The only way to contribute to the society you live in, is living out of that single citizenship; any other way makes you lose everything you think you have (Luke 8:18).

lezing voor internationale collega’s in het kader van een conferentie van De Verre Naasten

Dear sisters and brothers in our Lord,

After being asked to speak here, I received the Conference Theme Description. It made me afraid in more than one way. The first of course was being announced to you as an expert, while I’m not. I’m just a colleague of yours, currently working in the Rotterdam area. If I’m anything stranger than ‘just’ a colleague, that is because I’m a maverick, personally and theologically. When everyone turns right, I almost certainly will turn left, and vice versa. In your pastoral wisdom you have probably already concluded something like that from the title of this speech. So the only hope left for me is that you like mavericks, or at least that you are able to cope with them.

Further, being Dutch, and as blunt as we usually are, reading the Theme Description gave me the creepy feeling that you would like to become like us, in Western christianity. Living a dual citizenship for some seventeen centuries now, our minds are set on earthly things, keeping citizenship of heaven as a kind of secondary insurance, a backup for those rare instances that our European passports do not pave our tourist ways through life: when we are old, or seriously ill. We have a history of saying that we want to contribute to the common good, while in fact we want to have our share in the power and the plunder. And we have become the undisputed masters of bad excuses about that. So when I read about many christian leaders wanting to contribute to the wellbeing of their society, my primary reaction is: been there, seen that, not going to end well.

Our Lord taught us to be there for each other as neighbors, to give, to share, to care, to listen, to pray, to invite, to refrain from any kind of power, to be not protected, to keep hold en let go in love. Nothing contributes more to the common good than people who live such lives beneath the surface of society. As long as you just live out of your citizenship in heaven, all questions posed in the Theme Description are no real questions. When they are posed as real questions, that’s a sign that you are loosing contact with your citizenship in heaven, as we did. So I hope that this second way of becoming afraid is just my mistake, and that you are not insulted by my fears. Anyway, I presume that you are fully awake now, and eager to contradict me wherever I deserve that. Just a last warning: I’ll exhaust your attention with a sermon that is so long, that I had no time to measure how long it will be.

When the apostle Paul writes about our one and only citizenship in heaven, where our Lord King Jesus lives and reigns, he is alluding to the same reality as does the governing theme of the gospels, the theme of the Kingdom/Kingship/βασιλεία of God. I’ll start there, and collect some lines of thought. In a next section I’ll concentrate on the phenomenon of society, and how Jesus deals with that. A last section tries to draw some conclusions. To keep you alert: there are many more conclusions that you can draw and I can’t, because I’m just me. I hope you can surprise me later this morning.

When I started preaching, in 1991, I struggled with the theme of the Kingdom/Kingship/βασιλεία of God. I was trained as a student with a reading of βασιλεία as kingdom, even as a kingdom yet to come as eternal life, which was announced by Jesus. For today, we had no more than forces and potencies of that kingdom, given by the Spirit as signs from the future. So there was a small ‘already’ and a big ‘not yet’. This reading did not work, especially did not work with Jesus’ parables of the βασιλεία. As visitors to the Kingdom of the Netherlands today, you may be able to imagine that. This kingdom is a static nation-state, with some ornamental king. When you fill in, for example in Matthew 13:24, the Kingdom of the Netherlands can be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, that makes no sense. Jesus’ parables are far too dynamic to be applied to a kingdom.

After some years I was in some way, probably by reading some book I can’t remember, shown a way out of this dead end. For the kings of old, their way of being king decided upon their kingdom. Being a great warrior, Alexander the Great extended his kingdom to India. There was a dynamic connection between your acting as king and the extent and polity of your kingdom, and it is this dynamic connection that is called to our attention by the Greek word βασιλεία. It implies activity, a way of acting as king, and with activity, it implies history and time. When βασιλεία is an active word, denoting what happens in a realm when a βασιλεύς, a king, is acting as such, all of Jesus’ parables of the βασιλεία make perfect sense. You can paraphrase the beginning as: when God is going to act as the King He is, that can be compared to … and then the stories follow.

