What is the Kingdom of God?
Marcus references the christian scholar John Reumann, he wrote “ask any one hundred new testament scholars around the world Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or non-believer ‘what was most central to the message of Jesus?’ and all one hundred of these experts would say the kingdom of god.” So what is the kingdom of God? It’s not about heaven, it’s for the earth, its about a transformed earth, not a transformation of the world of nature but a transformation of the humanly created world of societies and domination systems. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to Christians despite probably half american Christians not getting it. It’s right there in the lord’s prayer “Your kingdom come on Earth, as it already is in heaven”. Marcus references John Dominic Crossan’s one liner on the subject “Heaven’s in great shape, earth is where the problems are.”
Kingdom in the first century was a political term. Jesus’s peers knew about the kingdom of Herod and the kingdom of Rome and they knew about the kingdom of the eastern empire. So when early Christians heard about the kingdom of god they must have thought, that must be something different than these other kingdoms. If Jesus has wanted to avoid the political implications of the word kingdom, he could have spoken about the family or unity of god but he chose the kingdom of god. What the kingdom of god is, is what life would be like on earth if god were king and the domination system of this world were not. Don’t confuse this with theocracy. Theocracy is a bunch of guys ruling in the name of god.
Separation Between Church and State
In a passage by Mark, the pharisees and the herodians came to Jesus seeking to entrap him in a speech and they say to him “good teacher, tell us is it lawful to pay to taxes to Caesar or not?” This is a trick question because if he says yes then he loses the support of the crowd and if hes says yes then that is an act of high treason and lead to his immediate arrest so instead of answering the question he asks if the questioners have a coin. They pull out a silver dinars and hand it to him and Jesus looks at it and says “who’s image is this?” Of course everyone knew it was an image of Caesar. This immediately discredits the questioners with the crowd. Firstly, they are carrying a graven image which you’re not supposed to do anywhere but especially in the temple court. Secondly, they’ve answered the question for themselves. Additionally the inscription on the coin would have had the titles of Caesar on it, these include, ‘son of god, lord’ and ‘Augustus’ in other words idolatrous language about Caesar.
Sacrifice
There is no precedent in the bible for sacrifice to be about payment and it is never about the animal being a substitute for the human that is offering the sacrifice. It’s never that the human being deserves to be punished but god’s willing to take it out on the goat. Most generally in the old testament, animal sacrifice was about offering a gift to god. Because some of the animal is burned, some of it goes up to god in smoke, but basically the animal gets cooked and it comes back to the people offering the sacrifice as a meal. That meal is understood to be a meal shared with god.
Social Democracy
A social democracy is democratic of course and it values the whole of community. This is what Canada and many of the countries of Europe evolved after World War II. Valuing the community translates into safety nets, good access to healthcare and good public education. The contrast is individualistic democracy which is primarily concerned with the advancement of individual interests. It’s too bad that ‘freedom’ in the United States has become associated with a radically individualistic democracy. It’s the freedom for the wealthiest to keep as much of what they have earned as possible.
Closing Blessing
The greatest compliment paid to anyone by the highest authority. “You are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth.” These were words spoken by Jesus to his followers and we all know they were not perfected people and yet he says to them “you are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth.” The message being go and participate in god’s passion for transformation.