Contemplation Corner: “Only now and then. . .”

“Only now and then comes a man or a woman who, like John Woolman or Francis of Assisi, is willing to be utterly obedient, to go the other half, to follow God’s faintest whisper. But when such commitment comes in a human life, God breaks through, miracles are wrought, world-renewing divine forces are released, history changes. There is nothing more important now than to have the human race endowed with such committed lives. Now is no time to say, ‘Lo, here. Lo, there.’ Now is the time to say, ‘Thou art man.’ To this extraordinary life I call you—or he calls you through me—not as a lovely ideal, a charming pattern to aim at hopefully, but as a serious, concrete program of life, to be lived here and now, in industrial America, by you and by me.”
-Thomas Kelly (A Testament of Devotion)

by Pastor Donnie Brooks
Marcellus United Methodist Church
pastordonnieb@outlook.com

   Thomas Kelly was a Quaker philosopher, theologian, and missionary of the early 20th century. Most of his life consisted of the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom and establishing a name for himself in academia. It wasn’t until late in his life after time ministering to communities in Germany during the Nazi control that he had a true sanctifying conversion worshipping and serving alongside Quakers and other “confessing church” Christians who had not gone along with the flow of nationalistic Christianity of its day. His experience changed him and made him realize that Christianity is too often stuck in its mediocrity. It is too stuck in its status quo of “cheap grace” (as Bonhoeffer called it).

   Mediocrity can often lead, in extraordinary times, into evil: whether actively or passively. Mediocrity doesn’t protect us from evil’s influence nor from being lulled to sleep in passivity. Kelly draws us to seek to follow Christ in real devotion. In obedience. In the risk of the obedience of faith. If we are going to combat the spirit of this age, its authoritarianism and lack of humanity unparalleled for generations, we must combat it with dedication not to the way of the world or the weapons of its warfare, but ours. “There is nothing more important now than to have the human race endowed with such committed lives.” Committed to the way of Christ. One of love and peace. That sticks to its convictions but that withstands the power of the unjust. That does not back down or get compromised by that power either. How many of have lost their souls at the cost of the power and greed they sought for themselves? How many have betrayed Christ as Judas? For 30 pieces of silver and using Christ’s name but of a very different sort than Christ the reality: rather Christ the idol. This Christ is either warmongering or too tame to be of use. Not the Christ that gave himself for the world, as an example of what the sacrifice of love often looks like and those agents who claim to be a savior but are actually Caesars. And those to whom we have no allegiance.

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