So my description of the βασιλεία of God became: what happens when God is going to act as the King He is. As said a moment ago, that implies activity, a way of acting as King, and given that activity, it implies history: when the King acts, things happen over time. As soon as you paraphrase the parables of the βασιλεία this way, you can expect them to tell you about those two things: they tell you abut the specific way of Gods acting as King, and they tell you about the history of Gods acting as King. Let’s start with the second, the history, and make a detour to come at the first, the way of acting.

Remaining with the 13th chapter of Matthew, the parable of the mustard seed is one of the most outspoken about the history of Gods acting as King as a history of contrast: the smallest of all seeds becomes a tree. When God is going to act as King, it starts very small and ends very big. As the parable of the leaven adds, this may take some time (and some hiding), but in the end all flour is leavened. The parable of the man who sowed good seed in his field adds another trait: this history of Gods acting has a discontinuity in it: after the time of growth the time of harvest comes. Or, in terms of the other parable of the net, after the time of gathering fish, the time of separation of the good and the bad fish comes. In that break, a form of judgment takes place, and after that judgment history continues in a new, festive way: the harvest is great and good fish abound.

When we plug in some other parables, we see that the period of history before the judgment is in some other way also discontinuous. There is a time when the bridegroom is here, there is a time when the bridegroom is gone, and there is a time when the bridegroom comes back. There is a time when a man is with his servants, there is a time when he entrusts them his property, and there is a time when he returns and settles accounts with them, and then the celebration starts. So there is a history in four parts: when God is going to act as the King He is, it starts small, it continues hidden, all is revealed in a kind of judgment, and a new, festive, history follows.

The whole of this four part historical flow is the history of the βασιλεία of God. It implies that we are living in the time in which the βασιλεία is hidden. What is still out to come is not Gods βασιλεία itself, but the revealing of its small and hidden forms in judgment, and the eternal celebration of it. I assume you see that this is an approach very different from the already-not yet distinction I started with. It calls attention to the here and now, the hidden, the undercover operation of the βασιλεία, its underground or undertow character. And of course, it calls attention to the way of Gods acting as King.

To come there, I take a small detour. For it is not difficult to see the connection between this four part history of Gods acting as King and Jesus’ own life. I take it that Jesus’ parables, and other teachings about the the βασιλεία of God, imply his own life. As promised, God would come to his temple, but in Jesus, He does so in an unexpected way: as Son of Man. That is the surprise of the New Testament, not as such predicted in the Old. When God is going to act as the King He is, it starts with a baby born from a mother: very small. It continues with a man who acts as God in human flesh, who is crucified: small, easy to despise. After his resurrection, visible only to those who love and follow him, He reigns at the right hand of God, now hidden from the public eye, but real. At the end of time He judges the living and the dead, and then returns the whole cosmos to God for life everlasting.

So I suggest that we make this connection throughout, and read the life of Jesus as Gods βασιλεία. When God is going to act as the King He is, He does so in Jesus. If that is right, we can detect the way God is acting as King from the whole of Jesus’ life and teachings. That was the second thing that was to be expected from the stories of Jesus’ parables. But now they can get their setting in the whole of Jesus’ life and the rest of his teaching. That makes things easier in a way.

In what follows I will confine myself to what I consider as the central and most remarkable trait of the way God acts as King. That is visible from the start in Jesus’ life: He refrains from using any form of power. In Lukes gospel, the royal armies return to heaven after leaving a message to shepherds about just a child, swaddled as all others, and defenseless and vulnerable as all others. In Matthews gospel, the newborn King of the Jews evades the confrontation with Herod’s power, and is dragged to and from Egypt as ‘the child and his mother’, as powerless as any refugee. When the child has become a man, right at the start after his baptism, Jesus is tempted in the desert with power: the power to care for himself, the power that protects and the power that rules. But He does not give in. The most obvious place to find the strangeness of this King spelled out, is of course Jesus’ discourse with Pontius Pilate in John 18. He is a King, with an all-encompassing claim, but not to power, but to truth. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting for me. As power is the only language Pilate speaks, they pass each other like ships in the night.

So, when God is going to act as the King He is, He does so without using any form of power. Not for self-care, not for protection, not for conquering, not for defending a realm, not for any other purpose. It took me some time to discover how far this reaches, and in how many details this is worked out. Gods way of acting as King shuns not only the overt forms of use of power as in coercion or violence, but also avoids any form of hidden use as in manipulation or fascination. Following Jesus for the signs and wonders He does is actively discouraged: This is a hard saying, who can listen to it? (John 6:60). But even that is not all.

