In the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “your Kingdom
come”
What do you think about when you pray that?
Something we are working towards? An end?
Have you ever begun something not knowing how
it will end? Or are you people who cannot start something without knowing all
the details of the final destination?
Have we been frustrated by stories or dramas on
the television or radio that have had “bad endings”? Have we been surprised by
an ending we didn’t expect? (Lucy Beale’s killer on Eastenders.) Continuing
drama of course doesn’t have an ending. It goes on, unless it is axed.
Do we find working out how a piece of work will
end easy or difficult. When I was growing up, we had a minister, Geoff, who
wrote me this letter about get on and candidate, who used to preach at great
speed and with great excitement and he used one of those notepads you can turn
the pages over and over, and we used to sit there and count the pages, but when
you thought he was coming to an end, he would start up again, so you were never
quite sure where his ending would be.
Preparing a difficult sermon for the Baptist
Church last Sunday in Rye, I couldn’t finish it as I couldn’t make the list of
the tribes of Israel going into Judah interesting. I had to go out for a few
hours, and then return to it, to think about it more. A good ending is
important – even pastorally. A good funeral, an ending to a job, even sometimes
an ending of a relationship if it is amicable. Claire and I only fought at
parting over who the Camberwick Green and Trumpton DVDs belonged to!
Are there things in the news today we don’t
know how they will end? The election, Syria, poverty, although Comic Relief
films have people going back to find things have radically improved, horrific
murders, Jeremy Clarkson (!)
What about an ending for us spiritually and
theologically. What in the church are we working towards. If we pray “your
Kingdom come”, aren’t we working towards an ending? Do we need a corporate
commitment to an ending, even if we don’t know all the details?
So in this final session of this little course
where we have looked at worth, at grace, at a biased God to the suffering,
today we will look whether we are journeying to an end, we will do some
exploring of the concept of a Kingdom of God, we will do some Tutu, and we will
do some Mark’s Gospel passages and end by dipping into a powerful Oscar Romero
quote I use a lot to inspire us to keep journeying, doing our bit as part of
the story of God’s people. I believe, and those coming to the Circuit
Meeting will hear more about this then, we need a Circuit vision, a
destination, a direction of travel together which all the churches can express
differently, but we support one another to get to and work towards. Radical!
We are meant to have a Circuit mission
statement and we make something up when we want a grant or a minister but no
work has been done together on the journey and I am encouraging the Circuit
with the Circuit Leadership Team a process begin.
The
Kingdom of God
Central to the ministry of Jesus was the
concept of the Kingdom of God. We shall discover together what Jesus meant by
that.
What did Jesus see the Kingdom being like? What
do you know?
A brief whip
through Kingdom theology before Jesus – and I mean brief!
Jews
believed that God would deliver them, which was their hope for the future.
Israel was at its most affluent during reign of
Kings David and Solomon. From that point, things began to go downhill. The
Kingdom was divided into 2 Kingdoms. The division made some long for
restoration of past blessings. Two concepts in OT theology – Davidic, and
Apocalyptic.
Davidic View of the Kingdom
Hope was God
would send a king like David, and Israel wanted a nationalistic, militaristic
Kingdom to return. Belief in the Day of the Lord when all would be restored.
See Psalm 126 for example – Southern Kingdom in exile, Zerubbabel, a descendent
of David became king. Davidic hope for a military and political power emerged
strongly here. Hope that a descendent of David would return them to the glory
of David’s rule.
Important to note the Kingdom of God was
thought to be a Kingdom of this world, which would be for the Jews.
There was nothing spiritual or future about it.
Some see it as a dream of Jewish nationalism.
Apocalyptic View of the
Kingdom
Intertestamental
period – 404 to 6BC – apocalyptic literature.
A heavenly kingdom which would break into the
present evil age. A new world would break into the present world and bring the
rule of God. View that Satan dominated the present and the present was under
his rule.
175 to 164 – Antiochus Epiphanes – persecution
on Israel, view flourished. Theme of evil winning and good losing.
Books of intertestamental period show us the
views of the people at a specific time. Enoch – Satan pictured as a ruler of a
Kingdom of evil, with many followers, the demons. Book of Jubilee – a golden
age to come in which God himself would usher in his Kingdom reversing the evils
of Satan.
Views about the Kingdom
1.
C.H.Dodd held that the Kingdom of God
was realised fully in the ministry of Jesus. The Kingdom of God is an earthly
place, where there is righteousness, peace and joy. He called it realised
eschatology.
2.
Another view is that the Kingdom is a
place of future blessing which occurs at the second coming for the people of
God. The followers of Jesus enter the Kingdom when he returns. The coming
Kingdom would bring an end to the old order of humanity, and bring a new
existence in a heavenly order. Key proponent of this was Albert Schweitzer –
said the Kingdom is altogether future and supernatural.
3.
Adolph Von Harnack – the Kingdom is a
subjective realm, an inner, spiritual, redemptive blessing. The Kingdom is an
inward power which enters into the human spirit and takes hold of it.
4.
