The Church of our Lord does not take naps. When God rested on the seventh day, he still kept creation under his mighty control (Psalm 121:4). The Church imitates her Lord in that sabbath mood. Her sabbaths are celebrations filled with hearty shouts of praise ascending to the Mountain of the Lord (Micah 4:2). When the people of God win victories, she sings for joy, dances with praise, and eats and drinks with gusto. She celebrates with one hand and is strategic with the other. The Church is the productive arm of the kingdom seeking to strengthen and reform society after the theocracy of King Jesus.
The overturn of Roe v. Wade is reason for much rejoicing! We should! Tomorrow when the Church gathers, she better sing for joy. Tomorrow when the Church gathers, we need to be sober and alert because the devil will be looking to devour the sophisticated footnotes of boys and girls who have consumed the spirit of the age (I Peter 5:8). Those who mumble their way through the liturgy will be most prone to apathy and their celebrations will be mild and timid and other terms associated with the gay-ification of our churches.
So, those who mumble may make it to the kingdom of heaven, but they will make it as by fire (Jude 1:23) and stinking like rotten fish (Jonah 2). But let those who rejoice, lose their voices for a day or two. Let the stranger and pagan look at you as if you came from another world because, in fact, you were formed in another kingdom altogether.
But in our celebration, we must already be thinking of the next step. I want to rejoice, but tomorrow is already here, and the pagans are already contemplating their next step (Psalm 2:2). So, we need to keep the champagne bottle in one hand and the other strategizing hand on the keyboard. Yes, of course, Christians have been working hard for almost 50 years on this issue. We have been at the forefront of every conceivable effort. To quote Samuel Parkison in an essay for Kuyperian Commentary:
“On every meaningful metric, it is the religious and pro-life demographics that are the most generous with their time and resources to non-profit organizations that do the work of caring for the orphan and widow without compulsion from their neighbors or government.”
This is true in every sense.
But we cannot grow weary in well-doing (Gal. 6:9). While the enemy strategizes on how best to keep us passive and rejoicing in the good ol’ days of June 24th, 2022, living off of the nostalgia, Christians need to out-strategize paganism. We need to worship more faithfully using the Scriptures as our guide, we need to be more covenantal in the way we look at the world, considering the next 40 years to be just down the road, we need to argue more consistently for a Christian ethic rooted in the Law of God, and we need to inculcate to our churches the need to see all of life in and through the Trinitarian God.
So, tomorrow, when we come into worship, we are doing a little bit of both: rejoicing and strategizing. Be present. Be aware of the role you play in redemptive history as a witness to the kindness of God.
