The Gospel and the Kingdom

In the recent past, Brian Maclaran said that he doesn’t think we’ve got the gospel right yet. Though it’s a hard thing to admit, he’s probably right about that. As Christians, we hear the term “gospel” thrown around quite a bit, and we should, as it is central to our identity as Christians. However, it is often used in such a sense that is disconnected from who Jesus is, and what he taught. Generally, Christians use the term to refer to the kernel of their message, the “simple” truth behind the confusing parables and obscure laws. Sometimes this is boiled down to a few bullet-points, printed on a tract, and distributed, often ending up as litter. Why does it end up as litter? Because it is wrong and irrelevant. There is a gospel, but it doesn’t come on tracts; it is lived.

The parodied gospel so-called gospel goes something like this:

1.       God loves you.

2.       However, you are sinful, and, therefore, deserve eternal torture for your sins.

3.       But instead, God killed Jesus in your/our place, and Jesus absorbed all God’s anger against you.

4.       Now, you can go to heaven, and freely receive God’s love.

So convoluted is this system that it led St. Augustine to say that God hated us even while he loved us (On the Trinity). Augustine couldn’t reconcile the internal contradiction of this system. Neither can we. It begs the question: “ Did God love us before Jesus died for our sins, or does God love us because Jesus dies for our sins?” This system, known as the penal theory of atonement, pits Jesus against God, and, ultimately, leads to a view where Jesus actually saves us from God, which means God save us from himself. This sounds like a pretty emotionally unstable God, if you ask me, a God made in the image of an abusive father.  Is this really the gospel? Is this what Jesus preached?

In fact, it is not. According to the synoptic gospels, Jesus preached that “The time has come. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent, and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15). In Mark 1, Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, not just near. Repent, he says, and believe the good news. What good news? That the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But it’s not . . . Confused? The kingdom of heaven/God is not pie in the sky; it’s now. It’s about repentance. You can’t join without it because repentance is the starting point for living a Godly life. We can’t participate in the liberation of creation if we are still in bondage to our sin, which is our selfishness. We confess to break down barriers. We put aside all pretense of righteousness and admit our brokenness before God and one another. Then, we seek “on earth as it is in heaven.” We share, we feed, we visit, we clothe. We live lives of love, which means patience, grace, charity, forgiveness, peace, truth, justice. This is why Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” We do not wait for what we already have.

This life is active and activist. Throughout history the Church, despite its sins, has been the group creating hospitals, orphanages, and schools. It was Christians like John Wesley who advocated strongly for the abolition of slavery, and like the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. who gave his life for equality. These are Christian ends. Mega churches are not.

The Christian life struggles; it bleeds; it weeps; it fights, though without bloodshed because it means harmony, the harmony mentioned in Genesis 1 at the end of the 6^th day, when all creation lived together without violence (all things ate only fruits and herbs). We see this in Mark 1: 13, when Jesus was with the wild animals. It is a reflection of Isaiah 11:6-9, which says:

And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatted domestic animal together; and a little child shall lead them.

                And the cow and the bear shall feed side by side, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
                And the sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.
                They shall not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

It is code. Mark is saying. “Here it is! Quit waiting for lighting from heaven. Let’s get going.”

The gospel is about right-wising the world, the whole world. When John the Baptist sent his followers to ask Jesus if he was the Messiah, Jesus responded “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor” (Luke 7:22). And we come back to the good news. What was this good news for them? What was Jesus doing for them, or telling them that was so great? Jesus made a place at the table for them. Rather than seeing life circumstances as some karmic arrangement, Jesus acknowledges the injustice and chaos of the world, and proclaims that love has the final say. No one is without value. There are no Christian death camps, no Christian undesirables. No one is pushed to the fringes of society, at least that how it is supposed to be.

The good news is simple, though multi-faceted: God loves and forgives like a father loves and forgives his children. Status has no place; all are invited to join God without exclusion. Suffering is part of life, but is made more bearable through loving relationships. The seeming finality of death does not have the last word, for the resurrection is God’s promise of commitment to us, a promise that we live out in a community centered in selfless love. The Good News is that our destructive pictures of God are wrong, that our hierarchies of oppression will be undone, that God hears our prayers, and is responding to them. It empowers us to live hopefully in an otherwise hopeless world.

The gospel has roots before Jesus. The promise to the Jewish people was a relational one. God would be their God, and they would be God’s people. God will walk among them (Leviticus 26:12). The Gospel is about the ongoing faithfulness of God. It is God’s proclamation of love. “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have the life of the ages” (John 3:16). This culminates at the cross. “For greater love has no man than this: that he lays down his life for his friend” (John 15:13). This is a response to the condition of the earth, and should be juxtaposed with the Genesis account of the flood. Rather than curse the earth and destroy it in fire or flood, God saves it through blood, God’s own blood. God offers up himself as a sacrifice to the world to atone for the evil, to say “I’m sorry.”

                The Gospel is not all-together complicated, but it means several things. Negatively defined, we might say that the idea that bad things happen to people as a result of God’s curse is wrong. Secondly, the notion that we suffer and wait for better times is wrong. Third, judgment of others is wrong. Fourth, the idea that God is apathetic to our suffering is wrong. Positively defined, we might say that a) shit happens; b) work together to clean that shit up; c) don’t look down on others, because your shit stinks, too; d) God loves us, and cares about us, shit and all.