Mauricio Chenlo preached on Satan’s temptation of Christ, offering him all of the kingdoms of the world. Similarly, often we depend on the kingdoms of the world to deliver the kingdom of God. Mauricio related his experiences growing up in Argentina where he experienced Christian faith expressed in the nation’s politics swing wildly from right to left as the government went from a dictatorship to a Marxist government. He even heard the preaching on liberation theology about the kingdom of God from the dictator Ortega of Nicaragua in the 90s. Politics is the process by which people make collective decisions about how to live together by distributing power, responsibilities and resources. So, who gets to define these priorities? In this country it seems that we are told to change our politics every four years. Likewise, the Church historically has been tempted to align with political ideologies. Jesus, however, brings a different kind of politics. Jesus rejected alignment with any of the political ideologies of his time. The role of the Church is to be a witness and an extension of the kingdom of God in this world, because we still must be in the world even if we are not of the world. We cannot just focus on feeding people’s bodies (not on bread alone); we must also nourish people spiritually. We must not manipulate God’s word, love, or message to gain power or popularity.
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