Jeremy L. Berg

I found this to be a wise and timely word from Joel Lawrence, President at The Center for Pastor Theologians and adjunct professor at Bethel Seminary. -JB

My wife and I moved to the Twin Cities 20 years ago. It’s the place where we’ve lived the longest, where we’ve raised our kids, where I have taught theology and pastored churches and grown rich in friendships. 

People sometimes ask me: Do you ever want to move back to Texas? Get out of that Minnesota weather? I always answer the same way (with no offense to my Texas roots): “No. This is home. I feel like I should have been from Minnesota.”

Since we moved here, we’ve seen a lot of beauty in the Cities, but also a lot of tragedy. From the collapse of the I-35 bridge, to gun violence in our streets and shootings in our schools, this community has been through a lot. 

But, over the past few years, these tragedies have ramped up, and the Twin Cities has found itself regularly at the epicenter of the cultural upheavals coursing through America. From Philando Castile to George Floyd to the political assassination of Melissa Hortman, our home has been global news for events marked by violence. 

Last week, it happened again, with the killing of Renee Good, an American citizen, at the hands of an ICE agent. Here we are again, at the epicenter of cultural forces riling our nation. 

I have often asked myself “Why? Why does Minnesota continue to be the center of these events? Why does our home continue to be a place of violence?” 

I don’t have a great answer to those questions. After all, the issues facing Minnesota are present elsewhere. We don’t have a monopoly on racial tension or division between progressive and conservative or cases of significant fraud. So why do we experience so many world-shaking events? I don’t know. 

But I do know that this time is different. This time we are seeing armed federal forces going door to door. This time we are seeing armed agents walking through Target as a show of force. This time we are seeing a 17 year-old US citizen assaulted while working. This time we are seeing public schools close out of fear for the safety of children and their teachers. 

This time my family and I are personally experiencing immigrants in our church, who are fully documented and working through the legal process, being arrested and deported, including one who was lured out of his home under false pretenses and taken into custody. These are people providing services and paying taxes, living in America legally, until it was decided by fiat that they weren’t. 

This time is different, because the pressure being brought on the Twin Cities is being driven by the power playbook of using personal vendettas, misinformation, and the “rule of law” as an excuse for breaking the law and instilling fear. This time is different. 

And yet…It also isn’t different. There is nothing new under the sun. 

The worldly government is doing what worldly governments do. Perhaps we are so surprised because we have believed in the myth of American exceptionalism. Perhaps we have gotten used to the idea that the USA isn’t a nation-state like all the others, a structure of power and force built on the threat of violence. 

Perhaps the Church has been lulled into believing that our country is unlike the others. Perhaps we have said things like, “Sure, we have our problems, but America is different. We aren’t like the other nations. We are God’s nation.” Perhaps we have allowed our calling to be the People of God to be consumed by the “We the People” of an earthly kingdom.

Perhaps we are shocked by what we are seeing because we have denied the theological reality declared from the beginning to the end of the Scriptures: Nation-states belong to the Old, to the era of rebellion against God. Perhaps we are shocked because we have divinized that which the Scriptures consistently, constantly, declare to belong to the way of the Old.

By all means, we have the right to be sad at what we are seeing. By all means, we have the right to be angry at what we are seeing. But we must not be surprised when the powers of the world are worldly. There is nothing new under the sun. 

So, how should we respond? And by we, I mean “We the Church.” How should we respond? 

First, we must reject the myth of American exceptionalism. Yes, America has done some remarkable things in the world. Yes, America been a place of opportunity and prosperity (for some, like me. But not for all). But we must be freed from the narratives that have shaped us into a people whose earthly citizenship has taken precedence over our heavenly citizenship.

Second, we must be renewed in our vision of what it means to be the People of God. Our primary “We the People” is not the American “We the People.” We are the Church, a global community of those united in Christ, whose citizenship belongs to another Nation. Our fellow citizens are not defined by earthly citizenship. 

Indeed, there are laws of earthly citizenship that the nations set and are responsible to enforce (legally). But for us, for those who belong to Christ, our citizenship transcends the declaration of citizenship of earthly kingdoms. Our fellow citizens are all who claim the name of Jesus, all who are bound with us by the Spirit into His Body. We are the Church, which means we are defined, not by the markers of earthly citizenship, but by our common confession of Christ. 

Third, we must not return evil with evil, but evil with good. We don’t belong to the methods and mechanisms that maintain earthly power. We belong to the Kingdom of the crucified Christ, the Lamb who was slain, the Sabbath Church. 

By all means, we are called to resist the Powers that rule this world, and that seek to do harm in the service of maintaining their own power. But our resistance does not depend on the weapons of this world. In his resistance, Jesus always refused to take up the weapons of the powers of the age, even as he stood against the powers of the age. His refusal was not a refusal to engage or be against; it was a refusal to take up the weapons and methods of the powers of the age as the means of his against-ness. 

Finally, the majority American Church must realize, perhaps for the first time, that our vocation is a cruciform vocation. We must, perhaps for the first time, truly learn what it means to take up the cross and follow Christ. For too long we have believed that the way of Christ is the way of glory. 

It isn’t. It is the way of the cross, the way of suffering and sacrifice, the way of refusing to believe the lie that God operates through the powers of this age. 

He doesn’t. He operates through the weak things of this world, in order to put to shame the strong. We must accept the cross, accept the weakness of God, and so be present as Ambassadors of the Lion who is the Lamb.