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June 12, 2005
The Kingdom of God
Deuteronomy 8: 11 -20 / Mark 1: 13-18
June12th, 2005
When Jesus stepped onto the stage of history to begin His work He announced: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the Gospel.” His cousin, John the Baptist was much better known than He was at this point. But he had been arrested and would soon be executed and would fade from memory as Jesus loomed larger and larger—but in an oddly quiet way.
He said “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” but the outward evidence of power that people looked for never appeared. Any Roman centurion with his sword struck more fear into the heart of Jewish man than Jesus ever caused in a child. So people through the centuries have wondered, “What did Jesus mean when He said, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand’?”
When Jesus stood on trial before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, Pilate asked Him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replied, “My kingdom is not from this world. . . For this I was born, and for this I came into the world.”
It was strangely disquieting to this Roman governor to have Jesus stand before him. Jesus was unarmed and had not even a little band of supporters sticking with Him. Pilate’s wife told him, “Have nothing to do with this just man.” Why should she worry about little matters like justice when Rome held all the trump cards, and her husband was the absolute representative of Rome in Judea? I wonder if she’d ever had such apprehensions before when a helpless Jewish victim stood before her husband’s cruel justice. What was there about Jesus, who stood there so helplessly that made her have a terrifying dream about him? Jesus would soon be beaten brutally and nailed to a cross. He was apparently powerless
The Bible that tells us of the absolute power of God does not hesitate to show us Jesus’ paradoxical helplessness before the passing power of Rome.
Here at the end of Jesus’ life the full paradox of Jesus kingship stares us in the face. Jesus’ kingdom was over all, and yet He stood apparently powerless before Pontius Pilate.
We have reason to ask today, “Where is the Kingdom of God?” That is, “Where is the control of God over this painfully troubled world?” The Nicene Creed says of Jesus’ kingdom, “whose kingdom will have no end.” But we may fairly ask, “When did it begin?”
The obvious signs of power are strangely absent from the Kingdom of God. Even in a religious sense, as Luke Timothy Johnson asked, “If Jesus is not even fully ‘my Lord,’ or in any manifest way ‘our Lord’ then how can we proclaim Him as ‘Lord of lords and King of kings’?”
The same kind of question has continually confronted God’s people. In the Old Testament Book of Psalms we read the devout claim, “The Lord is a great God, and a great king over all gods.” This was the God of Israel who was “a great king over all gods,” but who allowed other kingdoms that worshipped idols come in with their armies and destroy Israel and the Temple where He was worshipped.
This was the God of Israel who could not get His people to obey Him. Whereas God showed massive power in getting His people out of Egypt, performing miracles to convince the stubborn Egyptian king, once God brought Israel to their destined Promised Land, they lived out of control. God couldn’t get his own people under His control, it seems. Where is the Kingdom of God?
As the prophet Isaiah said, “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way.” Israel lived out of control. And so it has been in Christianity. We call Jesus, “My Lord and Savior,” but it is fair to ask, “Who’s really in control of my life?”
We know that in the days when there were real kings in Europe, kings got what they wanted. The king’s word was law. You might not like what the king said, but you obeyed or he could have you executed on the spot, even if you were his wife—Henry VIII’s wives discovered.
When you put God in the place of king, it would seem that the level of power and authority maxes out. An earthly king used to have a lot of power. But God is and always has been all-powerful.
So it would seem that in the Kingdom of God everything would be exactly the way God wants it to be. But it sure doesn’t look that way when we look around, does it?
Where is the Kingdom of God?
Last week I presented an idea that came to me as I thought of the Second Coming of Christ. It is an idea that haunts me. I spoke of this life as a vestibule, a sort of narthex. When you came into church this morning you came by one of two doors. You came into a narthex, a vestibule, entryway, and then walked into this room that we think of as the sanctuary. None of us stayed in the narthex, the vestibule. If we stayed there even if the attendance was down, the vestibule would have become over-crowded. Our goal was to go into this room where we now are.
Well, you and I are now living in a narthex, a vestibule. And our destination is what lies on the other side of this vestibule. This vestibule offers us all sorts of challenges to believing in the power of God. We look out there at the world and see Iraq out of control, and Palestine’s cities living in continual apprehension that terrorist attacks will happen at any moment. Indeed, terrorism, the out-of-control use of immense death-dealing force, is in the hands of individual people even boys and girls. We used to pray that God might keep great enemy nations under control. But now we worry about individuals hiding bombs inside their clothes as they get on airplanes, or as they go into corner cafes. This vestibule we now live in is all we can see. It is scary. We can’t see into the big room where we’re going to live out by far the great majority of our lives.
This vestibule in which we live now has many religions saying, “I’m the real thing.” And most of these are more aggressively missionary religions than Christianity is. Numerical gains are happening for Christianity in Africa and South American, but overall Islam is making more converts. This is because they are more aggressive than we Christians are in making converts.
Never before have Americans had more freedom. The vestibule in which you are living out your life, and in which I am living out my earthly life, is so full of options that it’s hard to choose. While there are a lot of poor people, there are a lot of people with plenty of money to spend. Money means economic freedom, which means I am limited only by my health and what’s going on out there in the choices I can make. Patriot Acts try to keep us safe—but can go only so far.
