Worship Beyond Nationalism. Rob Hewell

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Worship Beyond Nationalism - Rob Hewell


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ventures in creating and sustaining dominion, the kings and people of Judah looked forward to a kingdom without fail. Some seven hundred years or so later the post-Isaiah Israelites who encountered John’s message were still hoping for Messiah, though with a skewed character. Since the commencement of Roman rule six decades earlier, Jewish expectations for Messiah had taken a decidedly nationalistic turn with nearly unqualified inclination to a worldly means-to-an-end. Those expectations quite missed the point of the prophet’s inimitable message.

      The people who heard John’s statements and responded to his plea for repentance and baptism were yet clueless about the true nearness of heaven’s kingdom. The baptizer’s message made it clear he himself was not the promised one of Israel. There was another coming that would transcend John’s own identity as messenger. John’s audience was witnessing the arrival of the kingdom, if they would but discern its manifestation among them. The arrival of the long-awaited Messiah was shocking, not because of its force but for its lack of force in worldly terms.

      This much they knew: freedom would come at a price. All that was lacking was someone willing to accept the mantle of leading the uprising, one surely to signal a return to sovereignty over their own affairs. This person would also assume enormous risk, a dare most were generally unwilling to take. Was it not the word of the Lord God through the prophets that Messiah would come? Jesus Christ resisted the efforts of the Jews to cast him into their agenda, steadfastly preferring the agenda of his Father’s kingdom.

      Jesus’ life, ministry, and teachings were, among many things, political. The politicality represented in Christ is an accurate reflection of the reign of God, and the politics of this reign are distinct from all worldly politics. If, indeed, all things were created through Christ and for Christ, then the most direct path into the kingdom of heaven is through Christ himself. God’s reign in Christ is the kingdom of God.

      To be sure, Jesus Christ lived among humankind in a specific time and place. Yet the primary context in which he did what he did and said what he said was not a Jewish society struggling to survive under first-century Roman rule. The primary context of his birth, every encounter, conversation, miracle, and even his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension was the kingdom of God. Christ literally inaugurated life in this new kingdom in his very self. Hence for Christ’s followers to be in Christ and to obey the commands of Christ is to be in the kingdom.

      During his earthly life Jesus Christ was questioned regularly, often by persons allied with groups attempting to catch him in some heretical or treasonous act. He had a propensity for responding


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