“We are called to incarnate the Kingdom of God.” I read that phrase this past week. It startled me. I wasn’t used to that sort of language. The incarnation, well, that’s Jesus’ deal. I just sit back and admire what Jesus has done, right? Now, before you accuse me of heresy and set up a council to renounce me, I do believe that Jesus is the unique incarnation of God. He alone is the Logos, the Word made flesh. But what this quote is getting at is that we are called to put “flesh on” the Kingdom of God. This reign of God breaking into the fallen world. You and me are to walk around Colorado Springs (or wherever you might live) embodying the good news of the Kingdom of God.
I didn’t hear much about the Kingdom of God until my last year of college. This is sad because Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God pretty much more than anything else. In fact, he sees his mission as that of proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. In talking about the kingdom, he doesn’t say “wait for it, wait for it…” No, he says, “the kingdom has come near.” (Matthew 4:7). He says heads up, turn around; the kingdom of God is at hand.
What Jesus was saying was that he was ushering the kingdom of God into the world. God’s reign has been inaugurated in Jesus Christ. Yet, we don’t see or experience his kingdom completely. The kingdom won’t fully be on earth as it is in heaven until the final victory of Christ. So the kingdom of God is here now and the kingdom of God is not yet fully here. We live in between the times. Or to say it another way “In Jesus Christ the Kingdom of God has come and is coming.”
But my friends, in the midst of a fallen, broken world, we live in light of this inbreaking Kingdom. We live in light of the end where there is no death or sadness. We live in light of the end where there is no crying or pain or darkness. When things are no longer the way they used to be. We live as kingdom people who have sold out to this King of justice. Who claim allegiance to this King of joy. Who owe all loyalty to this King of peace.
Shirley Guthrie puts it like this, “All of us could be tempted to simply give up in despair when we take a hard look at the world around us and the mess we make of our own lives. The hostility between people who are sexually, racially, and politically different from each other; never-ending national and international conflicts with the threat of nuclear war that will never go away; the misery and suffering of the ever-increasing number of the world’s poor, the depersonalization, manipulation, and exploitation of human beings in and by modern technological societies….in the face of all that, what use is it even to try to do something? But if we believe that since Easter the powers of evil are fighting a losing battle and that the One who has already conquered them is still at work to finish what he began, then we can take heart nevertheless to keep fighting…”
Guthrie goes on to say, “It is true that we live in a “twilight zone” in which the light of God’s compassion and justice is still at war with the powers of darkness, but because we remember what God has done in Christ and can therefore have hope for what God will do, we may be certain that it is not the twilight that comes before darkness overcomes the light but the twilight that is the dawn of a new day when light will overcome darkness.”
I encourage you to spend some time in the gospels. When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God (sometimes referred to as the kingdom of heaven), how does he describe it? When he demonstrates what it is like, what is he doing?
To get you thinking:
“When we think of a kingdom we usually think of physical power, prestige, and wealth. But the phrase “Kingdom of God” is used throughout the Gospels in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. The Kingdom of God is set in stark contrast to worldly kingdoms. It reverses their emphases on physical power, prestige, and wealth.” Loving Justice, pg 28.
Do biblical understandings of the Kingdom apply to modern societies? If not, why? If yes, how?
When we pray the Lord’s prayer and say, “may your kingdom come” what are we praying?
-- Katie Dayton
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