Scott Freeman

Three Kingdoms

The one the Jews wanted.
The one that they had.
The one that Jesus offered.

When Jesus climbs the mountain in Matthew 5 and begins to speak it is with the authority of one who has been sent by God. His message is a simple one: repent for the Kingdom is at hand.

And then Jesus begins to describe that Kingdom: a place where the meek will inherit and the poor in spirit will see God.

A place where cheeks are turned, enemies are loved, and wrongs are forgiven.

We know from the Desert Temptations that the kingdoms of the world were under the control of Satan. Earthly Kingdoms are not the blessing that the Kingdom of Heaven is.

And it’s important for me to remember that. Rome is still Rome and the Kingdom of Heaven is still something over and against.

While God uses Rome for His purposes, it is still fallen. May I not lose sight of the fact that the Kingdom I want must be the one Jesus has called me to.

Great things can happen within the context of nation-state. I do believe there is a candidate that best achieves that.

But ultimately the Kingdom I am called to strive toward resembles Matthew 5-7 not a worldly power.

From Warren Carter:

In the meantime, until this judgment takes place, in the light of this fresh assertion of Roman power in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., how are the disciples of Jesus, once crucified by the empire, yet the revealer of God’s saving purposes and reign, to live in its midst?
Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount addresses precisely this question. It sets about training disciples by having them imagine a different identity, that of being followers of Jesus, not imitators of Rome. It has them imagine a different way of life, a life that differs from imperial values and practices. It has them envision different ways of being, different social structures, different practices, different community.
Why? To bring down the empire? No–that is God’s work, in God’s time, by God’s means, according to Matthew. No democratic processes are available to these followers, no letter-writing campaigns, no petitions, no elections, no PAC’s. And no violence. Rather, they are to engage the empire by enacting in the midst of it, by embodying in the midst of the empire God’s just and life-giving purposes in an alternative community that offers a different experience of being human, that bears witness to the falsity of Rome’s empire, and offers an alternative to it: the empire or saving presence of God.

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