New Waters S4 | Episode 2
Power and Authority
Being the Church in sea of change requires followers of Jesus to have a healthy understanding of authority. Why? Because power and authority are not the same thing.
"Power is something that we grasp for ... but authority is given." ~ VIJAY KRISHNAN
Join Dom and Vijay as they dive deep into Church history and discuss Biblical imagery, 1st and 21st century power plays, organic vs organized church, and what it means to be an enticing visible embodiment of healthy authority.
Listen and read along below or join the conversation wherever you listen to podcasts.
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+ Transcript
VIJAY: Season 4 Episode 2 of New Waters, strikes back.
DOM: Here we go. Rock and roll.
VIJAY: This is “The Church in a Sea of Change.” I am Vijay Krishnan. I'm here with Dom Russo. And Dom, you and I met years ago. We've been talking ever since. In fact when people heard we were doing a podcast they were like, what is that, 4 hrs an episode? No, but I don't know if you've had this experience, but when I'm driving along listening to a new podcast, and I'm like, first, I feel okay, I'm not alone. Secondly, I feel, oh, you were wondering that, too. And thirdly, I’m like, oh, that's helpful language. That's really what we've been trying to do, just kind of kicking it off at episode one. And now here we are in episode two of talking about the Church in this season and this time. And of all the conversations we've had over the years, Dom, I think my conversations with you, I feel I've always come away having a better grasp of the Church, and what it means for me to be a pastor, in this season. And so for those of you that are pastoring Churches, those of you that are a part of Churches or you were, and you're thinking, is there any hope for the Church, you know? So a couple of the ideas that I think really are important when it comes to talking about Church, that are inescapable because of where our culture is at, are these words, power and authority, and maybe the word privilege along with that. These are very important, very weighty, almost daily conversations, in the media and around dinner tables, and in Churches, and in communities, I think.
DOM: And also the idea of a Church as a business, institutional.
VIJAY: Institution, that's connecting with that. We've talked about how the misuse of power, the straight up abuse of power, at the very least the ignorance of the impact of power, not tended to properly, and in the world, as it relates to leadership structures, and titles, and people with roles, institutions and as a subset of that, of course, the Church. And so Dom, some of the conversations that I hear in the culture, and that within the Church is like, oh, this power, that is a negative word, there's a reckoning that's happening where Church leaders or boards or denomination.
DOM: Are losing their place
VIJAY: Being called to account, first of all, for things that have happened , quote, under their watch or authority. And then that sort of reaction, which is so natural, and I feel it too. Sometimes it actually makes me want to run away from Church ministry. Honestly, some of the times you see and read about the misuse of power, I'm thinking, I'm so afraid that that would happen to me. I think I just don't want any part of this.
DOM: I thought you were going to say, because you're discouraged.
VIJAY: That, too. And so, whether you're a pastor or just a part of a Church, you probably feel that on some level.
DOM: You feel like you're trying to, you're speaking for all the mistakes you see, and you're like, well, but we're trying not to do that. Like, it's like all on you.
VIJAY: And yet I'm like, am I going to guarantee that I'll never do that? How does that even work? I think one of the things that I hear, and even in my own head is, you know what? We gotta get back to the days of the early Church, when there weren't those kinds of problems. There were other problems, but not those ones. It was really when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire, and Church and state got married, and ever since has been just a messy marriage, and divorce, and remarriage, and all of that. As we've talked, you've sort of encouraged me to think from a Christian history standpoint. There's probably more to the story than that. So that's my little confessional in terms of how some of this has made me feel, and some of the questions that it brings up as it relates to the Church. Do you resonate with that?