One of the things that make Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount such a strange piece, is his rejection throughout of what is called the reciprocity code. That code has two aspects: ‘If someone does you a favor, you owe them an equal favor in return. If someone does you an evil, an equal evil is due them.’1. Good has to be returned with good and evil with evil. To remind you of where we are going, this reciprocity code forms the nerve system of all societies. But both sides of this reciprocity code, the positive and the negative, are repudiated by Jesus. And this repudiation reflects the way Jesus himself lives. He does not resist the evildoer, he returns good for evil, and gives good to anyone, especially to those who can’t repay. And Jesus adds: this is the way of living of children of the Father in heaven, for He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. Or, as Jesus’ brother James wrote some time later: He is the God, who gives generously to all without reproach (1:5).

When we look closer, we can discover that Jesus, and so that God, even refuses to use the most subtle forms of power, incorporated in habits and social laws like the reciprocity code. Giving someone a good thing gives you a subtle but real form of power over that someone, as he or she is now due giving you something back. In the negative form of retaliation the same structure gives people a subtle but real form of power over those who have done them some kind of evil: they can be forced to pay back.

When God is going to act as the King He is, He refrains from the use of any, even the most subtle form of power, and still is King. When we return to Jesus and Pontius Pilate, we hear that Jesus has come into the world to bear witness to the truth. In this setting this has to mean that the truth is, that there is something stronger than power, even stronger than the death which is imminent on Jesus. When we are entitled to believe that God has created the whole universe out of love, goodness and care, it is obvious that God is entitled to believe that love, goodness and care are stronger than anything, and stubbornly hold on to that. Exactly this is what we meet, when God is going to act as the King He is.

God is no way going to extend himself in others, making them do what He wants — which is one of the definitions of power. He is the one who makes room in himself for others, even to hurt him. He is the one who loves his enemies, and turns the whole cosmos upside down in search of them. He is the father of two sons, who keeps talking to his oldest for the rest of history, to persuade him to enter the celebration for the return out of the dead of his youngest. He is love, and thus the lover who keeps asking his lost beloved to return, without any coercion of manipulation, just asking: be reconciled to me (2 Corinthians 5:20).

For normal humans, like you and me, this is difficult to swallow, addicted as we are to power, protection, self-enforcement, and from childhood trained in extending ourselves in others, making them do what we want, in however subtle ways. We connect kingship with power. We connect authority with power, legitimate power, but power. But Jesus’ authority, as his βασιλεία, lies in the truth, more specific the truth that love is stronger than power. What happens when Jesus acts as God in human person, as King, is that people are loved, found, healed, reconciled; this truth sets us free. This loving mercy is the most easy part of the gospel. But in the same movement it is the most difficult. This truth leaves us unprotected, without power, called to follow God in the abundance of his love in a world that is bound up in all kinds of power. Without power, how can we flourish, even, how can we survive in our societies? Well, may be we can’t. Jesus didn’t survive either.

I make a break here, for time’s sake, and move to the phenomenon of society. About societies there is something that is so obvious that many people don’t see it, or don’t see all of it. Societies are not natural phenomena, they are power-structures. They pull a complex network of social power-lines through the relations in a given population. That power-lines determine rights and duties, reciprocities and expectations between people. Along those lines we learn how to behave in socially accepted ways. As different as societies are, this character of power-structures they have all in common.

That this is not seen, or only partly seen, has to do with a specific character of power: the more potent it is, the more hidden it is. The most dominant relations of power are conceived as self-evident by most if not all members of a society, and tend to be named as natural or creational orders. As a rule, the greater a power is, the less it will be experienced as what it is: power, arbitrarily categorizing people, including and excluding them. As such, the power-lines of society resist being exposed as power, as arbitrary, and insist on being hidden as some given. Anything other than power will do, as long as it is normal, self-evident, and accepted as such: custom, law, heritage form the ancestors, part of our identity, etc.

