Teaching the Kingdom

What a day for a daydream.

Occasionally, just occasionally I switch off from sermons. Sometimes it's because they're just plain dull but more often than not it's because of a 'ground control to Major Tom' experience: some nugget that the preacher's delivered or some bewildering line of scripture has caught my imagination and I'm off on my own train of thought - never to return to ground until the final hymn is announced.

This happened in a sermon on Acts 1. Lots of stuff happening in the passage, Jesus literally does his 'ground control to Major Tom' bit, travelling off on a cloud, but I'm transported by a little line in verse 3: after his resurrection Jesus appeared to his disciples 'over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.'

3 years of travels with the Messiah and the disciples still hadn't graduated - they needed more teaching, and more teaching specifically about the 'Kingdom of God.' Now my sermon daydream probably revolved around setting up a 'Kingdom of God School' that ran forty day intensive courses but obviously didn't involve me dying and being resurrected in order to teach it.

It also got me asking a question though why all this teaching on the Kingdom? By this I don't just mean people littering their teaching, writings or sermons with the phrase 'The Kingdom of God' I also mean that we've seen a big shift in emphasis in our thinking about Christ's mission: much of our church life now revolves around living out the ideals of the kingdom of God.

A different gospel?

Let me expand. Someone explained the switch we've made in our thinking like this:

'We used to think Jesus came to preach the good news of Salvation. Now we believe Jesus came to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God.'

What's the difference? Traditionally church outreach and mission had placed an emphasis on the preaching of the gospel as a means to bring people to faith i.e make sure everyone has a chance to hear why and how Christ died for them and then respond using the ABC:

Admit that you are a sinner and need forgiveness.
Believe that Jesus Christ died for you on the cross and rose from the grave to bring you to God.
Confess, through prayer, that Jesus Christ is the only way to God, and commit to live for Him the rest of your life.

The focus is on creating a faith 'crisis' point: Christ died for you, if you accept this your 'saved' if you don't your not.

Now of course the cross is central but it is not the sole point at through which people enter the Christian faith. For the apostle Paul people believing that Christ died for them was of utmost importance, but more important was them believing in what Christ's death and resurrection pointed to - essentially that 'Christ is Lord' - the first creed of the Christian faith - Romans 10.9

'That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.'

Why does Paul emphasise belief in Christ's resurrection from the dead? Because for Paul it was like a 'crowning' ceremony: in crucifying Christ the world had rejected Jesus kingship, by raising him God pronounces his sovereignty over all the universe - Jesus is Lord.

So the apostles spent their time heading from town to town trying to prove to the Jewish world from the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ, the long expected Messiah - God's anointed king who would save Israel and the world from their sins.

One of the central scriptures the New Testament writers referred to, as did Christ himself is Psalm 110. It's known as the 'coronation' psalm and is the most quoted piece of Old Testament in the New Testament:

The LORD says to my Lord:
"Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet."
The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion;
you will rule in the midst of your enemies. Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.
Arrayed in holy majesty,
from the womb of the dawn
you will receive the dew of your youth.

So God has appointed Christ king over heaven and earth. Christ's death and resurrection are not 'saving' acts in themselves but only as part of Christ's saving rule. The goal of salvation then is to make us fit for service in the kingdom of God.

Christ's mission on earth was to usher in Kingdom 'directives', to see God' sovereign will followed by everyone created in his image. Christ made this 'mission statement' the core of the Lord's prayer:

'Our Father, who is in heaven,
Holy is your name, your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.'

In this sense Christ's goal was to see humans obey God with the same sense of passion, self-sacrificing loyalty and instant obedience with which Angels do God's bidding in the Heavenly courts.

More so - we're supposed to follow God's will with the same kind of obedience Jesus himself showed to God the Father while on earth.
'For I have come down from Heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.' John 6.38

We'll make Heaven a place on Earth.

The idea of 'heaven' coming to 'earth' is central to Christ's teaching. As Tom Wright says in his commentary on Luke much of the Temple culture of the Israelite faith was about making Earth like heaven. Look at a plan of the Temple and it resembles a palace with various outer courts and a central 'Throne room' the Holy of Holies. Effectively the earthly temple was the seat of God's 'government' on earth.

So if the holy of the holies was the 'throne room' of God, the tearing of the curtain at Jesus death is symbolic of the 'rule of God' - temple culture where God's will is obeyed-moving in to all the earth.

This picture, of Christ bringing in a new age of God's kingdom rule fits with the progressive story of salvation: The establishing of the Kingdom of God (referred to as Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew's gospel) happens in stages.

As Wright says many people in Jesus day envisioned the Kingdom of God being synonymous with God getting rid of Israel's enemies. 'No king but God' was a popular slogan used in Jesus day - when God is king the Roman Empire will be defeated.

However Jesus defined God's kingdom not in terms of takeover of a geographical area, or the Israelite nation becoming an empire but in terms of people pledging allegiance to his rule:

'His invitation to people to 'enter' the kingdom was a way of summoning them to allegiance to himself and his programme, seen as the start of God's long awaited saving reign. For Jesus, the kingdom was coming not in a single move, but in stages of which his own public career was one, his death and resurrection another, and a still future consummation another.'

Tom Wright Luke for Everyone.

