Andrew S M Clark

‘How then shall we live?’

This is a questions we who are companions of the Northumbria Community are encourage to ask. In light of the massive story of God and his engagement with the world, in the light of Christ, and in the light of the horrors, terrors, beauties and confusions of our world, how then shall we live?

I am not a massive eschatology nerd, although I long for the return of Christ. I don’t get into the various activities of discerning who or what the antiChrist is, or which political power is going to create the one world order, or any of these questions. That, in my view, takes our eyes of the primary focus we are invited to have – that is Christ, and him crucified; Christ resurrected Christ glorified; Christ returning. His story is so much bigger than my small capacity to fathom out the mysteries of the Father’s timing, and indeed, Jesus said that it wasn’t even for him to know the times and dates (Acts 1).

I thoroughly believe ‘how then shall we live?’ and ‘how do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ are revolutionary questions. It demands we become melded in to a story which is of divine authorship so thoroughly that we learn our true part. God want’s me to be Andrew Clark, and to live my life in such a way that Jesus would if he were living my life. I am to be immersed in a kingdom whose values are not of this world, but to incarnate that in a very specific locality of where he has placed me. Right now (and hopefully until I see him face to face) that is Arran. In me, and my brothers and sisters in Christ, God is seeking to express his wisdom and glory through the church…through the lived example and witness of the followers of Jesus. But this living is to be incarnated – it is to be immersed in the local and the specific. It is the glory of Christ with an Arran coat. That is how Christ came to his immediate community – as a very recognisable 1st century Jewish man from Nazareth.

Did it ever occur to you that Jesus had an accent? He was a northern boy. I am sure that as soon as he opened his mouth, you knew he was from up north. It was in this very local reality that the glory of God was displayed in the most remarkable way. The Messiah, born into the Roman Empire, is totally not of empire. He does not play the Roman political power game, nor indeed the expansionist overbearing control-freakery game that the Romans played. Neither did he play the controlling religious game of the local Jewish leaders. He could not be drawn into anyone’s power-plays – he sought dominion over no-one, and yet, he was the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

In a world where the new Roman Empire seeks to step into sovereign nations and suck them into the vortex under the pretence of international security, best interests, and sheer power-grabbing entitlement, the call on the Christian is to be in it but most definitely not of it. We eschew everything that reeks of empire and live totally incarnated as a witness for Christ at the fundamental grass roots. And it is there, at the grass roots with everyday people, Christ’s witness always wins and softly influences with a different kind of power – a hopeful, transformative, freeing and liberating power to step into the authentic Kingdom.

To be a part of the Kingdom resistance in this day is to become so rooted in Christ, and so settled into the life of a local community, that our lives become a glorious outpost of the non-coercive generosity of God – the one who beckons every tribe, nation, language and tongue to his side. The salt has to contact the product it’s affecting, the yeast has to be in the dough for the bread to rise, the Christian has to be so close to the ground that they make manifest the alternative reality of what God is doing. How then shall we live? Locally, incarnationally, generously, lovingly, prophetically, and tangibly. We take on the habitat of the community in which we are sent, whilst also allowing Kingdom truth to shine through our cracked clay jars. And we pray – we pray: your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in Heaven.

This has been rumbling around my heart in the tumult of these times. The idea, the concept, but the rubber has to hit the road in real-life experience.