DOM: You know, as you're sharing, I think about one of my earliest ministry experiences as a pastor. I was helping at a Church, I got out of Bible school. I was really excited to make a lot of changes, and because, either I was immature and pushed too hard, I got fired from this first Church experience. And I remember being shattered inside, and not knowing how to talk about that, and being ashamed and thinking, you know, the Church is just a business, and it’s just a big institution that doesn't care about people. I kept saying that to myself for a while, and I think because I was young, and immature at the time, and made some mistakes. But I didn't realize that, part of why we say that the Church is institutional is because we're trying to remember that the Church has things that Jesus has instituted for us to do. So the word institutional gets used in a very broad way to mean everything's bad rather than saying, no. Some of the things that we do have been instituted for us, by Jesus, and the earliest Christians said, don't lose these things. You must keep doing these things. And as well, how we read the story of our faith throughout History, is a big issue as well.
VIJAY: When you talk about the Church as a business, the understandable response sometimes to this is going, we’ve got to get back to the “good old days.” The grassroots. We've become like Wal-Mart, and now we’ve just got to tear it down. Sometimes we can think about the history of the Church, and certainly like the New Testament Church, Book of Acts, as those were the “good old days.” And yet they had problems. What's been helpful for me, in conversations with you is, oh, there's more to that story. Even pre-4th century. And we have to take a deeper look at this, as it relates to institution, structure, power, and authority in those seasons.
DOM: I think this is such an important corrective, that I've spent years studying, but also I think we really need to correct this in our culture. A lot of people, even those who are not Christians, who I've spoken to, will use this Constantine narrative as a way to not be part of the Church. We as Christians think it's a good thing, but actually it's going to backfire. And we're basically sawing the branch which we sit on when we say, yeah, the Church was a time when it was all pure and there was no corruption. And then the emperor, he kind of took over everything. Some people even believe that Constantine picked the books in the Bible, which is not true. So there's this whole misconception. So I think one of the things we want to remember is that when we're reading the scriptures, we want to understand that the earliest, earliest Christians are already seeing God do something amazing. And that means that there's growth in the Church. And anyone who knows this, who's listening, when anything grows, whether it's a family or a business, new structures are needed. New structures are needed to keep doing the things that are good things. Now, one of the things I think people feel, is that if something feels bigger, this is the Walmart piece. Or feels mega-church, whatever people say, is that as something gets bigger, you lose a highly relational fabric. Which is true. And so earliest Christians, I think we're aware of this, like we are, that the bigger something gets, it can lose some of the relational fabric.
VIJAY: Of knowing, and being known.
DOM: Where you belong, and people know when you're missing, right? So that is such a valid point. But I think we want to be careful that we don't read all of our angst with institutional or megachurch culture, into the early Church. One of the things I encourage students to think about in my, or even just for today, is to realize that even within the first 100 years of the Church, there's already some important councils that are happening. Now when people hear the word council, you might not understand, but the Church has two forms of councils for how decisions are being made and how authority is being trusted, across the Church. Some of those are local councils, meaning a local community in a local region has to come up with a decision on a doctoral matter. Right. And that's kind of a local council. But then there's an ecumenical council. An ecumenical council is the council where people and leaders from across the Empire, at the time, were brought in to discuss a very complicated theological issue.
VIJAY: Because these things aren't in textbooks, they don't have cell phones to call so and so to say.
DOM: There's no verse in the Bible that clarifies exactly what the answer is. So they're trusting the Spirit's leading, and the Spirit is leading the Church to speak as one voice, from different parts of the world. And so these councils are that.
VIJAY: You have synagogue structures that they're in mind, that they’re drawing from. You have Roman guilds that they're thinking about, and how the work place is organized.
DOM: You’ve got the Temple.
VIJAY: Yes, the Temple, you’ve got the Empire, Synagogue. You're pulling in their structures and they're going, okay, how do we do this in this local place? And a lot of it was determined by the size of that community, as you said.
