In the latest issue of Forbes, Peter Huber points out the hidden cost of efforts to cut prescription-drug costs: the US is currently the only major market supporting research into new drugs. Government efforts to bring down drug costs will no doubt make existing drugs cheaper; but they will also choke off the flow of new drugs, because the money needed to finance the research and development behind them will no longer be there.This points to the flaw in the reasoning of those who point to Canada and say, “Why can’t we do that? It works for them.” The fact is, their system only works as well as it does because of the US, which helps keep their costs down and their waiting lists more tolerable by treating many of their patients, and because the US’ open market effectively subsidizes their drug costs. It will be interesting to see, if the Democrats get their way and move the American health-care system hard left, what the other unintended consequences are for health care in Canada, and Mexico, and elsewhere in the world. I have a hunch they won’t be pretty.
This is the day that the Lord has made
let us rejoice and be glad in it. This has been a productive study leave so far; the most pressing item on the agenda was sermon planning, and I actually got farther than I had intended—I have all of 2009, not merely blocked out even, but laid out in detail. This is of course only prospective, since God reserves the right to upskittle all my plans; but still, if I have to deviate, I now have a base course to deviate from, which is quite satisfying (and more than a little reassuring, honestly).As noted, of course, that wasn’t the only objective I set myself for this week (just the one that needed to be accomplished first), so with that done, it’s on to other projects. At the moment, though, I could really use a brain break, so I’ll leave that for this evening; for now, it’s time to join the kids on the sledding hill.
Wishing you a joyful New Year
I’m not sanguine about 2009; I don’t think it’s going to be, objectively and materially, a good year for America or the world. That said, I hope and pray that even if it’s a hard year for all of us, that God uses those difficulties and those challenges to make us a better, wiser, more mature, and more godly people, and thus that it will be a year that bears good fruit in this nation in the future; and I pray for everyone who reads this that God will richly bless you this coming year in ways you do not expect and cannot see coming now, such that whatever happens, you will look back on 2009 as a good year, and one filled with joy.Happy New Year.
It all depends what the meaning of “is” is
In today’s daily piece on the First Things website, titled “The Good Life,” Amy Julia Becker meditates on what it means for life to be good as it is in the face of human disabilities—and in the face of those who vehemently deny that possibility. She begins with this quote from William Motley, an Oxford geneticist, from a letter to the editor of the New York Times:
Fighting Down syndrome with prenatal screening does not “border on eugenics.” It is a “search-and-destroy mission” on the disease, not on a category of citizens.
As Becker notes, this is merely an attempt to evade the fact that his “search-and-destroy mission” will in fact eliminate a category of citizens, regardless of whether they are declared to be its targets or not; he’s attempting to defend himself by redefining the reality, and thus by avoiding the argument rather than answering it. Put another way, he’s attempting to define the humanity of Down Syndrome children out of the discussion.Which prompts the thought that there is no category of people with whom you couldn’t do the exact same thing. Want to get rid of homosexuals, or black people, or redheads? It’s not eugenics, just a “search-and-destroy mission” on a particular characteristic. All you need is for society to agree that that particular characteristic is undesirable, and boom! you’re free to proceed, unhampered by any of those pesky ethical considerations.It’s just one more way to argue that society should be free to get rid of the inconvenient. Which seems fine, as long as you’re strong and productive and able to defend yourself. But those who live by that particular sword will die by it in the end. Sure, right now, everyone agrees that you’re a contributing member of society; but will they always?
The Washington Post and the liberal double standard
My heartfelt thanks to Paul Hinderaker for posting this classic letter to the editor from the Washington Post, from a chap named Martin Carr:
I’ve got to stop reading the Post. The Dec. 17 front-page fluff piece on Caroline Kennedy [Friends Say Kennedy Has Long Wanted Public Role] was nauseating. You devoted more than 1,200 words to the subject but none that addressed why she is qualified to take on the role of a U.S. Senator. Her maiden name—and I loved the part about how she has now abandoned her married name—is her only “qualification,” and a dubious one at that.What really irritated me was the paragraph about how her cousin thinks she’d be great because she’s a mom and the Senate needs more such real people. Hmmm. . . . Seems to me we just had the “realest” person I can ever remember running for vice president—a mother of five who got involved in politics because she didn’t like the way things were happening in her home town—and she was excoriated by The Post and other media outlets for being inexperienced and uninformed.Caroline Kennedy’s qualifications are nil, and I’m ashamed that The Post is pretending that she has some. Have you lost all sense of editorial balance and real journalism?
