Quotes about Kingdom

The disciples wanted a kingdom without a cross. Many would-be "orthodox" or "conservative" Christians in our world have wanted a cross without a kingdom, an abstract "atonement" that would have nothing to do with this world except to provide the means of escaping it.

The work of the kingdom, in fact, is summed up pretty well in those Beatitudes. When God wants to change the world, he doesn't send in the tanks. He sends in the meek, the mourners, those who are hungry and thirsty for God's justice, the peacemakers, and so on.

When Jesus gave his disciples this prayer, he was giving them part of his own breath, his own life, his own prayer. The prayer is actually a distillation of his own sense of vocation, his own understanding of his Father's purposes. If we are truly to enter into it and make it our own, it can only be if we first understand how he set about living the Kingdom himself.

Jesus, to be sure, often spent long times alone in prayer. But he was also deeply at home where there was a party, a kingdom party, a celebration of the fact that God was at last taking charge.

Saying `our father' isn't just the boldness, the sheer cheek, of walking into the presence of the living and almighty God and saying `Hi, Dad.' It is the boldness, the sheer total risk, of saying quietly `Please may I, too, be considered an apprentice son.' It means signing on for the Kingdom of God.

We have reduced the kingdom of God to private piety, the victory of the cross to comfort for the conscience, and Easter itself to a happy, escapist ending after a sad, dark tale. Piety, conscience, and ultimate happiness are important, but not nearly as important as Jesus himself.

The story Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell is the story of how God became king—in and through Jesus both in his public career and in his death.

In God's kingdom, humans get to reflect God at last into the world, in the way they were meant to. They become more fully what humans were meant to be. That is how God becomes king.

Part of John's meaning of the cross, then, is that it is not only what happens, purely pragmatically, when God's kingdom challenges Caesar's kingdom. It is also what has to happen if God's kingdom, which makes its way (as Jesus insists) by nonviolence rather than by violence, is to win the day.

Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world's true Lord; Jesus is raised, so God's new creation has begun—and we, his followers, have a job to do! Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven! To

How much easier to produce moral musings than present the fresh challenge of the kingdom!

Perhaps even "his own people"—this time not the Jewish people of the first century, but the would-be Christian people of the Western world—have not been ready to recognize Jesus himself. We want a "religious" leader, not a king! We want someone to save our souls, not rule our world! Or, if we want a king, someone to take charge of our world, what we want is someone to implement the policies we already embrace, just as Jesus's contemporaries did.