Tag: kingdom of God

Give thanks with a grateful heart

Today’s song from Sing Praise is by Henry Smith. The words as printed are few, and I set them out here in a clearer form than in the book:

Give thanks with a grateful heart,
give thanks to the Holy one,
give thanks because he’s given Jesus Christ his Son.
And now let the weak say ‘I am strong’,
let the poor say ‘I am rich
because of what the Lord has done for us’.
Give thanks.

But as demonstrated by St Luke’s choir in this morning’s video, the first three lines are repeated, then the next three, then the whole repeated again.  There are essentially three reasons set out for being thankful: the gift of Jesus, God’s strength to the weak, and the spiritual richness of the humanly poor. These are signs of the Kingdom of God (the Church season that we are about to enter) as Jesus enters the world to make the last first.

The Bible in a Year – 21 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

21 November. Luke chapters 17-18

People are always fascinated by the idea of the Apocalypse.  Or something like it.  A time when human society with its conflicts between good and evil, with all its joys and sufferings, will be transformed into something vastly different, and usually better (at least for “good” people).  It is a desire born of the frustration that even the best human leaders are far from perfect, and even the best systems of government leave many injustices unrighted.

There has rarely been a time in human history without at least one person who claims either to be the key figure in that transformation – the Messiah, the final prophet, the enlightened one, the immortal one – or at least to know exactly when that day will come.   The fact that no-one who has predicted the date of the Apocalypse has (yet!) been right, and that no-one other than Jesus has ever lived up to claims of immortality, does not stop many people from believing the next man who comes along with such a claim (and it does always seem to be a man).

In Jesus’ day there seem to have been lots of self-proclaimed messiah figures and prophets.  John the Baptist had been the most recent, and in Jesus’ estimation, the greatest, because he called people not to “get rich quick” but to a simple life and to repentance.  But John himself had been quick to point to Jesus as “the One who was to come”.

So it was, that people were asking Jesus such questions.  In chapter 17 it was the Pharisees. Their question was phrased as “when [is] the kingdom of God coming?”   Jesus told them that “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed … the kingdom of God is among you.” It sounds as if they have missed out on its coming.  But a few verses later Jesus describes what was clearly to be a future event, as unmissable as when “the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other”, which he calls ‘the day of the Son of Man’.

Are those answers contradictory?  No.  Jesus is talking about two things.  For him, “the Kingdom of God” meant any situation in which God’s will was truly done, as he was doing it.  His disciples, indeed anyone who tried then or tries now to follow him, would be able to experience something of the Kingdom.  “The day of the Son of Man”, as he described it, was something else, and closer to what the Pharisees had in mind – the time when God’s rule on earth would overthrow imperfect human rule.  But he warns that it would not be something for most people to look forward to.  It would be as catastrophic as Noah’s flood, he says, or the destruction of Sodom – both of which were seen as God’s punishment of human sin and evil.

“One will be taken and another left” on the day of the Son of Man. It is not clear whether that means the righteous would be taken away to heaven and the unrighteous left to suffer destruction, or the righteous would be left to enjoy life on earth while the unrighteous are carted off to hell.  It probably does not matter, for apocalyptic language like this is not intended to be taken literally.

What does matter is that we learn from the parables that follow in chapter 18. We should be like the widow who never ceases asking God for justice, like the tax-collector who continually seeks God’s mercy, like Simon Peter who was willing to leave his wife, home ad business to follow Jesus, and like the blind beggar who asked Jesus to make him see – metaphorically, to see the Kingdom of God that is already all around us, if only we will look with the eyes of faith.

 

The Bible in a Year – 12 September

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

12 September. 1 Chronicles chapters 1-2

Of all the books of the Bible I think this one is the hardest to write about, at least the first few chapters.  For they concern entirely the genealogies of the tribes and clans of Israel, purportedly going right back to the mythical first man Adam (which means that somewhere back along the line it ceases to be historical).

Why was genealogy so important? As we recently saw in the book of Ezra/Nehemiah, when the people returned from captivity to re-establish a Jewish state in and around Jerusalem, it was important to be able to prove that one was descended from Jacob (Israel), and in the case of priest and temple servants (Levites) to be able to prove descent from a particular tribe.  Otherwise, how were people (even if they had been living in the Jewish community in exile) to be distinguished from the ritually “unclean” gentiles living in the land to which they had returned?

It can be equally important today, as witnessed by a recent news item about a man who had been born and lived in Britain all his life, contributing to the economy, but had now been told that he has no right to remain or work here any longer. According to strict immigration rules, as his English father was not married to his non-British mother at the time of his birth, there was no qualifying reason for him to count as British, since only the mother’s nationality counts in the case of an unmarried couple.

To any sensible person that was completely unacceptable, and I believe the decision has now been reversed.  His birth here, and the many years he had worked unchallenged, were more relevant and important than rules intended to limit numbers of immigrants.

The Kingdom of God as proclaimed by Jesus, fortunately, has no such limitations or rules.  As St Paul wrote, in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.  Anyone may claim their birthright as a child of God, by acknowledging that they “believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6).