- Ancient Near Eastern kings were responsible for bringing justice and peace to their people. Israelite rulers were mandated by God to secure justice and peace for their realms. Every messianic passage in the Hebrew Scriptures presents the longed-for king bringing justice and peace.
- In the Lord’s Prayer, we find the parallelism of “Thy Kingdom Come” and “Thy will be done.” God’s Kin-dom comes when God’s will is done. The question remains: What is God’s will? See the ending of the Sermon on the Mount. The Christian answer is (or should be) that God’s will, nature, and character are best seen in the Christ event.
- Jesus was asking his people to imagine what their world would be like if God were king and not Caesar or Herod. Jesus claimed that in him, his teachings, deeds, healing miracles, and openness to “sinners,” God’s Kin-dom was arriving, present, and set in motion “among you.”
- God’s Kin-dom is best understood as a verb, not a noun. The Kin-dom is active, lived, and incarnated.
We see the nature of God (and thus the nature of the Kin-dom God wills and activates) in the words and deeds of Jesus.
- Jesus’ parable of a woman “hiding” yeast in three measures of flour (around 5 gallons of meal and enough to feed 100 people!)—(Matthew 13:33) All of Jesus’ parables had an element of surprise designed to alert the hearers to some aspect of the Kin-dom of God.
- Jesus’ parable comparing the Kin-dom to a mustard seed which grows into a weed (and was considered a nuisance by farmers). (Matthew 13:31-3:20)
- The Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount perhaps best express the nature of God’s Upside-Down Kin-dom. (Matthew 5:1-11; Luke 6:20-26)
- The two great commandments inextricably join a love of God with a love of one’s neighbor. But who is “my neighbor”? See the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37.
- “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”
- Jesus was especially attentive to children in a world which ignored or abused them. (Luke 18:15-17)
- Jesus was unique in his attitude and openness to women.
- Jesus’ open table fellowship with “sinners” was condemned by religious leaders. Jesus saw this table fellowship as a proleptic inbreaking of God’s grace and mercy.
- Many Jews of Jesus’ day would have seen the father’s response to his prodigal son as disgracefully indulgent.
- Jesus defined greatness as service and sacrifice for others. He said that he came to serve and to give his life for many. (Mark 10:35-45)
- Jesus rejected violence as a means to achieve his ends. (John 18:33-36; Matthew 26:52)
- As Marcus Borg demonstrated, Jesus saw compassion as the most important characteristic of God and the characteristic we as children of God should most emulate. (Good Samaritan parable, Matthew 25; Luke 6:36)
- Jesus focused on the way we live, the goodness we share, and the love we show. He said of his followers, “By their fruits you shall know them.” He seemed little interested in doctrines, much less dogma. (Matthew 7:15-20)
- The practice of forgiveness was central to his message. (The Lord’s Prayer; How often does/should God forgive us? How often do/should we forgive others? (Matthew 18:21-22) Jesus understood that forgiveness allows life to begin again.
- Jesus’ Kin-dom ethic was mature and exceptional. (See Matthew 5:43-44) We live a Kin-dom life not because God demands it but because we want to emulate God in Her unconditional and indiscriminate love and compassion.
- Trust in God as Abba was central to his life, and he taught that it was foundational to the lives of those who would follow him. “Faith” was defined more by trust than belief. (Matthew 6:25-34)
- Jesus understood the Kin-dom of God to be participatory. We are to follow Jesus and thus join God in bearing witness to Her Kin-dom. Jesus also understood that God’s Kin-dom was risky for those who chose to enter it. God’s Kin-dom was a radical and threatening alternative to “the powers that be” in this world. There will be a cost in following Jesus. Thus, he said, “Take up your cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23-25)
- God’s Kin-dom must be lived within community. Jesus never expected his followers to live a Kin-dom life alone. Only within koinonia was Kin-dom life possible. The Twelve Disciples were a symbolic expression of this new community. Just as there had been twelve tribes constituting the Kingdom of Israel, now there would be Twelve Disciples representing this new reality of God’s people.
