I am working on a new believer's study for our church that starts with the Kingdom of God. Instead of starting with us, I am trying to start with God and show where we fit into God's overall plan. I have been studying the Kingdom of God for a couple of years now and cannot believe that I've missed what Jesus was saying. Instead of seeing everything through the lense of systematic theology, I've begun to deal directly with Jesus' words and the rest of the words of Scripture and let them shape me and my understanding of theology. It has been more than refreshing. I am seeing things differently as the Bible comes alive.
At any rate, Scot McKnight is nailing it on the Kingdom of God, God's will in the world, and the role of the church in carrying out God's will. He says this:
What I am is someone who has, by reading the Bible, learned more and more that the church is the center of God's work and that the church ought to live out the grand vision God has for oneness, holiness, justice, grace, peace and love.
What would happen if we took that seriously?
Check out McKnight's posts on this. At the very least, He gets you thinking. I would say, though, that while McKnight starts first with the community that God is forming in Christ, I still think that the individual and the salvation of the individual is integral to the establishment of the community. McKnight believes this as well, but for the sake of deconstructing Individualism as a barrier to our understanding of Church, he starts with the community.
The excerpts below are direct quotes from McKnight.
Encountering Jesus' kingdom gospel not only makes us think, but it makes us think we just might have gotten lots of things wrong. It makes us rethink how we are reading the Bible. It makes us think about what the gospel itself is. It also makes us back up to the elements of the Story - creation, cracked Eikons, covenant community, Christ, and consummation - and see which of these elements are the focus of Jesus' own preaching.
Luke's Gospel, like the rest of the Bible, focuses on the covenant community of faith instead of on an individual's relationship with God. If you read Luke together with Acts you see that what Luke wants to tell us is that the transition from Israel to the Church is now complete and the work of God in the covenant community is alive and well. The community - and here is how Luke defines the "problem" that flows out of the Story of Genesis 3--11 - is out of sorts. The community that confronts Jesus in Luke's Gospel is blanketed with social injustice, Israel's bondage to Rome, economic injustice and the like. Into this world Luke writes his wiki-story and says that Jesus formed a community, which we call the church, where those things are to end - right now.
[F]rom 1996 until now, as a result of teaching college students and listening to both their sharp critique of the church and, at the same time, listening to their lack of interest in attending local churches, I learned something else: the gospel we are preaching is so individualistic, so tied into getting the individual into heaven, that the church has become an afterthought for many Christians today. The current generation of young Christians is now living out, so I believe, the gospel my generation preached to them - the individualistic gospel. This gospel is deconstructing the church, making the church little more than a Sunday morning option for those who want to follow Jesus. Do you realize how far this church-as-option is from what we see in Luke's wiki-story of the Story? For Luke, the church isn't an option; it's the main stage.
What was the problem according to John? If Kingdom is the answer, what is the problem? Here it is again: the solution is a spiritual and social resolution to a spiritual and social problem. Israelites had turned at one another's throats and John calls them to care for one another, to live in a community the way God wants them to live. Repentance is more than feeling bad about your sins, though it involves that. For John, repentance looks real: sharing extra possessions to take care of those in need, collecting a just tax, and ending the abusive use of power. When we talk about repentance today - the kind of repentance that leads to baptisms - the kind of repentance that leads to salvation, do we say "share your possessions, don't extort, be satisfied with your pay?" or do we have other things in mind? I think we will nearly all admit that we have other things in mind.
If this solution Luke tells us sounds strange to you, I ask you to read this passage (Luke 4:18-19) again. It's in your Bible and in mine. Mary's and Zechariah's and John's stories differ from Jesus' but only slightly. Jesus carries on their vision to announce that the kingdom he is setting in motion is a kingdom that will undo injustices, establish justices, and create a society where God's will is done. The gospel is about church formation before it is about personal formation.
So far so good: kingdom means community formation through commitment to Jesus. That community brings justice and it ends every form of oppression. Jesus' kingdom vision will mean a total spiritual and social make-over for Israel. With everything now in place, Jesus takes an about turn, faces his disciples, tells them they've got a blurred vision of what God is actually doing, and creates an entirely new vision for what kingdom means. Kingdom, formerly connected with triumph, will now be connected to cross.
When Pentecost happens, a cross-shaped kingdom community emerges. If we treat Luke-Acts as the wiki-story that it is, then we will read the first few chapters of Acts as the continuation of the story that began in Luke 1 and 2 with Mary and Zechariah and John the Baptist. And we will read it as a continuation of Jesus' first sermon, his Beatitudes, his answer to John, and his anticipation of the cross. So, now here are the words of Luke and I hope you read them slowly enough to pick up on all of Luke's resonances with the previous passages because Luke lets it all converge right here: the community Mary wanted and Jesus announced arrived with Pentecost.
Alan, as you might expect, I wholeheartedly agree, but I do have a question/caveat...
I think many people get confused by the use of the word church today because of what our culture's "church" looks like. When you write things like "[t]he gospel is about church formation before it is about personal formation[,]" suddenly people abandon ship because the last thing they want (and rightly so) is another church building with a bunch of religious people in it who don't really do anything as a true ekklesia.
I like the word Kingdom, because it, for me, connotes "reign." And for me that is what it is all about - it is about the reign of God. It is about each of us submitting to God. It still has individuals, but we are all submitting to His plans and purposes - putting those above our own individual desires and wants.
I don't know how we can escape the baggage the "church" word carries, but it is very real. I know I read it into the word. I doubt I am alone in that.
What do you think?
Posted by: Bryan Riley | May 22, 2009 at 03:50 PM
Bryan,
Good to hear from you. I hear what you are saying and see your point. Many people do have a poor view of the church from bad experiences and just want to know God. For many, their experience with the church has been a hindrance to their walk with God. But, I am obviously not talking about that. I am talking about the church as ekklesia, the called out ones who know Jesus as Lord. At the very least when we look at Pentecost, we see the community being formed at the same time that people were born again. I have a very positive view of God's idea of the church and that is what McKnight is talking about, I think.
Posted by: Alan Cross | May 22, 2009 at 10:30 PM