Telling the Story of Jesus: Thy Kingdom Come
Rev. Lee Ann Bryce
Community Christian Church
April 10, 2011
Today we continue with our Lenten sermon series, “Telling the Story of Jesus.” We began with considering the primary ways that Jesus is viewed in our culture. Then we explored the value of seeing the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John through a historical-metaphorical lens. In this way, we understand the gospels not as the divine, infallible Word of God, but rather as memory and testimony of Jesus’ followers in the decades after his death. The next week we discussed the difference between a pre-Easter Jesus and a post-Easter Jesus. By pre-Easter Jesus, I mean Jesus before his death; by post-Easter Jesus, what Jesus became after his death. With this distinction, we understand that the pre-Easter Jesus, the finite, mortal Jesus, likely did not consider himself as the Messiah. Jesus didn’t talk about himself in this way. Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion, Christianity. Jesus was a Jew, whose teaching might well have simply led to a reformation within Judaism. Christianity as we know it developed gradually over the centuries after Jesus’ death; a movement led by Jesus’ followers in response to their encounters with him. Last week we addressed the anti-Jewish bias that has been drawn from the gospels by many Christians and the misunderstandings that have led to this false conclusion. What would Jesus do? Jesus, a Jew, would never condemn the Judaism he held dear.
With all of this background in place, today we consider the big picture of Jesus. What was Jesus’ overriding message? What did he come to say?
It might surprise you to know that there is almost universal agreement among biblical scholars about what Jesus’ message was. These folks don’t agree on much, but they tend to agree on this. Scholar Paul Reumann writes:
Ask any hundred New Testament scholars around the world, Protestant, Catholic or non-Christian, what the central message of Jesus was, and the vast majority of them – perhaps every single expert – would agree that his message centered in the kingdom of God. (Jesus in the Church’s Gospels, p. 142.)
This is consistent with gospel of Mark, our earliest gospel. In Mark 1, right after Jesus emerges from his 40 days of temptation in the wilderness and he launches his ministry, Jesus proclaims, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news” (1:15). This is a summary statement of almost everything Jesus talked about.
What did Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God, its coming, and its nearness mean? How and when did he think the kingdom would come? What did his followers understand him to mean? What a surprise - scholars are no longer unanimous in their answers to these questions, though there is some general agreement on a few points.
First, the kingdom of God is not about heaven. Jesus was not talking about an afterlife. Rather Jesus was talking about a kingdom of God on earth, “on earth as it is in heaven.” (Does that sound familiar?) Jesus proclaimed a transformed world, a world of justice and plenty and peace; a world where everybody has enough. Jesus preached about a safe, just world reminiscent of the prophet Micah when he said, “And no one shall make them afraid” (Micah 4:4).
What would it be like to have a world where no one intimidated, or threatened, or bullied another? Jesus message was about the kingdom of God on earth. As theologian John Dominic Crossan says, “Heaven’s in great shape. Earth is where the problems are.”
Second, the term “kingdom” is a political and religious term. In the first century, people understood kingdom a bit differently than we do now. We don’t use the word “kingdom” much anymore. Jesus’ hearers knew about the kingdom of Rome (the word Rome used for what we might call Rome’s empire.) Jesus’ kingdom referred to a political order. Not the “kingdom of Rome” but “the kingdom of God.” Instead of saying the kingdom of God, Jesus could have spoken about the community of God, or the family of God, or the people of God. But he didn’t. Instead he spoke about the kingdom. The usage had to be deliberate, intended to contrast the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of this world.
And he spoke of the kingdom of God. It’s not just about politics, but is the way the world would be if God were king, and the kings and domination systems of this world were not. The kingdom of God is God’s dream, God’s passion, God’s will, God’s promise, God’s intention for the earth, God’s utopia – the blessed place, the ideal state of affairs. As the Beatitudes in both Luke and Matthew affirm, the kingdom of God is good news for the poor and bad news for the wealthy and powerful. Jesus spoke of God’s kingdom as a place where things are reversed from the way they are now. No wonder the common people, the people at the bottom rejoiced in Jesus’ message. No wonder the powerful people at the top plotted to silence him.
Jesus message then was about the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. What is God’s kingdom like? What did Jesus have in mind? For one thing, this is a kingdom of economic justice. Not everyone gets the same, but everybody has enough. And this doesn’t happen as the result of charity, but as the natural product of just systems where everyone naturally has enough. This is kingdom where there is no need of soup kitchens or homeless shelters because everyone has food and shelter without depending on the charity of others. Nations do not war against other nations, nor do individuals enact violence on one another.. There is work for those who can work. God’s kingdom is a world very different from the domination systems, large and small, ancient and modern, that characterize our world.
