“The Kingdom of God is God’s total answer to humanity’s total need. . . If Jesus made the kingdom of God the center of his message and the center of his endeavor, the greatest need of man, as I see it, is to rediscover the kingdom of God. Man needs nothing so much as he needs something to bring life together into total meaning and total goal. Life for the modern man in East and West needs something to give total meaning to an otherwise fragmented life. He needs an absolute from which he can work down to the relativisms of the day, a master light of all his seeing. He is being pushed and pulled and beckoned to, enticed and bludgeoned from all directions. He is being pushed from relativism to relativism. He is confused-the most confused and yet the most intelligent person that ever existed. He knows everything about life, except how to live it.” From E. Stanley Jones' book The Unshakeable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person.

The phrase 'Kingdom of God' appears 65x in the New Testament and 'Kingdom of Heaven' 31x (all in Matthew's Gospel); and yet we don't tend to think of Jesus' message in this way. Individualism and the focus on the afterlife has reduced and altered the message to 'accept Jesus and you get to go to heaven with him when you die.' Jesus certainly is the way to the Father, but this reduction and alteration of the central theme of his teaching tames the revolutionary message of complete allegiance to this King and complete participation in bringing this Kingdom of God, of heaven to the earth: ". . . your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" Matthew 6:10.

Here is an amazing quote from Thomas Cahill's book: The Desire of the Everlasting Hills ~ The World Before and After Jesus.

He writes . . . ‘the radical society of friends, of free and equal men and women, that came forth from the side of the crucified (an earlier reference to the blood and water that poured out of Jesus as the spear went into his side - the blood and water, the Lord's supper and baptism) was quickly overwhelmed by ancient patriarchy and has been overwhelmed in every era since by the social and political forms of the age’ (pg. 303).

So this community of love that Jesus envisioned and gave his life for has been usurped by some with different agendas. Well meaning, good people maybe, but still not in line with the purposes of Jesus. So it's been form over funtion and the the mission of Jesus is often subverted in favor of issues of power, status, expedience, structure, legacy, etc. It's very difficult for people to discern because religious language is used and the forms are taken to be the reality; "having a form of godliness but denying its power" (2 Timothy 3:5).

Kingdom and Church

Sunrise Worship, Resurrection Sunday on the James River

"The church gets into trouble whenever it thinks it is in the church business rather than the Kingdom business. In the church business, people are concerned with the church activities, religious behavior and spiritual things. In the Kingdom business, people are concerned
with Kingdom activities, all human behavior and everything that God has made, visible and invisible. Church people think about how to get people into the church, Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church people worry that the world might change the church, Kingdom people work to see the church change the world." Howard Snyder

The One who started the church said, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the
gospel will save it" (Mark 8:35). This is not just true for individuals, but for groups as well and institutions! So the church that is in survival mode ends up losing its life and the church that willingly gives away its life ends up saving it.

Just finished Langston Hughes' brilliant book, Not Without Laughter, written in 1930. It's the coming of age story of Sandy, a black youngster being raised in Kansas poverty mostly by grandma, who is called Aunt Hager. The book climbs to this passage, "But was that why Negroes were poor, because they were dancers, jazzers, clowns? . . . The other way round would be better: dancers because of their poverty; singers because they suffered; laughing all the time because they must forget. . . . It's more like that, thought Sandy.
A band of dancers. . . . Black dancers-captured in a white world. . . . Dancers of the spirit, too. Each black dreamer a captured dancer of the spirit. . . . Aunt Hager's dreams for Sandy dancing far beyond the limitations of their poverty, of their humble station in life, of their dark skins.
"I wants you to be a great man, son," she often told him, sitting on the porch in the darkness, singing, dreaming, calling up the deep past, creating dreams within the child. "I wants you to be a great man."
"And I won't disappoint you!" Sandy said that hot Chicago summer, just as though Hager were still there, planning for him.

I read through 1 Thessalonians this morning. Some thoughts . . .

Almost everyone will tell you Paul wrote this letter, but it’s actually written by Paul, Silas and Timothy. So there was a team! "We", "us" and "our" are the words that fill the letter. There are only two times in the 5 chapters that the word "I" is used, referencing Paul. We keep trying to be superheros for Jesus when God is trying to form a team with it's strength being the unity shared in Christ.

These passages from 1 Thessalonians showed that at the core of the Gospel, is about living ‘life together’.

1 Thessalonians 1:4 For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake.

1 Thessalonians 2:6 We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else. As apostles of Christ we could have been a burden to you, 7 but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. 8 We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.