becoming

What will it be like if you were to hear Jesus proclaiming that “The Kingdom of God is here!”, in your world? Consider this:

Some of us have worked on Wall Street, and some of us have slept on Wall Street. We are a community of struggle. Some of us are rich people trying to escape out loneliness. Some of us are poor folks trying to escape the cold. Some of us are addicted to drugs and others are addicted to money. We are a broken people who need each other and God, for we have come to recognize the mess that we have created of our world and how deeply we suffer from the mess. Now we are working to give birth to a new society within the shell of the old. Another world is possible. Another world is necessary. Another world is already here.

Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, p.188. Quoted by Tom Sine in The New Conspirators, p.25.

Andrew Perriman made the effort to clarify some ambiguous usages of terms like New creation, Spirit, blessing and the Kingdom of God, in which he argues that:

the New Testament tells a longer story that culminates in the vindication or justification of the Son of man community against the pagan imperial powers that opposed it – that is, against Rome. But the main point to grasp is that the ‘kingdom’ language defines not the missional practice of the church but the action of God to safeguard the integrity and autonomy of his new creation people, not least when they come under attack from the nations and cultures that surround them. The kingdom is not something that the church builds but something that was announced. When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray ‘Your kingdom come…’, what he has in mind is not the mission of the church but the coming transformation of Israel’s circumstances – the defeat of Israel’s oppressors, the restoration of the people, and the giving of the kingdom to the Son of man.

Read it all here.