Rachel Held Evans on Christmas
I was poking around online this morning and found this quote by Rachel Held Evans from her last book. Rachel and I disagreed on several points of doctrine — major points — but she had tremendous skill as a writer and an incredible mind. I came across the quote below while reviewing another article of Rachel’s and found her insight to be profound and illuminating.
One of the things that we’ve seen in the Church since 2015 has been a large capitulation to the spirit of this age — the Age of American Idolatry. The abdication of Christians for Donald J. Trump is not indicative of the church’s power, but of the fact that many of the people in our churches have been discipled into conservative/Republican contexts first and then Jesus/Kingdom second. When they were forced to make their choice — Jesus inevitably demands of all his followers (Luke 14:25–35) — they abandoned Him and wanted no more to do with Him (John 6:60–66).
It therefore shouldn’t surprise us in the least that so many have left the Church for the American Kingdom as most horrifically demonstrated by Robert Jeffress and America First Church of Dallas (read here for the gut-punching details by Bryan Kaylor and Beau Underwood).
As we head into Christmas tomorrow, perhaps the best thing that could happen to the American Church is to listen to the words of a prophetess without honor who was excoriated by our evangelical industrial complex. Rachel dared to hold up a mirror to the ogre of American Political Christians and they decided, as monsters typically do, to respond by attacking the messenger and clinging more desperately to their idolatry.
Rachel is right — The Resistance is winning. It started winning at Creation and won again when God became one of us. It won again when the monsters in our midst crucified Him and announced it’s fullest victory to date at an empty tomb. The true Church — the church we do not see because it is a spiritual entity — continues to win as it progresses through the ages. And at the glorious end of days, Christ will return and shatter this wicked world and establish His Kingdom that shall have no end.
“Come, Thou long-expected Jesus,
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.
Israel’s Strength and Consolation,
Hope of all the earth Thou art;
Dear Desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.Born Thy people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a King,
Born to reign in us forever,
Now Thy gracious kingdom bring.
By Thine own eternal Spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone;
By Thine all-sufficient merit,
Raise us to Thy glorious throne.
Or, as St. John wrote in Revelation:
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. (Revelation 22:17)
Indeed. Merry Christmas to all.
“It’s easy for modern-day readers to forget that much of the Bible was written by religious minorities living under the heels of powerful nation-states known for their extravagant wealth and violence. For the authors of the Old Testament, it was the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, and Persian Empires. For the authors of the New Testament, it was, of course, the massive Roman Empire. These various superpowers, which inflicted centuries of suffering upon the Jews and other conquered populations, became collectively known among the people of God as Babylon.
One of the most important questions facing the people who gave us the Bible was: How do we resist Babylon, both as an exterior force that opposes the ways of God and an interior pull that tempts us with imitation and assimilation? They answered with volumes of stories, poems, prophecies, and admonitions grappling with their identity as an exiled people, their anger at the forces that scattered and oppressed them, God’s role in their exile and deliverance, and the ultimate hope that one day “Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the pride and glory of the Babylonians, will be overthrown by God” (Isaiah 13:19).
It is in this sense that much of Scripture qualifies as resistance literature. It defies the empire by subverting the notion that history will be written by the wealthy, powerful, and cruel, insisting instead that the God of the oppressed will have the final word…Yet rather than confessing our sins, and rather than dismantling the systems that perpetuate them, many Christians shrug it off as part of an irrelevant past or spin out religious-sounding rhetoric about peace and reconciliation without engaging in the hard work of repentance and restitution. Ever the quick-fix culture, we want oppressed people to “just get over it,” to move on and let the injustice go. I’ve heard many black preachers liken the church’s response to racism in America to the words of Jeremiah, who cried, “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14).
Saying we are a nation of peace doesn’t make it so — not for Trayvon Martin, not for Tamir Rice, not for the twenty kindergartners shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School, not for that Cherokee mama, not for the Iraqi villagers in the crosshairs of our drones.
Tensions around issues of injustice must not be avoided in the name of an easy peace and cheap grace, but rather passionately engaged, until justice rolls down like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.
My friend Jonathan Martin, who is a third-generation Pentecostal preacher, described the election of Donald Trump as an apocalyptic event — not in the sense that it brought on the end of the world, but in the sense that it uncovered, or revealed, divides and contours in the American social landscape many of us did not want to face, deep rifts regarding race, religion, nationalism, gender, and fear. It was certainly apocalyptic for me…until the resistance movement fit more conveniently with my political persuasions.
For too long, the white American church has chosen the promise of power over prophetic voice. We have allied ourselves with the empire and, rather than singing songs of hopeful defiance with the exiles, created more of them….though political, they avoid partisanship; though clear-eyed, they remain stubbornly hopeful.
…What I love about the Bible is that the story isn’t over. There are still prophets in our midst. There are still dragons and beasts. It might not look like it, but the Resistance is winning. The light is breaking through.”
-Rachel Held Evans
