GOD’S ULTIMATE FUTURE AND
URGENT PRESENT
Isaac Butterworth
“Your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.”
Matthew 6:10, NRSV
This is now the third sermon in a series on the Lord’s Prayer, and the approach I have taken is that this prayer, if allowed to do so, will shape us into maturing disciples of Jesus. My understanding of prayer is that it is not so much directed at changing God and getting what we want as it is directed at changing us and getting what God wants. Every petition in the prayer is designed to refashion our desires and to bring them into alignment with God’s.
This is nowhere more evident than in today’s petition, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This, in fact, is the heart of the prayer. All the other petitions beat with the pulse of this one, in which we express our longing for God’s kingdom to come in its fullness.
But what exactly are we praying for when we say, “Your kingdom come”? In order to answer this question, I would like to ask three other questions and offer a brief answer to each of them.
I. Where Is the Kingdom?
Let’s start with the question, where? Where is the kingdom of God to be found? Many will tell you that the kingdom of God is in heaven and that, as a matter of fact, heaven itself is the kingdom of God, and that, when we die, we enter the kingdom. I would have to disagree with that answer.
Truly, the kingdom of God includes heaven, but it is not limited to heaven. The kingdom also includes earth, or, at least, that is what we ask for in this prayer, that it will extend itself to cover the whole created order. Listen again to what we say each and every Sunday: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth....” On earth! as it is in heaven.
To be exact, the kingdom of God is not a place at all. It is a force. It is the active reign of God in every place to which it extends. It is where God’s will is “done on earth, as it is in heaven.” In Luke, chapter 17, we are told that “Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you’” (Luke 17:20f.).
And what did Jesus mean by that? He meant that where he is, there is the kingdom. He is the perfect embodiment of God’s will being “done on earth, as it is in heaven.” If we are in him, then we are in the kingdom, but note this: the same obedience that characterized Jesus is to characterize us. We, too, must become an embodiment of God’s will being “done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Where Jesus is followed and God is obeyed -- there you see the kingdom in force. There you see God actively reigning. You might say that where the people of God are, there is the kingdom in midst.
But, of course, we are not perfectly obedient to God, not with the consistency that Jesus was. So, we have to qualify things a bit to say that where the people of God are, there, more or less, is the kingdom at work.
II. When Is the Kingdom?
If the first question has to do with where the kingdom is, the second question has to do with when it comes. We might ask, “When is the kingdom?”
You will recall that, after Jesus was baptized by John at the Jordan and tested by Satan in the wilderness, he emerged on the scene with these words on his lips: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17, NRSV, margin). It’s arrival was near, and it was near because he was beginning his great work. His call to repentance meant then, as it does now, that the nearness of the kingdom creates an atmosphere of urgency. We must prepare ourselves for it. We must shift our attitude from one of self-preoccupation with our own desires to an attitude of attention to God’s desires. Repentance means that we change our minds about what’s important. It means that a new necessity drives us. No longer are we to be motivated by money, sex, and power, but by righteousness, justice, and faithfulness to God.
N. T. Wright is the bishop of Durham and a New Testament scholar without equal in my judgment. Bishop Wright describes the kingdom as God’s “ultimate future and urgent present.” What does he mean?
He means what so many others mean when they say the kingdom is both now and not yet. There is a ultimate future in which God will rule without rival throughout the whole creation. It is the future that Isaiah envisions when he tells how “the wolf shall live with the lamb, [how] the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together..., [how] the nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp..., [and how] they will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain” (Isa. 11:6ff.). It is the future that John envisions when he says, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth.... And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.... And I heard a voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his people, and God himself will be with them” (Rev. 21:1ff.).
The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to pray for this ultimate future, which, by the way -- did you notice? -- takes place on earth! It shapes our desires, if we let it, so that we long for the time when, as Habakkuk puts it, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of...the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14).
But, as much as we yearn for that future, it has not come in its fullness, not yet. But does that mean that God is not now actively ruling in the created order? No, not at all. God’s rule is making headway even now in pushing back the borders of Satan’s dominion. And we, who are God’s people, are called to demonstrate that fact to the rest of the world. In fact, in our Presbyterian constitution, we read just those words. The Book of Order says that, among the great ends, or purposes, of the church is “the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world” (G-1.0200). It says further that the church is to be “the provisional demonstration of what intends for all of humanity” (G-3.0200).
And that’s what the kingdom of God is, after all; it is the demonstration of what God wants for all of humanity. One day, we will see God’s dream fulfilled in all its perfection. That’s the “ultimate future” aspect of the kingdom. But, for now, we must embrace the “urgent present” aspect of the kingdom. We are called to embody in the imperfect “now” what will be in force in the perfect future.
III. What Is the Kingdom?
That brings us to our third question on the kingdom, and we have already answered it in part. What is the kingdom? We have said, as the Lord’s prayer makes clear, that the kingdom of God is present when and where God’s will is being “done on earth, as it is in heaven.” I want to suggest three arenas in which we must be urgent about God’s will being done, and all three are “on earth.”
First, there is the personal realm. The Lord’s Prayer calls you and me to a renovation of the heart, so that our greatest desire is to do God’s will. Larry Lea, who used to serve as a pastor in Rockwall, Texas, has a course on the Lord’s Prayer. When he teaches people how to pray this petition -- “Your kingdom come” -- he asks them to draw an imaginary circle around themselves and not to emerge from that circle until all their priorities are in sync with God’s. I have done it, and it isn’t easy. Often, I have left the circle defeated, because I have chosen my way over God’s. But that doesn’t mean that the claim is no longer upon me, and it is something I have to do daily.
So, there’s the personal realm in which we “seek first the kingdom of God.” But we must not leave it at that. One of the great misfires of Christianity is to view our relationship with God as a private matter, something just between God and me. But that is not the Christianity of the New Testament. We must seek God’s kingdom, as well, in our community of faith, which is the church, and in our society. Those are the second and third realms.
In community, we are called to forego the need of the ego to control and manipulate others. In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he wrote: “Make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves” (Phil. 2:2f.).
When Paul planted the church in Philippi, along with all the other churches he planted, what he was doing was establishing outposts of the kingdom, alternative communities that stood in contrast to the prevailing culture’s values of “eat or get eaten,” “make sure you get yours,” and do whatever you have to do to get ahead. The church today is called to be just that kind of alternative community, and it is in our corporate witness to the world that we will be most effective in communicating what the gospel has the power to do.
Finally, there is the social order. The very word “kingdom” suggests a social dimension, and God cares about the societies we build. Repeatedly, in the pages of Scripture, we are summoned to seek peace and righteousness and justice. And by justice, the Bible does not often mean retributive justice, in which revenge is meted out to offenders. It most often means the kind of justice where everyone -- from the least to the greatest -- has a voice and is treated with dignity and honor. That is what Amos 5:24 means, where the Lord says to the people, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” This petition in the Lord’s prayer seeks to work on us and change us, little by little, perhaps, but change us nonetheless -- until our greatest desire is not for our own little kingdoms but, rather, for the kingdom of God.
