DAILY BYTE
As we have looked at different parables of the kingdom this week, the closing observation I would like to make is this: the kingdom of God has radical political implications that have a profound impact upon us individually and collectively as we live out our lives within this world.
There is no denying it – the kingdom of God stands in sharp and direct opposition to the kingdoms of this world. And so when we pray, ‘Your kingdom come’, we are effectively entering the political fray and daring to challenge the status quo of our world.
In Mark 1:14 we read about the start of Jesus’ public ministry in which he announces that the Kingdom of God is near. But interestingly the passage is situated in an explicitly political context, in that it begins with these words, “After John was put in prison.”
John, the forerunner who had been sent to prepare the way for Jesus, had been arrested. This tells us that he was seen not as some religious nutter living out in the desert, wearing camel-hair underpants and eating grasshoppers. No, he was seen as a threat to the political establishment. His presence and the message he proclaimed were profoundly challenging to the status quo – and so the prevailing political powers of the day, deeply threatened, silenced him instead.
His arrest forms the backdrop for the start of Jesus’ ministry, and provides the clearest indication of the nature of the kingdom that Jesus came to inaugurate. A kingdom that stood in sharp and direct opposition to the kingdoms of this world.
That’s how it began. And that’s how it continued throughout Jesus’ ministry. And that’s how it culminated at the cross, with the political execution of a young man charged with sedition.
It was Karl Marx who said famously that ‘religion is the opiate of the masses’. In other words, religion dulls people to the painful realities of this life by promising them spiritual release from this world. But nothing could be further from the truth of what the Kingdom of God is like, as revealed to us by Jesus. The kingdom Jesus came to bring near is not some airy-fairy, spiritualised escapist fantasy – but tackles the kingdoms of this world head on.
And so when we pray “Your kingdom come”, there is something incredibly risky, subversive and downright dangerous about that. For one thing we’re praying that all of our earthly systems should be displaced and brought under God’s rule. For another, we’re praying that God’s radical alternatives would infiltrate every aspect of our lives. As we pray, ‘Your kingdom come’, we’re aligning our lives with the redemptive purposes of God in history, and we’re declaring that our ultimate allegiance belongs to God.
Praying in this way may seem so futile in the face of the mighty kingdoms and powers of this world. From the terrifying military-industrial complex in America and its never-ending war on terror, to the belligerence of Robert Mugabe, genocide in Darfur, corruption and evasion and political manipulations at the highest levels of our civil society, a heartless AIDS policy, and the shameful reality of xenophobia – there is much in our country and world that seems insurmountable. Beyond hope.
Except for one thing. There is another kingdom not of this world but at work within it. There’s another reality, another rule, another throne – infiltrating our lives, individually and collectively - bringing light to the darkness, hope to despair, and life where before there was none.
And every time we earnestly pray ‘Your kingdom come’, we are adding to the groundswell of grace and the rolling mass-action of our God that will ultimately heal and transform our world.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Kingdom of Christ for thy coming we pray
Hasten O Father the dawn of the day
When this new song thy creation shall sing
‘Satan is vanquished and Jesus is king!’ Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING
Mark 1:14
After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said, “the kingdom of God is near...”
