The politics of Jesus, the politics of the Church.

I've been re-reading one of my favourite books recently as some kind of 'build up' to Easter. The book is John Howard Yoder's "The Politics of Jesus". Along the way a friend forwarded the following to me from Kester's (?) blog. I believe it a powerful comment. The piece is part of, I'm told, a longer ongoing discussion about 'emerging church' & the employment of strategy. Towards the end of his book, on page 245 in a section entitled "The War of the Lamb", Yoder writes

"Suffering is not a tool to make people come around, nor a good in itself. But the kind of faithfulness that is willing to accept evident defeat rather than complicity with evil is, by virtue of its conformity with what happens to God when he (sic) works among men (sic0, aligned with the ultimate triumph of the Lamb."

Through Game Theory we have been duped into thinking our best strategy is to not trust one another. But beyond that Christ's death on the cross - a deliberate 'loss' - subverts the very idea of strategy at all.

At Golgotha, God declares the end of strategy.
God will not play our power games.
God is.
God loves.
There is no win or lose.

All too quickly the early church - mostly under the influence of Paul, I would argue - lost this message and began to make itself into a 'strategic organization'. We don't really know the effect of Paul's journey to Rome, what we do know is that in 313CE Emperor Constantine declared himself a Christian. Why? Because he believed that the Christian God had given him victory in battle. Where did he get such a theology? Surely not from Christ. Constantine was a brilliant soldier, and an astute military strategist. Is is possible that there is a thread that leads from Paul's strategy to evangelize Rome to Constantine's conversion?

I'm clearly speculating. But what concerns me about Constantine is that from there on we see Christianity moving from a religion of the poor and the oppressed, to a religion held up by the rich and powerful as one which supports them.

This is a long way from the cross, and it seems a long way from us too. But I believe that if the church allows itself to be tied up in strategies, to 'winning' people for Christ, it will end be moving towards power-politics, towards support for wars, and away from genuine concern for 'the other'.

To give oneself for 'the other' is to lose. It is to be engaged in transformative relationships, rather than tactical change. It is to love. To know grace. And grace and love have no strategy.