the cold and the Kingdom
While I know I am from the Midwest and have experienced soul piercing, frigid, negative degree weather, after all these years living in Tacoma, our current temps are cold enough. It is interesting that over the past few years I have grown accustomed and appreciate our mild winter, often times, heading outside without a coat or settling for shorts around the house. The weather and acclimated behaviors have lulled me into a deep oblivious state of mind. Today, as I was working, I had a deep soul shivering moment as I realized, “It is cold!” Now that I have been shaken out of my oblivious slumber, I have taken the right measures to stay warm.
Like the rest of the world, I have been struggling to make sense of all the events that continue to bombard us with anxiety and images of triumphalism at its best. I have reached for answers and tried to find comfort in God’s Truth. At some point we have been lulled to sleep and accepted a distorted understanding of the true Power and Hope that the resurrection of Jesus brings. What made his life, ministry, death, and resurrection so transformational was that it ushered in a new era. The Kingdom of God was inaugurated on that day. Paul writes multiple times about “Powers of sin and death being humiliated and defeated on the cross and in the resurrection (Colossians 2).” This shaped and empowered the early church to act and stand in defiance against Rome’s evil triumphalism.
In his book, Surprised by Hope, N.T. Wright realigns followers to the Hope of Jesus’ resurrection as the inauguration of God’s Kingdom. He says, “God’s kingdom in the preaching of Jesus refers not to postmodern destiny, not to our escape from this world into another one, but to Gods sovereign rule coming “on earth as it is in heaven.” The roots of this misunderstanding go very deep, not least into the residual Platonism that has infected whole swaths of Christian thinking and has mislead people into supposing that Christians are meant to devalue this present world and our present bodies and regard them as shabby or shameful. …Most Christians today, never think about the present reality as a possibility of God’s kingdom. They remain satisfied with what is at best a truncated and distorted version of the great biblical hope.”
The resurrection meant that the world was changing because God’s redemption was at work. Evil had been judged and defeated in the cross and resurrection. The early church didn’t sit around wishfully thinking about “getting away,” they were driven with conviction to join God in the Kingdom work of restoration. Jesus even taught them the most powerful words to pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Think about what that shift really means. While the earth is groaning it is also watching, experiencing, and waiting for the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom and his redemptive work. We do not sit here today, helpless and anxiously waiting for a bus ticket out. To follow Jesus is to do just the opposite. We roll up our sleeves and join him in the redemptive work of caring for the vulnerable, defending the widow, immigrant, and orphan. Every act of ministry or miracle Jesus did was a blow to the enemy’s grip on creation. Every word spoken was a proclamation of Good News in defiance to the empire’s tyrannical lust for power. Jesus offered a different way, it is a way of Peace, Love, and Redemption.
N.T. Wright goes on to say, “The classic Christian doctrine, therefore, is actually far more powerful and revolutionary than the Platonic one. It was people who believed robustly in the resurrection, not people who compromised and went in for a mere spiritualized survival, who stood up against Caesar in the first centuries of the Christian era.”
What the world needs now…Well let’s start with the church. What the church needs now is a return to the True Hope of the Resurrection. The empire has lulled us to sleep and given us a watered-down understanding. You see, when we sit and quietly wait for our “ticket out” we have yet again, handed over the keys. The Hope of the Resurrection cracks the faux walls of reality and jolts us to action, realizing this is not right. This week I had to be jolted out of my lulled reality of weather to realize, “It’s Cold!” So, may we embrace the Hope of the Resurrection and the True Kingdom of God that is growing so that we may be jolted into Kingdom action and never be satisfied again with, “mere spiritualized survival” and stand up to Caesar.