DOM: A bigger community. For example, the Church in Rome, we know from the first few centuries, had a lot more influence than other Churches because Rome was the center. It's like the big city just had more leverage. There's all these structures, and one of the beautiful things about the earliest Christians is they borrowed all the best things that they saw that were being used. They just watched and they're like, wait a second, we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. One of the things we see early on is the structure of maybe a bishop, or an overseer, and then elders, which are selected for more practical ministry, then servants, which are deacons in our Bible. Right. So you see inklings of this in the Bible, it's not fully developed, and we don't know exactly how it's all working in every region, but it's already there. And what's really important, just to go back to the Constantine moment. If you don't know about this, The Da Vinci Code, was a movie that came out, that already stirred that all Churches are corrupt and are lying to you about everything. Let's just agree that the period of the 4th century, when this Emperor, who had this mysterious vision, scholars are not 100% sure about it, and associated that vision with winning a battle, and deciding that that vision and the battle were connected to the God of the Christians. We're going to start worshiping this God, right? There's this big movement. There's a sense that he does not anticipate one problem. That for 300 years before he ever became a Christian, we're not even sure when he actually made a decision to become a Christian. Is that Christians are already highly organized, and they're having incredible debates, doctrinal issues. They're already fighting. So it's almost like Constantine's worst nightmare is associating himself with Christians, where historically we've flipped it the other way around, that it's like the Church's worst experience is that.
VIJAY: The Emperor brought all of his dysfunction.
DOM: I think Constantine is going to realize, wait a second, you Christians don't agree on stuff.
VIJAY: Dom, so why is that important for us to realize? Because I get how we can’t blame it on Constantine and the Empire. So this isn’t just the fault of the Empire institution. Could they have gotten there without all of this fighting and structure, where you just say, look, this is inevitable when it comes to a community that's growing?
DOM: No, I think one of the things that protects us from having, again, the simplistic view that the early Church grew in this powerful way that we love to preach about, just by….
VIJAY: Organic house Churches.
DOM: Just people hanging out in their basement with a banjo and singing songs. I mean, they're working out complex worship structures.
VIJAY: I don't think they had the banjo yet…
DOM: No, maybe not, but they're working on complex worship structures. They're trying to figure out how do we help Jews, Gentiles, and Romans, and have them worship together. They're also, people might be shocked, raising money. They're collecting money, they're planting new Churches, Paul is traveling.
VIJAY: They had systems for...
DOM: They had systems for everything. We actually already know that by the 2nd century, we have found lists of Churches, I think it's in Rome, if I'm not mistaken, lists of names of widows and people who were cared for by the Church. It's a highly structured operation. I think this was done with a sense of spiritual authority, with a sense of, God is calling us to this. When we often see the Church having to really get more clear on its structures when persecution happens. One of the things we know about the early Church, is that when the Church is persecuted, we know that they come first to get the people who are the leaders in the Church. So there's two groups of people in the Church
VIJAY: The difference with Constantine was if you were a Bishop, you were the first to die.
DOM: And if you were a reader, meaning that you're the only one who can read the scriptures. So you realize, wait a second, this is happening years before Constantine becomes the Emperor. That there's this developmental structure in the Church.
VIJAY: So one of the things that this makes me think of, and I remember having this conversation with our board in our Church, is sort of going, our goal is not growth. This isn't trying to put bums in the seats, because you can have growth, without health. For sure. Our goal is health. How do we nurture? If Jesus says, remain in me, the vine, the tree. We are tasked with health, built around Jesus, through the power of the Spirit. But anything that's healthy will grow in some way. We don't dictate how or what it looks like, but we have to steward whatever it looks like. So I think what I hear you saying is, they were, they had the power of the Spirit of Jesus in them, there was something healthy and dynamic, they were growing, so they had to figure out how to steward this incredible entrustment that was spreading way faster than they could figure out. So it was a stewardship question, not an empire or, you know, whatever. And yet as soon as you do that, there's complexity. Yeah, there's differences of opinion. There's there's hard decisions to be made.
DOM: And you see this already in the New Testament, when we think about our Bible. I mean, early on, there's a sense of like, how do we know which of the earliest letters are going to be the most trusted, as we worship?
VIJAY: We don't recognize Paul, in one of his letters, how much he's going after himself, he’s the worst sinner. Other times he's like hey
DOM: You should trust me.
