A few years ago I noticed how often I came up against the
phrase “Kingdom of Heaven”
in my reading of the New Testament. It bothered me that I understood the term
in only a shadowy sort of way, especially since it seemed always to be
connected to Jesus. We don’t sing about it very often in our songs, and I
noticed that when Christians talk about the “gospel”—a term which was almost
always connected to the “good news of the kingdom” in the New Testament—we have
a lot to say about atonement theology and almost nothing to say about this “kingdom
of Heaven,” at least not in any way connected to mustard seeds and pearls of
great price. In each of the synoptic gospels, Jesus talked about the kingdom
almost exclusively. In fact, the first words of his public ministry were
“Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven
is near.” (I take it for granted, by the way, that kingdom
of Heaven is an interchangeable
term with kingdom of God,
but that Matthew, observing Jewish scruples, didn’t write the name of God.)
So what might this kingdom
of God be about? I’ve heard several
explanations that I find unconvincing. Most commonly, that the phrase “kingdom
of Heaven” is a shorthand way of
expressing “getting saved and going to heaven when you die.” That’s not a bad
guess based on what most of us think
Jesus was concerned with, but when you try to plug that meaning into the actual
texts it doesn’t fit. In the big mainline churches you’ll hear a lot about the
kingdom of God when people talk about soup kitchens and other types of
humanitarian work. I think that the kingdom work is certainly no less than
that, but I’m also pretty sure that it’s more than kindness to small children,
old ladies, and stray dogs. It isn’t inner peace of mind, and even though
there’s certainly an eschatological element to Jesus’ kingdom teaching, it
doesn’t seem to be about the destruction of the space-time continuum either. So
if it isn’t “getting saved and going to heaven,” and it isn’t “doing acts of
kindness and making the world a better place,” what might this kingdom project
be?
If we only had the New Testament documents to examine, it
would be hard to answer that question, because no one at any point in the New
Testament stops and writes out an exact definition of what the kingdom would
look like and why everyone is so excited about it. We do, however, have plenty
of other sources from the time and culture of the New Testament, and they are
also filled with writings about the kingdom. After looking at those sorts of
sources, starting with the literature of the Maccabees, we can get a much
clearer picture of what the Jewish expectations were concerning the kingdom
of God, and the ways in which Jesus
was in continuity with those hopes and also in subversion of those hopes.
The major problems for the Jewish people in the last few
centuries B.C. were their Temple,
their Land, and their Torah. If you picture yourself as a citizen in the
American colonies in the years before the Revolutionary war, you might be
getting close to the Jewish mindset about being ruled by the Romans and by
their puppet government, the Hasmonean dynasty. (the Herods of the New
Testament) In this political climate the people began to talk of the Kingdom
of God over and against the Kingdom
of Rome. This wasn’t a spiritual or
abstract idea at all—the Jews firmly believed that YHWH was their one true
ruler and hoped for his enthronement (and Caesar’s defeat) in real time and in
the real world. Furthermore, the temple had to be the place for their god-king.
Even though a temple had been built when they returned from the Babylonian
exile, the presence of YHWH had never returned to dwell there as it had during
the time of Solomon when Israel was a mighty nation and YHWH did rule them
through his servant-kings. Last of all, the land and the people had to be
cleansed of their pagan impurities, most likely through a return to faithful
observance of Torah, against the Roman and Hellenistic encroachments on true
Torah-keeping. In short, as long as YHWH had not returned to the temple, the kingdom
of God had not yet come. As long as
the pagans ruled over Israel,
the kingdom of God
had not yet come. As long as the whole nation of Israel
did not keep Torah together, the kingdom had not yet come. As long as the
kingdom was not brought by God’s Messiah, the kingdom had not yet come. The kingdom
of God hopes in 1st
century Israel
were concrete and specific. To sum up, the Jewish expectation of the kingdom
of God was the saving sovereignty
of the covenant god exercised in the vindication of Israel
and the overthrow of her enemies.
