“For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” (Hebrews 13:14)
What a privilege to be offered this powerful word as watchword for the year 2013! Written to a discouraged and fatigued church in the early days of Christianity, it has reminded the churches throughout time that their witness finds its inspiration and orientation in all those things that God makes new.
No reason, therefore, to conform readily to every single thing that our “cities” around the world may offer as status quo. We actually know too well: the common sense of our cities can, on occasion, be so senseless, their cultural constructs can become so harmful and oppressive, and their values at times so painfully opposed to the values revealed in Jesus Christ as the polity of this “new city” that is to come. Churches are not called to join in those choruses of senselessness, oppression and injustice that can be heard at times, but to join the new tune of God’s powerful transformation. It is a tune that leads to a new togetherness among human beings and with God’s creation.
Therefore, no reason either to give up, running away or withdrawing from the cities and their complexities in which churches find themselves today. God enters this world so resolutely and so passionately, to the point of offering Jesus Christ, God’s Son, for the sake of love that there is hardly any convincing reason for a church to turn its back on it! In fact, the watchword invites the churches’ deeper engagement in the world. Experienced injustices, violence and conflict should not become reasons to despair and withdraw, but to speak even louder and to work even harder for justice, peace and reconciliation.
As such, the watchword invites churches to be both: on the one hand, powerful bearers of the memory of God’s new creation as revealed in Jesus Christ, joyfully announcing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the newness it offers; and on the other hand, strong advocates of the new, challenging through proclamation, diaconal actions and fearless public witness all that promotes injustices and violence, and that keeps our cities singing the old tunes of self-destruction.
Messengers of God’s story of powerful transformation and midwives that prepare the way for the newness that breaks into our world in Jesus Christ – this is how I would describe the task of being the church in today’s world. And this is how the LWF has described the “city” that it sees as it journeys and witnesses as a communion of churches in today’s world: “liberated by God’s grace, a communion in Christ, living and working together for a just, peaceful and reconciled world.”
May God inspire us all in this New Year ahead of us, so that the words and the actions of the LWF communion and its member churches may convey hope and joy at the things that God is making new!
Rev. Martin Junge
Geneva, January 2013
