July 14, 2008
Kingdom
Krister Stendhal, New Testament scholar and Lutheran bishop, puts it like this: Wherever the brokenness of the world is being mended, there is present the kingdom of God.
I find that most appealing and wonder often at its ramifications. I’m careful to note that he didn’t imply that if it’s still broke, God’s not there, only that God’s kingdom may not be there.
However you put it, there’s surely something to say for the relationship between God’s reign and mending or might we also say, healing. Healing, not curing [which is another story], but healing is what this is about. Being made whole, being complete, requires God, in this life, at least, to close the gaps that keep us short of being a bit more passionate for our pains, a little more alive, a little wiser, a little more beautiful, a little more open and understanding, to fulfill us, in short, to help us become a little more human.
Stendhal’s reflection seems also to say something about the Christian privilege and covenant to witness. So often, witnessing is taken only to mean telling one’s own story in faith, what one’s take or one’s church’s take on the Good News might be at any given time. All that is well and good, but, I’m sure you’ve found, not always so welcomed by one’s audience.
May not witnessing also mean something like that of a witness providing evidence in a courtroom. We churchers don’t seem to be much in the habit of looking outside our own institutional salvation-periphery for God’s kingdom. As much a part of the broken world as we obviously are, we imply — quite ludicrously — that one really needn’t look any further. Witnessing, if it would be at all winsome, is surely more than that.
Perhaps telling about the kingdom of God could mean telling about wherever we see the brokenness of the world being healed, wherever we see signs of the kingdom — peace, justice, and love — manifest, wherever people are becoming free to choose, more loving, more creative, more reasonable, more in harmony with the creation, itself. Maybe, if Paul be correct, even more foolish, maybe even so foolish as not to let mere things like gender blind us to God’s reign, God’s healing in our lives, and especially God’s healing in the lives of others. There, we might say with something like reckless abandon, is God at work.
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