I have continued to be amazed at the way in which utterly unfounded and ridiculous slurs against Sarah Palin have been disseminated and believed for no other reason than that people dislike her party affiliation. Here, the Post has given us the flip side of that. And the MSM wonders why they have no credibility . . .
Samuel Huntington, RIP
I’m working with a fairly limited connection here at the moment, but I wanted to note the death of Harvard political scientist and author Samuel P. Huntington. Over the last decade, Dr. Huntington took a pounding from his fellow members of the liberal Western intelligentsia; when they wanted to join Francis Fukuyama in celebrating The End of History, he had the guts in his article “The Clash of Civilizations?” (and the resulting book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order), to point out how foolish that triumphalism was. As Mark Steyn put it, Dr. Huntington’s key point was that
the conventional western elite view of man as homo economicus is reductive—that cultural identity is a more profound indicator that western-style economic liberty cannot easily trump.
As a consequence, he argued that the post-Cold War era would not see the end of major conflict, but rather would see a shift from wars of ideology to wars driven by conflicts between cultures—and particularly by the conflict along “Islam’s bloody borders.” He was pilloried for his argument, but it seems to me that history has validated his analysis, where Dr. Fukuyama’s position has fallen by the wayside. For those interested in reading more, Power Line has a good short roundup of pieces on Dr. Huntington, including Robert Kaplan’s excellent profile of him in The Atlantic. For his insight, his capacity for independent thought, and his willingness to follow out his analysis in the face of the conventional wisdom, Dr. Huntington will be greatly missed.
A nod to the Browncoats
I’ve been meaning to post this and hadn’t gotten around to doing so, but now’s probably as good a time as ever; so, apropos of nothing in particular, here’s the title sequence to the late, much lamented show Firefly:
I do hope that someday we get the rest of the story; and I particularly hope that that includes Whedon resurrecting the characters he so callously killed off. (Yes, people die, but under the circumstances, I think that really was a callous way to treat the actors in question.)
The world’s wait and the church’s mission
When Christ came to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, he inaugurated the kingdom of God on earth; in forbearing to declare the day of God’s vengeance, he put off its consummation. He established a time of mercy, with judgment held off; which means that while the patience of God is extended to sinners—which is all of us—the world continues to wait for its complete redemption, and for the fullness of the kingdom of God. Sometimes people cry out against that fact, asking with the Psalmist, “How long, O Lord? How long will the wicked prosper? How long will you let the injustice and suffering of the world go on?” We don’t have answers for those questions, because God hasn’t given us those answers; we don’t know when Christ will come again to set everything finally right, and so we don’t know why he hasn’t come back already. But what we do have, as we contemplate the child in the manger, is a response to those questions. Indeed, in a way, we are the response to those questions, or ought to be. God responded to the wickedness and injustice and suffering in this world by sending his Son Jesus Christ, and Christ left us behind to continue his work until all the world has heard the good news and the time is right for him to return; and as this world waits for that fulfillment, that wait is our opportunity to work on his behalf as his agents and representatives, as the agents and representatives of the world which is to come.What this means is, we as the church aren’t just about gathering for an hour or two on Sunday mornings. This is an important part of our life in Christ, as we come together to worship him and to be trained for the rest of our mission, it’s the beginning of everything we do, but it’s only the beginning. When Jesus returned to the Father, he left us behind to shine his light into every corner of the world—both outward, into the areas of our society and other places around the globe where his name is not known, or where people know his name but resist him, and inward, into the darkest places in our own hearts. Our mission is to follow the example of the one who sent us—the one who told the truth so clearly and unflinchingly that people finally killed him for it—so that all those who seek the light of God may find it.(Excerpted, edited, from “The Incoming Kingdom”)
Living between
“Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, with no one passing through,
I will make you majestic forever, a joy from age to age.
You shall suck the milk of nations; you shall nurse at the breast of kings;
and you shall know that I, the LORD, am your Savior
and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.“Instead of bronze I will bring gold, and instead of iron I will bring silver;
instead of wood, bronze, instead of stones, iron.
