“The Kingdom of God is Like…”
Justice and Depth, the Uncomfortable and Subversive Church
Introduction:
If we read the gospels and the story of faith leading up to them, then I believe what we see is a story of uncomfortable and subversive truths. The church, in its 2000 years of history has wrestled with interpreting this story. Our first interpreter was the Apostle Paul, who created his own version of church, and throughout history many of those interpreters have found different sticking points or models of doing church. What I am advocating for is that we must embrace an ancient, but future model of being in uncomfortable and subversive church.
I would argue that the water we swim in (our cultural context) is changing dramatically, forcing the church to consider its place in the marketplace of options for people to commit their time, money and ideally, their lives to. Learn to adapt or go extinct is the law of natural selection. The church, however, should want to do more than survive. We should be aim to thrive, to transform and ultimately to be agents of change in our world. In the midst of this, we call ourselves Christians, which means we seek to emulate the life of Christ in our world. In order to do this, we need to first learn to adapt, but go then beyond adaptation towards transformation.
I am fully aware that being an uncomfortable and subversive church is not the most compelling argument to get people in the pews. “Our church is really uncomfortable,” is not a good opener. I am also fully aware that the church is clinging to an old model that I do not believe will ever come back. I believe that the realities of our cultural context present an amazing opportunity to reconsider how we do church. In our process to become an uncomfortable and subversive church, we are not choosing to be impolite, but we are making a choice to resist old patterns, in favor of something greater, something deeper and something more profound. If we know what we are saying yes to, it makes it easier and necessary to say no to everything else. I believe that many people are desperately looking for a community centered on social justice and authentic relationships. This pathway is what I call the uncomfortable and subversive church. This journey is not easy, but my hope and prayer is that in the end you will see the value of becoming an uncomfortable and subversive church.
Might As Well Be Ancient History
Consider some of the highlights from the Disciples Dispatch at First Christian Church in early months of 1988:
“Group 4” and the “Ungroup” are meeting for an Italian style potluck. The “Gumdrop Group” is meeting for sandwiches and salad in the evening. JR and Elaine are leading the Chi Rho youth group from 1 – 3 and then the Christian Youth Fellowship from 3-5 on Sunday evenings. The first Tuesday group is meeting at Ramona’s house at 5:30. A 40th anniversary party is scheduled from 3 to 7 at the Delta Chi Fraternity house. The Christian Women’s Fellowship has their meeting scheduled. Ranch Breakfast at Avery Park, bring your own plates and silverware! Elaine and JR thank everyone for the baby shower for Jenna. The Meet and Mingle group reported on the success of their potluck from the previous month. Coming up the Meet and Mingle will host at Hamburger Fry at Doc and Lu’s
These excerpts from the internal publications of an average church tell a certain story. The story I hear is the story of a busy place, where socializing and building community was just as important, if not more important than gathering for worship. The centerpiece of the church was the Sunday morning worship experience, and the small group gatherings in homes, in parks, in social halls. We will call this paradigm the Social Church. The Social Church is labeled as for obvious reasons, but for our purposes, the Social Church designation will be used as contrast to other models. These will be important distinctions to add to the descriptive labels of the church that will be informed by history. The 2000 year history of the church is worth considering as we consider what the future church might look like.
How Did We Get Here?
The Ekklesia
The birthday of the church is often said to the day of Pentecost, circa 33 C.E. This is the day the book of Acts records the arrival of the Holy Spirit which brought fire and fervor to the hearts of the early believers. The early church is called the “Ekklesia,” a Greek word meaning “called out ones”. The vision of the early church is a beautiful vision of equality, purpose and spirit. People’s lives were changed. The early church culture sought out equitable allocation of resources, support for the poor, but also a strong evangelistic desire to find new converts to the faith. The early church was social justice driven and also highly motivated to find new recruits.
As the church increased in its popularity, so did its persecution. Early Christians were persecuted partially because of their bizarre stories of miracles and resurrections, but more so because it proclaimed a kingdom other than Rome—the kingdom of God as articulated by Jesus. What ensued were a few hundred years of martyrdom and persecution of Christianity. The result, however, was it only emboldened the movement. This was the Ekklesia, or the Called Out Church.
The Institutional Church
By the 4th century, Rome decided to join the movement by making Christianity the official religion of the Empire. This was the fuel that sustained the privatization and institutionalization of what might be considered a grass roots movement. Church cathedrals were built, traditions were formalized, books and ideas were canonized. The structure of the Church was developed, drawing on the tradition of Scripture, but in some ways drawing on the pragmatics of the Roman cultural contexts. This was the Institutional Church.