Combining the two things said until now results in a separate thought about the Conference Theme. As all societies are power-structures, and power resists to be exposed as what it is, anyone who embarks on a mission of contributing to a given society becomes part of that complex power-structure, which always remains for the most part hidden, unveiled and not identified. As far as I can see, playing an active role in any society makes you inescapably an accomplice to powers that be. Even when you identify and attack some of the power-lines in your society, you will stay entangled in others that remain hidden for you. Remaining with ourselves as Western christians: no one can fathom the extent to which we are wrapped up in global capitalism and the planetary plunder of colonialism in its recent neoliberalist form, even if we criticize the lot. The devastating power of personal property remains hidden for most of us. I still am wondering the extent in which I myself am conditioned as an individual, that is living in the illusion of being complete in myself, not connected with others, as persons are.

All this and many things more about societies become interesting when we look at Jesus’ life. He lived in a society, as we all do. His was the Graeco-Roman-Jewish society of the first century. Generally speaking, that implied a form of an honor and shame culture, vertically structured upon patron and client relationships, and horizontally upon many loyalties within extended family relations. When we check the gospels on this, the most remarkable trait of Jesus’ behavior is, that He tries as much as possible not to take up any role in society. Jesus’ focus is not on society, but on people. He approaches them not in their societal roles, like family, or kinfolk, or fellow countrymen, as patrons to be respected, or as clients to bestow benefits on, but as neighbors. To be more precise, not as neighbors in what may be our usual sense of neighbor: people that live next door, who in many societies have rights and duties to you, but as literally neighbors: people next to you, people you meet, and who you meet as humans, as persons. In fact, Jesus evades and avoids the whole power-structure of society as such, and lives his life free of it, or, as I suggested in the beginning, beneath the surface of society. Society is there, but it is not the level on which Jesus is operating.

To avoid misunderstanding, Jesus is not denying the society He is living in. He is the carpenter from Nazareth (Mark 6:3). He is submissive to his parents (Luke 2:51). He pays his taxes, even to the emperor in Rome. But all of this is not of any positive importance to him. The playing with the fish (Matthew 17:27) or with the coin with the emperors image on it (Matthew 22:21), shows that for Jesus society is no more that circumstantial. It has to be dealt with, if necessary, but there is no sign that it has any positive importance whatsoever. Neither, by the way, is there any sign that Jesus supports some form of revolution, that is to say, a change of power-structures. He operates on a different level, where relations of power play no role. He may be in society, He is not from society — and indeed, in most places in the New Testament where we meet the expression ‘the world’, what is meant is in fact society, the power-structured social world.

So, when people try to make Jesus play any societal role, He pulls back, changes subject, or disappears altogether. ‘Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?’, He asks (Luke 12:14). Perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself (John 6:15). Even the roles Jesus seems to accept or tolerate are not left intact by him. Nikodemus’ certainty about this rabbi, teacher, is shattered by the necessity of being born again from above out of water and Spirit, that is, like before the first day of creation: Jesus is living as Gods new creation (John 3). His being a descendant of David is wrapped up in a riddle by Jesus: David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son? (Luke 20:44). And, of course, as soon as anyone recognizes Jesus as the Messiah, he is told to keep silent about it. Being Messiah would make Jesus the ultimate king in this world in the eyes of his contemporaries, and make the power-structures of society his playing field. There is no mystery to that.

With regard to his disciples we observe the same things. When they want to follow Jesus, they have to leave house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands (Mark 10:29), even ‘hate’ them (Luke 14:26), however that has to be understood. ‘My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it’ (Luke 8:21). Statements like these are still offensive for many, but in Jesus’ own society they in fact deny the importance of the extended family, one of the great backbones of society. As still today in many societies, people were completely wrapped up in do’s and don’ts, rights and duties, respect and shame in their families. Followers of Jesus are called out of this power-fabric of society.

The same load we find in Jesus’ famous words about receiving the βασιλεία as a child, that is, as a nobody in society, which boils down to the same as denying yourself or losing your life for Jesus’ sake, and then finding it (Luke 9:24) or selling everything you possess to follow Jesus (Luke 18). Only people who are stripped naked from their positions in society, will be able to follow Jesus on his way under the surface of society. That under the surface of society was the place where Jesus lived, becomes, last but not least, visible in the people He meets, his infamous company: sinners, whores, publicans, lepers, the sick, the lame and the blind, and the possessed. All of them are outcasts or dropouts from society. The only place where one really could meet them, was in the underground, under the fabric of power that had excluded them. As such, they are a sign of Jesus’ real playing field: that of people, humans.

