A lot of people don't believe it -- but there's a new kingdom coming. Often, like a phoenix bird, it arises out of the ashes of the old. As a young sapling is germinated by forest fire, so the new kingdom is sprouted in the desolation of despair. Like tundra flowers and crab grass the new kingdom has irresistible life impulses and grows anywhere. There is a new kingdom coming.
You may wonder where it is -- this new kingdom. You may look for advance press releases, television bulletins, screaming headlines. Or you may listen for the voice of battle, the clamor of war, the sound of trumpets. And you will look and listen in vain, for this kingdom comes as leaven in loaves overflowing bread pans, as new wine fermentation bursting old wineskins, as tiny mustard seeds gently growing to giant stalks. The kingdom has been coming, is here among us, and is coming still.
During World War II there arose an unexplainable shortage of chewing gum in the Pacific theater. The mystery soon was solved. American airplanes dropped billions of sticks of chewing gum over enemy-occupied Philippines. And on the inside of every gum wrapper these words were printed: "I shall return. MacArthur." Although there is a shortage of natural chicle for chewing gum (they're using a plastic substitute), there is no shortage of gum wrappers. We ought to acquire them and drop them all over our "enemy-occupied" world with these words on them: "I shall return. Jesus."
In the midst of our current pessimism and enslaving despair, we are here to announce a new kingdom coming. We have a liberator, a King whose kingdom is coming, the hope for which lifts us above the delusions of fading temporal power.
Note first of all, the new kingdom coming is out of the future, not the past.
Many Americans are amused at the quaintness of the Amish people. These descendants of Germanic pietism attempt to stop the clock, to idealize a segment of time as the kingdom of God. Almost wholly agricultural, they ride about their farms and towns in horse-drawn vehicles, avoid the modern conveniences of electricity, and disdain any instruction other than that of their own schools. For them, the ideal of the kingdom of God seems to be fixed somewhere around mid-19th century.
Riding about in modern automobiles with modern dress, many of us are more similar to the Amish than we like to believe. The ideal life, the ideal church, the ideal family was somewhere in the past for some of us. Consequently we keep looking over our shoulders at some period of the past like Adam and Eve looking over their shoulders at the Garden of Eden on their way out. If only we could return to the good old days!
Indeed, there may have been better days in the past. And we may be greatly distressed with the present. But the kingdom of God is coming out of the future. And if we insist on horse and buggy faith we may miss the rocket realities of the new age. Throughout Biblical history God has been leading people out of past bondage and bondage to the past. He led Abraham out of Ur, Israel out of Egypt, Judah out of Babylonia, mankind out of hades and death. The past belongs to fewer and fewer people. The future belongs to everybody.
Ed Coale, Chief Executive Officer of General Motors, retired a few years ago after 44 years with one of the world's leading corporations. Perched at the pinnacle of American career success with a large compensation in salary and bonuses, Coale said the happiest day of his life was when he left G.M. When asked if he would do it again, he answered no.
Why this bitterness from one who had reached the rarefied atmosphere of the pyramid-top Camelot? "It's no fun anymore," said Coale. "Governmental regulations are immense and burdensome. There's an awful lot of enterprise in America," said Coale. "But because of governmental intervention, very little of it is free enterprise."
If Coale was displeased with the burdensome future created by Washington legislators and bureaucrats, others are dismayed at the future created by technocrats such as Coale in the automotive industry. Even now, the new anti-pollutant catalytic converter will itself pollute our air with dangerous quantities of sulfuric acid.
Future Shock author, Alvin Toffler, is correct when he says: "Technocrats suffer from myopia. Their instinct is to think about immediate returns, immediate consequences. They are premature members of the now generation."[1]
Further, says Toffler, "To plan for a more distant future does not mean to tie oneself to dogmatic programs .... It means an infusion of the entire society, from top to bottom, with a new socially aware future-consciousness."[2]
Christians have had, for centuries, a future consciousness, when they have talked of Christ's kingdom coming, a kingdom never yet fully realized or actualized, but always in the process of becoming in each successive stage of history. It is when Christians walk backward into history with eyes fixed on the dogmatisms of the past, that the kingdom's forward march is frustrated. Some Christians have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the future. This is not to say the past is unimportant. It is only to say it is less important, because it belongs to fewer and fewer people. The future belongs to everybody.
