The kingdom theme is basic to our Bible. Jesus came preaching first that the kingdom or rule of God is at hand. It belongs to those who are poor in spirit and to those who suffer persecution for the cause of right. We are taught to pray for the coming of the kingdom on earth. We are called to seek first the kingdom, even more than peace of mind, physical health, or worldly success. We can expect to find it within us. Still we are to look forward to the day when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord.
As with most basic biblical themes, we have done most everything with this one. The message about the kingdom has been secularized by those who have identified it with ideologies, programs, institutions, and isms. It has been individualized by those who would limit it entirely to the inner recesses of the heart. It has been spiritualized by those who would remove it entirely to heaven. And it has been futurized by those who will not speak of it except in connection with the second coming of our Lord. Because liberals were so naively confident that they could roll up their sleeves and build the kingdom, most conservatives tend to relegate it entirely to another place or age. Because some have schematized it so as to know the exact hour of its arrival, others have dismissed all hope in its coming. Because some have forgotten the necessity of a deep personal commitment to it, others have eliminated the biblical themes of peace, righteousness, and justice from their hopes about the kingdom.
The Political Nature of the Kingdom
In the face of neglect, confusion, and varieties of interpretations, it might be helpful to consider what this theme probably meant to the hearers of Jesus. We know that most of them were expecting a political kingdom. Many were hoping for one who would deliver their country from the Roman oppressors. They wanted a king or Messiah, which in Greek is Christ. One of the valuable contributions of John Howard Yoder's book, The Politics of Jesus (Eerdmans, 1972), is the conclusive and scholarly evidence that the gospel is "political." Political is used in the broader sense to signal that the Jesus Way deals with right relationships with one another as well as with God. The New Testament message is one that calls for social justice and righteousness as well as personal salvation.
Unlike the original hearers, we have received the gospel story in such a "spiritualized" package that we have either ignored or been unable to receive literally the words of scripture. Such is certainly the case with the beautiful song of Mary, known as the Magnificat:
"He has shown strength with his arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty" (Luke 1:51-53).
The clear message is that the coming of Jesus is not to be wholly unrelated to the social and political expectations present in the suffering of Israel. The one whose birth is being announced is to be an agent of radical social change.
Yoder exegetes the temptations of Jesus to maintain that they represented different options for kingship. The textual platform from Isaiah, which Jesus read in his home synagogue, literally states the messianic mission in social terms. Most of us would get in trouble today by suggesting literal responses to the following in our home churches:
He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives; and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18-19).
A growing number of biblical scholars believe that "the acceptable year of the Lord" likely refers to the jubilee year of Leviticus 25. For this year there is promised a remission of debts, the liberation of slaves, the making fallow the soil, and the return to each individual of their family's property. For rabbinic Judaism and his other listeners, Jesus was linking his coming with the time when all inequities would be righted, a time of social and economic restructuring. Yoder suggests that texts such as "Do not be anxious" may be given in the context of the fallow year and that the prayer, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" should be interpreted far more literally than has usually been the case in praying our Lord's prayer. "Sell what you possess and put in practice compassion" may not so much be a counsel of perfection as a jubilee ordinance that was to be put into practice here and now. The two parables of the merciless servant and the unfaithful steward are interpreted in light of the jubilee. Whether or not all of Yoder's exegetical suggestions stand the test of biblical analysis, it is difficult to dismiss the teachings and expectations concerning the sabbatical and jubilee years that were deeply ingrained in the consciousness of first-century Palestine.
There are many other indications of the political nature of Jesus' ministry. His intimate associates were political. As many as one-half of the disciples, if we are to believe Oscar Cullman and other scholars, were zealots, members of the political revolutionary, party of Judaism. The language of Palm Sunday was messianic, pointing to the coming of a king. Though he was traded for an insurrectionist, the charge against Jesus was likewise political, charging him with aspiring to be king of the Jews. John Howard Yoder's concluding summary as to who Jesus really was focuses on the possibility of a messianic ethic. Jesus was not just a moralist whose teachings had some political implications; he was not primarily a teacher of spirituality whose public ministry unfortunately was seen in a political light; he was not just a sacrificial lamb preparing for his immolation, or a God-man whose divine status calls us to disregard his humanity. Jesus was, in his divinely mandated (i.e., promised, anointed, messianic) prophethood, priesthood, and kingship, the bearer of a new possibility of human, social, and therefore political relationship (The Politics of Jesus, pp. 62-63).
The Kingdom Style
Though Jesus shared much with his times about the coming kingdom, the New Testament makes it clear that he differed basically with popular expectations. His people looked to a worldly kingdom with the usual style of worldly leadership. He called for a kind of leadership in which servanthood would replace lording it over others. He shared the concerns for justice and peace, but differed greatly as to means. When he asserted that his kingdom was not of this world, he did not mean that it was entirely individual or invisible. Rather, he was affirming that the means were different. Jesus does not criticize his disciples for expecting him to set up a new social order but for misunderstanding the style of action that would characterize that order. Unlike most of us, who are tempted to take the easy and safe way in order to stay out of trouble, Jesus was probably tempted more by the Zealot option because of his common identification with the poor and the oppressed. He shared their passion for the poor as revealed in the Lukan beatitude: "Blessed are the poor." The struggle in the garden revealed a continual struggle with the idea of "a holy war for the kingdom." He was tempted to eliminate the cup of suffering love and call down 10 legions of angels to join his zealot disciples in fighting for the revolutionary kingdom. Instead, he told Peter to put up the sword. His was another way, the way of suffering love.
