The Kingdom of God
Mark’s gospel tells us Jesus came among people saying: ‘The time is fulfilled; and the Kingdom of God has come near repent and believe the good news.’ That invitation is at the centre of Jesus’ message is illustrated by the line of the Lord’s prayer, ‘… your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.’
Jesus describes how God relates with, and acts within, creation using stories we know as parables. The kingdom of God begins like the smallest of seeds planted in the ground. Parallels between the process of growth in the natural world and the kingdom of God help us to understand that this kingdom is not of human origin and, in the end, cannot be thwarted by human failure or evil intent. There are however, forces acting against the full realisation of the ‘kingdom crop’, just as there are in nature.
Stories of the precarious nature of life drive home the challenges that those who seek the Kingdom of God must also face. On the Time magazine website in February 2019 there is one of the classic Time cover pictures. This one features the reality of life during drought. Adam Ferguson’s photo is of a stark brown land with a dead stick of a tree poking out of the parched ground. A mob of sheep, brown and parched as to be almost indistinguishable from the ground, form a line just below the horizon. In the accompanying article Casey Quackenbush wrote:
The country has experienced 9 of the 10 warmest years on record since 2005, and a heat wave in January broke records across Australia. With January bushfires on the southern island of Tasmania and monsoon flooding in parts of north eastern Queensland in early February, Australia is battling the gamut of extreme weather linked to climate change.
Then follows a quote from Professor Mark Howden, director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University who said,
“We are probably more challenged than we have ever been before. We’re going into drought quicker, harder, tougher…”.
Like the challenges that exist in the natural order, the challenges to the growth of the kingdom of God are every bit as real. In the parable of the sower these challenges are illustrated by the broadcasting of seed onto a path, into rocky soil and among weeds. Traditionally these environments represent the hard-heartedness, shallow commitment and distractions that hinder our participation in the Kingdom. God initiates the Kingdom, and in Jesus, invites us to participate in it. And although we cannot control its growth, we have a part to play. The seed also lands in good soil and produces a plentiful crop.
In the trial of Jesus before Pilate we see something of a clash of kingdoms – the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar. When asked if he was a king, Jesus says he was but that his kingdom was not of this world. Indeed, it is not, but that does not mean the kingdom of God is not in the world, just as Jesus followers are in the world and not of the world. St Paul writes to the Ephesians in words that are chilling in this context:
…remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
We are not without hope and we know, through Christ, that God is in the world. There are countless faithful people through the centuries who have put aside their own desires to consider prayerfully how they should live. Take the example the story of the 4th century saint called Martin. Martin eventually became Bishop of Tours in France but early on he was a Roman soldier. During the time Martin was preparing for Baptism he rode past a beggar sitting by the road. The man was near naked and the weather was freezing. In the past he might not have given the man a second thought, but because of what he had learned about the teachings of Jesus he began to think differently, and he asked himself how he might help the man. The answer came to him. He took out his sword and took of his soldier’s cloak. He slashed the cloak in half and gave one half to the beggar. A lived example of Jesus words, ‘I was naked and you clothed me.’ And a sign of the kingdom of God come near.
Just as Martin did, we need to ask prayerfully of God how we can assist the growth of the kingdom. One issue that has caught my attention recently is the possibility of universal basic income. I have written about it in the latest Lazarus Centre Chaplaincy Newsletter. It means essentially that every citizen is paid an amount of money sufficient to cover essential needs. It is not means tested. It represents something of a share of the bounty of creation for each person. In practical terms it means when people lose their jobs or have to lockdown because of pandemic, need to leave an abusive employer or relationship or choose to reduce paid work to care for a friend or family member they can do so without being totally impoverished. It sounds idealistic and threatening to our notion of the centrality of paid employment, but there are many other types of creative work. There are many reasonable objections to UBI, including how it could be afforded and how it would be incorporated into the fabric of our economy.
Just one story about how it might work. * There was a study conducted in the US relating to child welfare. During the study it happened that some of the participants who were first nation’s people became the beneficiaries of a profit-sharing scheme from the proceeds of a casino. Every first nation person received a modest amount of money on a regular basis. Though not enough by itself to live on, researchers noticed over a number of years the participants who received the payment showed improvements in health and welfare, confidence, school attendance and participation in tertiary education. There was also a reduced engagement with the criminal justice system. The only possible cause was the regular income they received. Far from becoming lazy and disengaged the results showed the payment had just the opposite effect.
Some ask how we could afford such a program, while others ask how we can deny sharing the resources of the earth, which none of us created, with others. We cannot ignore the freedom and opportunity the UBI affords those who may be otherwise marginalised.
As the parables tell us we have a part to play in the growth of the kingdom of God by tending to the kingdom as the workers in the field tend to their crops. The kingdom or reign of God, rather than only a state of existence at the end of time, was proclaimed by Jesus as present in the world and accessible to those who would believe the good news and follow him. The kingdom of God grows just as surely and mysteriously as does the bounty of creation.
· Further references include: Guy Standing, Rutger Bregman Andrew Yang and others