I will make your overseers peace and your taskmasters righteousness.
Violence shall no more be heard in your land,
devastation or destruction within your borders;
you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise. “The sun shall be no more your light by day,
nor for brightness shall the moon give you light;
but the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.
Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself;
for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.
Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever,
the branch of my planting, the work of my hands,
that I might be glorified.
The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation;
I am the LORD;
in its time I will hasten it.”The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.
They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.
Strangers shall stand and tend your flocks;
foreigners shall be your plowmen and vinedressers;
but you shall be called the priests of the LORD;
they shall speak of you as the ministers of our God;
you shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their glory you shall boast.—Isaiah 60:15-61:6 (ESV)And [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll
and found the place where it was written,“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.
And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”—Luke 4:16-21 (ESV)When Nazi Germany fired the first shots of World War II in 1939, their enemies were ill-prepared for the assault, and by 1942 Germany and its allies controlled most of Europe, including a large chunk of Russia, and almost all of North Africa. By the spring of 1943, however, the tide of war had turned; the Nazis had been driven out of Africa and had lost much of their ground in Russia. That summer, the Allies invaded Italy, and by September of 1943 Italy had surrendered. Most of northern Italy remained Nazi-controlled after that, however, and the Italian mountains prevented the Allies from gaining much ground there. It was clear that an invasion of France was necessary.On June 6, 1944, D-Day, the Allies invaded northern France, in the region known as Normandy. Planning for the assault assigned five different landing zones. American troops hit Utah and Omaha Beaches; the British took Gold and Sword Beaches; and Canadian infantry and armor were assigned to Juno Beach. The troops at Utah Beach landed in the wrong area, and their mistake meant that they met little resistance and thus had great success; Omaha Beach, by contrast, was quite strongly defended, and the invaders there took heavy casualties before finally establishing a small beachhead. The situation of the Brits and Canadians was somewhere in between, as they faced hard fighting but succeeded in driving several miles inland. The Germans’ only real hope of fending off the invasion had been to drive the Allies back off the beach, and they had failed. From this point, the Allies made steady gains, and by September 15, 1944, they had reached the borders of Germany itself. The Nazis did launch one last offensive that December, sparking a battle which would become known as the Battle of the Bulge, but the offensive failed, and on May 7, 1945, Nazi Germany formally surrendered; in Europe, World War II was over. But though the fighting in Europe didn’t end until that day in May, which was quickly dubbed V-E Day, that wasn’t when the war was won; to all intents and purposes, the war ended on D-Day, when the Allied invasion of Normandy succeeded, because Germany’s last real hope of avoiding defeat depended on keeping those armies from securing that beachhead. Once they failed there, the rest of the war was nothing more than a formality, for all the suffering and death it brought; Hitler might just as well have sued for peace on June 7, 1944, for all the good fighting was going to do him. On that day, while the Allies had not yet defeated Germany, they had already won; their victory was already assured, it just was not yet fully realized, because the enemy refused to accept their defeat. As a consequence, they had to keep waiting, and suffering, and working, in order to bring about the victory they had already earned. As Christians, we’re in much the same position. On the one hand, when we look at the description Isaiah gives us of the kingdom of God, we see a beautiful and glorious picture of God’s reign, a staggering promise of what he will do in the future—but something which is clearly not the world as we know it. “No longer will violence be heard in your land.” “The sun will no more be your light by day,” nor will the moon light the night, “for the Lord will be your everlasting light . . . and your days of sorrow will end. Your people will all be righteous . . .” Good news to the oppressed, healing for the brokenhearted, liberty to the captives, release for the prisoners, comfort for all who mourn; the day of the Lord’s favor on those who seek him, and his vengeance on the wicked. The devastations of the ages repaired, and the erosion of centuries undone. This is a long way from the reality we find in the morning paper. And yet, granted that undeniable fact, there’s something else that needs to be said as well. In one of his very first public appearances, Jesus read from the heart of this passage, and then proclaimed, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” At other times he said the same thing in different ways, declaring, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the