If we fast-forward 60 years or so from this picture to the
letters of the early Christians, we see that something curious has happened.
The disciples of Jesus and the first wave of Christians are also talking about
the kingdom, but in a different sort of way. Imagine a 5-act play. If the Jews
were talking about the kingdom as Act 3—awaiting the climax in Act 4 so that
they could get onto the business of putting everything right in Act 5—the early
Christians had relocated themselves to Act 5. According to them, the kingdom of
God had already arrived, and while there was plenty yet to do and certainly
some very important eschatological hopes, there was no doubt for them that
Jesus had inaugurated God’s reign in a way that fulfilled Israel’s hopes
according to the scriptures. Most curiously, the kingdom story was now told
with those Jewish hopes reshaped—Israel
was no longer the holy land of the covenant god and his people, but now the
whole world. The temple in Jerusalem
was no longer the dwelling place of the covenant god, but his spirit lived
physically in his followers. Torah was no longer the boundary marker of the
covenant people and their code for holiness, but grace and forgiveness instead.
No one talked of Caesar’s power as something that YHWH would overthrow—in Jesus, it had been overthrown.
What then do we make of Jesus? Was his language about the kingdom
a collection of religious teachings about love and grace, preferring inner
observance of the heart over outward legal codes? In the context of the
writings before and after him, I think we get a more historical and
comprehensible alternative. He began his ministry with the announcement of the kingdom
arrival. He told short stories and parables about what the kingdom would look
like—a mustard seed, yeast, a sower sowing seed, treasure in a field, a
merchant looking for pearls. Many of these stories illustrate how the kingdom
would grow through a tiny remnant, others how the kingdom-bringer would suffer
and be vindicated. He called disciples to himself and acted in highly symbolic
ways to evoke Israel’s
history. He emphasized that the nearness of the kingdom ought to bring
repentance. He told his followers to seek the kingdom first, and to pray that
it would come “on earth as it is in heaven.” He said that the kingdom would
suffer violence and violent men would try to take it. He said only those born
of water and the spirit would enter it. He talked of the new covenant people as
critical to the kingdom task. He cleansed the temple of impurities and
redefined observance to Torah. Finally, approaching Jerusalem
to die, he mourned over the city since it did not know the time of its
visitation—it did not know when or how YHWH was returning to the holy city.
How do we make sense of this in any sort of way for our own
day? As the people of Jesus, what do we make of a kingdom that Jesus told us to
seek first and to pray for on earth as in heaven if that kingdom story was so
far removed from us historically and locally? To be frank, I have more questions
than answers, and I ask for and invite everyone’s ideas about how this might
look. If we begin to engage with Jesus’ kingdom teaching it does enrich our
understanding of the cross and resurrection—surely these events were not merely
for private salvation and the expiation of personal guilt (although they
weren’t anything less than that either) but in some way the cross brings the
kingdom. It is the kingdom of God
that defeats evil. It is the kingdom
of God that brings YHWH into
dwelling with his people. It is the kingdom
of God that reclaims the whole
creation for his dominion. It is the kingdom
of God that rewrites the rules on
money, sex, and power. It is the kingdom—the reign of God, and of his Messiah,
that speaks into any politics we would try to run on our own, Christian or not.
And, I believe, it is the kingdom of God
that we must make our central task as teachers of young Christians, whether
that be through music, math, or Bible. As fellow citizens of that kingdom, I
can’t wait to see what that looks like. Let us pray.
Heavenly father, we pray that you would instruct us what is
your kingdom and that by your spirit we would have the understanding to seek it
first. We pray that your kingdom would come in this world as it is in heaven,
and we thank you in all joy and praise that you have made this possible by the
victory of your son Jesus. Help us, father, to be imitators of Jesus in all we
do, and we pray that we would be worthy dwellings of your spirit. We pray for
our students and the work we have before us today. In your great and holy name,
Amen.