God's Cops

We are often told that Jesus was the greatest revolutionary that every existed. Not true. Neither is the Church to be seen as a 'rebellion.' You only need a revolution if the system of governance is ineffective or corrupt. There is nothing awry with God's rule over the cosmos. So we are not the revolution: we are the authority.

In fact we are fighting a rebellion. The earth is like a 'rogue' state slowly being won back over to life lived in obedience to God - correcting Adam's disobedience to God. Our job as the church is to 'police' the world. Before you rush out and buy a truncheon and a taser though, we win people over to God's rule through the weapons of truth, humility, grace, unity, justice, prayer and passion.

In this sense Jesus mission can be seen as challenging the rebellion of the 'world' through the in-breaking power of the kingdom. Christ brings kingdom authority to bear in many ways: authority over Satan and his minions through exorcism; authority over sickness & disability; authority over the natural world - walking on water and calming the storm.

The crazy thing is God gives Christ authority for us to go out in the power and name of his authority! Matt 28
'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.... Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.'

Citizens of Heaven

Christ's emphasis was on the unique role that his followers had to play in this world transforming communities into 'outposts' of the Kingdom where God's rule is carried out.

Someone has said that the Church has overlooked this role. That we believed our job was to see people 'saved and then warehoused for heaven.' Mark Greene, my boss at the LICC says that the church often had a 'convert and retain' policy of discipleship where as Jesus model was 'train and release.'

So we take passages like Phillipians where Paul says 'our citizenship is in heaven' and we may think it means 'this world is not our home, we're just passing through' as an old gospel song states. However as Tom Wright explains that's not how citizenship, in Paul's day, worked:

'Rome planted colonies, often of old soldiers, not so that they could return to their mother city when they retired from work but precisely so that they wouldn't: their task was to bring Roman influence to bear on the countries and societies where they were.'

Every church then is a 'colony' of God's kingdom with a divine imperative to see communities transformed by living life in obedience to Christ's teaching.

A Radical Change?

We've seen the influence of this teaching in the church over the past few years. There's been a switch from focussing on the gospel being 'proclaimed truth' to being 'provocative praxis.' So 'colonies' like the Eden project in council estates in Manchester don't just tell people God loves them, they actively display what it looks like to live in a world where God rules: restoring people's humanity by being dedicated to transforming local areas, living in communities where people desperately need to be shown the love of Christ.

Perhaps one of the biggest ways we've changed is through what we believe the role of evangelism and the mission of the church to be. It's not looking for that opportunity to 'drop the gospel' in to a conversation but rather to ask 'what are the responsibilities of a citizen of heaven in this situation? The situations in which I work, shop, study, live?'

And we don't simply 'do good deeds' out in the community for a 'gospel payoff' i.e. we don't only clean up graffiti on a subway because someone will then stop us and ask 'why are you doing it?' we do it because of kingdom rules: God demands that we are good stewards who look after the environment he's given to us and we also do it because he asks us to serve others.

If you look at the New Testament there are precious few directives to get out there and preach the good news. As Paul states in Ephesians 4, only some are Evangelists. Graham Tomlin, director of Holy Trinity Brompton's theological centre - St Paul's, writes about this in his book The Provocative Church. Although directly preaching the good news of Christ obviously has an important place, much of the emphasis in NT teaching is on how we live as God's people: live such good lives among the pagans that ... they may see your deeds and give glory to God.' 1 Peter 2.12

As Tomlin points out, texts such as 1 Peter 3.15 have often been used to encourage us all to be evangelists 'Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.' Yet at the heart of this text is the assumption that someone has asked us about our faith in the first place - to everyone who asks you. Peter isn't saying that we preach to everyone but that we have an answer ready when our different lifestyle provokes curiousity in people.

Pictures of the Kingdom

Tomlin sums up the central drive of Jesus mission this way:

Jesus is to be seen as a king coming into his kingdom.

His teaching is a mix of his vision for his Kingdom and rules for living in his kingdom.

Evangelism and mission then becomes living out his Kingdom rules and inviting others to come under the rule of Christ.

This is, in effect Sesame Street Church. Sesame Street is somewhere so fantastic that you don't even have to invite people to go there, they ask you 'can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street.' This is what often happened in the early church when Christianity was 'underground.' People used to sidle up to Christians in the marketplace and say 'I hear you're a follower of the way. How can I found out about it?'

As Jesus knew, lives lived in obedience to God create such a beautiful stink in society that people can't help but take notice. Building the Kingdom of God is a big task though, that's why God wants to enlist every single person whoever existed or ever will. It's not just that it's the most exciting task in the universe: the building of the Kingdom of God is the reason the universe exists in the first place.

IDEAS.

Why not do a study on Jesus 'Kingdom of God' sayings? Could take a while though, head to www.Biblegateway.com and put 'kingdom of God' into the keyword search and you'll see what I mean.

Do a family service on 'painting pictures of the kingdom.' Jesus didn't always hand out rules for living in his kingdom, he often simply 'painted pictures' of what the kingdom looks like through his stories. Have loads of big bits of blank paper eg. wallpaper stuck on the walls around the church. Then give out pictures of the Kingdom for mixed age small groups to paint eg the kingdom of God is like, a mustard seed that grows into a shady tree, a feast, a party, a pearl of great price.
Afterwards ask 'does our church look like this? Is it a feast, a party, a treasure hidden in field...?'

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