A reality that bites

With continued news of oppression, earthquakes, tsunamis and radiation leaks, we must reflect again on whether 'Jesus, Lord of All' has become for us a pietistic slogan more easily stated, or perhaps sung, than lived. Has this truth become fragile enough for us that its veracity is sustained only by reports of small miracles: a discovered baby, a man discovered alive floating miles out to sea?

That Christ is Lord of All is not sustained by willpower but a reality shaping and shaking truth.

However we begin our Christian journeys, it soon becomes clear that our ongoing life of discipleship is characterised by a need to learn how to see the world again under the lordship of Jesus.

This is illustrated by a conversation my colleague, Neil Hudson, had not so long ago with a group of students at a university Christian Union, with whom he had been discussing the lordship of Christ:

Neil: 'Who is the Lord of all things?'
Students (Without missing a beat): 'Jesus'
Neil: 'Who is the Lord of the university?'
Students (Again in unison): 'The Chancellor.'
Neil (Becoming somewhat more emphatic): 'OK, one more time. Who is the Lord of all things?'
Students: 'Jesus'
Neil: 'Right, so who is the Lord of the university?'
Students: 'The Chancellor'

At which point we leave Neil to reflect on the current state of university education and his own teaching techniques...

Many of us, like those students, fail to perceive the difference that the declaration 'Jesus is Lord' makes to the world in which we live. Perhaps the central challenge that the church faces today is to understand that the lordship of Christ is not an abstract, ethereal matter, to which we give our intellectual assent, but a truth to be made real and evident in our day to day experience.

Maybe I am 'preaching to the choir', but we must remain urgently convinced that our assent to the lordship of Christ must go beyond a ceremonial title, occasional truth or statement to be defended. As Dutch theologian, Hendrik Kraemer, phrased it over 50 years ago in his passionate, provocative and essentially pastoral call to the church to discover the meaning of the lordship of Christ over all:

Everything in the church and in the world revolves around the so-called 'ordinary member of the church'. For in them must become somehow visible that the lordship of Christ over the church and over the world is not a fairy-tale or a gratuitous assertion, but a reality which 'bites'.




Ben Care is Imagine Project Facilitator at the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity. This article is re-published here with permission.