It is from that playing field of persons, regardless of their position in society, that we have to read Jesus’ teachings. Regarding his Sermon on the Mount (or in the field in Luke), you can hear people, especially societal active christians, say that this commandments are impossible to obey on the level of society. Well, that fits if they are meant to be obeyed beneath that level and regardless of society.

Let’s take an example from outside the Sermon on the Mount: Jesus’ parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20). The master of the house agrees with the first laborers for a denarius and promises the later laborers ‘whatever is right’. In the end they all receive the same denarius, which was a usual decent wage for one day work, good enough for giving humans a life. What happens in the story is that people are not just payed for work, they are payed as humans, who must be able to live decently from their work. And that is not only a question of goodness or generosity, it is called ‘whatever is right’, in the meaning of just. What is justice in the eyes of God is paying as humans, according to their needs (not their wants, of course). Paying for work, so much the hour, and no more, is injustice in the eyes of God. Followers of Jesus are not allowed to loose sight of their fellow humans, their life and their needs. If it is not possible to run your business this way on the level of society, that is too bad for society. In that case the Lord challenges you to be a real entrepreneur and find some creative underground way to do justice in the eyes of God.

Of course there is a permanent form of tension between Jesus’ commands and the power-structures of society. That is to be expected when the reciprocity code forms the nerve system of society, and Jesus does not agree. But we have to keep in mind that this is a strange form of tension. It always has the form it gets in Matthew 20:15: or do you begrudge my generosity? Giving without repay is not forbidden, refraining from retaliation is no crime, being generous as God is not against the law. Still, what happens is conflict. For an example, some moments ago I referred to Jesus’ remarks about leaving, even hating, your extended family as his disciples, that is, leaving the network of reciprocity code power-lines of good for good and bad for bad. That will turn out true, when you obey Jesus’ other command, some verses earlier: when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, because they cannot repay you (Luke 14:13, 14). Those are people that have no role in society in Jesus’ time, and they stink. When you try this inviting of those dropouts, you will discover that many of your friends or brothers or relatives or rich neighbors, will make you reproaches for that, and won’t turn up on your feast. For them, the power-structures of society are of more importance than their fellow humans next to them. They will begrudge your generosity.

So, coming to an end of this second section, when God is going to act as the King He is in Jesus, we see him operating on a playing field beneath the power-structures of society, a king walking, not riding, from human to human, generous and loving, caring and healing, evading any societal role, and refusing to engage the human powers that be. What starts is a kind of underground movement, distinguished from other underground movements in being not revolutionary: refraining from power, this movement is not interested in changing power-structures from one color into another. As this a-revolutionary movement it continues in Jesus’ church in the times of the New Testament: she also evades society. All positive statements about authorities (Romans 13:1), taxes (Romans 13:7) and prayers for kings and all who are in high positions (1 Timothy 2:2), have the apparent purpose to keep space for christians to live under the radar of society, ‘that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life’ there. It is this underground movement that reflects the period in which Gods βασιλεία is hidden. There it is that evil can be overcome with good, and christians can follow their Lord. He has not changed his way of being King since his resurrection. He still does not use power, in whatever form. So is the instruction for his church. She has no citizenship on earth. Her only Lord resides in heaven.

At last, let’s try to draw some conclusions. Maybe the most important is, that we all have to learn, have to teach, and have to teach by example, that we are trusting in Jesus, that is the God who refrains from the use of any form of power, because the truth is, that love is stronger than power. It is with self-giving love that we are found by the Lord, who chose self-surrender over self-enforcement. It is his love that teaches us to love. At the same time trusting Jesus in this world, in our societies, means being poor, getting hurt, exploited, being laughed at, vulnerable and prosecuted. It means being one of those that Jesus calls blessed in his beatitudes. Any use of power, in our personal life and in our lives as churches, proves that we are not able to trust Jesus’ witness to the truth, in fact it proves that we think that power is stronger than love, even if we use it only for some kind of self-care or protection.

