The Kingdom, not the Church

A Church for the World

Kingdom, not the Church - life outside the building

"What the church is about is something more than the church...it is related to God's kingdom and his righteousness and justice." Jürgen Moltmann

"We do well not to pray the prayer (the Lord's Prayer) lightly. It takes guts to pray it at all. . . 'Thy kingdom come. . . on earth' is what we are saying. And if that were suddenly to happen, what then? What would stand, and what would fall? Who would be welcomed, and who would be thrown the Hell out? Which, if any, of our most precious visions of what God is and of what human beings are would prove to be more or less on the mark and which would turn out to be phony as three-dollar bills?.... To speak these words is to invite the tiger out of the cage, to unleash a power that makes atomic power look like a warm breeze." Frederick Buechner

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The Power of Story: How Jesus Communicated God's Kingdom Through Parables

It's always been frustrating for me to try to get feedback about how my sermons come off. I will ask someone what they thought of it, and rarely will someone come back with, "Wow, the way you talked about the trinity best understood through the idea of perichoresis; it was brilliant." Or, "I don't think I have ever heard someone talk about the Gospel with as clear of language as you did today." Or, "You, talking about the immanence and transcendence of God today changed my life."

No, it usually is something like, "When you told the story about your mom loving you when you were a jerk, that spoke directly to me." Or, "That story about when you were a kid, and you felt shame because of failing in your class, wow, that created a more accessible picture of God for me." Or from my then-young son, Trey, "That story about you losing your front tooth in the lake. That was funny!" That was funny!?! Believe it or not, that is not exactly what I was shooting for. 😂 My inner dialogue usually goes something like, "What about my precise theological statements? I worked on those most of the week. The illustrations were a last-minute add-on. Why is it you can only remember the silly story?"

The reason? Stories emotionalize information. They give color, depth, and texture to otherwise bland material, except for us theological types, they allow people to connect with the message in a deeper, more meaningful way.

Jesus understood that. That is almost certainly why he rarely gave linear lists. By the way, this approach is so unsatisfying and not just a little frustrating to the Western mind. We want a list. We want something linear. We want something concrete. But Jesus gives us stories. That is primarily because the left-brain thinkers have a monopoly on the talking roles in the church.

It is also probably why I have gravitated toward Paul's writings. Paul is more Hellenistic in his teaching; he used prose, logically thought-out language, and he was more linear. Heck, he is even easier to outline for a sermon. Nevertheless, the things that I remember about Scripture are the parables and stories that Jesus taught. Most of the time, and for most humans, the concrete, abstract lessons and straight talk are like Teflon, while the stories, parables, and word pictures are like Velcro.

I have wanted Jesus to be clearer and more pithy about the Kingdom of God. Couldn't he just give us a list of what it is and what it isn't? What he does give us, however, is his stories. We are left to sink into those stories to understand what it means for the gentle king and Shalom Kingdom to be present in our lives. In the Gospel of Mark, we find two very important stories of the kingdom of God. As a matter of fact, they begin with the statement, "This is what the kingdom of God is like." That's a pretty good hint to pay attention if we really want to know what the kingdom of God is.

Let's look at the stories together.

The first parable is about the process of the growth of the Kingdom or how it happens, and the second parable is about the scope or purview of the Kingdom's growth.

First, the Kingdom grows mysteriously. In vs. 26-29, Jesus said,

"This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain---first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come."

During my first foray into gardening, I pushed some onion bulbs into the dirt in one of my raised garden beds. It wasn't hard. I just jammed them in there, shot some water on them, and walked away. I was gone for 2 weeks. Trey, my youngest son, continued to douse them with water occasionally. And, Voilà! When we returned on a Thursday night, they were about a foot tall. Now, I am certain that there are people who can explain the process of such significant growth, but the point is, and the point of our parable is, that growth happens, whether they are watched or not.

Sure, there is a role that the Sower has, but for the most part, the growth happens outside of the view or fretting or oversight of the person who plugged the bulbs in the dirt.

I maybe could put it, God's Kingdom happens, regardless...It is not ultimately dependent on us, the church. v. 27

The Church's Mission: Displaying God's Kingdom vs Building It

In my world, this is one of the church's biggest blind spots. I have spent 40 years now hearing and preaching that if the church doesn't stop doing this and start doing that, stop thinking that and start thinking this, we are doomed. It is not just me. It seems that most Christian books take this approach. This is what is wrong, and this is how to fix it. It really is low-hanging fruit.

For the most part, the church makes it really easy on its critics. We see moral failure of its leaders, sexual abuse of minors, and thoughtless discrimination of gay people, of women, and of Black, Indigenous, and people of color. The church makes it easy to take shots at it, and most of them are deserved.

We are in a particularly anxious moment right now.

There is literally a fallout happening right now in the church. The Dones. Church people are losing their minds and monetizing their solutions at an unprecedented rate. The clue that this is happening is when a Christian leader starts using the word "must!" It's not a bad word and has a place (so, don't go harassing me when I use it some, and I will. "It must be used"), but it is a "tell" that someone has "discovered the answer,” the real answer to all the churches problems.

The fallacy of that is in thinking our job is to build the Kingdom. Have you heard that language? Let me cut right to the chase. Nowhere in the Bible does it instruct us to build the Kingdom.