Saint Augustine – the Kingdom and the
Church are the same thing. We sometimes talk about bringing people into the
Kingdom. He believed that as the Church grew, the Kingdom grew. As the Church
takes the Kingdom into the world, the Kingdom is extended.
When you
pray your Kingdom come, what are you actually praying for? In your view, has
the Kingdom come, or are we still waiting?
Some
passages in Mark’s Gospel showing Jesus and the Kingdom
Mark 1: 14 – 20
Verse 15
here is the message of Jesus in a nutshell, and the centre of this verse is
“the Kingdom of God” Perhaps Jesus slogan! It means that God is on the throne
of the universe, controlling the world and seeking to rule human lives. Jesus
was saying, “God’s hour has struck!” A need to turn.
·
Imagine
you were one of the crowd. You have been brought up with dreams of the Kingdom
coming. Jesus announces its arrival. How do you feel? How do you then feel when
he says you need to change?
·
One
commentator has written, “The Kingdom of God was in the Old Testament. It can
be clearly demonstrated that the Kingdom is seen in events like the Exodus and
Israel’s captivity in Babylon. God acted in kingly power to deliver and judge
his children. The Kingdom came into history once and for all in the person and
works of Jesus. Is then mission of Jesus, and our task today, to bring
salvation and return people to fellowship with God?
Mark 10: 17 - 31
·
What
is Jesus saying in this passage about how we enter the Kingdom?
·
What
do you find hard to put lower down your list of priorities to do God’s work
today? Where is people’s allegiance?
Oscar
Cullmann from Christ and Time talks about the now and not yet.
The
Bible clearly tells us Christ will return. It is not clear when that moment
will be.
What
are we to do? Be busy teaching the words and doing the works of the Kingdom in
this present evil age.
Read
Isaiah 11: 1 – 16 and reflect on a Tutu quote:
“God
has not given up on God’s dream. It has been kept alive by those whom God has
sent to remind us of it. Just as Martin Luther King Junior famously proclaimed
“I have a dream” in a deeply moving address in Washington DC, so God can keep
reminding us, “I have a dream that one day my people will know that I created
them to be a family; I created them for togetherness; I created them for
complementarity; I created them for a delicate network of interdependence where
each makes up for what is lacking in the other.” Is this dream pie in the sky
or are we working towards it in our church programme this very day? Who do you
thank God for who remind you of it, or have reminded you of it?
Two
areas of theology we might need to explore as we approach Holy Week soon, one
is death, the other is life.
Do
people see death as the great taboo it once was? The end of earthly life?
Perhaps there is uncertainty in people about what happens next, is it the end
or is there like the leader of the funeral says a new place to go?
And
what about the end of the creed. Do you know how that goes? He will come again
in glory to judge the living and the dead and his Kingdom will have no end.
Theology insists there will be an end.
David
Stacey: “History must reach its climax, time and space must come to an end, the
universe must achieve its God given destiny. From our point of view that must
mean a comsummation and a Last Day. The triumph of God is not complete while
there is a time and a place where people can still deny him.
The
final stroke must, then, be universal. There must come a moment when all things
are subject to his glory when all that is must either be raised to dwell in the
light unapproachable, or else cease to be.”
Do
we work now keeping an eye on the future, which determines what we do today? Is
the Kingdom that is to come the full and consummate expression of the Kingdom
that is already here? Are there signs that God is at work around you today? If
not, what are we doing?
Endings
and new beginnings are part of life. We face them every day. Think about a last
day doing something, or being with someone for the last hours of their life.
How did you cope with those occasions? Walking away is hard because suddenly
things you know have gone.
Tutu:
“I align myself with Origen, who in his universalism taught that ultimately
even Satan would be converted, because even he would not be able to resist the
attraction of the divine love; and then God would truly be all in all. And the
times of the End would be as the times of the Beginning. Amen. To God be the
glory. Amen. Amen. (That’s where Tutu’s reflections on being in God’s hands
end.)
We
do our bit to work towards it now. Remember the accountability of Wesley’s
classes! We can all make a contribution but we cannot do it all, and we cannot
expect others to do more than they can. In our Circuit, we are working together for a Kingdom
not for 12 churches full of burnt out people, aren’t we? So, this prayer I
usually use at the end of an appointment, so maybe in 2017 here with you. It
reminds me we are but part of a process and we are called to be faithful to the
vision and to do our best. It is attributed to Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San
Salvador who was murdered for his faith:
A
Future Not Our Own
It
helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The
Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it
is beyond our vision.
We
accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of
the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing
we do is complete, which is another way of
saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No
statement says all that could be said.
No
prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession
brings
perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No
program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No
set of goals and objectives include everything.
This
is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one
day
will grow. We water the seeds already planted
knowing
that they hold future promise.
We
lay foundations that will need further development.
We
provide yeast that produces effects
far
beyond our capabilities.
We
cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation
in realizing this.
This
enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It
may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a
step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's
grace
to enter and do the rest.
We
may never see the end results, but that is the
difference
between the master builder and the worker.
We
are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Final
reflection for us all:
As
we approach Holy Week, the cross and the empty tomb, what is it that God is
saying to us? What are you, we, your church, community, the Circuit, working
towards?
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