- What happens when God’s Kin-dom arrives? What is the nature of that Kin-dom and the mission of Jesus, the inaugurator of that dynamic experience? (See Matthew 11:1-6 for references to healing and emancipation.)
- Jesus saw his mission of inaugurating God’s Kin-dom as the culmination of God’s long journey with Israel. In him all the hopes, dreams, and potentialities of Israel were being fulfilled. God at long last was returning to Her people to bring forgiveness, shalom, liberation, justice, and reconciliation. “The Return of the King” was occurring in this lowly carpenter from the nondescript village of Nazareth. But the nature and intention of that return were not what was expected. Surprise—radical surprise — was the fundamental character of this Kingdom become Kin-dom. We can only wonder at the frustration and pain Jesus underwent as he was repeatedly misunderstood. His prayer from the cross could be applied to the Romans crucifying him, the religious leaders who condemned him, the crowds who misinterpreted him, and those of us who still do not get it. “Abba, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” We are all a part of that “them.”
Today, Jesus would not choose “Kingdom” as a metaphor for what he presented as God’s entrance into our world and the lives of people.
Today, Jesus would not choose “Kingdom” as a metaphor for what he presented as God’s entrance into our world and the lives of people. The Mediterranean world of the first century CE knew only kingship as an option for government. Everything Jesus said about the Kingdom of God indicates that God’s Kingdom is nothing like the kingdoms of this world. Those kingdoms operate out of greed, violence, arrogance, revenge, retaliation, manipulation, intimidation, lies and propaganda, and self-serving religion. The Kin-dom of God, according to Jesus, is God coming into history, the world, and people’s lives bringing the good news of love, compassion, sharing, justice, truth, peace, joy, forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, and authentic hope. The “King” in Jesus’ Kin-dom serves, sacrifices self, loved unconditionally, and in the words of New Testament scholar Jose A. Pagola, is “a friend of life for everyone.” Pagola writes, “God was not coming as a pompous judge, but a father overflowing with love. . . God was coming to ‘reign,’ but not to exhibit his power over everyone; rather, to show his goodness and put it to work. . . His reign would not be imposed by force, but to bring mercy to all life and fill the whole creation with compassion. . . Apparently, Jesus was communicating his own experience of God, not the experience that people routinely talked about” (or what they learned in the Temple or synagogues). The Jewish faith certainly had traditions which presented God as loving and compassionate. However, with Jesus, love and compassion were the defining characteristics of the One he called Abba. And his insistence that God loved God’s enemies and did so unconditionally as well as the ways Jesus incarnated that love were unique.
The disciples of Jesus during his ministry never quite caught on to Jesus’ understanding of the Kin-dom of God or his mission. It was not until after the crucifixion and resurrection that his followers began to “get it.” His death revealed a deeper meaning of God’s Kin-dom as did his resurrection. His birth, life, deeds, teachings, example, death and resurrection all comprised “the Christ Event” which explicates the full nature of God’s Kin-dom and, therefore, the deepest character of the One he trusted as Abba.
Jesus invited his hearers to enter the Kin-dom that was present in and through him. They were to live out of the experience, truth, and values of this Kin-dom. They were to live “in this world without being of this world.” Their citizenship and allegiance were grounded in another Kingdom. Jesus called people to trust that it was more real and life-giving that any kingdom presided over by earthy rulers.
Today, perhaps Jesus would talk about the Dream of God and how we could dream with God for a world of compassion and justice as well as live out that dream concretely in our here and now.
Or perhaps Jesus would use MLK’s Beloved Community.
Or perhaps he would talk about the God Movement like Clarence Jordan.
Or perhaps he would use Network or Matrix as God and all creation connect in a common purpose.
Or maybe the choice of Indigenous theologian Randy Woodley would be Jesus’ choice: Community of All Creation.
