I didn't have any great answers. But this was the email I sent him:
Hi W.,
Great questions. I'm just figuring this stuff out myself, so all this is very tentative and provisional. I'm feeling my way forward here.
You might want to check out my series "On Weakness and Warfare" on the blog, or revisit it if you've read it before as it tries to get at some of these questions.
But my basic answer is that if God is love/weakness then God is experienced in this world as an interruptive, disruptive force that comes from the "bottom up" rather than as a coercive force that comes from the top down. This means that "the Kingdom of God" or the "Rule of God" is episodic and transitory. The Spirit blowing here or there in an unpredictable way.
So, to switch to mission, I think what we do is try to interrupt and disrupt the world--the principalities and powers--with love. This requires tactical imagination, improvisation and creativity. Artistically inserting ourselves into the gaps of the world the way Jesus did. Like a flower growing in a crack of a city sidewalk. Love is weak, but it interrupts the world with beauty, grace and mercy.
The big eschatological question is can the weakness of love, given its light touch, "win" in the end? Or, at some point, will God have to knock heads together to force things to come out right in the end? Especially given the biblical witness?
Those are hard questions. I don't have great answers. But we're called to hope. That's what I hope for. That love wins in the end. And that's enough for me to love today.
Grace and peace,
Richard
