When I started graduate school at a Methodist seminary, I had to take a number of required courses: ethics, systematics, inter-religious dialogue and leadership, et cetera. As a biblical studies dude (I realized about halfway through the program that I would become a Master of B.S., quite literally), I spent about two-thirds of my coursework in language classes and biblical seminars, but the material I found truly enlightening was within the aforementioned courses that aimed for breadth, rather than depth. Needless to say, studying systematics at a Methodist seminary that almost got kicked out of the Methodist church for training rabbis and imams... well... you know. Neither Aquinas nor Augustine made the systematic theology syllabus; rather, we read Jurgen Moltmann and Delores Williams, and delved into the wildness that is John Caputo.1
However, in my ethics class -- the one that featured Hauerwas and Winkle and Yoder and consequently turned me into a pacifist -- I learned a new term 2 that has radically altered the way in which I hear and engage the Bible and liturgical things and preaching and kind of everything that utilizes certain thematic elements of the Christian imagination.
This term isn’t really a new word. It’s just a remodeling of an existing word: all you gotta do is delete the “g” from “Kingdom”.
The Inadequacy of the Kingdom
For hundreds of years, the “Kingdom” provided a more realistic metaphor to Christians than it does to the 21st century mind. As a feudalistic serf or lord or something in between (you know, someone with a fine sense of absolute authority), I might have been able to understand the concept of God as King; even if a Cersei equivalent ruled over me with a tyrannical fist, I would be able to understand the yearning for a virtuous replacement. And when that righteous usurper did come, I could internalize the concept of their foreshadowing the true King, who would accept me into the Kingdom. The Hebrews would have understood this, I suppose, even though they were never intended to have a human king, as made clear in 1 Samuel 8:10-18:
The Hebrew people got jealous of surrounding empires, wanted a king, threw a hissy fit, and got what they wanted, despite the fact that YHWH (their actual king) warned them of unavoidable exploitation. Every human leader will enslave their people in some way or another, will oppress rather than liberate, will force injustice for self-gain. If you and I are rather incapable of becoming moral paragons, how much more susceptible are political leaders to evil inclinations? Take a quick glance at Saul, David, and Solomon, the first three kings: Saul loses his mind through violence and commits suicide; David is a rapist and murderer; and Solomon -- for all his reported wisdom -- quickly descends into idolatry given his unbelievable sexual promiscuity (literally, according to accounts, hundreds of wives and concubines were involved in his infidelity).So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
Beyond the fact that the biblical kings all possess deep flaws, and just get worse and worse (except for a couple, like Josiah) as the sequence of rulers progresses, those of us sitting here in the 21st century don’t have a whole lot to go on. I mean, I’ve never even had a king to compare God to, so how can my imagination possibly begin to appreciate and acknowledge all the weight that the symbolism of kingship carries?
My point is this: the notion of God’s “Kingdom” doesn’t really cut it anymore for many of us. Emptied of potential meaning, its repeated colloquial usage subtly fosters unhelpful, and even destructive, notions surrounding any number of theological stuffs.
Down with Praise and Worship Music: A Brief Though Relevant Rant
To paraphrase Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J.: God doesn’t give a shit about our praise. I mean, think about it: what sort of a good king demands constant praise? Does Jon Snow3 make the Wildlings or Winterfellians constantly tell him how stupidly handsome he is? Did King Arthur force his knights to sing about how awesome he is? All that is more of a Joffrey Lannister4 move. And yet…
After attending any number of church services (both of Protestant and Catholic leanings) that involve contemporary ensembles, I’ve come to grasp that such musical inclinations arise from a desire to sing at the King: to tell him how wonderful he is, how beautiful his love is, how great his sacrifice is. My fiancée glances over at me whenever one of these songs that “magnify” God commences; I think she’s convinced that I’ll be driven to involuntarily vomit one day. I do not mean to bash those who connect with God through praise and worship. In my mind, anything that fosters greater love for God is awesome. However, love of God isolated from love of neighbor means nothing, and my theological beef with much5 contemporary music is this: it ignores community in favor of the Kingdom.
Let’s face the facts here. While praise and worship can be quite moving, so long as it echoes the sentiments of the seraphim in Isaiah 6 (“Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”) -- whose entire existences revolve around filling the heavens with song -- humans are not angels. We were not created with and for that purpose. Jesus is not Joffrey, after all. I have trouble reading the Gospels and thinking to myself, “Man, I should go sing to Jesus about how great he is, because that’s what he wants from my life.” I just can’t escape the feeling that the Incarnation did not happen in order that God could be sung at.
In reality, according to the first bits of Acts, the response of the Christian community to the Spirit is not singing praise and worship, but intentional community (Acts 2:43-47):
Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.And just to be clear, first century Temple worship did *not* look anything like contemporary praise and worship music. These disciples’ Temple sacrifices fed their community life, and vice versa. Praise and worship music, in icky contrast, tends toward individualistic consumerism, honing in on the guarantee of personal salvation because I praise and worship so damned well. Salvation becomes a financial contract, with a currency consisting of moral worthiness (at its best) or intellectual assent (at its worst). And praise and worship music does so precisely because the destination is the “Kingdom,” whose entry into which I want so badly.
Take the final two stanzas of “In Christ Alone” as one example among limitless others. Despite its gorgeous melody, these lyrics are abominable. Granted, there is a little bit of Christus Victor 6 in here, but nonetheless it emphasizes an understanding of salvation as transactional (“bought with the precious blood”), and removes all personal agency and freedom from the picture (“Jesus commands my destiny”). Note how it’s all about me, me, me, me, and more me.
There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory,
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine—
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.
No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.
