On a Knife's Edge
The words “The Kingdom of God” sound far away and otherworldly to many of us. For a lot of people this phrase translates to “Heaven”; it is only about a world outside of this one. We don’t think it is something immediate or available for us now.
The gospels are all about ‘the kingdom of God’, and God’s kingdom or kingship isn’t about another world to which we might escape from this present one. God’s kingdom is precisely his ‘in-charge-ness’...The point was not that people would leave this world and go somewhere called ‘heaven’ instead, but that the life, the love and the power of ‘heaven’, of God’s domain, would become a reality here on earth. 1
What does this mean in a practical sense for those of us who follow Jesus? What does God’s domain mean for our everyday experience?
I think the first thing to take away from this is that every moment is pregnant with the possibility of redemption. Our God is still God; He never ceases to be who He is. By contrast, we are often fickle, flighty, and fair-weathered (that’s a lot of “F” words!); but God is never this way, and it is impossible for Him to be so. He is more committed to us than we are to Him and likewise He is more committed to our redemption than we are.
And this goes beyond us as individuals; God seeks to redeem the entirety of creation. He is always weaving the threads to bind up the bleeding, even if we cannot discern it. His Kingdom is an order of bandaged limbs and salves for the deepest scars. His goal isn’t to remove us from evil but to show us off as vulgar displays of his mercy. This appears vulgar to those who sit on thrones of religious pomp and grandeur, those who think they are above others. These ones haven’t let the King touch them; they are in fact keeping redemption away from their being.
As a result, this trust in His Kingdom propels us forward through life, even the dark episodes of it. God’s work is running parallel along with whatever we face both good and bad. His Kingdom is a huge wheel that is spinning forward; nothing will be able to slow it down. His redemption is the summation of all things and the goal of all things; this cannot be stopped by us having a bad day. Therefore, we can live in a certain confidence that His power to redeem is all around us despite what we see on the surface.
The second big takeaway I think is that we can participate in this redemptive process with God. He doesn’t want us to sit back and merely observe, but He wants our hands to be on the wheel with Him as He changes the human predicament.
When Jesus commissions the disciples in Matthew 28:16-20, He gives them this charge:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (ESV)
This statement is the ongoing invitation to follow Jesus in the power of The Spirit and be a people who bring this power into our everyday lives. It causes us to make space for the Spirit to redeem. Jesus has the authority to turn the drama of the world around, to make the goodness of God explode out of the earth. J.R.R. Tolkien had a word for this: Eucatastrophe; which means a sudden turn from bad to good.
This has nothing to do with coercion or manipulation. This is demonstrating the goodness of God and causing a broken world to fall in love with the Redeemer. We don’t have to limit God to what this looks like, I believe we just need to hold out our hands and say “yes”. However He wants to work with us, whatever he wants to do; we just say yes to it. This happens as we still struggle and stumble.
What is emerging from this process is God’s rule in the earth, not politics or nationalism. It is a groundswell up, not a force coming from the top down.
This is the knife edge of the Kingdom of God cutting through the sorrow of the world.
This is good news.
Let’s be open to it.
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