The Kingdom of God – Luke 11:1-4 Mark 4:30-32, Mark 10:13-16

Jesus teaches us to pray Your Kingdom come your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
If you read the gospels you will see that he is incessantly talking about this new kingdom and trying to reshape the life of this earth. A new kingdom….
When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, or as Matthew calls it the Kingdom of Heaven, his language was charged with urgent political, religious, and cultural electricity. He lived in a world of kingdoms, with local rulers and Roman emperors. Kings and kingdoms made a difference. But if we speak of the kingdom of God today, the original electricity is largely gone. We no longer live in a kingdom. We live in a world of democracies and while we have a queen she is largely ceremonial. I note those selling their land in the red zone sell it to the queen but in reality her power compares little to the power and authority of an emperor or even a local ruler of Jesus’ day.
For most of us, kingdom language evokes images of absolute control, domination, and a regime without freedom. While we could do with a benevolent and wise local ruler to sort out Christchurch and give clear leadership, we don’t trust anyone to do it. We value the benefits of co-operative working, power sharing, and democratic checks and balances. We’ve heard too many stories of kingdoms and dictatorships that have gone wrong. People with power seem to have a habit of using it for their own ends. We look at African countries with a succession of absolute rulers and we cringe at the corruption and the suffering of the people. We look closer to home at the Kingdom of Tonga and smile. These places reek of wealthy elites, oppression, people used as pawns, and corruption – all things Jesus stood against.
It makes you wonder if Jesus was here today what language would he have used to articulate his message of a new earth, of heaven coming to earth, of God’s rule? What images, what metaphors might he draw upon to describe this central hope of his message? I want to name three possible metaphors as I try to understand the Kingdom of God in our time.
The dream of God. As we recite the Lord’s Prayer the Kingdom is closely linked with the will of God. We pray you kingdom come your will be done on earth as in heaven. The language of God’s will has frequently and usually disastrously been interpreted by Christians and other religious groups with much certainty of what this will is, and frequently imposed with the power of coercion. Jesus I believe tells us that God is an invitational sort of God who isn’t into forcing people to do anything. God gives us free will to choose. Jesus invites us to follow but doesn’t demand this of us. We have to commit ourselves to his Way. The Greek word that lies beneath our English word “will” can also be translated “wish.” But to say, “May your wish come true” sounds fairy tale-ish and is rather wishy washy. If however we see, as I do, of God’s will in invitational terms I think one helpful way of seeing this will is as a dream. I’m thinking in terms of the dream a parent has for their child, or the dream an artist has as he/she begins to paint a picture, or the dream a musician has as they begin to compose a piece of work. Such dreams define what is being created, but allow space for things to change along the way. God I think has a dream for all of creation just as God has a dream for each of our lives. It doesn’t mean that every last detail is mapped out, or that we will choose to seek and live out that dream. “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven” could thus be rendered, “May all your dreams for your creation come true.” This language suggests a more personal, more invitational, less mechanistic relationship between God and our world.
The call to faith is the call to trust God and God’s dreams enough to seek those dreams and to live out our lives under the influence of them. We are called to learn to live the way that brings the dream of God into reality.
The healing of God, (or the salvation of God, but that word salvation is a very loaded word.) Imagine that everyone on earth has become infected with a horrible virus. The virus makes people physically sick and mentally insane. Its symptoms vary from person to person and place to place but some of the symptoms are: violence towards others, greed, sexual addiction, lying and dishonesty, a lack of authenticity, physical illness, and so on. Imagine that a doctor develops a cure. He brings the cure to you and says, “Once you take this medicine, you’ll begin to feel better, more authentic and true. You wont feel the need to be anyone else or compete with others. (The writer of John’s Gospel called this the entering into eternal life.) But I’m not just giving you the cure for your sake. As soon as you feel well enough, I want you to make more of the cure and begin bringing it to others. Tell them the same thing: they are being healed not just so they can be healthy but also so they can become healers for the sake of others.” Just as the disease spread “virally,” now the cure will spread. A healing mission—where you are healed so you can join in healing others—it will involve a heap of loving and caring, listening, wisdom, and learning, but the results will be a new earth ruled by love. People will be free to be authentically themselves. It will be a new earth where people uphold the sacredness of all life including the life of all creatures and living things – even the earth itself. So we might pray: May your power of love be released within us to heal this world.
The network of God, is another metaphor works with the idea of a network or system. God is inviting people into a life-giving network, or for those more business orientated, into a life giving enterprise. First, God wants people to be connected, plugged in, in communication with God, so God can transfer to them what they need—not just information but also virus-debugging software that frees us to genuinely care for others and respect others. Loving neighbour becomes a genuine way of life because we know we are connected through God. Being networked God breaks down the walls of smaller, exclusive networks like racism, age groupings, class and so on. We no longer see one another according to nationality, colour, stage of life, etc but as fellow sisters and brothers. God invites us into the only truly worldwide web of love. The network becomes a resource for people outside the network as well, and of course, people are always invited to enter the connectivity themselves. The whole ecosystem would be networked in as well, so that our current imbalanced, commodity orientated systems, would be transformed to live in a new network of relationships that will produce balance, harmony, and health on earth. The prophets Isaiah and Micah spoke of such networking when they looked forward to the time when lion and lamb would lie down together and true peace and harmony would reign on earth. They too looked for the time of Shalom, peace, when all things would live in right relationship with one another and the sacred network of love would be complete.
There are many other metaphors we could explore to express the Kingdom of God. There are I suspect issues with each of them. Remembering Jesus’ love of parties we could call the kingdom the Party of God. Some people talk of the revolution of God. Shirley Murray our own hymn writer talks of the commonwealth of God. What is important is that we realize the kingdom is central to the ministry and teaching of Jesus and it should be important and central in our lives. Christian faith isn’t primarily about turning up at Church on Sunday, nor about getting an insurance policy for when we die. It is about discovering the dream of God, the healing of God, the network of God, which is happening now in our midst.
I want to invite you to do some thing this week which may be helpful in this process. Firstly I want to underline again my invitation to pray the Lord’s Prayer at least once a day. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t, remember God is an invitational God. You don’t have to. All I can say is that I believe it is good for us to have such practices. They re-orientate our lives in god and in the will of God.
This week I want to invite you to do something more as you pray the Lord’s Prayer. As you pray Your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, I’m inviting you to stop for a minute and to think back over the previous 24 hours and to ask where have I seen the kingdom today? Jesus said the kingdom was all around us, but we are pretty good at missing it or maybe not acknowledging it. To help you spot the kingdom you can ask yourself, when did I feel most love, or when was I most at peace or deeply joyful? When was I most alive? These questions will open your eyes to the moments when the kingdom was close. Just take a minute, say thank you to God, and then move on to where we’ll head next week with our daily bread.
May we all draw closer to this amazing kingdom, this dream of God, the healing of God, the network of God.

Dugald Wilson 22 Jan 2012