Assembly '97 News Home page Documents next story		Grieve the dying giant … but don’t resuscitate Marjorie Lewis-Jones, Perth, July 11, 1997 — Our task as Christians is not to resuscitate the "dying giant" that is Christendom, according to Assembly Bible study leader, Vicki Balabanski. "No matter how familiar and dear that giant’s face may be". Neither is our task to "resurrect Christendom", though perhaps, she concedes, "we may need to recognise our grief for it". Christendom took a turn for the worse this century, Ms Balabanski said, "fragmenting and dissolving all around us". Christendom’s mistake had been to collapse the distinction between the kingdom Jesus proclaimed and the Christian kingdom of this world. It had also erred in collapsing the distinction between God’s reign and the church. "There is, and must always remain, a distinction between the religious culture and the reign of God," Ms Balabanski said. Ms Balabanski spoke of how the reign of God, which Jesus proclaimed, stood over-against the cultural norms of Jesus’ day and over-against the power structures. The reign of God critiqued these structures and required "a new way of thinking, a repentance, a change of perspective". Ms Balabanski said we had long been witnessing "the humbling of Christendom", though we had been reluctant to name it. In fact we had expended great amounts of energy "suspending our grief" about Christendom’s decline. Some had invested themselves in the vision of "what was" – building shrines and memorials to the past through buildings and programs. Others had pointed fingers: Conservatives attributing the humiliation and decline of Christendom to the laxity and wishy washiness of the liberals; Liberals blamed the rigidity and narrowness of conservatives. Others had thrown themselves into activism or into "packaging" Christendom -- hankering after visible demonstrations of success and "believing they could rescue the church from its downward slide by their own expertise". "Part of me relates to each of these responses," Ms Balabanski said. "In all this, I have to suspect that the church’s humiliation, my humiliation as a citizen of Christendom has something to do with the gracious will and plan of God," she said. "Against my will, I find that what I thought was an abiding city, Christendom, is not. "Against my will I am a pilgrim with no abiding city – but seeking one that is to come." Ms Balabanski said she preferred to think spatially rather than chronologically of the reign of God which pressed in on our own reality, changing our perception, inviting our allegiance at every moment. God’s reign (as perceived in Jesus) was not a reign people could grasp with their hands or domesticate to the realm of the senses, Ms Balabanski said. And yet, those who were open to it, could glimpse God’s reign breaking in; liberating people from all kinds of bondage. "When Jesus proclaimed good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and the oppressed to go free the possibility of God’s reign was close at hand, pressing in," she said. "This is still the case. God’s sovereign rule presses in on our superficiality. It becomes tangible where people transfer their allegiance, the depth of reality they perceive in Jesus Christ. "This realm can be tasted in fellowship with one another, prompted by the spirit, entered in prayer. And it becomes tangible in the liberation of the oppressed. In all these ways we can be enfolded in the depths of god’s reign. So we can relax. "Expressing allegiance to God’s reign we commit ourselves to prophetic openness to the presence of God. We commit ourselves to cultivating ears to hear and eyes to see it. We commit ourselves to living out the depths of God’s reality, God’s love. We commit ourselves in inviting others to join in our allegiance. "Rather than constantly gazing sideways at each other, or backwards to see where we have been, looks forward to Jesus as the forerunner and perfector of our faith. "Repent and believe," Ms Balabanski challenged Assembly participants. "Change your perspective. Invest yourself in the good news of God."

"The Uniting Church affirms that it belongs to the people of GOD on the way to the promised end." Basis of Union, Revised edition published 1992