Lent 2009: The Lord's Prayer
Session 4 : Thy kingdom come
One of the most fascinating aspects of learning to me is the study of the development of a word, especially some frequently used word in the vocabulary of theology. In this chapter I want to examine the word "kingdom," especially as it relates to that phrase in the Lord's Prayer where we are taught to pray, "Thy kingdom come."
The word "kingdom" first appears in the biblical tradition simply as the name of a political entity, the kingdom of Edom or Moab, for example {Numbers 24:7). It was considered by the Hebrews to be an evil thing (1 Samuel 8:1 iff.). A kingdom had a king who enslaved, taxed, and conscripted his people.
The Hebrews were cautious about kings; they never made Moses or Joshua their king. At the beginning of their national history, their ideal was local self-government in loose confederation. In fact, during the period of the Judges, they practiced a kind of states rights, resisting all attempts at the centralization of power.
However, the forces of history, including the need for self-preservation, finally compelled the people of Israel to ask for a king. "Give us a king that we might be like other nations," they petitioned the prophet and judge, Samuel (i Samuel 8:5). He, loyal to the loose-confederation period of Hebrew history, was slow to move. He saw a king as a threat to his leadership. When he finally did respond to the pressure for a monarch, his latent fear of strong, centralized government caused Samuel to establish a very limited monarchy over which he would continue to have authority. This limitation of power was a factor in preventing Saul, the first king, from establishing a dynasty.
Certainly if the biblical record is historically accurate, it did not help Saul's cause when Samuel anointed David as his successor while Saul was still living. In any event, after Saul the royal house of David came to power and ruled for many generations, achieving its period of most material splendour during the reign of Solomon, David's son.
With Solomon the word kingdom began for the first time to have religious connotations, particularly after the military defeat, the long exile, and finally the return of the Hebrews in the fourth century to their homeland.
For this is the period when they idealized the kingdom of Solomon, yearned for the splendour of his reign, and incorporated these yearnings in the patterns of their worship (i Chronicles 29:11). Israel is referred to as the kingdom of the Lord (i Chronicles 28:5). Homage paid the king began to colour the form in which homage was paid to God in worship. The king was the epitome of power, status, and influence. He was the pinnacle of human success, and his kingship became the primary analogy by which men understood God. The Hebrews began to picture God on a throne. They spoke to him only on bended knee, they extolled his virtues, they sang his praises, and his domain they called the "kingdom of heaven." Our religious language has not yet escaped the influence of this attitude.
To the Hebrews the kingdom of God was the description of earthly kingdoms
perfected. God's kingdom would be everlasting, not brief (Psalm 145:13)-
It would possess glory and splendour, not instability and problems (Psalm
145:11).
When this tiny nation of Hebrews was buffeted or defeated in the tides
of world history, more and more did its people hope for that kingdom which
could not be buffeted or defeated?
The more the Hebrews were stripped of all vestiges of human power, splendour, and prestige, the more they began to pray that "the kingdom" would come and the more vivid became their image of that kingdom.
The One who would usher in that kingdom they called Messiah, and it was in him that they placed their hope for future fulfilment.
The Messiah would be the answer to their needs. Since they were weak, he would be strong, a mighty conqueror, a kingly man, a fitting and worthy son of David. He would inaugurate the kingdom of God in which they would share. Messiah was the embodiment of their human yearning.
He would overcome their discontent. It was under the symbols of "kingdom of God" and "Messiah" that the Hebrews expressed their lack of fulfilment and revealed the hope of glory which they did not possess. They were grasping at a life bigger than they were living, and a meaning greater than they had found.
Within this context and against this background, a first-century Jewish man broke upon the stage of history announcing that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mark 1:15).
Yet in no detail did he fulfil the expected image. This man, a son of David? Hardly! (Matthew 13:23) His mother was a peasant girl, and his father a carpenter. He hailed from Nazareth, a second-rate village. This man a kingly figure? Why he owned nothing! He had been born in a stable and his associates were tax collectors, publicans, prostitutes, fishermen. This man on a throne in Jerusalem? Why, he was executed in a public place, buried in a borrowed tomb!
Yet this man looked beneath the imagery surrounding "kingdom" and ".Messiah" and discovered what the deepest human yearnings expressed in these words really were. Then to these yearnings he spoke.
