From the Executive Director...
How would you describe a color to someone who had been blind since birth?
Explaining the unimaginable to the puzzled or someone who has no experience of what you are describing is really what must have been Jesus’ life for those years of his public ministry. It was frustrating, exciting, illuminating, and confusing to those who heard him. And made many angry. Very angry.
In Jesus’ time, most people thought the end of the world would be in their lifetime. There were many who roamed the world, proclaiming the end times or promising that they were the ones to save the world.
To get his message across Jesus clothed the utterly unique work of God through Christ in language that was how the people of his time lived and spoke.
Jesus’ preaching and teaching was all about “the kingdom of God.” The first-century world understood the concept of “kingship” very well. They expected that their salvation would be a political one—a geographic king of power and might. The nations of the world were ruled by kings, and kings were absolute authority figures with unquestioned control over their subjects. The Old Testament refers to the kingship of God more than any other divine quality. Israel was God’s first kingdom, but in the future all the nations would recognize God’s ruling status and bow down before God.
When Jesus spoke of the “kingdom of God’ his audience, especially the Torah-learned Jews, thought they knew what he was talking about.
Surprise. They did not.
Jesus was not talking about establishing a place with borders, a kind of divine fiefdom. The kingdom of God wasn’t a political polis or a pie-in-the-sky, far-and-away dreamscape.
In fact, the kingdom of God didn’t even depend upon a stern, large-and-in-charge “king” for its existence. Even though Jesus spent most of his days describing the kingdom of God, he had little to say about God as “king.” Instead, Jesus spoke of a God as “Abba,” a God who loved, who longed for their children, who offered redemption and forgiveness. A closer but not exact translation would be “Papa” or “Daddy.” That is who Jesus prayed to.
Jesus’ “kingdom of God” was something entirely different from any kingdom people had ever seen or heard or experienced before. How do you describe that in a way that people could wrap their heads around it?
You and I are still confused about it.
Jesus never defined the kingdom. Jesus never gave a clear and concise definition of what he meant by "the kingdom of God." But Jesus did describe through stories and healings and teachings what might be the capacities that would challenge each one of them to live into a relationship with God. A faith built on principles of hope and new life might lead people to:
- Make choices that are thoughtful about when to cross the line and when to stay in line.
- Continue to challenge themselves to look to their principles and faith for a new view on their life and challenges.
- Focus on their experience and living as a process of learning.
- Look to the stories of the people who lived before them as resources of understanding and perspective.
There is an “ing” quality to this capacity that Jesus offers. Movement. Experimentation. There was a “reJesus” movement in the 2000’s that encouraged people in Christian faith communities to become a “conspiracy of little Jesuses.” It raised important perspectives on holding one’s feet to the fire of belief. Do people who observe us see that there is a connection between what we say and how we act? The issue is not catching or judging other people in their hypocrisy but catching and healing our own.
Jesus’ first act in public ministry was to start calling a community of disciples to “follow me.” Jesus’ invitation was “Join me. Be in relationship to me and what we stand for. And later Jesus promised his disciples that wherever “Two or three are gathered in my name, there I am also.”
When Jesus called his first disciples, Simon, Andrew, James, and John, he didn’t call them to a life of thoughtful contemplation, days of mystic musing, or holy habitations. Jesus called them into live action, everyday mission. They had been making their living by catching fish. Now they would make a new life by catching people, by sharing a message and perspective that is more caught than taught.
Our family lived in Europe in 2003 for 6 months. We got to travel throughout Great Britain and then made trips to France and Germany. On one of our trips, we spent time in a garden of the sculptor Auguste Rodin’s statues in Paris.
While we were there, we heard a story about Rodin. One day Rodin noticed a large crucifix that had been discarded in a pile of trash. Although it was in terrible shape, Rodin thought that it could be restored to its original beauty. He and others carried it to his home.
But the cross was too big for his house. What to do? Rather than return it to the trash heap, Rodin decided to knock out some walls and raise the roof of his house to make room for it.
In what ways does our observation about our everyday world and our clarity about what we believe challenge us to knock out some walls and raise the roof of our lives or our faith communities? In what ways are we taking the challenges that were offered in the first century and making them relevant and engaged in the 21st? How do we think systems and watch process? Where do we need to cross the line, experiment, clarify, take action or learn from the experiences of those in previous generations?
Blessings,
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