We find ourselves in the midst of a series on what it means to live as “exiles at home,” a designation that highlights both our distinctiveness from and familiarity with American culture. Last week, I offered a first directive in this endeavor: Jesus must shape our imaginations. The idea here is that people with one foot in God’s kingdom must perceive the world and its possibilities with kingdom imaginations.. Only then will we be able to discern what faithfulness means as we navigate our home culture. Ultimately, Jesus, the king, must shape our imaginations for this endeavor.
Today we move to directive two: honor the kingdom community. In reaching for this goal of exiled life, we acknowledge that Jesus has dramatically redrawn our social boundaries around himself. We can find the seeds of this new social reality in the same passage we explored a couple of weeks ago where Peter employs exile imagery. Notice how he identifies his audience in 1 Peter:
To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood… (1 Peter 1:1b-2a; emphasis mine)
That last part about being sprinkled with Christ’s blood is covenant imagery that harkens back to Exodus 24:8. In that earlier passage, we hear these words: “Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.’” (emphasis mine) The sprinkling in Exodus was part of a pivotal ceremony in which the people of Israel entered into covenant relationship with God. When Peter speaks of being sprinkled with Christ’s blood, he is saying that something similar has happened with Christians. This time, though, the blood of the covenant isn’t the blood of bulls. Rather, it is the blood of Jesus himself. Importantly, Peter isn’t being all that original with this imagery. Rather, Jesus himself spoke of the “new covenant in his blood” when he took up the cup at the Last Supper. In all of this, we find an important truth of the Christian life: through Christ’s self-sacrifice on our behalf, Christians are counted as members of God’s new covenant community.
While we can talk about membership in the new covenant community through a variety of lenses, the important thing today is to highlight its social character. The new covenant community is just that - a community inaugurated by and gathered around Christ. Importantly, this community cuts across nationality, gender, and socio-economic status - those boundaries that often divide human society. That’s what Paul means in Galatians 3:28 when he says, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Though Christ does not erase these factors of human existence, he does nullify their social importance in the Christian fellowship. At the foot of the cross, the ground is level regardless of the pecking orders dictated by the fallen world around us. Moreover, Jesus calls us to live into this new reality, with the kingdom community becoming our primary lens for understanding the social constructs around us. In this, allegiance to the new covenant community takes precedence over worldly groupings and boundaries. As Christians, we are called to honor the other members of Christ’s community in his name and for his sake. To do anything less would be to discount the cross of Christ, which brought his community into existence.
As you might imagine, committing to our Christian brothers and sisters over other allegiances would drastically change much of the evangelical landscape. Take, for instance, recent controversies over CRT and the Black Lives Matter movement. Honoring the kingdom community in this context would mean first recognizing black brothers and sisters in Christ who are challenging oppressive social narratives with these tools and movements. Then, having recognized them, we would need to commit to hearing and understanding these brothers’ and sisters’ arguments in good faith. Imagine how transformative that approach could be! Disappointingly, we don’t have to look far to see that this often is not how things have played out in the evangelical space. There is no need to relitigate all of that here. Rather, let us imagine a world in which we actually allowed our commitment to the kingdom community to guide our actions as individuals and church communities. How might this change the church? How might it change the world? So much is possible if we will choose to honor Christ by honoring one another. And, so much else will fall into place if we will celebrate our Christian bonds before the other ties that bind us. Justice, compassion, and care can’t help but follow. Unsurprisingly, love for Christ’s people leads to greater faithfulness in other areas. Of course, this would be the case. In Christ, we are called into community with people unlike us. In that community are the seeds of a renewed social vision.
This, then, is the second directive for living as exiles at home: Honor the kingdom community. In doing so, we honor Christ by honoring one another and allow our allegiances to be redrawn around our Lord.