Whilst all the powers and authorities, both temporal and spiritual, do their thing, those of us who belong to Christ have an option to take and a path to walk. History in the last 2000 years shows us what the church has continued to do in the places where empires crash and burn. Rather than rushing to save civilisation, the church turns to the margins, and to God, and works an alternative future until such times the society gathers itself again.
Whether it’s the Desert Fathers and Mothers in the 3rd and 4th Century, the Benedictines from the 4th century, the Celts in the 6th – 8th century, the Franciscans in the 13th century, and so on, the Christian instinct has been to recognise that whilst kingdoms and civilisations rise and fall, the Kingdom of God stands. Even when it is hounded, it stands. Even when it seems to be snuffed out, it rises in another place because the Kingdom of God is like that.
Here we are in the 21st century. It does seem to me, even in my short life time, that the tectonic plates of ‘civilisation’ have shifted in such a dramatic way to the extent that, even after the drama and terror of two world wars, society divides on the same old lines and we no longer understand our neighbour, let alone know them. It takes no imagination to believe that ‘the West’ could fall quite unceremoniously…just the press of a button, perhaps.
Over in Europe at the fall of the Roman Empire, the ‘Celts’ who would soon readily become Christian, and who had withdrawn (or were pushed like barbarians) to the Atlantic edges of the furthermost parts of Galicia, Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, soon created such an alternative community that it gave birth to not only what would become Scotland in these parts, but made Northumbria and eventually helped solidify England in the face of such a seismic shift. And all through the tiny hubs of Iona and Lindisfarne and other places like it.
Out here in the Western coastal fringes on Arran today, its not the case that the empire’s impact isn’t felt, but there is at least a sense of just enough water between us that a little breathing room can be created. We are not immune to the waves of the empire crashing on our shores, but we are probably peculiar enough to hold most of it with contempt…even if we’re like Cnut trying to hold back the sea.
All that to say there isn’t a huge amount we can do here beyond prayer about what happens in the States, or Russia, or Ukraine, or Israel, or Gaza, or on the city streets of our own nation, or in the vast secularisation of most of the Western world as people still hold on to materialistic, reductionistic doctrines of a failed enlightenment. Here we are, a few of us, gathered in prayer waiting for a coming Kingdom given by God. It is a city, yes, but a God-given city with a tree of life in the middle, and with streams of water that flow from the throne that gives healing to the nations.
Dare we shape our lives around that Kingdom? that New City? that promised hope? That glorious King? Yes, we do. We very much do.
Andrew S M Clark 