VIJAY: You should trust me. Follow me as I follow Christ. That was literally what he was saying. They were trying to discredit him in some cases. It clearly seems in the backdrop of some of the letters. So this whole idea of who can I trust? It wasn't like nobody can be trusted, and there he is going like, here's why you can believe me.
DOM: And not only that, I think if we don't correct this strange reading of this Constantine moment, almost as a lens to read all of the story of the Church through, we're going to have a big problem when people are introduced to faith, and are thinking about Church, who are outside of the Church, and we start to tell them, Hey have you ever thought about baptism and what that means? Have you ever thought about what we mean when we invite people to say yes to Jesus, and that there's an accountability around this? They're going to be like, wait a second, I just came because I just want to be connected and belong. I don't want any of your structural stuff. This has always been the case. This is there. So I think we want to be really authentic by not presenting that the Church is just organic people who just belong.
VIJAY: We've run into it in our Church. When we're talking about taking a step of baptism and it sounds strange coming out of our mouths. We've actually missed building a bridge for people to go, What am I a part of here? So that's a really good thing.
DOM: Super practical
VIJAY: Yes, especially if you're starting a new Church. You want to be, oh let's thin on the structure. Let's keep it simple. Simple is good. Clear is good. But what are the essentials, and sacraments, and all that stuff. And we'll get into that later.
DOM: One of the things that is important to understand is that the earliest Christians have no idea what to do with a Christian Emperor. They're learning for the first time that somehow they're rubbing shoulders with the most powerful person in the world, at the time. And they're realizing, is the emperor's power the same as a bishop's authority? Are they the same thing?
VIJAY: Up until that point the Christians have been saying, no, Caesar is not Lord, Jesus is Lord.
DOM: And they're just being responsible. They're praying for the Emperor because the Bible says, pray for them, but they're staying out of their way now. There’s a kind of equality debate that has to happen. And even in the earliest council meeting that happens with the Emperor, The Council of Nicaea, one of the issues that arises there, is that the bishops ask the Emperor to abolish slavery, and to move all cases related to slavery, to the authority of the bishops, so that they can start to liberate people more, and give dignity to that horrible institution. And it happens. So you see, like even the blessing of that, has a positive side. Now, the Church doesn't always use that in a good way. But I think this is a good moment to maybe kind of tease out that power and authority are not the same thing.
VIJAY: What do you mean by that?
DOM: Well, I think we see that in the Bible, Jesus is consistently noticed as someone who has authority. Yeah, it was incredible. And people wanted to listen to him. They're like, there's authority about this guy. We don't know what it is. It's going to take a while to kind of get to that piece. But also, I think authority is something that's recognized, where power in the Bible is something that's taken. And Jesus will say this, right? I'm not giving you the kind of power that gives you the authority to lord over people, or to control people. This is the kind of authority that is made known, and is recognized when you wash people's feet. Wow, and you know from preaching, his disciples don't get this.
VIJAY: No, well this is the interesting thing. If you take the word authority, just on its own, let's tease that out from power. Power is something we grasp for, and is taken, but authority is something that is given. The conversations about authority happen all the time in the ministry of Jesus. The ones with power, the religious leaders are constantly asking him, who gives you the authority to do this?
DOM: They're playing checkers and he's playing chess.
VIJAY: And he references crazy John the Baptist. He says, oh, he had authority. So again, no institution had given that to him. But here's Jesus operating with this, teaching with authority, performing signs with authority, criticizing the leadership.
DOM: The corrupt structures.
VIJAY: The corrupt structures. And they kept saying, well, what gives you the authority to do this? So then you track the authority, Jesus. And of course, the answer he gives is well, destroy me and I'll be raised.
VIJAY: He becomes the temple. He says, destroy this temple. His resurrection then is that authentication of his authority. Then he says to his disciples, all authority in heaven and earth is given to me, therefore go. In John's gospel, he breathes on them, receiving the Holy Spirit. And so the Church actually starts with authority.
