I started putting together my sermons for the coming year this past week.  It’s a helpful discipline to me and I both look forward to it, and loath doing it, every year.  It’s fun to see everything laid out – but oh the mental errors I make doing it!

As I put together the readings for Kingdom Collision, I found myself wondering, “What is my purpose for this, anyway?”  Right from the start I knew I did’t want to be doing the same project that my friend, and fellow Eastern Alum, is currently doing.  I also didn’t want to do the same project that Greg Boyd had done back in 2004.  It’s not because these other projects aren’t worth working from, it’s just that they’re already being done – by folks better than myself at working them out.

I also have the audacious idea that I’d rather be working on a project that would almost seem like prolegomena for the other projects – a sermon series which helps establish a “Biblical language” with which the disciples gathered at Central Baptist might be able to use in their political conversations.  Conversations which may include the projects referenced above.

It is clear to me that our thinking about the mix of religion and politics needs to change.  It is certainly true that our understanding of Jesus’ relationship to politics in his own day need to be fundamentally refocused.  The centuries of belief that Jesus had nothing to say about politics in his day (desiring only to “save souls”) has created a vacuum in that aspect of our shared public life.  A vacuum which has been filled with all the “weapons” of any worldly political arsenal.  If Jesus had nothing to say about how to be involved in “politics,” after all, then we’ll have to take our example of how to wield political power from other sources – ironically, Christians on both our artifically constructed ends of the “left-right” spectrum have taken up these non-Christ-like examples in the name of “honoring Christ.”

The thing is, Jesus is portrayed in the Gospels as speaking on politics frequently.  The problem in forming the Kingdom Collision series was not the lack of material – but the over-abundance of it! This should come as no surprise to Christians.  After all, one of the “offices” Jesus took up was that of Prophet – and even a cursory reading of the prophetic literature in the Old Testament will tell you that the prophets were political by virtue of their calling.  Prophets challenged power structures to become in sync with the Covenant the Lord had made with Israel – and any time you challenge a power structure, you’ve entered the world of politics.

We’ll look at this prophetic picture of Jesus throughout Kingdom Collision – not to undermine the other offices of Jesus, but to show how the Prophetic office of Jesus great impacts the way that Jesus works out his Priestly and Kingly offices, to this very day.

The question for me is, “What would make this series a success?”  I can honestly say  I’ll feel that we’ve  been “successful” even one person who walks this journey with me starts listening to political news commentary, speeches and debates with the question, “How does this sound like what Jesus was talking about?” in the heart.  It’s a dangerous question to ask – one that might just turn the world upside-down.

I sure hope people ask it.