Speak Truth To Power

Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. - 2 Timothy 2:8-10

Laura Lacombe and Donna Burkland set up their sermon yesterday by pointing out Paul’s context. He was writing from prison. The reason he was in prison is that he’d messed with the status quo. He’d messed with those who had something to lose if the status quo was changed.

Paul had messed with the status quo of the Romans who wielded the power of the state, whose ‘empire’ included the machinery of economic production, military might, and political will on a grand scale - which pushed aside anyone who was free (at least half of Romans were slaves), was not male, or was not a citizen. And Paul messed with the status quo of the Jews who wielded the mutated but nonetheless significant power of diaspora, whose ‘empire’ had been dispersed into small pockets of cultural and religious resistance to the Romans. In each city, those pockets were intentionally self-segregated from the Romans and run as mini-empires.

Paul told the Romans their empire was a joke and all the little people they pushed to the margins were prized by the One True Emperor (who was actually a Slave); Paul told the Jews that their empire also had the wrong people in it and that even Roman oppressors were welcome inside when they bowed the knee to the One True Slave. The latter tried to kill him; the former threw him in jail and eventually did kill him. This is what it meant for Paul to ‘speak truth to power’ for the sake of others being let in on what God was up to in the world.

When is the last time you got into ‘good trouble’ (a great term from John Lewis')? Ask Jesus what it might look like for you to take a small risk this week - for the sake of the gospel, like Paul, and for the sake of others (which Paul calls ‘the elect’ here). Pray for courage. Pray for open eyes to see the opportunities.