good news.” This great promise, this future which Jesus taught was coming, he also declares to have already come. The kingdom of God is not yet here, it still remains to be realized, but in Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit it’s already here among us. You can see this clearly in the way Jesus uses Isaiah 61. He reads the promise of verse 1, declares that he has come to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor—and then stops. He doesn’t go on to announce “the day of vengeance of our God,” he stops. Jesus in his first coming—and ultimately, on the cross—began this process, but he didn’t finish it; he inaugurated the kingdom of God on earth, but he didn’t bring it fully into being. That’s left to his second coming, which is still in the future. That’s why Scripture says repeatedly that we are in the last days; the dramatic stuff that Revelation talks about hasn’t happened yet—or at least not for the last time—but that could be right around the corner. In every way that matters, we have been in the last days for two thousand years, ever since Christ came, because that was D-Day. The war which has been raging on earth ever since our ultimate grandparents first disobeyed God has already been won; the only question remaining is how much more fighting there will be. Which means that the work Christ began is still going on—in us. We as Christians live between the times, between D-Day and V-E Day; we live in two realities at once. We live in the present reality that Jesus brought the kingdom of God to earth, brought us into his kingdom by his death and resurrection, and sealed us to himself by giving us his Holy Spirit; and so we look back and we celebrate his first coming at Christmas. At the same time, we do not live in his perfected kingdom, but in a fallen, sin-soaked, pain-haunted, temptation-riddled, death-scarred world, and we cling to the hope of what God has promised us; and so we look forward in anticipation of Christ’s second coming, when all will be made more right than we can now imagine. As Christians, we look forward and backward at once, because we live between the times, citizens of two worlds at the same time. We live as the representatives of a future that is not only coming, but incoming; there is a new world breaking in to this one, and we’re the thin point of the wedge, the point of contact. This has profound implications for our understanding of our earthly allegiances. Yes, we serve others in this world—our family, our friends, our communities, the organizations which employ us, our nation—but we don’t belong to them. We don’t truly work for this world, we work for Christ, and Christ alone. We live backwards to the rest of the world—we live from the future to the present, and our ultimate allegiance is to a kingdom which has not yet fully come. We are, right now, the kingdom of God on this earth; we are the incoming kingdom, which will fully come when Christ returns in glory, and we are called to live in the light of his coming, according to his agenda, not this world’s, and not our own. We’ve been given a message for the world—now is the acceptable time, now is the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of his vengeance has been put on hold to give as many people as possible a chance to respond—and we need to share it with as many people as we can. We’ve been given the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and we need to shine that light wherever we go, in every conversation we have and on every issue we face. Sometimes that will square with what this world recognizes as good, and we’ll be praised for it; sometimes it will bring us into conflict with the powers that be and with the ruling assumptions of our culture, and we’ll be criticized. Whichever it is, we need to follow Christ as faithfully as we’re able, regardless of what anyone else thinks of us. This is the work God has given us to do while we wait.(Excerpted, edited, from “The Incoming Kingdom”)
The Incoming Kingdom
(Isaiah 60:15-61:6, Malachi 3:16-4:3; Luke 4:16-21)
When Nazi Germany fired the first shots of World War II in 1939, their enemies were ill-prepared for the assault, and by 1942 Germany and its allies controlled most of Europe, including a large chunk of Russia, and almost all of North Africa. By the spring of 1943, however, the tide of war had turned; the Nazis had been driven out of Africa and had lost much of their ground in Russia. That summer, the Allies invaded Italy, and by September of 1943 Italy had surrendered. Most of northern Italy remained Nazi-controlled after that, however, and the Italian mountains prevented the Allies from gaining much ground there. It was clear that an invasion of France was necessary.
On June 6, 1944, D-Day, the Allies invaded northern France, in the region known as Normandy. Planning for the assault assigned five different landing zones. American troops hit Utah and Omaha Beaches; the British took Gold and Sword Beaches; and Canadian infantry and armor were assigned to Juno Beach. The troops at Utah Beach landed in the wrong area, and their mistake meant that they met little resistance and thus had great success; Omaha Beach, by contrast, was quite strongly defended, and the in-vaders there took heavy casualties before finally establishing a small beachhead. The situation of the Brits and Canadians was somewhere in between, as they faced hard fighting but succeeded in driving several miles inland.