Blech.
The Kin-dom7 of God
Re-imagining the Kingdom as the Kin-dom does a number of things, I’ve come to see.
First, it forces our imaginations to engage a new perspective on what we’re all about, as followers of the Nazarene. The standard understanding of salvation -- as N.T. Wright points out in his excellent The Day the Revolution Began -- has been so thoroughly platonized over the centuries that we’ve lost sight of the biblical understanding. Salvation is not so much about us going from “here” to “there”8 as it is about “here” and “there” colliding: hence Revelation (chapter 21) and the second letter of Peter (chapter 3) speak of “a new heaven and a new earth”. The Bible’s various perspectives on eschatology do not so much advocate this world’s obliteration, but its transformation. Jesus does the same in his prayer, petitioning for the kin-dom to come, that it might be realized “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Second, the Kin-dom invites us to long for salvation not as a strictly individualistic matter, but a thing in and through which we become bound to one another in a radical solidarity. Neither bought nor earned, salvation is a thing that becomes and grows in the here and now. The Gospels make this glaringly apparent, at least when we sit down and read any one of them straight through: with each healing and exorcism, the Kin-dom pierces through the earthly plane a little bit more.
Third, and most importantly, the Kin-dom advocates a position of fierce subversion: we can sit by and wait to enter the Kingdom, but the Kin-dom requires our cooperation, for the Kin-dom -- though it be the not yet -- still properly belongs to the immanent. Should we begin to see that salvation is less about a transaction and more about a salve-ing, less about personal purity than about communal authenticity, maybe we’d kick things into a higher gear: the groans of birthing would grow stronger.
The Kingdom has clear boundaries. Some lay without, others within, whereas the Kin-dom has no boundaries. All these walls we construct, these walls that barricade the other from my presence, echo the structure of a kingdom. The simple radicality of the Kin-dom, though, reacts against both our natural inclinations and the exclusivist logic of the world. It demolishes those fabricated barriers we so willingly erect, for by its very definition, it cannot be anything other than unconditionally inclusive.
The Kin-dom7 of God
Re-imagining the Kingdom as the Kin-dom does a number of things, I’ve come to see.
First, it forces our imaginations to engage a new perspective on what we’re all about, as followers of the Nazarene. The standard understanding of salvation -- as N.T. Wright points out in his excellent The Day the Revolution Began -- has been so thoroughly platonized over the centuries that we’ve lost sight of the biblical understanding. Salvation is not so much about us going from “here” to “there”8 as it is about “here” and “there” colliding: hence Revelation (chapter 21) and the second letter of Peter (chapter 3) speak of “a new heaven and a new earth”. The Bible’s various perspectives on eschatology do not so much advocate this world’s obliteration, but its transformation. Jesus does the same in his prayer, petitioning for the kin-dom to come, that it might be realized “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Second, the Kin-dom invites us to long for salvation not as a strictly individualistic matter, but a thing in and through which we become bound to one another in a radical solidarity. Neither bought nor earned, salvation is a thing that becomes and grows in the here and now. The Gospels make this glaringly apparent, at least when we sit down and read any one of them straight through: with each healing and exorcism, the Kin-dom pierces through the earthly plane a little bit more.
Third, and most importantly, the Kin-dom advocates a position of fierce subversion: we can sit by and wait to enter the Kingdom, but the Kin-dom requires our cooperation, for the Kin-dom -- though it be the not yet -- still properly belongs to the immanent. Should we begin to see that salvation is less about a transaction and more about a salve-ing, less about personal purity than about communal authenticity, maybe we’d kick things into a higher gear: the groans of birthing would grow stronger.
The Kingdom has clear boundaries. Some lay without, others within, whereas the Kin-dom has no boundaries. All these walls we construct, these walls that barricade the other from my presence, echo the structure of a kingdom. The simple radicality of the Kin-dom, though, reacts against both our natural inclinations and the exclusivist logic of the world. It demolishes those fabricated barriers we so willingly erect, for by its very definition, it cannot be anything other than unconditionally inclusive.
1 Respectively: a super cool liberation-y Reformed theologian, a Black Womanist biblical scholar, and a post-Christian theologian/philosopher. The Crucified God, Sisters in the Wilderness, and The Weakness of God all shifted my theological perspective tremendously, especially when I figured out I could put them into dialogue with one another.
↩
2 This occurred in the most unassuming of ways. Each week, we were required to post a written response on a forum before our in-person meetings, and respond to the posts of two others. One student kept referring to the “Kin-dom” in her writings, and it slowly began to sink into my own vocabulary. My stubborn Catholic instinct initially dismissed it as silliness, but now it’s the only way I think about the “Kingdom”.
↩
3 For the uninitiated, Jon is the dreamy hero of Game of Thrones; humble and courageous, Jon possesses strikingly tamed curly locks.↩
4 Once again, for the uninitiated, Joffrey is the main a-hole in the Game of Thrones universe; he is a teenaged sadist who thinks far too highly of his golden locks and does all manner of unspeakable acts.↩
5 Maybe most. Or all. I dunno.↩
6 A more accurate understanding of the Paschal mystery, methinks, as advanced by the earliest theologians: the resurrection does not so much signify unlocking the gates of paradise in some weird equation, but marks the radical transformation of reality, for death no longer has the final word on our existence, as Christ has proven victorious over death.↩
7 In writing this post, I realized I had no idea as to this word’s origins, but some Googling yielded liberation theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz. Yay her!↩
8 Salvation becomes platonized insofar as it takes Plato’s two worlds -- the realm of shadows and the realm of Forms -- and turns them into earth and Heaven.
↩
No comments:
Post a Comment