It tells us to...

• Enter it - Matt 7:21

• Receive it - Hebrews 12:28, Luke 18:17

• Inherit it - Matthew 25:34

• Seek it - Matthew 6:33

• Proclaim it - Matthew 24:14, Acts 28:31--- but never to build it!

Also, the Kingdom of God is announced as good news...You can be near the kingdom or far from it; but it's not over here or over there, it's within or among us, its citizens. It's not a matter of talk but of power. The kingdom is a gift the Father is pleased to give his children. Or as blogger Dan Reid wrote,

"If the kingdom is the dynamic reign of God, how can we as humans "build" it?

Actually, it should come as a relief to realize that you and I aren't in the business of building God's kingdom.

Almost, well, like good news!"

Why do you think there is a gravitational pull to unwarrantedly add the verb "to build" to our description of the Kingdom of God? It is captured by geography, by control, by capitalizing, by saving resources.

A former Youth Worker at a church I pastored led a Group that intentionally engaged skaters in our city. The name of the group was “Pigs in a Blanket.” There were some disturbing but mostly awesome things that happened in this youth group. One time, two of the leaders got escorted by the police to the Youth Gathering for skating on private property. Their cred with the students exploded that day. Once, a particularly local pastor called me totally ticked about our kids who skating in his parking lot. I finally said, "Friend, I'd like to encourage you to save your anger for something deserving. You need to chill out. We are trying to reach kids, and if you weren't so worried about your stupid parking lot, you might have some kids coming to your church." Let’s just say that tact is not always my long suit.

During one of our Youth Group services, several kids from the Pigs in a Blanket were asked to share at our worship gathering about their experience with Christ. One of the boys sharing was our leader's bro, then 14-year-old brother. His lifestyle gravitated almost exclusively around skateboarding. His peer group was "sketchy" in that drugs and other illegal activities were commonplace. Our youth leaders' strategy was to simply hang out at all the skate parks in town, trying to kill or at least embarrass themselves attempting to skateboard, and also make movies of the skaters. Because of their non-judging (and incarnational presence), the students actually listened when they spoke. When the younger brother's turn to share came, he told how he got involved with the Youth Group and how it helped him. He then began to weep when he came to talking about his brother and his influence. He talked about how his brother never judged him and how he was continually loved unconditionally and affirmed. The younger brother then said something that struck me as both stirring and odd. Through tears and with broken words, he said, "If it weren't for my brother, I would be lost. My brother saved me!" It offered a profound and provocative depiction of how incarnational ministry could unfold. At one point, we decided to give each of our Small Groups $500 to use for the Kingdom. Many of our leaders felt stuck on how to use the money. The Pigs in a Blanket, however, took the $500, turned it into thousands through sponsorships and private donations, and the Kingdom mysteriously broke into the lives of hundreds of kids who live here in our city. The Kingdom of God was to be completely fulfilled in the future, but it broke into our present.

v. 28 -- "All by itself..." Literally, "Without visible cause." It is clear that it is without human effort (or even understanding -- v. 27b). God is active.

To be sure, we have a role in Kingdom stuff; we are to sow, but God is who makes things emerge and grow.

As George Eldon Ladd put it,

"The Kingdom is the outworking of the divine will; it is the act of God himself. It is related to human beings and can work in and through them, but it never becomes subject to them...The ground of the demand that they receive the Kingdom rests in the fact that in Jesus, the Kingdom has come into history." ¹

Do we really believe that, though? We act like we don't. Many try to make it happen. We can't make something emerge faster than it should.

I am not going to try to contest that my heart and mind does not twist and turn at times over concern about the church and its failures. But the lesson of this first story is that God is at work, His work, breaking into time and place with his effective will. We pray for the Kingdom to come, and that prayer will be answered incrementally now and ultimately in the future.

The Kingdom grows beyond our imagination - vs. 30-32 - "Again, he said, "What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade."

This parable is really a story of a tiny beginning with enormous results. Mustard seed, though not literally the smallest (was proverbial), like..." I could eat a horse," or "Sweating like a pig," or "Skinny as a rail."

No one can actually eat a horse or sweat like a pig (except a friend of my brothers in High School - he could sweat like a pig, literally, while playing a video game. It made me wonder if he had sin in his life. :) ), is literally skinny as a rail. They point to someone who can really put the food away, perspires like crazy, yet is super skinny.

It starts as a minuscule seed and grows into something so much larger than its origin that it is, well, unimaginable.

It is more like a weed you can't get rid of. Tenacious, unyielding, will grow anywhere. With some weeds, you have to use toxic poison that ruins the entire globe to get them to stop growing.

Fascinating that Jesus would use this, a weed in the parable.

How do we imagine the Kingdom of God?

Contained, measured, and controllable.

According to the parable, it is beyond our imagination.

Knowing this, it makes Paul's grandiose prayer in Ephesians 3:20 make more sense.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us"

The last verse in the section speaks of the space for others in this massive plant. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade. Some synonyms might include something large, or welcoming, or accessible.

With this view of the Kingdom, I am not sure we are to be spending much of our time concerned about the "in's" of the Kingdom and those who are "out."

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1. A Theology of the New Testament, 102