Or maybe he would be particularly drawn to Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf’s suggestion of “flourishing life as a dynamic relation between God who is love and the world in which God dwells and which reflects God’s character.” (Volf insightfully uses the concept of shekinah in his interpretation of the Kin-dom of God. As Revelation 21 indicates, God’s ultimate goal is to dwell with Her creation.)
(The following is a Communion Meditation I used in a service centered on the nature of God’s love revealed in Jesus’ Upside-Down Kingdom/Kin-dom.)
The closest we will ever come to understanding God’s love for us is through analogy. Perhaps God’s love for humanity is most like the love a mother has for her child. Now, there are rotten mothers whose love is a far cry from the compassionate love of God we see in Jesus. But there are also wonderful, loving mothers who truly and sacrificially love their children. I was blessed to have such a mother. Susan, my wife, is such a mother. And our daughter demonstrates every day and in every way the kind of love I am talking about today. For such a mother, when anyone hurts her child, they hurt her. She would be happy to take all the pain and grief upon herself that the world would inflict upon her child. And she would be willing to take all the pain that her child might inflict upon himself.
As that child grows and matures, he will become more independent, and in his freedom, he will make some rather foolish if not dangerous and wrong choices. The mother would prefer he choose differently, but she understands she cannot dictate his life—not if she truly loves him. Sometimes all she can do is be there for him, letting him know she loves him, will be available whenever he comes to his senses, and will help him pick up the pieces of his life and start over. He may break her heart. He may crucify her love so that the pain she bears is far worse than any pain she has ever gone through in life. But will she stop loving him? Will she ever turn her back on him? Will she ever give up on him? Perhaps that is the significance of the Gospel accounts of Mary, the mother of Jesus, being at the foot of the cross witnessing and sharing his pain. Can any of us even begin to understand and feel the agony of Mary watching her beloved child die the agonizing death crucifixion brings?
But as great as a mother’s love is for us, God’s love is infinitely greater. The Bible tells us that even if a mother should forget or forsake her child, God will never forget or forsake us (Isaiah 49:15). If God really loves this world and everyone in it, and if God is in all things and all things are in God, then God experiences everything that everyone in creation experiences (including all parts of creation like the animal world). God feels every tear ever shed, every pain ever suffered, every fear that shocks the system. Right now, God is experiencing the hunger pains of millions of people facing starvation. Right now, God is experiencing the fear and hopelessness of children who have been abducted into slavery. Right now, God feel the trauma of a little girl who once more must be subjected to the sexual abuse of some predatory adult. Right now, God senses the guilt and torment of those who live lives based on greed and violence. Right now, God suffers with those who writhe in pain as they endure devasting diseases. With all this can you imagine how God’s heart breaks, hurts, bleeds for a suffering and stubborn humanity? Brian McLaren puts it this way: “On the cross, could Jesus be really and truly revealing the pain of God—God’s passionate, poignant, agonizing, sad, loving, dying, loving brokenheartedness for a runaway, beloved creation?” Could Jesus on the cross hanging between heaven and earth be revealing and exposing God as weeping, sweating, bleeding, suffering because of our betrayals and pain?
The only price we see paid on the cross is the price of love—the same kind of price we pay for loving others who betray and deny us, who choose paths which we know will lead to their destruction, or who suffer in the crippling vicissitudes of life. Only this love on the cross is not just for a few beloved ones. And it’s not the compromised love even the best of us can offer. It is a love that is truly universal, unconditional, sacrificial/self-giving (thus the cost), and everlasting. It is a love that is committed to each part of this creation which can never give up or let go–a love stubbornly determined to see all of us through the worst life can do to us or we can do to ourselves. It is a love that can bring hope and renewed life even from the ashes of our defeats, misfortunes, and demise. That’s what the resurrection is all about. Easter comes only through and after Good Friday. Love wins, but at a great cost. It is this love we find symbolized in the Bread and Wine at this Table.
