BlakeHuggins.com

Introduction | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV

I suppose I should be wrapping up my thoughts here. I probably should have a while a ago. This ended up taking a lot longer than I originally planned, but then life happened. Oh well.

I would encourage anyone who wishes to pursue this further to pick up Brian McLaren’s The Secret Message of Jesus or Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer’s Saving Christianity from Empire, just to name a few. Both are very accessible and both address this issue much more effectively and eloquently than I ever could.

That being said, I’ll offer a few thoughts to cap off this series.

1.) Kingdom language must be, above all, contextual and vernacular. I’ve mentioned this in some way, shape or form in every post I think. And I did it on purpose. It’s that important. Our images must be visceral and real to us just as “kingdom” very familiar to 1st century Jewish peasants. That’s why I oppose baptizing some sort of universal meta-image to describe God’s dream and ideal for the world. To do that is to miss the local nature of the gospel. Word are very important. We would do well to choose them carefully. A local, contextual image that is effective in white, suburban America is of no use to the oppressed and colonized slave worker in the two-thirds world. And vice versa. Each community must create its own image and its own manifestation.

2.) Kingdom language must be communal and relational. Everything that Jesus did, everything that Jesus spoke about, everything that Jesus stood for, in some way revolved around community and relationships. The kingdom is community. A community were all are welcome and all are invited. Period. No restrictions. No stipulations. No fine print. All are accepted in this community. People are placed before legalism, before religion, and before the individual. This is a community of faith, faith being, a Paul Tillich wrote, “ultimate concern for the other”—empathetic, kenotic, compassion. This is the most basic of all. If we can’t get this right, everything else fails. Relationships are always more important. Always.

3.) Kingdom language must be (a)politically subversive. Jesus stood over and against the Roman system of government and preached a gospel that rejected and challenged the illegitimate authority of the empire with God’s egalitarian ideal. Our images must do the same. Especially now—given the political climate of our context. The American empire, like Rome, must be challenged, subverted and resisted. The absurdity of its domination and hegemony must be exposed and unmasked. And then a glimpse of an alternative type of reality can be caught. A reality not of domination and oppression, but of freedom and liberty. Jesus thought this was important enough to die for, somewhere along the line we lost sight. We need to learn to see again.

It’s getting late, and this is getting a little long. I’m almost done.

I think it is very important for us to remember that this reality, this “kingdom” while not fully realized, is always already within us, as Jesus told his disciples. The kingdom is here, the kingdom is now, not in the ways we would expect, but in the unexpected, the upside-down, the opposite, and the subverse. Almost like a disease, a cancer, that spreads like crazy once infected. Unlearn everything you have learned my friends, the kingdom is here. Eternal life begins now.

~bh ><>