When and where the kingdom of God?: a reflection for Day 3 of Lent
“Once Jesus was
asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered,
“The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor
will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom
of God is among you.” (Luke 17.20-21)
Jesus and
the disciples continue to journey towards Jerusalem. Jesus’ teaching has a harsh, prophetic tone;
indeed, the notion of repentance is emphasized.
The motif of repentance fits within the overall theme of Jesus’ teaching
– namely, the kingdom of God. Israel’s
hope was that Yahweh would reign over his people, perhaps through a Messiah and,
through this “anointed king”, rule all the nations of the world (cf. Ps.
2). There would be one God, one world,
one kingdom (needless to say, whichever empire happened to be oppressing the people
of God when Yahweh decided to establish his kingdom would be dealt with…). Every sect within Judaism at the time of
Jesus had its own understanding of what it would look like when “the kingdom of
God came near” (cf. Lk. 10.9, 11). However,
they were all agreed that the kingdom of God was bound up with Israel’s
national destiny. In scriptural passages
such as Daniel 7, the bestowal of the kingdom upon the “Son of Man” was predicted
to coincide with the “turning point of history”, i.e. when the kingdom became a
reality, it would mark the beginning of the “Age to Come”, the time when all
God’s promises of salvation for his people would be realized. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing four
decades after Jesus and for a Roman audience, spoke of the “four philosophies”
of Judaism – the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes and the Zealots. While the Essenes don’t appear in the Gospels[1],
there was a zealot among the apostles and Jesus will eventually die in the place
of a freedom-fighter (cf. Lk. 6.15; 23.18-25); also, we have ample records of
Jesus’ disputes with the members of the other two “schools”. All this to say that each “philosophy” had a
distinct expectation vis-à-vis the kingdom of God.
Neither the
Sadducees nor the Essenes had a program to “implement” the kingdom of God among
the populace. The Sadducees didn’t emphasize
the kingdom, due to its incompatibility with the idea of foreign rule of Israel. They benefited from an arrangement with Rome,
which allowed them to maintain their aristocratic status and manage the Temple as
they saw fit. Also, they had established
a hereditary high-priesthood (cf. Lk. 3.2; Ac. 4.6). The Sadducees did their best to maintain the status
quo, including a kind of “separation of church and state”; i.e., they left “civic
affairs” to the Romans and their representatives while they managed “religious
affairs”. Of course, politics and
religion weren’t easily separated at the time, but this is a way of
understanding how the Sadducees positioned themselves. For their part, the Essenes decided to withdraw
from society and live along the Dead Sea, expecting to be vindicated as the “righteous
remnant” when God decided to make his reign felt in Israel following the eschatological
war between the “sons of light” and the “sons of darkness”.
Both the
Pharisees and the Zealots adopted a much more pro-active approach to the
kingdom of God. The Zealots took their
cue from the Maccabees, who had liberated Israel from Syro-Hellenic rule in the
2nd century B.C. Judas “Maccabeus”
(i.e. the hammer) and his brothers had been “zealous” for the law of Moses and
resisted attempts to assimilate Jews to Hellenistic culture by forbidding them
to practice circumcision, as well as observe the Sabbath and kosher laws. As far as the Zealots were concerned, “There
was no king but God!” and violence was a legitimate strategy to help establish
the kingdom. For the most part, the Pharisees’
vision of the kingdom was one of strict Torah-observance, and their aim was to
encourage every member of the people of God to follow their interpretation of
the Law of Moses. However, some
Pharisees believed that violence was needed to hasten the coming of the
kingdom; e.g. Saul of Tarsus, who was “zealous” for the law, and exerted
himself to persecute those he deemed to be heretics and traitors to Israel’s
national cause (cf. Gal. 1.14; Ac. 22.3; 9.1-2).
Jesus
maintained that the kingdom of God was for this world (e.g. Lk. 11.1-2);
however, Jesus renounced violence as the way to anticipate or hasten the
kingdom’s arrival (cf. Lk. 19.41-44). Indeed,
Jesus had a radical vision of the nature of the kingdom of God, of which his
journey to the national capital was a part.
Jesus’ way of “bringing the kingdom near” was to teach and to heal, and
to warn “his generation” of coming judgment…
There is
still confusion regarding the kingdom of God among Christians today. Some of us think of the kingdom as a place we
can escape to, far from the troubles of our world (à la Essenes). Others think of the kingdom as a pretext for
imposing a “moral agenda” on society or even taking control of the levers of
power (à la Pharisees, Christian Nationalism).
However, the way of Jesus remains the only strategy that will effect real
change – to seek to bring healing and to preach the “message of reconciliation”
– to God and to one another (cf. 2 Cor. 5.17-20). Amen.
[1] Or do they? Some have speculated that John the Baptist
may have been part of the Essene community at Qumran before striking off on his
own to conduct his ministry of preaching at the Jordan. Since, presumably, John would have been quite
young when his parents died, and considering the fact that one of the Essene’s distinct
practices was daily “ritual immersion” (i.e. baptism), it seems plausible to conjecture
that John may have spent time among them. One of their excavated baptismal cisterns can
be seen in the image above.
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