DOM: Yeah, but I think we want to be careful Vijay, because I think if we leave it here, it's easy to see Jesus as like, rogue sticking it to the man, and he just went against the institutions. Jesus is, you know, he's like Batman, you know, he's just some guy who's like, pushing against the system. He's doing that, but he also does something which gets lost in this debate all the time, is he's honoring the power structures, when necessary. This is a profound thing that he does. And it's masterful. You know the stories. If you've read the scriptures that people will ask him - hey, you have spiritual authority, so does that mean we don't have to pay taxes to Caesar? And he'll say, No. Pay your taxes to Caesar. You're like, are you kidding me? How can you have spiritual authority and also honor this power structure that is corrupt? Jesus is like, wait a second, like you got to hold this together. Or when he heals people, he doesn't say, you're healed now, have a good day. He says, there's a structure of power that is embedded in how Judaism works. Go and show the priest that you're healed, and then you can go on with it.
VIJAY: But even conversation about the Sabbath was very much tied to their institution. He was not getting rid of the Sabbath, but he's constantly reinterpreting the purpose of this structure, which was fixed in their weeks, and saying this is what it's for. And so he wasn’t disregarding it. He was re-casting it for them.
DOM: And the earliest disciples, we see in the book of Acts, are still going to go to the Temple after the resurrection. They somehow are able to understand that Jesus, his spiritual authority, gives those power structures new meaning, that is not oppressive. It's almost like, they're there, and they matter, and we understand them in a new way, and they're holding that. I think we have to find a way to do that today in the Church.
VIJAY: They're in the temple courts. And they're in each other's homes, and they're in the local sense.
DOM: Any they have the authority of Jesus with them. I think about this, this issue in a practical sense. I don't know if you remember me mentioning this, but as a pastor, I find young couples and people who come to our Church always wrestling with this. You know, they'll sometimes feel like, oh, this Church is too organized. We're not a big, big Church right. But we're getting bigger and structures are in place. We use all kinds of different tools, whether it's the Internet, or check, and just calm and stuff. And when you have young people who come to our Church, they just want to be organic and just come and whatever. Even the scheduling is weird. Like what time? We’ll just come whenever. When the Spirit leads me here, I'll show up. And then when some of these young couples have kids, they want superstar structures. But how are kids being checked in? Are they safe upstairs? Is there a gluten free snacks? I'm like, what happened? How did you go from north 30 to a crazy institution? Ten months ago you didn't care about anything. And I think that's an issue as well. Like this season of our lives reminds us that. Sometimes we want a very loosey goosey vibe. And because we want that, we think the Church should be that too. And we forget, no, the Church is not just for you. It's for something bigger. And so the mission of the Church, when it remains central, makes you feel like, wait a second, are we honoring God with our resources? Do we know where you know our funds are going? Are we careful how we're caring for people? You know, that's all structured.
VIJAY: The other example that I think is something as core to Christian spirituality, as the gift of the Spirit. So given to the Church.
DOM: Which has a lot of authority language.
VIJAY: And, and really the purest sense of power.
DOM: Spiritual power.
VIJAY: Power from on high. Jesus’ way. And we'd say, okay, if you are a follower of Jesus, Trinitarian - Fathers, Son, and Holy Spirit. You believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. You're made alive in the Spirit. Like that's how the Spirit helps you cry Abba Father and become a follower, right?
DOM: Vijay’s preaching now, tone it down.
VIJAY: Essential, essential. I’m going to lead an altar call in a moment. But you know, as I'm teaching this in the Church, spiritual gifts, it dawns on me as I'm going through Corinthians what I'm saying about my own experience. Well, how did I know what my spiritual gifts were? It was not like Spider-Man, where the radioactive spider holds, and I realize I can stick to the walls. Or as my friend in the occult says, Well, he’s not in the occult, but who teaches on this stuff. He says, occultism is about identity that comes from the power you have. It's you. You hold it, you use it.
