The following is the follow-up to my recent article in which I reflected on Mark Galli’s editorial in Christianity Today on Trump and impeachment. If you haven’t read my first article, I would encourage you to do so, as what I say below flows out of the content of that post.
In the previous post, I noted that the question of the relationship between Trump and evangelicalism is a symptom of a deeper issue facing the western church: the question of the church’s understanding of our presence in history. Following WWII, Jacques Ellul, a French sociologist and theologian, wrote a book called Presence in the Modern World. In that book, he declared that the church had failed to follow the Biblical injunction not to be conformed to the pattern of this world (Romans 12:1-2), but didn’t grasp the ways it had been so conformed. I believe that the American church in the 21st century is deeply conformed to the pattern of this world in ways we don’t grasp. I also believe that the American church has before us the generational task of understanding this conformity so that we can better witness to the rule of Christ in the world; the phenomenon of evangelicals and Trump, the phenomenon of “progressive” Christianity, and the political division in the church that we see today are all signs of our deep conformity to the pattern of this world.
To understand the nature of our conformity, I suggested that we need to rethink our understanding of the relationship of the church to history. In my view, our mistaken notion of history has led us to a mistaken notion of mission, i.e., of how we are called to be present and how that is to shape our action in the world. This misunderstanding has created a flawed understanding of our relationship to the powers of the world, a flaw that has created our conformity. Believing that Christ’s resurrection triumph is to be translated into the structures of the world, the church has become a triumphalist institution working to impose “Christian values” (either left values or right values) on the world around us, but in so doing has become captive to the world. This mistaken understanding of presence has led us to the place we find ourselves today, mired in division along political-ideological lines, screaming at one another from entrenched positions provided to us by the options of a human political ideology, liberal democracy. We won’t be able to break out of these entrenched positions that are causing such deep division in the church until we free ourselves from the false view of the church’s relationship to history, and so to the powers of this age.
What is the vision of presence we need? I propose that the church’s unique purpose in the world is to be a “Sabbath Presence.” My concept of Sabbath Presence emerges out of an understanding of history built on Genesis 1-4, and understands sabbath to be far more than a spiritual discipline that calls us to rest, but rather is the Biblical vision of God’s intent for ordering the world and our fellowship with Him. So, let me begin with some thoughts on sabbath.
Sabbath
The first observation I need to make is that sabbath is not fundamentally about rest or ceasing work. These are implications of sabbath but are not the core issue of sabbath. Rather, the core issue of sabbath is Lordship. Sabbath asks: who will be Lord, God or humanity? Who will order the world, God or humanity? Who will be sovereign, God or humanity?
Sabbath, of course, is the capstone of God’s creation: On the seventh day, in Genesis 2:1-3, following the creating/ordering activity of God in Genesis 1, God rests. According to Scot Hafeman, “God ‘rests’ not because he is exhausted, but as the sign that there is nothing more to provide…The King's rest on the ‘Sabbath’ day of creation declares the good news that under his sovereign reign everything in his realm is as it should be.” The Sabbath rest of Genesis 2 is a declaration that God is the Lord of the creation. The world is ordered according to His will and so all is as it should be: His people are provided for; His people are protected; the creation is ordered for human good and human thriving. The seventh day sabbath is the declaration of life intended by God: the creation is to live under His Sabbath rule and so live under His provision and protection. In this way of being, the world is at rest because there is no competition for resources; there is no factionalism or nationalism because there is no “us” vs “them”; there is no injustice because there is no striving for power, no accumulation of resources in order to secure life for ourselves. All is well. The realm is secure in God and His Sabbath rule. This is rest not as a physical condition, but as the whole condition of the cosmos: The King is at rest; the realm is at rest; the subjects are at rest. All is as it should be.