He took this word "kingdom" and made it the centre of his message (Mark 1:14), announced that in and through his life it was at hand, told what was required to enter it, and urged his disciples to pray, "Thy kingdom come" (Matthew 6:10).
We will continue to pray this prayer, I submit, only when we can discover what this word meant to Christ.
To Jesus of Nazareth, God's kingdom is not a realm over which God rules, but it is a quality of life in which God is seen; it is a presence, a life-giving power. The kingdom of which Jesus spoke is seen not in the splendour of wealth, but rather in gifts of wholeness and healing.
The kingdom is revealed not in the mighty, he said, but in the poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3). Those who, when persecuted for the sake of righteousness, do not sink into bitterness and despair are the revealers of the kingdom (Matthew 5:10). Kingdom is the quality of openness to the stranger, the poor, the little children, the broken, and the judged.
The kingdom is that presence, that quality, that joy of life before which the value of everything else pales by comparison. So it is the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:46). It is the insignificant mustard seed that grows into dominance (ig:i8f.). It is the leaven that gives worth and quality to the whole loaf (13:33).
The kingdom is seen in the gift of humility which is not an attitude of self-deprecation, but the ability to be and to accept what one is. The kingdom is seen when, in a state of tiptoe expectancy, we look for fulfilment that we are certain is coming, for we have tasted it already (Matthew 25: iff.).
This is the kingdom, which Jesus proclaims, the kingdom he inaugurates. He brings it because he brings love; and when love touches life, it reveals to us the joy and the peace that are the marks of the kingdom.
We are thus invited into the kingdom, but we are also told to pray for its coming. We rejoice in its presence, yet long for its completion. We see it wherever love is shared, life is lived, freedom is experienced, and fear is overcome. But it is always but a glimpse, a fleeting moment.
When we meet God in the joy of human community, we become immediately aware that we cannot take in him. He is the "beyond in our midst," but always the "beyond." We meet him in life and love only to know that he is infinite, transcendent Life and Love.
When we respond to this presence of God in life, we discover dimensions
of life never before even within our reach. We become persons we never
before imagined ourselves capable of being, but we also know that there
is ever so much more we want to be.
Every taste of fulfilment simply broadcasts the desire for total fulfilment.
Every mount of transfiguration simply emphasizes the parts of life which
are not transfigured. So it is that even as we rejoice in the dawning
of the kingdom, we pray that the kingdom will come and we acknowledge
that it is not yet here.
It was Augustine, the fifth-century theologian, who observed in his Confessions: "Thou, Oh God, hast made us for thyself alone, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee." Restlessness is awakened by the experience of life and love announcing the presence of the kingdom of God.
Restlessness is sustained by the incomplete hold on life and love that marks every child of God who is a citizen of that kingdom. To pray "Thy kingdom come" is to acknowledge and accept the reality of incompleteness as part of the Christian life. It is to live in the joy of discontent.
I know of no place in the Bible where the Christ promises contentment or peace of mind. He promises the "peace which passeth understanding," which to me is the peace that surpasses understanding and enables us to live in the midst of tension and conflict and the lack of fulfilment.
I see him pronouncing his blessing on those who hunger and on those who
thirst. They are the ones who refuse to allow any god substitute to rob
them of the humanity which they celebrate and experience when they are
touched by the kingdom.
The kingdom of God does not create peace, contentment, and satisfaction.
Instead it brings to life an ultimate affirmation and love that is so
deep that we can live in the midst of human discontent without despairing,
that we can face the broken and unfulfilled quality of life without depression
or inertia. To be in the kingdom is to rejoice in who we are, the loved
children of God, while we still yearn for what we shall be. It is being
able to picture the world perfected while we live in the world that is.
It is refusing either to be content with what is or overpowered to inertia
by what is not yet. The victory is won, but the battle must continue to
rage.
The kingdom has come. It is within us whenever the love of God stands us on our feet and calls us to be the self we are. There is security, but not perfection, in this. The kingdom will come. It will arrive when all that shall be is. We live in the joy of discontent, full citizens of the realm that is yet to be.
"Thy kingdom come." To pray for it is to rejoice in it, even as we work for it and yearn for it.