The Kingdom of God is the Reign of Love

and love changes everything

Jesus preaches the real possibility of the Kingdom of God. “Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread,” observes Judith Butler. The Bible agrees: “Without a vision the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). We tend to call artists, musicians, and poets “creatives,” and limit “creativity” to this category of persons. In fact, we are all creators in every moment of our lives, by both what we do and don’t do, by both how we conceptualize ourselves and how we conceptualize others.

We may not be able to draw, but every time we interact with a stranger we create emotions in that stranger by treating them respectfully or disrespectfully. We may not be able to sing, but our decision to feed hungry children creates one world and our decision not to creates another. We may not be able to write poetry, but whether we let the other driver in or crowd them out affects that driver as well as the overall traffic pattern on that day. Because we exist through time, to be is to become, and to become is to create. The Creator created us in the image of God, to be creative. Thus, we are homo creator, the species that creates and is free in what it creates. As creativity involves risk, it is an act of courage, like unto God.

For our creativity to be constructive, for it to go somewhere, it needs a goal. This goal interprets our times, directs our decisions, and energizes our activity. If freely chosen, it turns an aimless life into a purposeful journey. And with this purpose comes meaning, because inspiration accompanies aspiration.

Jesus received from his Jewish tradition a vision in which “the Lord will become king over all the earth” (Zechariah 14:9a). This kingdom is good news for the generous but bad news for the greedy. Isaiah writes: “Woe to you who make unjust policies and draft oppressive legislation, who deprive the powerless of justice and rob poor people—my people—of their rights, who prey upon the widowed and rob orphans!” (Isaiah 10:1–2)

Isaiah’s God is not warm and fuzzy. Isaiah’s God cares deeply for the downtrodden. Their oppression—and their oppressors—anger God. This anger is resolute and consequential, provoking God to act. Speaking for God, Isaiah issues a threat: God will subject Judah to conquest and captivity for breaking the divine covenant through their dismissive cruelty toward the poor. But Isaiah also issues a promise, a road map to redemption. Judah’s repentance, expressed as care for all and neglect of none, will avert God’s punishment. After criticizing his fellow Jews for religious fasting even as they oppress their workers (Isaiah 58:3b), Isaiah continues:

This is the sort of fast that pleases me: Remove the chains of injustice! Undo the ropes of the yoke! Let those who are oppressed go free, and break every yoke you encounter! Share your bread with those who are hungry,. and shelter homeless poor people! Clothe those who are naked, and don’t ignore the needs of your own flesh and blood! (Isa 58:6–7)

To this day, Isaiah 58 is the haftarah, the liturgical reading from the Prophets on Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. God’s blessing, according to Isaiah, does not result from individual virtue, rigorous legalism, or ritual purity. God’s blessing arises from the practice of charity as you work for justice. Religiosity that neglects mercy only angers God.

Jesus wants us to experience the joy that love offers. The Hebrew Scriptures demand kindness toward the outcast and reveal God’s active concern that this kindness be shown. Jesus intensifies this urgent concern for justice in his preaching of the imminent kingdom of God, also known as the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is God’s disruption of human history, redirecting it from injustice toward justice. Jesus, the herald of this new way of living, begins his ministry by declaring, “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15).

Jesus’s characterization of his preaching as “good news” (euangelion) seems a bit exclusive, because it does not sound like good news for everyone. The New Testament records Jesus’s Beatitudes (“Blessings”) in both Matthew (the Sermon on the Mount) and Luke (the Sermon on the Plain). Most Christians have heard of the Sermon on the Mount, but fewer have heard of the Sermon on the Plain, and not without reason. The Sermon on the Plain is explicitly economic: while Luke declares, “Blessed are you who are poor” (Luke 6:20a), Matthew hedges, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matt 5:3a). Moreover, Luke couples each of Matthew’s blessings with a corresponding woe, a move that most likely gave rise to the church’s preference for Matthew over Luke:

Then [Jesus] looked at his disciples and said:
“You who are poor are blessed,
for the reign of God is yours.
You who hunger now are blessed,
for you will be filled.
You who weep now are blessed,
for you will laugh.
You are blessed when people hate you,
when they scorn and insult you
and spurn your name as evil
because of the Chosen One.
On the day they do so,
rejoice and be glad:
your reward will be great in heaven,
for their ancestors treated the prophets the same way.
“But woe to you rich,
for you are now receiving your comfort in full.
Woe to you who are full,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will weep in your grief.
Woe to you when all speak well of you,
For their ancestors treated the false prophets in the same way.” (Luke 6:20–26)

Why does Jesus characterize a preaching that explicitly threatens the rich and powerful as “good news”? Perhaps because they (at least some of them, I hedge, because Jesus didn’t qualify his statements) need to be rescued from themselves . . . Perhaps because I (from a global perspective, I am quite wealthy) need to be rescued from myself.

Self-satisfaction in a world of poverty demands hardness of heart. To waste what others need, to consume ostentatiously while others starve, distorts the soul and diminishes our capacity for joy. It requires removing ourselves from the human family, separating ourselves from those with whom God created us to be in communion. God, who is relationship, creates us in the image of God, to be in relationship, not with some but with all, because all are God’s creatures. God is joy because God is love, and we (who are made in the image of God) shall become joy to the extent that we become love.

This world of suffering needs to become a world of love. May it be so. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 135-138)

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For further reading, please see:

Walter Brueggemann. The Prophetic Imagination. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.

Judith Butler. Undoing Gender. London: Routledge, 2004.