From Revive Us Again:

… we must allow ourselves to look closely. Official Washington would isolate us from our enemies across the globe and from the poor in our own cities. But we have been given the eyes of Christ to see himself in their faces. It is Christ whom we assault in our inner cities. It is Christ who was recrucified at Hiroshima, and who will be the ultimate victim in the next nuclear war.

We must see now before it is too late. Unless we see a neighbor in the face of the enemy now, we will have no future worth speaking of. But if we look, really look, at the face of our enemy, we might end our warring madness, heal our terrible wounds, and renew the face of the earth.

With “an enemy” who is “out there”, away from our gaze and out of our view, the powers that be can convince us of an evil that needs to be cleansed for the common good. But the call of God is to another world. completely and utterly and radically different from that. A “triumphalist”, nationalistic, militaristic view is the lie that we are fed from those who have truly settled on the “dark side”, where OTHERS are obstacles rather than fellow citizens of the World, and even Citizens of this Kingdom that Jesus preached.

I have been so blessed and fortunate over these 20+ years to have had my eyes opened in so many ways so that I might more clearly see and hear the gospel, and be constantly challenged out of my apathy and busyness to being to see alternate means of living and existence, and a new vision for what family is; one that extends out far beyond my own, includes it, and calls us out of this tight-knit unit into koinonia with God’s larger family and Kingdom, and from there, to the place where God would have us apply our giftedness. Sojourners has been a flagpole, a witness, and a true resource for opening myself to the possibilities of how my call takes shape (and is BEING shaped).