The church is a political community where ‘chief among you are the least’, and judgment perpetually loses out to mercy. Her boundaries are not extended by the tactics of empire, technology or capital, but in her willingness to lay down her life for the forgotten, the refugee and anyone else level with her humility.
The church has all the zeal of the Zealot but without the sword, all the activism of the social revolutionary without the arrogance or the gun. She is a threat to the existing powers because she can’t be bought. Her authority is rooted in her powerlessness and her reliance on God’s help. Entitlements she defers to others, she is neither benefactor nor debtor other than to love as He loves. She becomes poor to enrich and honour the excluded, she shields the defenseless and speaks for those oppressed by power and greed. She is the prophet calling the world alongside her on her knees.
The church is an economic community making her home in the ghetto as among the rich, forgiving people their debts (yes I mean monetary ones!) and emptying herself that others have a home. She is the great wealth re-distributor, the proclamation of God's Jubliee.
Regarding world hunger she understands ‘God desires that no one perish’ and lives accordingly, sacrificially.
She chooses loss over gain, invisible in her charity and yet blessing the world.
She understands that among the reasons Jesus was crucified are political and economic and social ones. He died because he was contrary to the way things are.
Living as he did, she takes up her cross, prepared to meet up with the same fate he did. As he was contrary she too is contrary, mirroring his obedience, living to ‘share in his sufferings’ and his resurrection.
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