But we all know that there are boundaries in which we live. Birth and death. It all begins with birth, a birth we did not choose. It all ends with death, a death we’d prefer to keep off as long as possible.
Birth and death are like the boundaries of a two-sided vestibule in which you and I live. And while living in this vestibule we are given the opportunity to see whether we will acknowledge the Kingdom of God as The real Country in which we live. The Bible says we’re sojourners, wayfarers, who have no continuing city. Jesus even says to us who love our families, “If you love your father or mother more than me, you’re not worthy of me.” God will not use the kind of force that human kingdoms, bosses, and communities exercise to get their way.
Jesus confused people in His day for His refusal, most of the time, to use any kind of force to get what He wanted. We are surprised when He went into the Temple and knocked over the tables of the moneychangers, scattering coins all over and driving out the animals they were selling. We are surprised and say, “How out of character!” Because our picture of Jesus has no room for the kind of power our government will show to keep people in line or to subdue our enemies.
Jesus, in His time on this earth, used the gentlest kind of persuasion to get people to follow Him. He speaks to the will—the will that can say no or yes without coercion. To the twelve disciples He said simply, “Come, follow me.” No promise of reward. No threats. None of that. Just, “Come, follow me.” He apparently didn’t even say, “If you’ll follow me I’ll give you eternal life.” That would come later. Indeed, Jesus told them, “They will hate you because they hated me.” This is what will take place in the vestibule, Jesus let them know.
I’m not really changing the subject when I bring up the subject of God’s sovereignty and our freedom of the will. We think of God’s sovereignty as His absolute power. John Calvin, our grandfather as Presbyterians, was so amazed at the sovereignty of God that he taught elaborately about the Divine decrees. God decreed everything that happens, even your sins and mine. Nothing takes place, Calvin taught, without God’s specific decree causing it to happen--every leaf that flutters in the wind. We have no free will actually.
But I wonder if Calvin misunderstood something about the sovereignty of God because he thought too narrowly about this world as being the large sphere of God’s operations, when it is only the vestibule, the entry way, the narthex of God’s great building complex. Within this vestibule of life the big question you and I are answering every day is, “How will we respond to Jesus, our King, when He does not force us to do anything?” It matters how we respond. It matters if we obey, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” You are not my friends if you don’t. Grace may be wrongly understood as “no matter what.”
I am often perplexed when I realize how few and simple are Jesus’ commands, and that if we obeyed them we would be a happy people. But we’ve dithered about theological niceties, with our theories of justification and justification, grace and works. Meanwhile, in this vestibule in which we live, all Jesus gently pleads that we do is trust in Him, and then live a life of trusting Him. In this vestibule of life we are free to obey or not to obey.
In this entry way to eternal life God gives us freedom to choose. But God is sovereign over the big building; the great complex in for this little vestibule is our entryway. God put us in this entry way and asks, “What will you do with me in it?” It is your lab-school—time of experimentation with obedience and disobedience.
Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” When He said, “Repent and believe in the Gospel,” He did not command us to obey because it was important in this vestibule of life that we respond freely to His invitation. This life is only a small part of the great entity called “eternal life.” But it is important how we choose in this tiny entryway to eternity. God’s sovereignty is over all eternity—but in this tiny, brief vestibule of life, He gives us choices to make and act on.
Periodically we are given reminders of how passing, how temporary are earthly Kingdoms. When Stalin’s statue was toppled in Russia it was a remarkable thing because under Stalin, it had been a seemingly invincible reign of terror. When Saddam Hussein’s statue was pulled down in Baghdad, it was symbolic of the end of a terrifying regime. At their peak, Stalin and Saddam Hussein seemed to hold undisputable power. But Stalin’s body lies turning to dust, and Hussein languishes in a jail cell.
Our economic power hovers over all our lives. We confidently invest and spend even though 1929’s stock market crash took place within the memory of some of you who are sitting here today. We worry about tomorrow’s social security, when we know maybe we won’t even be around when a sixty-fifth birthday was supposed to arrive.
But Jesus towers over the wreck of time. His Kingdom will have no end. And it is your privilege and mine to live as though we believe this while we are in this small vestibule that we call “this life.” There are many things that addle us now that really are not very important. There was a saying I used to hear often, “Only one life, will soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.”
Jesus’ way is not to boss us around. He graciously shows us a way and invites us, “Walk in it.” He kindly shows us His truth, and says, “Now trust it is true.” He offers us a life, and patiently says, “Now live it.” And thus Jesus’ royal power shows itself in the hearts of all who will accept it, be they rich or poor, smart or not so smart, in this short vestibule that we call “this life.”
You and I will not live forever. My life may end tomorrow or ten years from now, as it is with us all. And what matters is what we do with Jesus’ statement, “The Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in this Good News.” What are you doing with the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, the Good News of the never-ending Kingdom, for which this brief life is the entry way?
Let us pray: O Lord, Thank you that Your Kingdom is not as ours are, and that it is an everlasting Kingdom, and that in Christ you have made us a way to be in it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at June 12, 2005 09:30 AM