From a tribute by Stanley Hauerwas to John Howard Yoder in FirstThings, 1998:

This beautiful and exacting passage, beautiful because of its exactness, comes close to the end of The Politics of Jesus. I believe that what John said in it is not only the heart of his work, but also the heart of what it means to live as a disciple of Christ:

The key to the obedience of God’s people is not their effectiveness but their patience. The triumph of the right is assured not by the might that comes to the aid of the right, which is of course the justification of the use of violence and the other kinds of power in every human conflict; the triumph of the right, although it is assured, is sure because of the power of the resurrection and not because of any calculation of causes and effects, nor because of the inherently greater strength of the good guys. The relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection.

Therefore it must be true, as John put it, that “the people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe.” A life capable of producing the passage above is not replaceable. But the very God that makes such a life possible will, we can be sure, send us new, and no doubt quite different, John Yoders. In the meantime, we can rejoice in that grain of the universe God made present in the life of John Howard Yoder.

Source: FIRST THINGS: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life