Sabbath and Time
This notion of sabbath fundamentally changes our understanding of the relationship of humanity to history. In pre-rebellion Eden, Adam and Eve were not seeking to control history, i.e., to control their lives and the future. They didn’t have to exert energies to bend history in a particular direction according to their desires. They didn’t have to accumulate instruments of power (money, land, political authority, etc.) in order to have the capacity to shape history as they determined it should go. Instead, they lived in God’s presence, without anxiety and without accumulating power that would shape history in a particular direction, because history did not belong to them, the future was not theirs to determine; it was God's, and Adam and Eve could live in the Sabbath rest of God’s Lordship over the future. Adam and Eve weren’t created to control history, but to live in submission to God and His purpose.
But, in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve rejected God’s rule, i.e., rejected Sabbath. In doing so, Adam and Eve took on the position of lord of their own life. With this action, a new history begins: history in rebellion against the Sabbath rule of God, a history in which humanity enters into a new relationship with the future, a history in which humanity must secure the future for ourselves through our own resources. This is history “East of Eden,” the history of rebellious humanity organizing our own lives by accumulating the resources of the world (money, land, personal authority, political power) under our control in order to secure the future that we envision and desire, and so must now create by exerting autonomous power. In this history, humanity, rather than resting in God’s provision and protection, must now strive to secure provision and protection for ourselves, and so history “East of Eden” is marked by competition, war, nationalism, and power conflicts as communities and individuals hoard resources for themselves that they might use those resources to shape history in the direction they set for themselves. This history is symbolized by Cain in Genesis 4, who, having been cursed by God to be a restless wanderer on the earth due to his rebellion against God’s rule, builds a city for himself, i.e., begins the process of humankind organizing history and society East of Eden, outside of God’s presence and provision. In doing this, Cain seeks to create a counterfeit social organization that seeks to secure for himself that which God promised under his Sabbath Rule, but which he rejected. The history of humanity since Genesis 3 is the history of human striving to be autonomous, to be sovereign over history and to bend it to our own purposes and benefit, through the instruments of power inherent in life East of Eden.
Jesus’s Sabbath Presence
Israel was called to be the Sabbath Presence on earth, but she failed, conforming to the East of Eden patterns of power, trusting in chariots and horses rather than in YHWH. But God, who is rich in mercy, sent His Son to be the One who would secure Sabbath for His people.
Jesus’s incarnate presence was a Sabbath Presence. One of the striking facts about Jesus is that he didn’t seek to control East of Eden history; he didn’t seek to control the powers of the world. He didn’t take the rulers of the earth with the utmost seriousness they demand. Jesus’s presence wasn’t a competitive presence in which he was competing with the East of Eden powers, working to drive them out so He could take over their jurisdiction and enact His rule through the structures and instruments of power of the day. As such, Jesus was not a revolutionary, come to overthrow one East of Eden power in order to establish another, better, one. Rather, Jesus’s was the presence of a wholly other jurisdiction. When Jesus declared that His Kingdom is not of this world, he meant it: His is not an East of Eden kingdom, a kingdom built on East of Eden power, provision, protection, etc. His is a Sabbath Kingdom, one that doesn’t seek to control history, but rather creates a renewed history of God’s Sabbath reign in the world.
In his short story "Anti-Christ", Vladimir Solviev, a 19th-century Russian mystic, offers a compelling depiction of the Anti-Christ. In this tale, the Anti-Christ is the one who promises humans the ability to solve the world’s problems by controlling history. In this, Soloviev shows that evil is rooted in human control over history, and even the impulse to use the forces of human control over history to fix the world fall prey to the forces of evil. Following Soloviev, Benedict XVI, in his "Jesus of Nazareth", depicts the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4 as Jesus’s refusal to take up the control of history offered to him by Satan. Christ’s refusal to go the way of Anti-Christ is His refusal to take up the East of Eden powers, knowing as He did that to take up these powers, even with the promise of saving the world through them (i.e. solving the problem of hunger by turning stones into bread) is the way of Anti-Christ, the way of East of Eden power set against God’s Lordship.