Alvin Toffler maintains we need more than ever a creative group to imagine a whole array of possible and preferable futures. Rather than ridiculing new ideas we must remember, "the essence of creativity is a willingness to play the fool, to toy with the absurd, only later submitting the stream of ideas to harsh critical judgment .... We need," Toffler continues, "sanctuaries for social imagination."[3]
And I ask, what better sanctuary than this and tens of thousands like it around the earth where we can dream dreams and see visions for the better future into which God would lead us? After all, for centuries Christianity has not only stimulated the imagination -- it has followed its vision to the pain of death.
John Wycliffe had a vision of a Bible in the common English tongue. But dogmatists anchored to the past killed him for it. John Huss dreamed a dream of a responsible Christian life guided by the scriptures. Traditionalists burned him at the stake. Martin Luther was awakened to a new reality of God's grace -- an awakening not shared by contemporaries profiting from the status quo. Consequently, he was hunted for years for revealing an exciting and preferable future. A kingdom was coming and the powers of evil could not prevail against it.
Hundreds of thousands more could be named -- dreamers and seers who envisioned a better future -- God's future where justice is more just, a righteousness more right, love more sincere. And the question in any age is whether there is yet a people to dream God's dreams, a remnant to think his thoughts after him, seers to catch the vision. How many are there in this sanctuary of social imagination? How many in this place of God -- this place of courage, erected in faith, sustained in prayer, enlivened by the Holy Spirit of God? How many? How many agents of the kingdom -- a kingdom needing to come, wanting to come, waiting to come?
Note secondly, the coming kingdom requires our mutual support -- spiritual and physical.
Very few people are expert in anything all by themselves. They need a supporting community. Do you know a good musician who was not trained, nurtured and sustained by the music community? Show me an athlete who achieves excellence all alone, apart from the athletic community. Very few wise men become so without the accumulated wisdom of the centuries as expressed in colleges and universities and libraries. Medical people are more like ensembles and symphonies than soloists. What business tycoon does it all on his own without dedicated experts in finance, engineering, personnel, and marketing? Excellence requires participation in, and support of, a community of like-minded people.
Likewise in the church -- a forerunner of the new kingdom. Very few achieve Christian maturity all by themselves. Seldom is the Bible studied diligently without the aid of scholars and teachers. Rarely are people led to generosity by their own impulses. More often, the Spirit of Christ, pulsating in the church, opens up the doors of the selfish, stingy heart to take in the brother. After all, Silas Marner and Scrooge were lonely, hermit types. Generous saints are social saints.
One time a little Sunday school saint was greatly chagrined when her brother and sister received church letters inviting them to choir and Sunday school, and she didn't. At mail time next day, when her letters arrived, her face brightened and she exclaimed happily, "I guess they really want me over there." The church really does!
The new kingdom coming is at its heart spiritual, but it needs a lot of physical fuel. Flying airplanes is a great spiritual and psychological dream, but it quickly becomes a nightmare without gas. Education is a great adventure of the mind, but turn off the research money and teaching energy and cerebral arthritis will set in. The refined experiences of high culture rest heavily upon the sweat of custodians and craftsmen. Just as the soaring abstract realities of mind and thought depend upon the more apparent realities of blood, bones, and body, so too the high adventures of spirit depend upon the church as body, life-blood and skeletal bone.
The kingdom of God is materialistic. It's waiting for your material -- your body, your brain, your energetic life-blood, your strong support. It has little to do with jelly-fish day dreams, idle thought or vain imagination. The kingdom coming has to do with reality -- reality in all its dimensions, physical and spiritual.
One time a leading citizen of the community was selling season symphony tickets to his business friends, soliciting their support. One friend said, "Thanks a lot, John. I love music, and I think it's a grand idea for our community to have a fine orchestra. But no thanks on the tickets. However, we'll be with you in spirit." However, John was quick on the draw and replied, "Well, wonderful. And just how many tickets would your spirit like?"
Jesus said, "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you?" (Luke 6:46). James says, "If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit?" (James 2:15-16). Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21).
