Will God's kingdom come? September 2007
8 February 2008 - 9:17pm — Sarah Hall
Dropping a big hint, I always love it when someone really wants to know what I believe. But I was taken aback recently just after the service, in which I'd been going on about the coming of God's kingdom, when someone asked me, ‘Sarah, do you really believe in that? Do you really think God's kingdom is going to come?'
At the time I didn't have enough time to think of a proper answer because the hand-shaking queue had begun. (By the way, if you're one of those people who never comes to the front door but goes out the back instead, rather than staying to have a coffee, I really miss not being able to say goodbye to you!) But it's been one of those questions that's stuck with me, and now we're in September, it's come centre-stage, as we re-enter the ‘getting-back-to-education' phase so familiar to me at this time of year.
For people who've been in formal education for a while, September can feel a bit like the film Groundhog Day, where the hero has to live through one day of his life over and over and over again. But on a larger scale, maybe we can all identify with that expectation of things carrying on as normal. Day follows day, month follows month; the changing seasons reassure us that the world will always behave as we expect. Of course, in terms of weather that's not actually true. After this summer, I'm going to feel a little nervous every time it rains. And maybe that uncertainty in our climate puts a question mark over other things we thought would always stay the same.
In one way it's unthinkable that the world as we know it can ever end (astrophysicists tell us that after a few hundred billion years the universe will burn out, but that feels much too far off to take seriously). Won't babies always go on being born, won't people always go on working out their relationship with God? If a final finishing line were to be drawn at the end of the human race, some runners could complain that they'd hardly begun. Yet even in the world as we know it, not everyone does get the same opportunities; a child born with AIDS now could also complain of not having a fair chance. And while such basic inequality remains, I cannot recognise this world as one where God's kingdom of justice and peace, promised by the Hebrew prophets, announced by Jesus, has already arrived. If this is as good as it gets, I am not impressed.
Is then the idea of God's coming kingdom we find in the Bible a mirage, a nice idea that could never work in practice? Is it written there in order to make us despair of earth and turn our attention to heaven? Or has that longed-for goal, God's just and peaceable realm, already been inaugurated by Jesus, who now invites us into partnership with the God who, as his own life demonstrated, cares and challenges, reconciles and judges, to carry it through to completion?
Flattered though I was to be asked, I have to admit that I don't know for sure the answer to the question: Will God's kingdom ever come? But going from what I know about God in Jesus, I believe the answer to be, Yes: with us, without us and in spite of us. If you should ask me when it's going to come, that's a question I can't begin to answer. But then, nor could Jesus, so I'm not too worried.
At the time I didn't have enough time to think of a proper answer because the hand-shaking queue had begun. (By the way, if you're one of those people who never comes to the front door but goes out the back instead, rather than staying to have a coffee, I really miss not being able to say goodbye to you!) But it's been one of those questions that's stuck with me, and now we're in September, it's come centre-stage, as we re-enter the ‘getting-back-to-education' phase so familiar to me at this time of year.
For people who've been in formal education for a while, September can feel a bit like the film Groundhog Day, where the hero has to live through one day of his life over and over and over again. But on a larger scale, maybe we can all identify with that expectation of things carrying on as normal. Day follows day, month follows month; the changing seasons reassure us that the world will always behave as we expect. Of course, in terms of weather that's not actually true. After this summer, I'm going to feel a little nervous every time it rains. And maybe that uncertainty in our climate puts a question mark over other things we thought would always stay the same.
In one way it's unthinkable that the world as we know it can ever end (astrophysicists tell us that after a few hundred billion years the universe will burn out, but that feels much too far off to take seriously). Won't babies always go on being born, won't people always go on working out their relationship with God? If a final finishing line were to be drawn at the end of the human race, some runners could complain that they'd hardly begun. Yet even in the world as we know it, not everyone does get the same opportunities; a child born with AIDS now could also complain of not having a fair chance. And while such basic inequality remains, I cannot recognise this world as one where God's kingdom of justice and peace, promised by the Hebrew prophets, announced by Jesus, has already arrived. If this is as good as it gets, I am not impressed.
Is then the idea of God's coming kingdom we find in the Bible a mirage, a nice idea that could never work in practice? Is it written there in order to make us despair of earth and turn our attention to heaven? Or has that longed-for goal, God's just and peaceable realm, already been inaugurated by Jesus, who now invites us into partnership with the God who, as his own life demonstrated, cares and challenges, reconciles and judges, to carry it through to completion?
Flattered though I was to be asked, I have to admit that I don't know for sure the answer to the question: Will God's kingdom ever come? But going from what I know about God in Jesus, I believe the answer to be, Yes: with us, without us and in spite of us. If you should ask me when it's going to come, that's a question I can't begin to answer. But then, nor could Jesus, so I'm not too worried.
