The Kingdom of God: Heavenly Commonwealth

In the summer of 2019, after watching all the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe catalog - the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Spiderman, etc - Corey and I attended the long awaited Avengers movie called The Endgame. Seeing that movie with my son stands as one of my fondest memories of fatherhood. Corey calls it a core memory of his childhood. He got that idea of a core memory from another movie, Inside Out. We love movies! The Endgame was one of those movies where the whole crowd stands at the end and cheers. We stood too, laughed, even cried. It's a precious memory, a core memory, that we both cherish.

For Christianity, it has its own version of the Endgame. The kingdom of God fully actualized on earth, that is the endgame. That’s what Jesus’ return, his second coming, will bring about. Jesus will return and usher in the kingdom of God, making it a present reality here, a reality that will last an eternity.

Jesus’s return. What do I think about this? While many folks believe this will be the literal return of Jesus of Nazareth, we don’t have to be so literal. The book of Revelation is full of metaphor and allegory. The return of Jesus might appear in the form of a movement that embodies the way of Jesus in revolutionary and world-changing ways. Maybe it is young people en masse suddenly building a Jesus-centered spiritual movement in a way that resuscitates the church like Jesus did with Lazarus. We don’t know what form Jesus’ return will take. I’m convinced it will surprise all of us!

So the kingdom begins in heaven, is latent in us, and in the end will be actualized with the return of Jesus in whatever form that takes.

But what will the kingdom look like? What kind of kingdom will it be?

That’s what we’ll be looking at today. 

Point 1: the kingdom will be like nothing we’ve ever seen.

The kingdom of God will not be like any other worldly kingdom seen or even imagined. Remember, the kingdom of God is not of this world!

When I think of kingdom, certainly, I think of the biblical kings of Israel – David, Solomon, and so on. I also think of England – King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and Sir Lancelot. As an American, King George comes to mind as well, and how the American colonies overthrew the monarchy here.

These are all earthly kingdoms. God’s kingdom will be nothing like any earthly kingdom.

Point 2: The kingdom will function differently than the worldly kingdoms and empires we've known.

 

God through Christ will guide us in the kingdom. And what does Christ call God? Father, a loving Father. The father whose love is unconditional and whose love runs out to embrace the wayward, the father who functions more like a typical tenderhearted mother, that father will be akin to the king in the kingdom.

With loving parent as the leader, maybe we ought to use the word family to get at what Jesus calls the kingdom of God. Because it will not be a worldly kingdom, the very word used – kingdom – fails to really get at what Jesus meant. The word kingdom, and the ideas the word produces, are world-bound, are they not? So maybe family of God is better.

Family however has its downsides too. See ourseleves as princes and princesses doesn't lend itself to humility, after all.

A recently deceased theologian, the wonderful John Cobb coined a phrase I really like: God’s Commonwealth.

God’s kingdom is like one, big commonwealth. All will be commonly shared. All will be equal not just in theory but in reality too. God’s commonwealth will be more egalitarian, less hierarchical.

Point 3 - God’s commonwealth is akin to Eden.

Remember the Garden of Eden? Remember the Garden where communion between humanity and God was real and thoroughgoing. God walked with humanity day to day. Unity, peace, harmony, contentment, well-being – these marked life in Eden.

Eden was a portrait of God’s Commonwealth.

But then the Fall, where humanity walked away, happened.

The Commonwealth that is Eden is now a mere glimmer. Yes, we can still see it, we can see it is real, and we can hope for a fuller vision. By living like Christ and embodying justice and compassion as individuals and as a collective, we can even help that glimmer of Eden grow and expand.

But for now, seeing through a glass dimly, the Commonwealth is not a fully realized thing. The glimmer of Eden that is God’s commonwealth won’t be fully realized until Jesus returns.

God’s commonwealth come true is the endgame that will surely come, but it is not yet here in full. No world power or empire can make it so. Only Christ’s return can.

The truest, clearest glimmer of the kingdom, of God's commonwealth, we get here in this life is, what? The church. Let me say that again, because it is my main point this morning. It's also

Point 4: The truest, clearest glimmer of the kingdom, of God's commonwealth, in this life is the church.

The church is meant to be God’s commonwealth here and now. That's what Jesus created the church to be! The earthly church is to mirror the heavenly commonwealth!

The early church fathers and mothers proclaimed the church is the Garden of Eden in our fallen world, an oasis amid the thirsty desert.

The world outside seems to be crumbling. Does it not? It's always been crumbling, folks. What is the church to do?

The temptation is to leave the Garden behind and enter the world and fight its battles. But what if us being the church is the best antidote for the world’s woes? What if us being the church, an oasis amid the desert, is the perfect thing we can be right here, right now? Instead of constantly doing, doing, doing, speaking out, performing, protesting, maybe just being who we are as the church is the healing the world needs most

We, the church, after all, are harbingers of and witnesses to God’s commonwealth! We must be who we are - the garden oasis amid the deadly desert of the world!

Let me be as clear as I can here. The church, simply by truly being the church, resists the world, its ways, and its empires of sand! The church, simply by truly being the church, and not a nationalistic, politics-first counterfeit, resists the lies of the world and its empires of sand. The church, simply by truly being the church, can’t help but stand in stark contrast to the world and its empires of sand. The church, simply by truly being the church, says to the world and its empires of sand, your callousness and hardheartedness is sin and, in the end, will not stand!

All of this is to say, the church’s focus must be on being the church, knowing that us being who we're meant to be is its own form of resistance to the culture around us.

If churches are something they are not, and suffering, declining, divided, dying in the process, then how can we expect the world to be true and thriving, ?

The Church needs to be all it can be, so she can do what she does – being an oasis that gives living water to the thirsty!

And that is my last point this morning - there is a severe spiritual illness that needs salvation.

The problems we are seeing now, namely here in our part of the world, are symptoms of a grave spiritual illness. Let us call it severe spiritual dehydration. As is the case with dehydration, if severe, it can be lethal. Our severe spiritual dehydration is killing us!

Seeing others as less than human, seeing immigrants as unwanted aliens, seeing the vulnerable as ignorable, seeing countries and peoples not our own as less than -  this kind of seeing is a symptom of our severe spiritual dehydration, our lack of living water.

The church can best serve the world by offering the living water that is Jesus. Does this rule-out pointing to the symptoms of the world’s spiritual illness? It’s okay, in fact, it is crucial that we see what is happening to the most vulnerable among us and call it out. We must decry lies. But the ultimate aim is not to point to the problem, our severe spiritual illness. The ultimate aim is to offer the cure, that of Christ.

And we offer the cure by being the Church!  Offering the cure of Christ by being the church – that is our call as the Church.

So let us be about that call, answering it, being the expression of the living water that is Christ in our day and age, a day and age where too many are dying of thirst.