against talk

Since Pentecost, manifestations of the power of God, power which will unite the world under his reign and remake it according to his vision, have been sparse. With this power seemingly drained from the Church, we its members have become accustomed to a life of words.

Christians have dumped hundreds of millions of words into the world over these two millenia. Sometimes the words are insightful and beautifully compiled: educated Christians, perhaps moreso than ever in the age of the internet, love to collect these words and read them and word out opinions on them to share among themselves. Sometimes they even pay to credentialize their experience reading and writing and listening to Christian words, and it is common enough to earn a comfortable middle-class living by working in the Christian words industry.

The great mass of the words we produce are not beautiful. At best they bore the hearer; at worst, they present an image of the One God that is even more obscure and distorted than what the hearer had already known. Whether beautiful or not, though, the words are not Godly, because they are impotent.

For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.”

The centurion, a pagan, understood that the words of God and of God’s Son, Jesus, are marked by their power. When those from Heaven speak, the world is not left unchanged. God says, “Let there be light,” and there is light. Jesus says, “Lazarus, come out,” and out he walks. He tells the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again,” and it withers.

The followers of Jesus, with our wordiness, have developed the opposite reputation. The world knows us, first and foremost, as empty talkers. The Christian is the tiresome sermonizer, the perpetual repenter, the failed predictor of the end times. She is the rosary repeater, the “I’ll pray for you!” busybody, the church lady gossiper. He is the respected but vacuous theologian, he debates about “validity” and “essences”, he creates inane arguments about fossils and Darwinism that are only convincing to the already indoctrinated. The Christian of conscience might become a protestor, shouting words at the world’s princes, who will hardly even take notice.

But what else can be done? We have been taught that the Lord will return one day to bring his Kingdom to completion, but until that day, what can we do besides show kindness to our neighbors and, yes, talk?

We say that the Lord Jesus is with us, now and until the end of the age. We say that those who believe in Jesus will do works even greater than the ones he did before he went to the Father. We say that it is possible, and indeed, that it is God’s plan, that the concrete Reign of God, the law and the justice and the power of His Kingdom, be established and spread using the hands of believers in whom the Lord Jesus lives.

We say that now is not the time to patiently wait. It is not the time to deliberate about which of the world’s evils is least. It is not the time (nor was it ever the time) for nostalgia about euro-medieval Christendom. We say that it is time to wrench every last drop of political power from the World so that Christ the King can use it to save the millions who are sick, who are lonely, who are enslaved, who are suicidal.

We say that there is not a single currently-existing political party that is sufficient as a vessel for Christ the King, and there is not a single person now in power through whom he would bring the fullness of His reign. We say that this is the time for a new political organization completely unlike any the World has seen, and that within this organization will grow a completely new type of politician, one who, hollowed out with the fire of God’s Spirit, is remade into the perfect image of the Son, who lives like Him in his poverty, in his celibacy, in his prayerfulness, in his love, whose life becomes His in every way.

To the great mass of Christian words we add these, and will add more. We are so bold as to believe that these are not empty words, but words of God, words with power. Their purpose is to summon. The Spirit calls a small number of believers to this new political organization, to a life devoted to materializing the Reign of God on Earth. These ones will say, “Do this,” and it will be done. They will say, “I am making all things new,” and the world will be remade.

You in your prayers have asked me to come out, and I have come. Now I call to you. Come out, my fellow workers. Let us live in joy with our Lord, spending all the day in the harvest and at night pouring wine on the battlefield.