When Gods acts as the King He is by refraining from the use of power and by choosing to rule by giving whatever is good, there is no reason to think that He will change method. On this side of history the βασιλεία changes from being small, in the person of the crucified king, to being hidden, in the person of the resurrected king, reigning at the right hand of God. But the way of acting as king remains the same: returning good for evil, giving, not demanding, asking, not coercing, being good to everyone. When we look at evil deeds, when we suffer from them ourselves, asking God to intervene by power won’t work. That does not say that God does not do anything. But it is his chosen style to make his sun rise on the Russians and the Ukrainians, and to send rain on the exploited ones in the South and on the plunderers in the West. Anyway, it does not make sense to use the concept of the βασιλεία as a category of power, not in the hands of Christ, even less in the hands of christians.

In the whole of the Scriptures the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ of the gospels signals a new start in Gods being King. God has abundant power and He has used it in earlier history, in the great flood, in the exodus, in the exile, and in many smaller instances. Most times He regrets it afterwards, all times it did not accomplish its purpose. In Jesus He starts over again on the level of creation, and now refrains from all kinds of power, revealing the inner side of all his ways with mankind and his people Israel. The French philosopher Michel Foucault, who would have been a monk if he were not an atheist, has keenly observed that the continuing model of Gods reign throughout the whole of Scripture is that of the shepherd, who is beneficent, who cares for the one as well as the many, in short, who ministers.2 This model of the shepherd has formed the deepest layers of the ideal of government in the christian West, however ambiguous or even evil reality was and is.

Ambiguity is the central word when it comes to kings in the Old Testament. They are never only good, always good and bad, in different rates of good and bad. In the reality of ambiguous people you can’t survive without kings, but with them is not an ideal situation either, to say the least. I just remember of the transition of power between David and Solomon, a scene that could as well have a place in mafia movies like The Godfather. Kings being the heads of the power-structures of society, it does not surprise that the New Testament extends this ambiguity to society as a whole: you can’t live without it, without some kind of order, but you won’t find peace in society. God is not a God of confusion, but not a God or order either. He is the God of peace.

All humans live in a society, and have to deal with it. The way Jesus handles the society He lived in, is remarkable. When I had to chose one word, I would say that He regards it as circumstantial. You live in it and have to find a practical way to cope with it, but society is not of any importance in itself. Jesus never tried the least to improve the society He lived in, nor did He try to demolish it or get rid of it. Against the background of religions may be the most remarkable fact is that Jesus never tried to incorporate society in his reign. Any form of a christian society or a christian state is as such a denial of Jesus’ βασιλεία. Consistent with this is the fact that Jesus never tried to organize his followers, his church, as a society. He assembles a people that is structured by gifts as a body with many different members who serve each other. Let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves (Luke 22:26). Given our living in a society, the only place for a community of gifted people that refrains from any use of power, is the place of an underground movement or undertow.

As I mentioned earlier, you can use the biblical language about ‘the world’ as a shorthand for society. We are in society, but not from society. We can’t leave society, but it is not the focus for a christian life. As is ‘the world’, society remains an ambiguous phenomenon. One of its greatest dangers I mentioned in the second section: you can never unveil all of the power-structures that constitute the society you live in. When you participate in it, there remain many blind spots, and unknown effects of your decisions. With the best intentions you get entangled in a fabric of power of which you have no oversight. Even the last excuse to contribute to the wellbeing of society, mentioned many times in the last years by christian politicians in the Netherlands, does not hold: we participate to avoid worse. There is no way of deciding, whether the worse that results from your cooperation is not worse than the worse you want to avoid. Anyway, when the use of and participation in forms of power contaminate the church, the damage to the gospel is huge. When we give in to the use of power, our minds are doomed to be set on earthly things, and our connection with Jesus’ βασιλεία gets lost.

Our Lord has left us no unclear message and no unclear example. I return to the beginning of my lecture. He taught us to be there for each other as neighbors, to give, to share, to care, to listen, to pray, to invite, to refrain from any kind of power, to be not protected, to keep hold en let go in love. Nothing contributes more to the common good than people who live such lives beneath the surface of society. That is no pious wish. History proves that as an underground movement, under the radar of power, christianity has had the deepest influence on people, on cultures and on societies. No matter in how much flour the leaven of the βασιλεία is hidden, at the end all will be leavened. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? And: take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.

I thank you for your patience and your attention.

1 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice in Love, Grand Rapids/Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2011, 123.
2 Vgl. Michel Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France, 1977-1978, Paris: Gallimard, Seuil, 2004; via: Andrew Root, The Pastor in a Secular Age, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019, 153-169.