Sarx

What would a truly Incarnational, Communitarian, Anarchist and Liturgical revival look like? What would it look like if a group of Christians, desiring only to live the teachings of Jesus, pooled their resources (a la the Early Church and the modern Urban Kibbutz Movement) and set out to totally ignore the state, in favour of the kingdom of God?

When we say “Death to the World” we’re saying that the World System - government, injustice, slavery, wages, greed - is death, is dying, is killing us. We don’t propose to overthrow it. We propose to live as if it has already been overthrown: because it has. “The kingdom of this word is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.”

As was blogged earlier…

“Jesus is Lord” is Revolution in Creed. It is the assertion that the secular, non-Christian state is, in fact, irrelevant. The real gov’t to which one owes allegiance is the Kingdom of God. It is an assertion of the reality of that Kingdom over and above any experience to the contrary.

“Christ is Risen” is Revolution in Creed. It is the assertion that the social understanding of things is refuted. The cultural ways of doing things - of propitiation, of superstition, of darkness and terror - are all meaningless.

“Jesus is Lord” is not a creed coupling religion and politics: quite the contrary. It unhitches the church and the state. It makes the Church an embassy: and as with any embassy, when one is on the grounds of the embassy the laws of the host country do not matter. The embassy is the political realm of the sending state.

“Christ is Risen” is not a Creed that divides the secular from the spiritual. Quite the contrary: the two are forever more than “linked” they are the same. If the Church is the embassy, this creed asserts that the “grounds of the Embassy” are everywhere.

The only way to live this is through being Communitarian Anarchists and Incarnational Liturgists.

Incarnational
The entirety of the Christian message hangs on this one word, expanded thus: God became as we are that we might become as God is. There is nothing in the world that does not point to God save for that man that wills not to. And that man - even the one pointing away from God - is the very ikon of Christ present for us to worship.

God, present and honoured in those around us, feeds us with his own hands when we feed him with ours. God, present and active in those around us, dies on our doorstep when we refuse to see him. God, present everywhere and filling all things, waits for us to reach out to him - by reaching out to everyone - in order to save our souls. It is the ultimate joy, the ultimate sadness, that God is present in this broken world and unable to fix it without us.

Communitarian
I can not be saved alone. Only WE can be saved. Being is Communion. To be and To be in communion are the same thing. Communion is not defined by political or theological doctrines, but by eating together, by sharing what we are and have with those who are God. To reject communion is to reject God. This communion begins in the heart - but must grow to encompass all.

Anarchist
The state, an invention of the worldly illusion, is powerless in this revolution.

• We can remember that no state is God’s kingdom.
• We can stop trying to make the world over in our version of God’s image and we can simply live it.
• We can stop pretending that either the stupid party or the evil party (pick one) is going to be better at doing God’s will.
• We can live as if God’s justice is the only justice needed.
• We can live as if God’s peace is the only peace possible.
• We can live as if God’s freedom in Christ is the only real freedom available.
• We can remember that “Jesus is Lord” is the most politically radical thing ever said; that “Christ is Risen” is the most poetically anarchistic thing ever said. Ever.

Liturgical
Liturgy - all true worship - is communal: not one person lording over others, but all, acting together (each in their own order and gifts) in the worship of God.

The Church is the New Creation happening. The boundaries of the Church are not coterminous with any history, institution or denomination and much less with any ethnicity or nation. The New Creation is the covert invasion of the Kingdom of Heaven into the illusion of this world. (Kosmos: it is also the word used to indicate the illusions of “cosmetics”.)

Liturgy - like all magical ritual - takes place in and between two worlds: in the Kingdom of Heaven and in the Kingdom of this Kosmos. Liturgy is the Pontifex Maximus, the bridge between this world and the next. Liturgy is the way in which Christians are connected to their Heavenly home and empowered to act in this world. Liturgy is the sending out of Christians to act in this world. Liturgy is the source from which all of us get our strength.

The Eucharist is the meal that eats us - that makes us into the Body of Christ (you are what you eat). It’s not until we sit together at God’s table that we are involved in the process of God’s healing of the world. Until we feed each other (instead of hoarding, each to himself) we are not acting as Christ. And, until we realise the Communion is served not in bread and wine, but in soul and body… only then can we share in the Kingdom of God.

Can it be done? Is there a desert so remote that, like St Pachomios and St Anthony, Christians might find a way to be Christians? Or, under the global panopticon and growing police states, are we forced to lay our revolution out on Main Street; the front lines being the hearts of the good citizens who live next door and complain to DHS about “those damn Christian hippies”?

Would a group combining the teachings of Jesus, Berdyaev, Bey, Tolstoy, Francis, Gandhi, Day, Skobtsova, Fox, (etc) be welcomed among Christians, among Americans? Or would it be doomed from the start by that odd cross-breeding of xenophobia and neophobia by which American has infected the West with paranoia since 9/11?

Because the kingdoms of this world say you are an “illegal”, should not the Church treat you with God’s justice and peace, with Jesus’ hospitality - even if it means the Kingdoms of this world (and our neighbours) hate us? Or should I cave into the legal fictions of this world which deny your personhood, your place as an icon of God before me?

Because the kingdoms of this world say you are a “terrorist”, should not eh Church treat you with God’s forgiveness, with Jesus’ hospitality, even if it means the kingdoms of this would will hunt us down as “sympathisers”? Or should I cave in to the legal factions - as you have - and deny your personhood even as you deny mine?

Judgement is only in the first person: I am a sinner. All others are Christ. I kneel and wash your feet and kiss the icon of God. This is revolution in process. This is death to the world. Can it be done?