A kingdom that cannot be shaken

After writing and praying my pleading pastoral prayer last week, a friend and I connected about our shared sense of anxious uncertainty in facing the fact that we are living through historic changes in our city, country, church and the world. It may well be that what is being asked of us as Christians at this particular moment in time, this kairos moment, is renewed resilience of faith, a defiant hopefulness and a determined refusal to let the seeds of resignation take root in the soil of despair.

I turned to the book of Hebrews this week, and one of its texts spoke powerfully into my uncertainties and my hoped for resilience. "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:28-9) 

What if God should also speak in an unexpectedly shocking and powerfully challenging way? Hebrews was written to people whose faith was seriously shaken, whose inner core was being destabilized by events around them, and often against them. The preacher-pastor who wrote this long letter of encouragement and warning, aimed at hope building, faith strengthening, with the goal of instilling community resilience in the face of threatening change and felt inadequacy.

In the midst of all that is shaking, "we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken..." To put it in the equally astringent words of Jesus, "I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)
 
Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation