The Kingdom

We’re not quite sure whether it’s arrived yet. It might be here, and then again it might not. It’s kind of hard to say.

We’re not very clear about who’s bringing it, and what will happen when it arrives, but we’re fairly sure that it’s going to be a good thing.

We’ don’t really know what it’s going to look like, but we keep praying for it to arrive anyway.

So what on earth am I talking about?

It’s that elusive reality called the Kingdom of God.

Every week, when we gather together and say the Lord’s Prayer as part of our worship, we’re invoking the Kingdom. “Thy Kingdom Come” we pray, week in and week out. But what exactly IS the Kingdom of God?

Well, the natural place to start would be with what the Bible has to say, but the problem there is that the Bible itself seems to contain contrasting ideas about what the Kingdom is:

On one hand Jesus tells us that we’re to seek it out. But he also says that it doesn’t come with our careful observation.

He tells us to try and enter the Kingdom; but then he tells us that somehow it’s already within us.

He tells us that it’s near; but elsewhere he says it’s not of this world.

Small wonder we’re confused!

Making sense of all this is a bit like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle when you don’t know what the picture on the box is. And we might be tempted to give up and not bother if it weren’t such an important thing to try and understand.

Because it is important! According to Mark, after years of thought and prayer and preparation, the first words Jesus spoke at the beginning of his public ministry were these: “The right time has come and the Kingdom of God is near”. According to Jesus, that’s the gospel message.

And as he hangs, dying on a cross at the end of his ministry, the last words that he hears are spoken by a thief being crucified alongside him “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom”.

And in between those two extremes, Jesus spoke constantly about the Kingdom. He used parables to explain it; he drew a child into the middle of his hearers to exemplify it.

He sent the disciples out two by two to preach it. And when Pontius Pilate drew him aside and subtly suggested that he might be able to save his hide if he stopped talking like he was Jewish royalty, Jesus flatly refused. He was a King; but his Kingdom was not of this world.

It’s a puzzle all right, but it’s not one we can afford to pack up and throw into the back of the toybox. It’s actually the very core of the message that Jesus wanted us to hear. And over the next few weeks we’re going to be immersing ourselves in the some of the parables and the teaching that Jesus used to try and convey the essence of the Kingdom.

But we won’t hear and understand them clearly unless we know a little about the world in which Jesus lived and ministered, and that’s what we’re going to do this morning.

Israel, 2000 years ago, was occupied territory. The Jews in those days probably felt about the Romans the way Palestinians feel about Israelis in today’s world.

They were God’s chosen nation; they believed that they had a special place in God’s purposes for the world. So why on earth had they been subjugated? Why had God let this happen to them?

And more pressingly, perhaps, what could they do about it?

Broadly speaking, there were four typical responses to the problem of Rome, represented by four groups that you’ll have heard of as you’ve engaged with the gospels over the years.

The first group were the Zealots. They were the self-styled freedom fighters. “The reason we’re oppressed is that we’re too frightened” they said. “We need to rise up! We need to fight back against the oppressors and show them the same kind of ruthlessness they’ve shown us. If we start putting our lives on the line, then God will see how earnest we are and intervene”.

Jesus had at least two Zealots among his twelve disciples – Simon the Zealot (the clue’s in the name) and Judas, whose nickname Iscariot is thought to come from the little dagger called a Sicarii that one class of Zealots was known to carry.

So the Zealots were the Freedom Fighters.

Then there were the Herodians: so named because they supported Herod, the Jewish puppet King placed there by Rome. Their view was pure pragmatism – “Rome’s too powerful” they’d say. “There’s no point even thinking about resistance. We’d be far better to play the game and co-operate and try to make the best of it.

The Sadducees, who you’ll have heard of in the gospels, tended to align themselves with the Herodians.

A third group, the Pharisees, put forward another way. The way of purity. If we really observe God’s law, they said, everything will go well for us. If there’s less sin and more piety among our people, then God will intervene and liberate us. We need to crack down on sin and sinners.

And that, of course, led to the Pharisees’ obsession with the minutiae of the law.

A fourth group, the Essenes, thought that the Zealots, the Herodians and the Pharisees had it all wrong. As far as they were concerned, the only way to please God was to distance yourself from the corrupt political and religious systems and create an alternative society out in the desert. And that’s exactly what they did. They established communes in the Judean wilderness, and it was in one such community, in Qumran in 1947, that the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.


So those were the four options available to you if you were a first century Jew wondering how to live with Rome on your back.

• Fight for freedom – Zealots,

• Compromise – Herodians

• Purify – Pharisees

• Withdraw – Essenes


But then one day, you’re out and about when you see a crowd gathered beside a small hill. And there’s a young man speaking to them. He has them in the palm of his hand.

“Turn away from your sins.” He proclaims, “The Kingdom of heaven is near”.

Now you know enough to know that any talk about alternative Kingdoms is very unwise in the present political climate. Kingdom is an inflammatory word in Caesar’s Empire. And sure enough, a Roman soldier strides over and starts to break up the crowd roughly when he hears the discourse going in that direction.

It could get nasty – hackles are raised. But the young man doesn’t rise to the bait. You watch as he calmly defuses the situation, and gets folk to disperse in peace.

‘Who is that guy?’ you wonder. The part about turning from sin sounds like the Pharisees, but the Kingdom stuff sounds far more like the Zealots. But if he were a Zealot there’s no way he’d have taken that from a Roman soldier. He’d have been spoiling for a fight.

You’re intrigued. So when you hear that he’s speaking to a large crowd outside town the following week, you tag along.

“Do you want to know who’ll be blessed?” he says. “Not the powerful ones with lots of money and weapons. No – the poor will be blessed. Not the ones who can shout the loudest and get their way. No – the meek will be blessed. Not the ones who kill their enemies, but those who are persecuted for doing right. Not those who play it safe, but those who stand up for the sake of justice. Not the clever and sly, but the pure in heart. Not those who make war, but those who bring peace.”

Now you’re more confused than ever. He can’t be a Zealot because he’s preaching peace instead of revolution. And he can’t be one of the Herodians because he’s speaking out against the rich and powerful. He can’t be an Essene, because they’ve given up on everyone else. Maybe he’s a Pharisee of some kind?

But then word reaches you through a friend that he can’t be! Apparently he rounded on the Pharisees one day - called them whitewashed sepulchures to their faces because they look good from the outside, but are full of death and decay on the inside. And then later that week he was seen at a party with prostitutes, drunks and Roman collaborators. Not the kind of place a good Pharisee would be found.

This man, whoever he is, seems to be a bundle of contradictions.

Either that, or the way he’s proclaiming is so new and radical that no-one’s been able to grasp it yet.

What he seems to be calling people to is a new political and social and spiritual reality that he calls the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of heaven.

It’s a Kingdom not of this world, but invading this world. Setting itself up in direct opposition to the rule of Rome. But if you’re part of this kingdom you won’t overcome by slitting Roman throats like the Zealots. On the contrary – if a soldier slaps your face, you offer him the other cheek. If he forces you to go one mile, you go two. You choose a better option than passive submission or angry retaliation. You choose the kingdom way.

If you’re part of this kingdom, you won’t join the Pharisees in cursing and damning sinners to hell. And you won’t run from them to the desert in disgust like the Essenes. You’ll refuse to judge them, and treat them with the kind of gentleness and respect they deserve as children of God, however troubled. You’ll be less concerned about their polluting influence on you than the possible healing and reconciling God might bring through you.

If you’re part of the Kingdom, you won’t settle for the status quo. You won’t turn a blind eye to injustice as long as your own nest is feathered. That’s the Herodian way. Instead, you’ll make radical decisions about how you live that will be a sign to others that you don’t march to the beat of the world’s drum.

If you’re part of this Kingdom, you may well be thought weak, naïve or stupid. They’ll dismiss you as a crank or crucify you as a threat. But the one thing they won’t do is ignore you.

And on that note, here’s a thought to end with. Have you noticed that for many people in our part of the world church is little more than an irrelevance?

We’ve just had a week’s very public discourse about the rights and wrongs of the Pope’s visit to Britain, and the relevance of Catholicism in today’s world.

Isn’t the tenor of that whole debate a sign that somewhere along the line the church has veered away from the radical Kingdom way Jesus was proclaiming? Isn't there a huge irony in the fact that most of the debate has centred around the wealth and power and violence of the church, when these are the very things the Kingdom of God seeks to undermine?

For many people in our part of the globe, Christianity's become an irrelevance. Why is that? Is it because we've compromised too much, like the Herodians, and become indistinguishable from the world around us? Is it because we've retreated into our safe ecclesiastical havens, like the Essenes? Is it because we've grown angry and embittered like the Zealots? Is it because we stand and carp on the sidelines like the Pharisees, instead of getting on with the costly business of learning how to demonstrate love in a fallen world?

Were the teacher to come among us and examine our lives as individuals, as a congregation and as denominations, would he see signs of the Kingdom he came to proclaim? Or would he remind us once more that when the salt loses it’s saltiness, it’s no longer fit for purpose?

Jesus came to open up to us this mystery called the Kingdom. In the weeks to come, may God help us understand more than ever just what that means for you and me.

Amen