Skip to main content

The Kingdom of God Is Now

We have mentioned a number of times and we will no doubt mention it again, that Christianity isn’t only about something that happened 2000 years ago. Oh yes, the coming of the Christ in real time was the hinge point of all history but if we simply think of our faith as expressive only of that coming, we have missed the purpose of the incarnation.

The Gospels tell us of the event and provide little future thinking. Their purposes included to authenticate the life of Jesus and to establish his claim to be the Messiah and the savior of the world. Within the Gospels there are indications that the events recorded will impact the future,  but their themes are God’s keeping His promise to Israel.

It isn’t until we enter the world of Acts and read the epistles that we get the idea firmly established that the message of Jesus is applicable to all, and is expected to have an impact far into the future. The Spirit is given to empower and help the new communities of disciples grow in the character of God as they live among their neighbors.

But not everything is rosy for the disciples. We find in the New Testament, evidence that the communities were beset by a number of problems. Those problems are based in a failure of disciples to believe that they were part of the story of God. Some of them continued to think that simply belonging to a group would be sufficient; some thought the incarnation was a historical event that had passed; many of them struggled with letting the Spirit lead them toward transformation. The readers of the New Testament were urged to continue to believe that Jesus was God incarnate and the promised Messiah. They were told that if they really believed, their lives had to reflect the character of Jesus.

Much like those early disciples, we are in danger of making the same mistakes. It has been a very long time since Jesus walked the earth, and the world doesn’t seem to be responding to the reign of God. Our stories remain two thousand years old and we have spent multiple fortunes and lifetimes studying texts and arguing the fine points of theology thinking that those activities are what disciples should be doing. We find in communities of disciples the same moral decay experienced in the first centuries. We too are tempted to treat Christianity as though it is defined and fulfilled by “church.”

We must read the New Testament as though it was written to us, as exhortation and correction, as well as reminder and assurance that our faith is real and is to impact our lives right now. We must believe we are living the revelation of God and that we have been given the Spirit and power of God to assist us in our transformation into the very images of God in the world.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Freewheeling

Merton never disappoints. Here's an excerpt from "Love and Living," a collection of individual writings collected after his death in 1968: "Life consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling; to do this one must recognize what is one's own—be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering valid." This short passage is pregnant with meaning and spiritual insight (would we expect anything less?). Let's start with the last few words: "…make that offering valid." The offering of ourselves, of our lives is our calling. We offer ourselves to assist the re-creation of Creation; the reconciling of Man to God. The validity of our offering is measured in how closely we mirror the work of God; to what extent our motivations are based on knowing who we are rather than a slavish obedience to p...
4 comments
Read more

Wineskins II

       In chapter 16 of Matthew, Peter ‘makes the great confession’ - Jesus he says is the Son of the Living God. At Covenant, when someone wants to become a member or to be baptized, we ask them who Jesus is and we expect this response. Peter is correct when he says this, but it is not clear that Peter (or the other disciples) understood the ramifications of his statement. Following Peter’s statement we find a series of incidents that make us wonder just how much Peters actually believed what he had said.      In the first instance, Jesus compares Peter to Satan. Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem and there he will die. Peter exclaims that he will not let that happen; Jesus will not be killed. Peter is expecting great things from Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God on behalf of Israel and he cannot fit Jesus dying into his hope for a greater Israel under this Messiah. This cannot happen, he reasons. Jesus’s response is a harsh re...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wineskins

  Jesus comes from the Wilderness where the Spirit has driven him for testing, announcing the imminent coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. His message to the crowds calls them to repent because the “Kingdom is at hand.” The kingdom or the effective rule of God has come upon Israel and Israel’s expected response is to return to her God. A number of passages tell us the sorts of things God has against Israel or at least her leaders. They have the form of the People of God, but not the substance. He will call those opposed to him “white-washed tombs” to describe their religious and moral corruption. They look good but are dead. He calls these people to repentance, to return to “their first love,” to actually live as though they are the People of God. In another place, he will tell them that while they do well to tithe mint and cumin, they have missed the larger point of caring for people. In the judgment scene, he describes sending into a place of gnashing of teeth those who failed to gi...
Post a Comment
Read more