Your kingdom come…
— Matthew 6:9
Following the Call—Chap. 32: God’s Kingdom
Kingdom imagination. Watch out! Making dreams come true. Your turn.
This is a prayer few are honest enough to admit: “Our Father who art in heaven…stay there!” We can cope with a God who is sequestered in some corner of heaven (or even center stage), but far off—which is where we like our gods to be—safely removed from our dwelling place and therefore no threat to us.
— Robert McAfee Brown
Kingdom Imagination
Our current world situation is such that one is tempted to either escape into a utopian dream world or give up in despair. The latter is understandable. There is so much heartache, both at home and abroad. Things just seem to be getting worse: growing disparity between the top 1 percent and everybody else, more than 100,000 drug overdose deaths in the last twelve months, soaring rates of mental disorders among adolescents, political polarization, rampant gun violence. Need I mention the pandemic and the war in Ukraine?
Even so, most of us try to live “normal lives” with at least some modicum of hope. Like the prophets of old, we can’t help but believe a better world is yet to come. Songs like John Lennon’s “Imagine” still move me. Unfortunately, Lennon jettisons the very thing we need most: heaven on earth. Even though Lennon rejects a certain kind of heaven, one beyond and removed from earth, he still longs for heaven on earth— a world without war, without possessions, without greed or hunger, a world of togetherness and generosity.
The question is whether heaven on earth is possible. For Jesus and his followers, God’s kingdom on earth is not only possible but inevitable when something “other” breaks in upon our earth, something that transcends our material and technological attempts to improve things. Jesus’ life and ministry not only demonstrate this but so does God’s history. God’s imagination for the world can become reality. Do we want it badly enough?
Watch Out!
God refuses to be sequestered, in McAfee Brown’s words, “in some corner of heaven.” If we want God’s kingdom to come we must start with ourselves; we must be ready for a blast of wind to blow away all that opposes God. “When the divine comes,” writes Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, “look out!”
God’s kingdom is good, and you know you are not good. God’s kingdom is truthful, and you are entangled in lies. God’s kingdom is just, and you operate in a world of injustice. God’s kingdom is full of love; it is merciful, even toward its enemies. What about you? Without realizing it, you have become hard as stone. (The Gospel of God’s Reign)
If this is the case, we cannot just pray for God’s kingdom to come and then merrily go on with our busy lives. If we really want God’s kingdom to come we had better be ready to have our lives changed. Otherwise, the Lord’s Prayer is but a dreamer’s prayer.
Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15). In other words, we need to be ready to do an about-face—personally, socially, economically, politically. The good seeds of God’s kingdom —justice, harmony, equality, fellowship, love, fullness of life— don’t just fall from heaven like a gentle rain as if the soil of our lives didn’t matter. The old must get plowed under. This is unsettling but also exhilarating! We not only get to imagine a new world but we can begin to experience it cropping up.
Making Dreams Come True
In praying, “Your kingdom come…” we are asking God to enable us to become his kingdom-bearers—a community of healed healers, of reconciled reconcilers, of peaceful peacemakers under God’s authority. N. T. Wright describes it this way:
Jesus is the medical genius who discovered penicillin; we are doctors, ourselves being cured by the new medicine, now applying it to those who need it. Jesus is the musical genius who wrote the greatest oratorio of all time; we are the musicians, captivated by his composition ourselves, who now perform it before a world full of muzak and cacophony. (The Lord and His Prayer)
Despite injustice, hunger, evil, and suffering in this world, despite our proclivity to pride and selfishness and self-righteousness, God can change us and help us put our energies into realizing his future here and now. It is at hand! We don’t just have to imagine it. “Even in us,” write William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, “God has claimed a bit of enemy territory, has wrestled something from the forces of evil and death.…We, you and I, are living, breathing evidence that God has not abandoned the world.” (Lord Teach Us)
God has never abandoned the world. God’s kingdom keeps breaking into our midst, despite us! We believe in and give ourselves to the coming of God’s future precisely because of what we’ve seen God do in the past and because his Spirit gives us glimpses into what will be. We need only read scripture, or read about the early Christians, or about the many renewal movements throughout church history, or about the countless missional, moral, and social reform movements, both past and present, inspired by faith and by Christ’s compassion to realize that the way things are can change.
Even today, God’s kingdom is taking hold of new territory. New configurations of church and community are enabling people to quietly, sacrificially embody God’s new social order of justice and peace. If you want to stay informed about ways in which God’s revolution is advancing in the word, be sure to read the Plough Quarterly. The next issue is entitled: “Hope in Apocalypse.” The Nurturing Communities Network is also a great place to learn about new efforts that bear witness to the presence of God’s kingdom. And if you like personal stories, be sure to read Another Life Is Possible.
Your Turn
What would have to change if this particular petition became the centerpiece of your life? Just reply to this email to leave a comment.