What is a kingdom? Why would anyone want one? Isnt democracy the cure for everything? One of the words that the religious left uses to put down traditional interpretations of Scripture is "patriarchal." As if just because a system is run by a single male person it must necessarily be a bad thing. Is it better if i’s run by a single female person? Who would you rather have, George Washington or Imelda Marcos? Or how about if it’s run - democratically, of course - by the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, or the Nation of Islam, or Queer Nation? There are good kings and bad kings, good democracies and bad democracies. It all depends on who’s holding the reins of power.
We spent a couple of days arguing liberation theology while I was away at seminary this last couple of weeks. How many of you know what liberation
theology is? It’s the idea that God’s purpose for the world is freedom. Which is great as far as it goes. They point to the great moment in Israel’s history, their liberation from Egypt, as the model we should all follow. Liberation theologians think that the first priority of the church should be to reform political structures so that no one can oppress anyone else. And who’s going to argue against that? I certainly think that the church has a great deal to offer in terms of speaking out against oppression and injustice everywhere we find it. In fact, it’s our duty. If we do not do something about the suffering in the world around us, we are acting like the priest and the Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan - you remember, they passed by the man who had been beaten, robbed and left for dead - whether they were in too much of a hurry or didn’t want to get their hands dirty is irrelevant.
And the people who are attracted to this theology have pointed with some justice to those many times in history when the church has been silent in the face of evil, when comfortable Christians have closed their eyes or turned off their TVs when "compassion fatigue" set in. I mean, what can we do, after all, about wars and famines and plagues in other parts of the world? Or in our own back yards, for that matter. We want to fix things. And all the violence and cruelty and oppression in the world is simply too much to bear, and to just keep chipping away at the fringes gets to seeming like so much wasted effort.
The solution, according to the liberation theologians, is to change the structures, to "bring down the powerful from their thrones, and lift up the lowly; to fill the hungry with good things, and send the rich away empty." [Luke 1:52-53] Sounds good, doesn’t it? It even sounds Biblical. Which it is, of course, it’s part of the Magnificat, the hymn of praise Mary sings when Gabriel tells her she is to be the mother of the Messiah.
But the problem with that scenario is this: it doesn’t work.
When God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, the political structures did get turned upside down. Not even just turned upside down. They were completely dismantled and stirred and replaced with God’s own design for human society.
God gave them perfect laws. The Ten Commandments were the best laws that the world had ever seen, and I don’t think anyone can point to improvements on them since. Moses told the Israelites to "observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!" For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today? [Dt 4:6-8] They had the most perfect legal and political structures possible.
Besides the laws, God gave them property. He gave them houses and land and fields and absolutely everything they needed to be prosperous and health:. "a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant... " [Dt 6:10-11] They had the most perfect economic structures possible.
But he didnt stop there. Not only did God give the laws and the land, he gave them leaders. He started with Moses and Aaron, who led them out of Egypt, and then Joshua who led them into Canaan, but then look what happened. The entire book of Judges recounts how the people kept disobeying the law and getting into trouble and crying out to God for deliverance. And whenever that happened, "The LORD raised up judges, who delivered them out of the power of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen even to their judges; for they lusted after other gods and bowed down to them. .... Whenever the LORD raised up judges for them, the LORD was with the judge, and he delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the LORD would be moved to pity by their groaning because of those who persecuted and oppressed them. But whenever the judge died, they would relapse and behave worse than their ancestors, following other gods, worshiping them and bowing down to them. They would not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways. [Judges 2:16-19]
So as you can see, changing the structures just did not do it for the Israelites.
But they thought it would. They were absolutely certain that the problem was with their form of government. Samuel was the last of the judges. He listened to God, and the people listened to him, at least part of the time, but as he grew old they started to get worried. "What will happen to us? " they asked. And "all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, "You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations." ... Samuel prayed to the LORD, and the LORD said to Samuel, "Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. [1 Sam 8:4-8]
Listen to that again. God says to Samuel, "They have rejected me from being king over them. " What does that mean? Why does asking for a king mean that they have rejected God?
In order for the laws, land and leaders that God gave the Israelites to work, the people had to be educated in the law, to discipline themselves, and to take part in the common responsibility of building a just and peaceful society. This is how Moses set things up, following the advice from his father- in-law Jethro: "You should represent the people before God, and you should bring their cases before God; teach them the statutes and instructions and make known to them the way they are to go and the things they are to do. You should also look for able men among all the people, men who fear God, are trustworthy, and hate dishonest gain; set such men over them as officers over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Let them sit as judges for the people at all times; let them bring every important case to you, but decide every minor case themselves. " [Ex 18:19-22] That’s about the best example of self-government that we know of in the ancient world, and yet it didn’t work.
Why didn’t it work? And why did they think they would be better off with a king?
It didn’t work because they didn’t have what it took to govern themselves, and the chaos was killing them.
It didn’t work because the people never really got with God’s program. There is no evidence either in Scripture or in archaeology that the people of Israel ever abandoned their worship of the local gods, and that meant they weren’t taking the moral law seriously, either. And it’s always easier to look around at other people for the answers to your problems instead of taking a good hard look at yourself, and your own responsibility.
