Transformational Power

"The Kingdom of God, which Jesus said belongs to the poor, will, at the end of time, include all. How could this happen? The poor and powerless, who are excluded from the kingdoms of today, will have the unique joy of seeing every tribe and language and people and nation included in the kingdom of God...The kingdom of God affirms that power should always be relational and inclusive... Finally, in the kingdom of God all expressions of power will affirm the theocentric nature of the kingdom. The slain Lamb in Revelation 5 will purchase and make us into priests and a kingdom so that we may serve God. In the kingdom economy, Redemption is not aimless; people are bought so that they may belong to God (I Cor. 6:19-20). Again, we are redeemed to be a kingdom of priests for serving our God (Rev. 5:10). In the kingdom of God, serving precedes reigning. Here then is the fourth clue from the throne. All power, according to the kingdom of God, will be directed toward God. All power will belong to God (Ps. 62:11). Therefore, in the kingdom of God power will reverse the natural order, reverse the world's understanding of power, be relational and always affirm that power belongs to God. Power expressed here at the throne is transformational (Rev. 5:9-10), is worthy of a new song (Rev. 5: 9,12), and is the final understanding of power (Rev. 11:17)." God of the Empty-Handed, Jayakumar Christian

(and this in honor of the UN's Human Rights Day today...)

Jesus Christ is the model par excellence of a new, liberated humanity (Ruether 1993: 137), the radical incarnation of the egalitarian vision and “spirit of brother- and sisterhood” that this Universal Declaration of Human Rights attempts to elucidate. Like the Eucharist which bears the memory of his sacrifice and the Last Supper which encompassed the fateful offering of the cup and bread, Jesus Christ is the representation of a community of equals wherein the value hierarchy of the world via table-fellowship practices is subverted through voluntary acts of self-kenosis.