November 23, 2003 -Christ the King Sunday
Revelation 1:4b-8
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John 18:33-37
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“Jesus came preaching the kingdom…”

“Jesus came preaching the kingdom and all we got was the church; what a let-down.” That phrase has been attributed to Alfred Loisy, the French Biblical scholar and one of the principle members of the “modernist” movement from the turn of the last century. I’ve been through Loisy’s book, The Gospel and the Church, several times and can’t find it. So it may be one of those, “if he didn’t say it, he should have” statements! Why? Because it’s the truth; Jesus came preaching the kingdom and all we got was the church – what a let-down!

When Jesus stood before Pilate he told him, “My kingdom is not of this world.” So what did Jesus mean when he talked about the kingdom? First, we have to understand that Jesus was a good, observant Jew. He knew and understood the Hebrew Scriptures and would have been quite familiar with Israel’s core understanding that the real leader of the nation, the real king was God. That’s why the Psalms will repeatedly use the language of kingship, “The Lord is king….” The prophets will also talk about Israel being restored to its proper place in the world when God begins to exercise kingship. One of the metaphors used to talk about the restoration of Divine kingship is the “heavenly banquet.” When Israel gets through its exile, moves beyond persecution at the hands of its enemies, there will be a great banquet where all the people will sit down in peace. A lot of the language concerning the coming Messiah is tied up with the promise of the restored kingdom and its celebration at the celestial banquet table. I think that’s why I like Thanksgiving so much. Every time we sit down at that “groaning board” – as our Pilgrim ancestors would have called it – we are experiencing a foretaste of what eternity is going to be like. Gathered around a wondrous table, surrounded by those whom we love, it’s not a bad thing to hope for, is it?

Jesus takes up these images and begins to use them in some remarkable ways. The Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – are loaded with references to the coming of the kingdom, the “reign of God,” that is very near at hand. Mark says, “….Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” [Mark 1: 14-15] The various parables, like the absent householder, the unexpected thief, and the ten virgins, all talk about the imminent arrival of the kingdom and all tie into Israel’s understanding that “the Lord is King in majesty enrobed.” When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, part of the prayer is “thy kingdom come.”

What is clear, especially in the dialogue with Pilate, is that Jesus wasn’t a political subversive or interested in kingship in quite the same way that the Roman governor was. Jesus is talking about establishing what William Thompson has referred to as “an alternative future community.” This community begins with individuals, as do all communities, but it is not something that is privatized or spiritualized. Thompson writes,

The Kingdom clearly includes individuals, but it relates them into a new network of social relationships . . . believing in such an alternative community is a corollary of believing in the Divine. It is an implication of our religious experience: because we experience the divine sovereignty and power in our lives now, we trust that the Divine will remain sovereign even in the future. Because we experience the Divine as a power enabling us to protest in judgment against the “anti-divine,” we trust that the Divine will remain judge even in the future . . . Human history is a social reality. . . Therefore we trust that the divine sovereignty will manifest itself in a renewal of the social and the public, not simply in the private recesses of an individual’s heart. . . .We moderns, too, can perhaps find a point of contact with Jesus’ experience in our own religious experience of trust in the Divine as a power over our lives and others’ lives, enabling us to trust and to protest the oppressive, we have an experiential correlate to Jesus’ own experience enabling us to co-affirm his trust.” [The Jesus Debate, p. 185]

I think Thompson is on the mark here. What is unique about Jesus’ message on the kingdom? Jesus. What Jesus comes preaching is a relationship; a relationship that ties us with God and then ties us together with one another.