DOM: You almost like, you take it.
VIJAY: Spiritual gifts are not that way. How do you know the Spirit is at work in your life? Only through the body. When other people say to you, Dom…
DOM: You recognize something…
VIJAY: When you spoke today, I felt like Jesus was opening my eyes or whatever.
DOM: Wow
VIJAY: That's when you go, oh my gosh. I don't know about how you got your calling. Initially, I was sort of unaware of what I was doing. I was just serving people with certain needs. And you realize this is not me, this is the Spirit in me. And it starts to go, wait a second, this is my spiritual gift, but it's for the body. And it's only discerned through the body. Only other people can tell you what your spiritual gifts are.
DOM: Yeah, it’s true.
VIJAY: Hey, when you wrote me that note, I felt like I could get out of bed.
DOM: Wow
VIJAY: That's the power of the Spirit, and encouragement. How do you know that, unless someone tells you. All of a sudden we’ve realized, wait, this is an essential part of our faith, the empowerment of the Spirit is only realized - activated - understood, in community. Where the community plays back to me, and I get to receive the power of the Spirit through other people.
It's not their gift. It's God's gift to me, through them, as they use their gifts.
DOM: It's so true. I think that's one of the big reasons this episode is important. Because if we don't correct that, the way we often use power and authority, they collapse into each other. And we lose all this important Biblical imagery, that requires a healthy understanding of authority, a corrective around power that's very, very problematic. And to say, wait, there's something very profound. And again, let's go back to the word mysterious, about how the Holy Spirit, and how his authority is unleashed in our midst, so that we can serve others and they can know that it's safe, and that Jesus is at the center here.
VIJAY: Well, this was Jesus’ whole conversation with the disciples, around authority is, oh you call me Lord and master, and I am, but I am among you, as one who serves. So this idea of like, I'm just turning this whole equation upside down for you guys, because what they understood as authority, was the same as power. So they're like, oh yeah, let's take it from the Jewish leaders, religious leaders, and now we're going to be who gets to sit on your right and left. It's like no, like that, you don't understand.
DOM: And they send their mother’s actually - that's how scared they were. They were like we don’t want to tell him we want power.
VIJAY: Yeah but that's first century power play. I'm going to send it to my mom.
DOM: I know your mom. She's nice. She'd slap you. Vijay, get out of here.
VIJAY: I think the last piece that I've just sort of almost stumbled upon recently is actually these structures, we somehow can maybe mistakenly think, oh, the world wants us to tear the institution of the Church down. And in part, maybe they do. In the sense of the bad stuff. Except that when it comes to the Church's mission in the world, the world doesn't even know how to receive the mission of God, except through a structured community. So I had this moment where, one of our sites meets in a movie theater. It's in a part of the city where apparently one of the builders wants to knock everything down and rebuild it. So I went to a public meeting, at city hall. The mayors there, and city counsellors, and I had 5 minutes to speak. There's other people there who are, you know, are concerned citizens about density and too much traffic for that. But I realized at that moment, as I'm listening to other people talk, nobody's saying what I'm going to say. And so I go up there and they call me, and I'm deputized or I'm speaking on behalf of my Church community. And I say, hey, I'm part of The Well. And we meet in this movie theater, and we actually have been a part of the Vaughn community for, and I just explain to them stuff we've been doing in the community for the last whatever many years. And I could see them just leaning in. It's not like, oh, yeah, here's the Church again, whatever. They're actually, Oh, you're a Church meeting in this space. Here you are. And I'm saying to them, Hey, like, these are the things we're doing. We believe that God is called to be a part of this city and we want to keep doing the things we're doing. But you have to help us. Yeah, but the fact that we were an actual Church in an actual location.
DOM: There is a visibility.
VIJAY: The visibility helps them grasp and go, okay, well, we want to try to help you stay here. So I don't know what's going to happen to that. You can pray for me. I literally was coming to the realization of it as the words are coming out of my mouth and I'm realizing this means something to them, as opposed to if I'm just saying, well, there's no role for us in the way we're going to be a grassroots movement or whatever.