The kingdom of God. Sounds great, doesn’t it? It also sounds impossible. And Jesus expected this kind of world, this kingdom of God, on earth? Was he crazy? How can such a pie-in-the-sky idea be compelling at all to us? Why dream an impossible dream?
Rheinhold Niebuhr spoke of this gap between reality and the vision of God’s kingdom on earth, affirming the power and the importance of this ideal. He referred to “the political relevance of an impossible idea.” We strive to approximate an ideal though we fall short. The ideal itself is far from irrelevant. Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God is something we strive for.
How did Jesus inspire those around him with his crazy vision of God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven? How did he communicate his message? According to all of the gospels, Jesus spent a lot of time performing miracles. (The word miracle might be more accurately translated as “mighty deeds” or “deeds of power.”) Whether these were supernatural events or events not fully understood in a pre-scientific age is not clear. Most of these were healings and exorcisms. As his reputation increased, Jesus began to attract crowds. “His fame spread…and great crowds followed him” (Matt. 4:24-25). “And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so that they would not crush him; for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him” (Mark 3:9-10). Indeed it was probably his reputation as a healer and exorcist that generated an audience for him as a teacher.
As the progression of gospels are written in the decades after Jesus death (remember Mark came first, then Matthew and Luke, and John was last) more importance was placed on Jesus’ teaching. More teaching texts are included in Matthew and Luke, than in Mark. So this image of Jesus as teacher became more and more important to the early church.) And Jesus must have been something else. (And in this congregation of so many teachers, we can appreciate that!) We’ve talked about his overall message, but how did he teach so effectively? Generally speaking, he used two teaching methods: storytelling (parables) and short, memorable sayings (aphorisms or “one-liners”). At times he would refer to Hebrew scriptures, but he didn’t make extended commentary on it. He didn’t teach Bible studies. Nor did he use the form of speech usually used by prophets: “Thus says the Lord,” to introduce his teaching. When he did make a big speech, such as the Sermon on the Mount, it’s usually made up of short, memorable snippets that have been collected.
His parables were made-up stories, fictional narratives. Some of these are very short, “The kingdom of God is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened,” (Matt. 13:33). Some are lengthy, fully-developed stories, such as The Prodigal Son or The Good Samaritan. Parables work because they are good stories and the audience is drawn in, then the story take some surprising turn that leaves everyone thinking, “What????” The meaning of Jesus’ parables isn’t clear. They weren’t clear to those who heard them and they’re not clear to us. Rather the listener, then and now, must identify for him or herself the truth they contain. Parables are designed to draw people into conversation. You get the idea that the conversation that follows is the mark of an effective parable, not the story itself. Jesus parables would have been repeated numerous times, as he traveled and taught.
And Jesus was terrific with a one-liner.
· “You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matt. 6:24).
· “Consider the lilies of the field” (Matt. 6:28).
· “Blessed are the poor for yours is the kingdom of heaven” (Luke 6:20)
· “Leave the dead to bury the dead” (Matt. 8:22)
· “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27)
These weren’t proverbs. We use proverbs to express folk wisdom or universal truths, something everybody knows or should now. Jesus’ aphorisms were different. They expressed a fresh insight and often overturned conventional wisdom. Like parables, they are surprising, arresting, and thought-provoking.
I’ll mention one more teaching practice that employed by Jesus – eating together. Meals, not ritual meals, but the simple sharing of food and drink in company was one of the central ways that Jesus expressed his message. He shared meals with surprising people, he offered memorable teaching at meals, he taught about meals, he performed healings at meals, he celebrated healings at meals, he referred to conflicts that happened around meals. (You gotta love a guy who ate his way through 4 gospels!) In his day, sharing a meal was a form of social inclusion and refusing to share a meal, a form of social exclusion. I suppose it’s still that way today to some extent. The radical equality Jesus demonstrated by eating with surprising companions upset people. It was not considered charming and sweet. It often created intense conflict and strong condemnation:
· “Why does he eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mark 2:16)
· “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner!” (Luke 19:7)
· “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them!” (Luke 15:2)
Eating with sinners. Telling stories with surprising twists. One-liners that ridiculed the mighty and lifted up the humble. These are the primary ways that Jesus communicated his vision of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. It also led to Jesus becoming the target of the powerful. Next week is Palm Sunday and we’ll continue our series by considering what the last week of Jesus’ life might have been like.
I am indebted to Marcus Borg for his lectures at the Canandaigua UCC church I attended last September, as well as Borg’s book, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006) as a resource for this Lenten sermon series, Telling the Story of Jesus.
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