The Germans’ only real hope of fending off the invasion had been to drive the Allies back off the beach, and they had failed. From this point, the Allies made steady gains, and by September 15, 1944, they had reached the borders of Germany itself. The Nazis did launch one last offensive that December, sparking a battle which would become known as the Battle of the Bulge, but the offensive failed, and on May 7, 1945, Nazi Germany formally surrendered; in Europe, World War II was over.
And some of you are looking at me and thinking, “And what does this have to do with Christmas?” I can hear you from all the way up here. Just bear with me, because there’s an important parallel to our own lives in this. The fighting in Europe didn’t end until that day in May, which was quickly dubbed V-E Day, but that wasn’t when the war was won. To all intents and purposes, the war ended on D-Day, when the Allied invasion of Normandy succeeded; Germany’s last real hope of victory depended on keeping those armies from securing that beachhead. Once they failed there, the rest of the war was nothing more than a formality, for all the suffering and death it brought. Hitler might just as well have sued for peace on June 7, 1944, for all the good fighting was going to do him. On that day, while the Allies had not yet defeated Germany, they had already won; their victory was already assured, but not yet fully realized, because the enemy refused to accept their defeat. As a consequence, they had to keep waiting, and suffering, and working, in order to bring about the victory they had already earned.
We live in much the same position. We have a pretty good idea of what victory will look like, because Isaiah and Malachi give us a vivid picture; and all we really have to do is to compare what they describe to the world we see around us, and we can tell the difference. Once again, Malachi gives us a powerful image of God’s judgment on the wicked: like the stubble that was burned off the fields after the harvest, they will be burned to ash by the coming of God. At the same time, though, he also shows us the joy that will come along with that for the righteous; to those who revere the name of the Lord, the fire that consumes the wicked will be glorious light, the sun of righteousness rising with healing in its wings—a verse which Charles Wesley rightly applies to Jesus in the carol we’ll sing in a few minutes. God’s faithful ones will be released from the power of the wicked and all the things that bind us in this world, and we will finally experience the fullness of his freedom, like calves released from the stall to run and play in the fields beyond. It will be, truly, a new and glorious day.
Isaiah, meanwhile, focuses on what that day will look like for God’s faithful ones, what it will be like to live in the kingdom of God. “No longer will violence be heard in your land.” “The sun will no more be your light by day,” nor will the moon light the night, “for the Lord will be your everlasting light . . . and your days of sorrow will end. Your people will all be righteous . . .” Good news to the oppressed, healing for the brokenhearted, liberty to the captives, release for the prisoners, comfort for all who mourn; the day of the Lord’s favor on those who seek him, and his vengeance on the wicked. The devastations of the ages repaired. This is a beautiful and glorious picture of God’s reign, it’s a staggering promise—but it’s clearly not the world as we know it.
And yet . . . In one of his very first public appearances, Jesus read from the heart of this passage, and then proclaimed, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” At other times he said the same thing in different ways, declaring, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the good news.” This great promise, this future which Jesus taught was coming, he also declares to have already come. The kingdom of God is not yet here, it still remains to be realized, but in Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit it’s already here among us.
You can see this clearly in the way Jesus uses Isaiah 61. He reads the promise of verse 1, declares that he has come to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor—and then stops. He doesn’t go on to announce “the day of vengeance of our God,” he stops. Jesus in his first coming—and ultimately, on the cross—began this process, but he didn’t finish it; he inaugurated the kingdom of God on earth, but he didn’t bring it fully into being. That’s left to his second coming, which is still in the future. That’s why Scripture says repeatedly that we are in the last days; the dramatic stuff that Revelation talks about hasn’t happened yet—or at least not for the last time—but that could be right around the corner. In every way that matters, we have been in the last days for two thousand years, ever since Christ came, because that was D-Day. The war which has been raging on earth ever since our ultimate grandparents first disobeyed God has already been won; the only question remaining is how much more fighting there will be.
Which means that the work Christ began is still going on—in us. During his time on Earth, Jesus repeatedly declared that with his coming, “the kingdom of God is among you,” and “the kingdom of God is near,” but he didn’t only apply that to himself; in Luke 10, he sent out his followers with the same message, to make the point clear that the kingdom of God isn’t just present in Jesus, it’s also present in his disciples. And if you look at that passage, what you’ll see is that he didn’t send them out just to say this, but also to back it up by doing the things he did—specifically, by healing the sick. The proclamation of the kingdom of God is backed by signs of the power of the kingdom of God. The miracles are the evidence that when the disciples proclaim a reality greater than the world as we know it, they aren’t just making it up. The kingdom of God is in fact already present in this world, in Jesus Christ the Son of God—and, because of him, in them; and if in them, then in us.
