April 4, 2025
Our Roots of Resistance
In the culture that Christianity was birthed, it was a premium to be a Roman citizen for the benefits it afforded you. To maintain your citizenship, one would often, depending on when and where one was living, have to declare their allegiance annually to Caesar. They would do this by making the public declaration that “Caesar is Lord.”
The earliest Christian creed was simply, “Jesus Christ is Lord,” a direct rebuttal to the Roman “creed.” Denial of either the current caesar’s authority or divinity, or both, could cause you to lose you citizenship—possibly even your life. Belief in Christ in the first few centuries was an act of resistance to the Roman empire, and the powers of the world in general. Because it is baked into the New Testament, resistance continues to be a core value of the gospel.
Maybe you have never thought about it, but Christian worship is an act of resistance to the many powers and values of the world that seek to be our “lords.” Christians gather to worship the triune God; not country, not industry, not wealth, not popularity, not success, not competition, not violence, and not victory. We claim the authority of the reign of God over our lives and inhabit God’s inverted values of all people being loved by God, and the first being last and the last being first. In our worship at First Covenant Church, we get a healthy dose of the scriptures and their view of the world that invites us to deny the narratives of power and success that dominate our culture. Instead, we, allow God’s Word to define an alternative future for us, claiming that tomorrow need not be like today. Justice, mercy, and love will ultimately triumph over greed, power, and sin.
Beyond our worship, our particular church affords people relationships across generations as we saw in our celebration of our Prayer Partners ministry. That is but one way we are teaching and rehearsing cross-generation conversations that are held in too few places in our culture today. This opens us all up to seeing the world from more than just our perspective. Further we open our doors throughout the week to those who attend our AA groups and those who attend our Saturday Breakfast. We also welcome those people to worship with us on Sunday, again creating relationships that expand our horizons and perspectives, pushing back against the echo chambers of thought in our culture.
The nature of the Christian message is subversive and dangerous. It names the principalities and powers that oppose the reign of God on earth and claims Christ’s victory over them. We proclaim “Christ is Lord”; as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. When the world around us becomes daunting, we are reminded that Christ is still Lord over all that we find disturbing and disruptive.
I invite you to listen for all the themes of resistance that are in our worship: prayers, readings, hymns, and so on. This will be especially true in our four Holy Week services, where—from Jesus’ triumphal entry to his death and resurrection—we are given language for resistance, and ultimately celebrate God’s victory over all that opposes God’s reign of life and love. A victorious campaign that will continue until it is consummated.
Thanks be to God!
~ Pastor Todd