How many tickets would you like for your spirit? The coming kingdom is waiting for you like the water reservoir is waiting for you to turn the faucet. Your closed faucet affects not the reservoir's reality, but yours. Like a mighty reservoir of justice and peace and love, God's kingdom is waiting for us to turn on the rusted faucet, waiting for us to cleanse the hardened arteries of constricted spirituality, to remove the plaque of selfishness, the corrosion of conceit. There's a new kingdom coming. It's waiting for you -- for me.
Thirdly, this new kingdom coming has a living, challenging King, not a dead one.
Jesus said, "Follow me," not into the grave, but into life. But as German theologian/martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer pointed out: "The object of Jesus' command is always the same -- to evoke whole-hearted faith, to make us love God and our neighbor with all our heart and soul."[4]
When people begin to raise objections about the mission of the church, when they begin to balk at adequate financial sharing and contribution of time and talent, the problem nearly always is traceable to a lack of love. For as Paul says, "If you love someone you will always do the best for him." When we hesitate and balk at even the most basic of Christian responsibilities we should examine our hearts, for therein we shall find mixed affections and loyalties. When Christian tasks seem only irksome duty, we can be sure we have fixed our priorities on something else than the kingdom of God.
Like all great leaders and teachers, Jesus often has a problem with his followers. Karl Barth, the late well-known and influential theologian of Switzerland, once said, "I hope I shall never become a Barthian. May God spare me from Barthianism!" Barth didn't want to be hemmed in or trapped by the smallest of his own followers who wanted to package him, market him, and profit from him as a safe product. Unable to keep up with the living Barth, they preferred the static Barth of printed pages. That way they could possess Barth, hold him in their hands, control him, use him to buttress their own biases.
Many contemporary disciples use Jesus in a similar way. They like the Jesus of a book better than the living Jesus because they can control and manipulate a religious leader in print, use his words to buttress their biases. But let Jesus come alive, and you have unpredictable demands. He then is in control. He is the teacher and we are the students. He the master, we the servants.
But we don't like that. We want to be in charge. We like to be the chiefs, not the Indians, and call the shots. Jesus may cause us discomfort and inconvenience. He might pin us to the wall on our discomfort and inconvenience. He might pin us to the wall in our selfishness and hardness of heart. He might expose the silent glee we have when the church has problems raising a budget or launching a program. He may press the question, "If you're not on my side, just whose side are you on?" We may want to say, "Let me go tend my field, bury my father, seek my pleasure, pursue my happiness, build my nest egg," but he says, "Follow me."
In the medieval period parts of Europe often were characterized by feudal fiefdoms and provincial territories of crown princes. But to create a unified state, feudal lords and crown princes were persuaded or forced to swear allegiance to the king. The king knew once he had the loyalty and allegiance of individual lords, he would have their lands and powers, their energies and resources.
Likewise in the kingdom of God. We all build our provincial kingdoms of corporations, professions, families, houses and lands, over which we preside like feudal lords on manorial estates. But God's sovereignty is established only when, through his judgment and kindness, we surrender ourselves to his lordship. God knows when we put our own hearts and minds and spirits under his control, he then will have access to all we possess -- our money, our abilities, our time. And Jesus is his vice-regent who bids us give the King our all for his great causes.
Nevertheless, afflicted with spiritual myopia, obsessed with the illusion of material things, shackled by a selfish heart, we resist the overtures of the Heavenly King and cling to our Dark Age feudal mentality. Unable to become immersed in the larger challenges and benefits of God, we become states' rights isolationists. Unaware of the immensely greater truths awaiting our discovery, blind to the larger vision of reality, insensitive to the suffering heart of the universe, we repulse the vice-regent and say, "I've got to tend my field," "I must wait until my father dies and then ...," "I really love these lands and my family too much to share them." And the King's vice-regent will say, "He who loves houses and lands and family more than me is not worthy of me."
There's a new kingdom coming. Will you be a part of the union or remain a selfish, separatist state? There's a new kingdom coming -- coming out of the future -- a kingdom needing to come, wanting to come, waiting to come. Waiting for you. For me. For this church, this nation, this world. "I will build my church," said Jesus, "and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Therefore, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven."
1. Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock, (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 406.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 411.
4. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, The Cost Of Discipleship, (New York: Macmillan Co., 1966), p. 252. "