Instead of taking on the powers offered by Anti-Christ, Jesus walked the way of obedience to His Father, a way that opposed the First Adam’s rejection of Sabbath. Jesus’s was a Sabbath Presence because His life was fully yielded to His Father; He didn’t seek to establish His own control over His own life but submitted Himself to His Father. This, according to Hans Urs Von Balthasar, was a reorientation to history/future that was changed in Eden. Jesus refused to shape His own future; instead, he allowed His Father to be Lord of the future, and so lived obediently as a Sabbath Presence on earth, not working to control the world but instead seeking to free people from all those instruments that strive for control in rebellion against God’s Lordship. Jesus’s Sabbath Presence led to the cross, in which the East of Eden powers attempted to exert their control over Him. But His resurrection was a victory over those powers, and established a new community, whose presence in the world was called to be a liberating presence in the same way as Christ’s: not by seeking to manipulate the East of Eden mechanisms of power but by being a community that does not operate according to those powers, but rather offers true freedom from those powers as a people who are not striving to control history, but instead are the first fruits of the restored sabbath reign of God, i.e., a Sabbath Presence.
Sabbath Church
These thoughts lead us back to Ellul. In the book I mentioned above, Ellul writes this:
“Christians must participate in the world's preservation. They really must work toward it. But...we must try to dispel serious misunderstanding on this subject. When we speak of the world's preservation, we immediately envision involvement in the activities that the world considers best for itself. The world chooses its paths and determines its plan of action for resolving its problems. It is often thought that Christians, to help preserve the world, should make efforts along these lines....The confusion seems to me to be serious and weighty. Christians participate truly in the world's preservation not by acting like others and laboring at the world's tasks but by fulfilling their particular role, [which is] not to formulate the problems as others do, not to attempt futile…solutions, but to succeed in discovering the actual spiritual difficulties that any political or economic situation involves.”
Ellul captures well the great need for the western Church in the early 21st century: to be a church that understand that we are to be fully present in the world and for the world (“Christians must participate in the world’s preservation”) but one in which we are not operating according to the East of Eden structures that the world offers to us and demands from us, i.e., not conformed to the pattern of this world. His critical point is that the church has so often failed to grasp our unique calling of being present and has instead given ourselves over to the world’s self-determined plan for action for resolving its own problems, trying to make ourselves relevant to the world’s own tasks in order to be helpful (which, if we follow Soloviev, tempts us in the way of Anti-Christ). Ellul’s solution: the church must not labor at the world’s self-defined salvific tasks (which is what the world wants from us: a Christianized version of “liberal” or “conservative” political ideology that will give worldly powers more power; this is what the worldly powers have always done in domesticating Christian “values”). Instead, we must discover the actual spiritual condition of this world and live as witnesses to God’s Sabbath solution to the rebellion of humanity.
Being the Sabbath Presence offers great promise for the church: to be the community who has ceased attempts at controlling history because, through Christ, we have entered into the Sabbath reign of God. As such, our Sabbath Presence in the world can be a witness to the reign of Christ that doesn’t seek to impose a triumphalist rule in the world, and so isn’t an authoritarian presence competing with other authoritarian presences, but rather is a presence that truly loves the world, and exemplifies peace and justice, exactly because we aren’t competitors for worldly, East of Eden, power. This is not escapist, nor is it a quietist presence that removes us from engagement with the world. But it offers a way of active engagement with the world that frees the church from seeking to control history, and so enables her to be a Sabbath Presence, resting in and witnessing to the Lordship of Christ as we love the world that is in rebellion against His Lordship.
This resource is part of the series Kingdom Politics. Click Here to explore more resources from this series.
Joel Lawrence is the Senior Pastor of Central Baptist Church in St. Paul, MN. He has also served as a Professor of Theology at Bethel Seminary. He holds a PhD in Systematic Theology from the University of Cambridge. He is a member of the St. Anselm Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