William Thompson sums this understanding of the kingdom up very nicely when he writes:

Thus, Jesus expects a community rooted in divine intimacy and love as the foundation of his hope and trust. It is a community characterized by an unusual intimacy, rather than by blood relationships or prestige or class relationships. Here we should recall how Jesus departed from Pharisaism in his emphasis upon the universalism of God’s love. As divine love knows no limits (and so we must love the enemy: Mt. 5:44-45), so this new community is rooted in a similar universal love. This is why the poor will be blest (Lk 6:20; Mt. 5:3), they will no longer be marginalized. Because the Kingdom is this new love community, human injustices which result in oppression will be uprooted (Lk 16:19-21). The Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo captured the reality well when he described the Kingdom as “a universe based on the presence of a companion to all mankind.” [The Jesus Debate, p. 187]

God’s promise at the outset of the Bible is “I am with you – always.” So, the kingdom that Jesus preaches is the ongoing realization of that promise lived-out in the “in between” between the already and the not yet. It is no less than the realization of the presence of God in the midst of God’s people – God is with us, right here, right now, and will continue with us…….always.

The point that Jesus was making to Pilate, the point that he makes through all the Gospels, is that the kingdom is not of this world, because it is a kingdom that at once embraces and transcends it. The whole point of Christianity, as Hans Kung (the Roman Catholic theologian who now teaches in the Protestant faculty in Tubigen, Germany, and who sounds a whole lot like a Congregationalist) says is that it is not about a principle, but about a living figure. Using the old Latin proverb verba docent, exempla trahunt (words teach, examples attract) he makes the powerful point that Jesus is the living example for who we are to become. “Indeed, Christians are not just to realize a general ‘Christian’ form of life but can attempt to trust in this Christ Jesus whose spirit is still at work, and directs their lives in accordance with this criterion. So in all that he is and means for human beings Jesus himself proves – as the Gospel of John interprets it – to be ‘the way, the truth and the life.’” [Christianity: Essence, History, Future, p. 27]

In this way and only in this way it is also possible to attain true happiness in this life (though it will by no means be free of suffering): not through peak experiences produced artificially by every possible means; not through a constant lofty mood of happiness which has to be striven for; but through a basic mood of happiness in realistic contentment with life which is maintained even in distress, and in the depths of the soul. All this means that being a Christian is an attempt to achieve a humanism which can cope not only with all that is positive but also with all that is negative, like suffering, guilt, meaninglessness, and death, in an unshakable trust in God which in the end does not rely on its own achievements and successes but on God’s grace and mercy. [Christianity: Essence, History, Future, p. 41]

I think this is why we say that the purpose of our church is to “bind together followers of Jesus Christ for the object of sharing in the worship of God and in making God’s will dominant in the lives of people especially as that will is set forth in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.” We covenant to live, to walk as “followers of Jesus Christ.”

Alfred Loisy, the one who is supposed to have originally talked about the let-down, wrote this in The Gospel and the Church:

The kingdom is for those God pardons, and God pardons all, provided they pardon themselves. Thus the kingdom is for those who are good after the example of God, and in organizing the present life on a basis of charity, the gospel realizes already the kingdom, whose full and final coming will only, as it were, assure the happiness and immortality of charitable men. But the kingdom is actually this everlasting happiness. Its root is within; it lies like a precious seed in the soul of each believer; but in this state it is hidden, rudimentary, imperfect, and it awaits its perfection in the future. [p. 76]

Jesus came preaching the kingdom not just in words, but in his life. That’s Loisy’s point. God wants us to live in loving relationship, to seek the good of others, just as Jesus showed us the way of unselfish, self-giving love. Jesus witnessed to this truth and brought the kingdom close to every one of us. Jesus came preaching the kingdom and the church is not to be some poor substitute, but is to be the living witness to “a universe based on the presence of a companion to all mankind.”

Our Puritan forebears wanted to “restore the old, beautiful face of Christianity.” I’m not so sure that we can or should return to the first century, though many have tried. I do think that we can get at the essence of Christian faith – relationship. It is becoming more and more clear to me that Christianity is more about ethics, how we live, than dogma, how we believe. I think that’s why they saw the covenant relationship as the key to church life. We have a vehicle that should constantly remind us not only of who we are, but whose we are – we are followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus came preaching the kingdom and where those followers are trying to live-out the love he called them to live in concrete ways, he’s still preaching the kingdom.