In other words, we as Christians live between the times, between D-Day and V-E Day; we live in two realities at once. We live in the present reality that Jesus brought the kingdom of God to earth, brought us into his kingdom by his death and resurrection, and sealed us to himself by giving us his Holy Spirit; and so we look back and we celebrate his first coming at Christmas. At the same time, we do not live in his perfected kingdom, but in a fallen, sin-soaked, pain-haunted, temptation-riddled, death-scarred world, and we cling to the hope of what God has promised us; and so we look forward in anticipation of Christ’s second coming, when all will be made more right than we can now imagine. As Christians, we look forward and backward at once, because we live between the times, citizens of two worlds at the same time. We live as the representatives of a future that is not only coming, but incoming; there is a new world breaking in to this one, and we’re the thin point of the wedge, the point of contact.
What this means is that though I focused, the last few Sundays we were here, on what Advent teaches us about waiting—and necessarily so, I think, because our culture is increasingly teaching us that we don’t have to wait, and shouldn’t have to—there’s a lot more to it than that; there’s also the broader reality that the whole world is waiting for Christ to come again, waiting for its redemption, waiting to experience the fullness of the kingdom of God. Sometimes people cry out against that fact, asking with the Psalmist, “How long, O Lord? How long will the wicked prosper? How long will you let the injustice and suffering of the world go on?” We don’t have answers for those questions, because God hasn’t given us those answers; we don’t know when Christ will come again to set everything finally right, and so we don’t know why he hasn’t come back already. But what we do have, as we contemplate the child in the manger, is a response to those questions. God responded to the wickedness and injustice and suffering in this world by sending his Son Jesus Christ, and Christ left us behind to continue his work until all the world has heard the good news and the time is right for him to return; and as this world waits for that fulfillment, that wait is our opportunity to work on his behalf as his agents and representatives, as the agents and representatives of the world which is to come.
What this means is, we as the church aren’t just about gathering for an hour or two on Sunday mornings. This is an important part of our life in Christ, as we come together to worship him and to be trained for the rest of our mission, it’s the beginning of everything we do, but it’s only the beginning. As I said on Christmas Eve, when Jesus returned to the Father, he left us behind to shine his light into every corner of the world. Part of that is what we call evangelism—getting to know people who don’t know our Lord, and making the introduction. Part of it is what we call local mission—helping to care for the poor and the vulnerable, for those in need. Part of it is discipleship: letting his light shine into every corner of our own lives, and especially the dark ones. Part of it in the coming years, I suspect, will once again be demonstrating that the power of God truly is greater than the power of this world, through such spiritual gifts as healing and prophecy. That hasn’t been something Presbyterians have been on about very much, because it hasn’t been something to which most of modern American society has been open, but I think I see that changing; if I’m right, that’s going to become a much more important part of the witness of the church in this country in the days ahead. And part of this, too, is being willing to stand up for what’s right even when the world around us is going wrong—to follow the example of Jesus, who told people the truth they didn’t want to hear, so clearly and unflinchingly that they killed him for it.
The common denominator in all this is the realization that we don’t work for this world, we work for Christ, and Christ alone. We live backwards to the rest of the world—we live from the future to the present, and our ultimate allegiance is to a kingdom which has not yet fully come. We are, right now, the kingdom of God on this earth; we are the incoming kingdom, which will fully come when Christ returns in glory, and we are called to live in the light of his coming, according to his agenda, not this world’s, and not our own. We’ve been given a message for the world—now is the acceptable time, now is the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of his judgment has been put on hold to give as many people as possible a chance to respond—and we need to share it with as many people as we can. We’ve been given the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and we need to shine that light wherever we go, in every conversation we have and on every issue we face. Sometimes that will square with what this world recognizes as good, and we’ll be praised for it; sometimes it will bring us into conflict with the powers that be and with the ruling assumptions of our culture, and we’ll be criticized. Whichever it is, we need to follow Christ as faithfully as we’re able, regardless of what anyone else thinks of us. This is the work God has given us to do while we wait.