DOM: I’m just going to hide in the background.
VIJAY: As you said, when things get bigger, things get lost. Without the presence, and that I realize that everything else has a physical presence. The mall with the ugly side on the highway where I live - the theater where we meet in, the schools, there’s a tangible physical presence that’s attached to the community, that is inseparable.
DOM: I think if people listen to episode one where we touched on the secular culture, I think it's a great example, like your story, that people who are not sure about the Church, are going to need more than ever, these visible embodiments of healthy authority. And in a recognition that, you have authority in this community, even if they don't know what you are. In my context, they’ll be, oh, you're a priest or you’re a pastor. They're not sure. But I remember when we started the Church, and we were kind of just meeting in some homes, and I mentioned to some people about this Church, there was kind of a creepy factor for who came in like this basement of a family. And we open the Bible and they're like, Well, who does this? Even in the sense that being in a space, that it feels more neutral, it's in a warehouse. Obviously a building is not the Church. We know that. We don't need a theology lesson. But us gathering or being summoned by Jesus there together, to worship him, becomes a safe place for people to be - this seems like more legit.
VIJAY: There’s an accountability of it.
DOM: There's accountability. You guys are legit, and the city knows that you're here, right? You're doing stuff that's legal. We are being respectful of the power that's here. But we have a different kind of authority, that you might not understand, until you come and see how we wash each other's feet. And only when we start doing that better, and more consistently, will we kill this almost simplistic view of like, get rid of all that? We're going back to the first century? Where is coming from, this hyper-simplistic, almost naive view of leadership? And if that's all we have, secular culture will eat us alive. It's too complex for that kind of theology for sure.
VIJAY: So if I think about the conversation we're having, and Jesus always the head of the Church, at work in his Church, in every age, one of the images Dom, that is a really helpful corrective for me, both a challenge and a comfort in this time, is this picture of Jesus in Revelation. Revelation when you talk about power and authority, the whole book is full of it. And all of the ghastly beasts are articulating the various ways that the Empire was looking.
DOM: The control of the Empire.
VIJAY: Probably by that point, under incredible persecution. John has this vision, and he keeps hearing someone say, look, the lion, power. I heard a lion, and I turned, and I saw a lamb. So every time he sees the lamb, he sees the slain Lamb. He sees Jesus arriving at a battle that hasn't begun yet. He's already got blood on his clothes. It’s his own.
DOM: Yeah, it's incredible.
VIJAY: The irony of this little slain lamb, defeating these grotesque massive beasts, that from the beginning of time - to the end, behind every beast is the dragon. The battle is the same. It is both comforting for me, but it's also a corrective, to me as a leader, representing and holding, hopefully well, authority to say, unless you hold authority like a lamb, you'll become a beast. This is what it means.
DOM: Power always corrupts you.
VIJAY: Always. Yet here's the resurrected, ascended Jesus reigning, but in a way that actually is a comfort to those who are suffering under the weight of it, and a corrective to those who have been called into authority, to represent his name.
DOM: And as you share Vijay, I think it's so encouraging for us to think about this in our world, because those images are not just images of like a battle that's going to happen one day in the future. It's the image of battle, and it's almost like it's finished. Don't see yourself in the culture, as the Church, as fighting in a confrontational battle. When Jesus is like, there will be challenges, there will be persecution, there will be times where you have to stand up and be courageous. But we never really fight that battle. Jesus fights that battle. You know, we sit under his authority, and the mission of the Church is different. It’s a totally different posture.
VIJAY: That's good. My prayer is that we just learn, daily, how to hold that, and how to do that together.
DOM: And I think people who've seen the world use power in such horrible, destructive ways, are dying for a Church that embodies this.
VIJAY: That's gospel
DOM: They'll be like, oh my goodness, there's a community that does this. So hopefully that's going to help some people.
VIJAY: Amen.