True Allegiance

“They live in their own native lands, but as aliens; as citizens they share all things with others; but like aliens, suffer all things… Every foreign country is to them as their native country, and every native land as a foreign country…”

Living as I do in the midst of so much Christian nationalism, in which to be un-Christian means to be un-American (and vice versa), these sentences hit me with a blunt force. How it restored my hope, to read such a clear statement that we follow and serve a King whose suffering love extends to all peoples, and that as his followers we are to be known for the same.

“They are passing their days on earth, but are citizens of heaven. They obey the appointed laws, and go beyond the laws in their own lives.”

In my History of Christianity class (which is where I came across this “Letter to Diognetus” in the first place), the teacher remarked that while Rome had many gods, Rome’s real god was Rome.

Rome’s gods were subservient to the Rome’s dreams and Rome’s thirsts, Rome’s lusts and Rome’s rages; and Rome allowed people to keep their gods as long as they swore allegiance to the idea of Rome and the strength of its legions.

During the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Christians were singled out for persecution because they believed it was Christ (and not the empire) who would bring healing and peace to the world.

My question for today is simply this, and I ask it sincerely and with all seriousness:

Do we believe in America more than we believe in Jesus?

Do we believe in America more than we believe in Jesus?

In our pride and our hurt and our “strength” we have declared that we will love those who love us, and hate those that hate us. We blunder across the stage of the world swinging futile arms. We work ourselves into frenzied tangle swinging at that which cannot be fought with human powers. We try to douse fire with kerosene, as if believing it to be water.

Is it in the strength of men that we place our hope?

Can the gun and the sword and bomb bring us salvation?

No, our salvation is found in the cross, and in the way of the cross, and in the Spirit that gives us the strength to walk that path in love, in union with Christ our Savior and our Friend.

As kingfishers catch fire…

This is one of my favorite poems.

I was introduced to it from reading Eugene Peterson’s “Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places”, which is incidentally a great book and one that I would recommend reading. =)

But enough of that- to the poem!

‘As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame’

Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves–goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the feature of men’s faces.

Timothy and Mary, part one

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned this summer, it’s a deeper appreciation for the difficulty of translating ideals into reality, plans into action, the exciting and imaginative conceptual into imperfect and everyday concrete.

I think of the lines T.S. Eliot penned in “The Hollow Men,” chilling but all-too-true:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

And so I’ve been reflecting on the last two months, trying to discern where the shadow fell, and why.

I think that my capacity to dream -to hope- is greater than my capacity to enact, greater than my capacity for the elements that form the foundation for action: persistence, patience, faith, sacrifice, love…

And I think that to some degree my hope itself has been mis-founded, resting more on an overconfident estimation of my own ability than on Christ’s ability to form me as his disciple, that process I so frequently resist, that life-long journey I wish could be done in a moment. One day there may be such a moment, a “twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:51, 52), but that day is not now, and I remain myself, imperfect and needy for the outstretched arm, the loving rebuke, the spirit of the cross: that mundane, everyday sort of resurrection. In short, needy for the wiser guidance of real love amidst all my dreams of heroism.