The Institutional Church provided a platform and opportunity to reach out into the corners of the world to spread the good news. In some cases, the good news provided much needed social services and other cases. At the same time, it provided justification for violence and genocide. The Institutional Church sought control and in some cases, received it. If you put a hamster in a small cage, she will do everything to try to get out, but if you put a hamster in a large cage, she will be content because with enough freedom, she will soon forget she is in cage. In the same way, the Church created boundaries and rules which invoked for some a desire to enjoy the comforts of the cage by conforming and following, if not in practice at least in word, and an equally strong desire to break out and create new sects and structures. There are countless splinters from the Roman Catholic Church and some survived heresy trials, while others were killed for their transgressions.
The Reform(ed) Church
While the Institutional Church never died, it did become less reasonable to burn people at the stake. Martin Luther, without realizing it, gave birth to the Reform Church in the 16th century. Much like Christ never intended to start Christianity, Martin Luther never intended to start Lutheranism. Luther’s complaints against the Church paved the way for many new expressions of Church, including the Lutheran Church, the Church of England, French Protestantism, the Quakers, the Methodist Church, and the Presbyterian Church.
Eventually, the spectrum of religious belief is broadened even further with the colonial conquest of the Americas, particularly in North America. As colonists claimed the continent as their own, creating boundaries and states that never existed, they also began to push the boundaries of Christianity as well. New expressions of church were exploding everywhere on the American frontier. Religious revivals were commonplace and every new town was built with a church in the center.
The Community Church
The church was free from much of its hierarchy and institutional trappings which led to some beautiful and bizarre manifestations of the church. Many of these were congregational churches, independent churches, but many of them shared similar constructs. I would call this the Community Church. The community church was the place you came to participate in rites of passage (baptism, weddings, funerals, confirmations, etc.) and it retained some of the hierarchal components which allowed the minister to settle disputes and give advice in serious matters. The Community Church continued to be a place to receive wisdom and hear from God on how one ought to participate in the communal life. As rural life dominated the landscape, the community church was a gathering place, not quite the Social Church, but some of the same elements as we see in the Social Church.
The late 19th and 20th centuries brought with it a huge amount of conflict and change around the globe. The church could never keep up. Several major wars around the globe, racial violence, industrialization, immigration, technological advancements, the sexual revolution, everything that happened in the 1960s, all brought with them opportunities to divide the church. Where did the church stand on civil rights? Where did the church stand on sex? The list goes on. The church tried hard to keep up, but it was futile. The church found itself on unsteady ground. The world around us looked to the church for answers and in most cases, we just stared ahead, blankly, unable to speak or say anything, because we were just as confused. So, the adaption that began to grow in the 1950s and 1960s was what I call the Social Church.
The Social Church
The Social Church was an interesting modification of the Ekklesia, but instead of seeking transformation of the world around us, the church retreated and twisted the words of Jesus in John 17 to proclaim our identity as in the world, but not of it. The Social Church is centered on self-help seminars and potluck dinners. The Social Church is passionate about being moderate. The Social Church resists making position statements because we don’t dare take the risk of being political. The Social Church is, in many ways, a beautiful place where everyone gets along and is not quite the vision of shared identity of Acts 2, but for a few times a week, social barriers and economics are erased. The Social Church is very much the foundation of many Protestant churches. The Social Church was the Christian version of the 1969 self-help book, “I’m OK, you’re OK.” Under the reign of the Social Church, the Church was seen as a healthy and safe place to send you kids, it was a place where people dressed up once a week and talked about love and forgiveness and grace and God.
The problem, however, is that the world kept changing and the church stayed the same. In other words, if the 1950s ever come back, our churches will be doing great! We kept on using Robert’s Rules of Order, when the world around us kept changing. We did little to adapt with the rapidly growing culture around us. The Social Church developed structures and policies, guidelines and models, that worked well, but as globalization and technology began to be king, we were still pining for the good old days, which I would argue never existed, but that is a topic for another sermon.
The Corporate Church
The Social Church continued to decline and fearmongers and politicians replaced it with the Corporate Church, built around consumer models and corporate models. It seemed to be working for Coke and Wal-Mart, so the church began to hire executive pastors and develop business models built around consumers needs and desires. The Christian brand began to be developed, with Christian music, Christian bookstores, Christian television stations, Christian radio, Christian clothing, etc., etc. The story of Corporate Christianity is seen through the lens of What Would Jesus Do? bracelets, t-shirts, and even underwear. Think about that for a moment, WWJD underwear?
Have it your way Christianity gave rise to worship wars, and all the sudden we needed more media and big screens and modern instruments. And so churches begin to compete with one another to see who is delivering the best show. Corporate Christianity is responsible for creating a brand of Christianity and corporate Christianity is so loud and so flashy, that this is the image most people in today’s American church see when they think church. The Corporate Church wanted to reinforce a singular identity, a right way of doing and being church, which contribute to the negative stereotype prevalent in today’s society when you mention the words church. The Church, then, is nothing more than a hypocritical, judgmental, anti-everything church. The Corporate Church blended the don’t drink smoke, dance, drink or chew mantra of the Southern Baptist Convention with a self-righteous, high orthodox institutional models of the past, but this time, the Corporate Church promised to make you jump higher and run faster than any other brand on the planet.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Which leaves us with the question: How did we get from the Ekklesia to the Corporate Church? More importantly, where do we go from here?