From this we see that Jesus was not just another political theologian. He combined a revolutionary content of his theology of liberation with a revolutionary method, one far different than that of most revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries. His was the way of the cross. The cross is the means of the kingdom come. In relation to the imitation of Christ theme, so basic to scriptures and tradition, there is only one area in which all New Testament authors unite, namely that we are to be like him in following the way of the cross. Every writer has some version of what is found in 1 Peter 2:21: "For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps." The fact that Jesus was regarded as dangerous enough to be traded for an insurrectionist may be proof of the political relevance of nonviolent tactics.
The Timing of the Kingdom Coming
We may agree that the kingdom is not to be entirely "spiritualized" as God's kingdom is one of righteousness, peace, and justice. We may also agree that the way of the cross is the fundamental style of participating in its coming. But we still may have fundamental disagreements as to the time of its coming. For this reason it may be helpful to examine from a biblical perspective some prevalent views. One popular 20th-century view has been that the kingdom will come as the world gets better. This liberal view fits in nicely with both evolutionary schemes of humanity's progress as well as optimistic assumptions about our ability with or without God to build a perfect society. Social Darwinism, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Process Theologians represent but variations of this interpretation of the kingdom. Also, such a view has often accompanied revivalistic millennium hopes that the conversion of the masses would automatically effect beneficial social changes. The scriptural support has been found primarily in two kingdom parables, the parable of the leaven and the parable of the mustard seed. This view of the developing kingdom does reflect some valid biblical accents. The kingdom often does emerge in unexpected modest places. Its means are indeed inauspicious in comparison with the ways of the world. Its growth can be hidden because of our false perspectives and priorities. As frequently articulated, however, this view places the accent on the claim that it is our kingdom rather than God's. It has too often ignored the depth and power of evil. Consequently, it has been too sanguine about the possibilities of easily building the kingdom here on earth. While it has biblical accents, it has too much ignored other fundamental biblical motifs.
Another basic reading of biblical timing is quite different. This view announces that the kingdom will come only after the world gets worse. The Bible is schematized in a chronological fashion to demonstrate that the bad events that were predicted to precede the coming of the kingdom are indeed occurring in our ominous times. One dominant version is that of the pre-millennialists with their prophecies about the second coming of Jesus and the ushering in of a perfect kingdom for a thousand years before the final judgment. Such expectations as popularized in The Late Great Planet Earth are widely received in eras of pessimism.
Such a hope is indeed biblical in keeping before us and alive expectations about the future coming of Jesus and the kingdom. Valid apocalyptic accents are much needed. Things do often get worse before they get better. Rather than any easy progressive unfolding of the kingdom, the biblical perspective would have us hoping for radical newness in spite of the lack of concrete historical evidence. This view keeps the stress on the fact that it is God's kingdom, not ours. It will come in God's time, not according to our will.
Such views often run contrary, however, to the spirit of the scriptures. Sometimes there is such joy in discerning the evil events of our time as a clue to the imminent return of our Lord that the resulting mood lacks deep Christian compassion and concern for our fallen world. Bad news is too easily translated into good news, forgetting the book of Lamentations, the picture of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. The means of bringing in the kingdom can be described in such a way as to make Jesus' second coming entirely inconsistent with his first advent, which then is inconsistent with the promise that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. One frequent unbiblical fruit of pre-millennial views is to place the ethics and demands of discipleship in the future dispensation. It is asserted that the Sermon on the Mount is not for us today because it is only to be lived when Jesus comes and sets up the perfect kingdom. This completely ignores the biblical promise that we can begin now to experience the first fruits of the kingdom, and begin to live now as if the kingdom has already come.
This brings us to a third view, one that does not entirely negate the other two but has an added ingredient. Rather than seeing the kingdom either as only coming as the world gets better or after it gets worse, this perspective believes that the kingdom is both now and not yet. Though this view is a bit more complicated, I believe it to be closer to experience and to the kingdom passages in the total scriptural context. The now can bring together the biblical truths from the first view at the same time the not yet can incorporate valid accents from the second. Though we are to begin to live in the kingdom now, we know that it will not come yet until God's final consummation. The kingdom is in the future; and because it is, it can break into history now as an explosive force. Because of our faith in its ultimate triumph, we can foolishly (according to the world's standards) and boldly begin to participate in its coming now. The New Testament describes such as having a foretaste or the first fruits of the kingdom. We begin to taste now what God wants in heaven and for all on earth.
Such views about the end are often tagged eschatology from the word, eschaton, which means last things. Since there was a strong teaching that the coming of Christ fulfilled all of the messianic expectations, some scholars have said that what we have more than anything else in the New Testament is realized eschatology. Others who read and interpret the books of Daniel, Revelation, and other apocalyptic material spell out a futuristic eschatology. I am proposing the possibility of a realizing eschatology. This allows us to be as literal or as metaphorical about the end visions as we feel led, if at the same time we begin to participate now in the kingdom coming. It allows us to stress strongly obedient discipleship to the Way, if we keep in mind that the means and fulfillment of this Way of the kingdom is God's and not our own.
Dale W. Brown was professor of theology at Bethany Seminary, a Sojourners contributing editor, and a former moderator of the Church of the Brethren when this article appeared.
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