There is no such thing as a sinful structure. There are only sinful people. As someone once said, the difference between communism and capitalism is that under communism people oppress and exploit people, and under capitalism it’s the other way around.
So what do we want with a king? Why do we pray, "Thy Kingdom come "? What is it that we want?
Are we looking for someone who will crack the whip, and make people behave? Are we looking for a time when we get to be on top, and get to watch all the nasty bad people get their just deserts? That’s what Jesus’ disciples expected would happen. They were going to get fancy robes and sit on fancy chairs next to Jesus at the high table and all the people who used to laugh at them and call them country bumpkins or religious fanatics would have to eat their words. And it was going to feel really good.
But that’s not what God’s kingdom is all about.
We are looking forward to a time when God’s people will have his law within them, when it is written on their hearts. [Jer 31:33] We are looking forward to a time when no one will hurt anyone else, when no one will lie or deceive or cheat, when promises are kept and love lasts forever. We are looking forward to a time when pain and sorrow and crying shall be no more. But it hasn’t come yet. Are we just praying for Jesus to hurry up and come back, or are we asking for something more?
Are we the kingdom? Jesus told the Pharisees, "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." [Lk 17:20-21] Was
he talking about himself? For he was, indeed, among them... But the Greek work can also be "within you " or "between you ".
And his parables don’t seem to say that he’s talking about himself. Jesus’ parables don’t imply that the kingdom is a particular person. Jesus’ parables
tell us that the kingdom is in some way already here, already working, sometimes imperceptibly but always and inexorably toward the fulfillment of God’s purposes. Because "the kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened," and like a mustard seed that ... is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches." [Mt 13:32-33] The kingdom of Heaven starts small, almost invisibly, but when you turn around and look again, there’s something new that wasn’t there before.
The kingdom of heaven exists wherever people are being transformed by the Holy Spirit into people who are ruled by God, rather than by our hungers or whims or fears. It starts with one person at a time, one decision at a time, one act of love or forgiveness or generosity at a time.
The kingdom of heaven is not something we create by changing governments or laws or economic conditions - although those things do matter. No, the kingdom of heaven is something that God creates within us and through us and sometimes, even, in spite of us. It happens because the "word that goes out from God’s mouth shall not return ... empty, but it shall accomplish that which God purposes, and succeed in the thing for which he sent it. " . [Is 55:11] The authority of Jesus Christ will grow continually, even though unevenly, sometimes dying down in one place only to spring up with renewed power in another. We can be sure, because "The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this. " [Is 9:7]
The kingdom of heaven is within us and among us. It is not yet complete, and will not be until Jesus comes again. But it is there. It is here. It is us. We are the foretaste of the kingdom. We are, believe it or not, the sacrament of the kingdom, the visible sign of an invisible reality. As theologian Jerome Thiesen puts it, "the church mirrors, articulates and makes intelligible the process of salvation that is being accomplished anywhere in the world. The church exists
to show forth the riches of God’s mercy in Christ. " [The Ultimate Church and the Promise of Salvation, p. 134]
When we pray, "Thy Kingdom come, " we are asking God to make us more like Christ, so that the leaven of his grace might spread - however slowly - from us to our world, one neighbor at a time.
So what we are praying for, in addition to the return of Christ and the final redemption of the world, is that God should make us what we are supposed to be. We are declaring ourselves willing to be people who are ready to do God’s will, instead of our own. Are we really? Am I? Are you?
If you are struggling with forgiving someone, remember that
forgiving takes time. Corrie ten Boom once told of being able to forget
a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but
she kept rehashing the incident and so couldn’t sleep. Finally, she
cried out to God for help in putting the problem to rest. She wrote this
about the incident: "His help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran
pastor, to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks."
"Up in the church tower," he said, nodding out the window, "is a bell
which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the
sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then
dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops. I
believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we
take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances
for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep
coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing
down." "And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight
reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my
conversations, but the force—which was my willingness in the
matter—had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at
the last stopped altogether: we can trust God not only above our
emotions, but also above our thoughts."
It’s not that she couldn’t remember that something had happened.
If she chose to, Corrie could have brought the incident back to mind.
But she dethroned the memory and refused to let it control her life. If
there is any grievance you are hanging onto, it is poisoning your soul.
Get rid of it.
Jesus implies it is unthinkable for a forgiven person to not forgive.
It should be an automatic reaction. A couple of verses after the one
we are studying today, Jesus says if you do not forgive others,
neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” [Mt 6:14-15]
Preacher Everett Fullam paraphrases it like this: “Father forgive my
sins only to the extent I am willing to forgive those who have sinned
against me.” [As quoted in J. Mark Copeland. After This Manner Pray.
(South Plainfield, NJ: Bridge Pub., 1992.) p. 157)
Oh - just one more thing - remember that I said that we’re not
obliged to forgive those who haven’t repented? Well, that’s not quite
true. We can’t rebuild the relationship until they have repented. But
as long as you hang on to the hurt, you will never be free. God is
ready to forgive the minute we turn to him. And so since it takes us so
much longer to forgive than it takes for God, we’d better get started
immediately in order to be ready when the time comes. And besides -
who wants to be a slave to someone else’s sin, to the past, or to pain?
Wouldn’t you like to be free?