Matthew 13:44-46….
44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls;
46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
Jesus often spoke in parables. Like listening to any wise sage, many around him, including his own disciples, pretended to understand and quietly turned to the neighbor to ask,
“Did you understand what he just said?”
“Not a clue.”
“Glad I’m not the only one.
The kingdom of God is like a treasure or a pearl of great price, something to be treasured, something to be valued, something to be protected, but this still doesn’t explain what it really is?
Once I find it, it should not be let go or cast aside, it should not be taken for granted, but what is it anyway? The answer is not a simple as that. It may take a few volumes. For now, before we even get to the particulars of the parable or the meat of the metaphor, we have to go back and look at this simple phrase, “The kingdom of God is like.”
Maybe even erase “is like” and even erase “God” for a moment, but don’t worry, we can add God back in later.
For the average citizen living in the neighborhood of Jesus, at the time these words are spoken, The Kingdom of is almost always followed by Rome or Caesar or the Tiberius.
The Kingdom of Rome, The Kingdom of Augustus Caesar or the Kingdom of Tiberius.
The Kingdom of God was immediately a political statement. The Kingdom of God was immediately a subversive and uncomfortable statement. It challenged the prevailing power of the day in an intentional, yet backhanded way, by taking the language of Rome so as to set people on their heels, and twist their understanding of the word kingdom. And the kingdom of God? God is a king? Does this mean God, and Jesus of Nazareth and his band of 12 is a military oligarch that will overthrow the kingdom of Caesar? There are some in theological education circles that suggest we abandon the anachronism and speak of the kin-dom of God, so as to refer to the kinship and connection of a body of believers.
But the kin-dom is not the same rhetoric as the kingdom. If the story is about the kingdom of God, then the interpretive models of the church begin to make sense, the called-out, specialness of ekklesia, the institutional church with its uncomfortable resemblance to the monarchy, the reformed and reforming church that is looking to create policy and process, even the community church and social church that seeks to bring cohesion and collective identity among its people, the corporate church is the modern-day version of the monarchy, so even it makes sense, to a point.
But the kingdom of God is meant to be a statement that counter-cultural, it is statement of protest, an unsettling protestation of the kingdoms of power, privilege and corruption. It is meant to be a different kind of kingdom, an identity that speaks directly to what it is not, and then speaks of what it really is…
The problem with all of the different models of church is that they are all incomplete; they all lack the sophistication, subversive nature and uncomfortable position sought out by the author of the kingdom, Jesus Christ. Over history, it is easy to parallel these models with the modalities of the day. In some ways, what I am suggesting is a church centered around justice and authentic community is nothing more than playing into the hands of a new generation of believers.
There is something unique about the kingdom, a certain something that challenges the status quo. It something that ask the difficult questions of who we are and how we are in relationship with the larger society. The kingdom of God, much like the kin-dom of God, is a place where equity is sought and it is a place where love brings people together, but it reaches beyond fairness, towards justice. Justice is, to put simply, the right order of things. But then we have to ask, in what order and who gets to decide. If we follow the logic of the kingdom of God, then justice is a radical re-ordering, re-shaping of the economy, a kind of upside-down economy, where in the words of Jesus, the last goes first and the first goes last, where the poor are given the place of privilege and the rich are asked to squeeze through the eye of a needle before coming in.
The kingdom of God is indeed love, the kingdom of God is grace, but the kingdom of God is at times, uncomfortable, edgy, and subversive.
I have this friend who one time casually mentioned he was a poet. In his small apartment is a few framed poems even. I asked if I can read some of his poems, so he lent me this notebook of poetry, spanning almost 30 years time. At the first few entries are superficial, poems about roses or sunshine. They are still beautiful, but certainly lack depth. They are the kind of poems you would find on an inspirational calendar. As you read on, the poems get deeper, more profound, more real, more geninune, as if the poems were no longer written for fun, but because otherwise he might burst if he did not put those words down. And scattered throughout are those occasional inspirational, calendar-themed poems, but some of the poems are dark, depressing, painfully real. You can, at times, feel his pain, his depression, his longing. You can, at other times, feel his joy, his relief, his love.
I think that is the story I want to tell about the Kingdom of God, one that profound, one that is real, one that is sometimes uncomfortable and subversive. This kingdom of God asks of us a deep engagement with ourselves and with the world around us.
44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls;
46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
We know from today’s reading that the kingdom is something valuable, beyond valuable it would seem. The kingdom of God is like a treasure. The kingdom of God is like a pearl of great price. Over the next several weeks, we will be unpacking that single phrase repeated over and again in the New Testatment, “The kingdom of God is like…” I am excited to see where it will take us and hope you are too.
AMEN.
