Crawl If Necessary
I’ve been away from Aberystwyth for a week. With about 50 other student type people I went to spend time with a church in Hyson Green, Nottingham. There is a small (about 20 people I think) pentecostal (amen, yeah! testify…) church there who are passionate, passionate people. They are commited to their community and to building the Kingdom of God there. Us white (yes, every single one of us), privilaged (university students) people got to let some of that rub off on us. We did some stuff they wanted doing too.
I didn’t think I’d ever be disappointed in Aberystwyth, but I was when we got back. It’s special, but also almost unreal. And so white it makes me cringe. It has been quite a week, partly from the event itself, and partly coincidentally, but I’m left with my head, heart and faith spinning and on edge. I’ve been happier, and more depressed, more convinced and more confused than I ever remember being. All I know is that I want to serve, and belong to, the Kingdom of God. (What?!….)
It is what Jesus told people about for the three years he travelled and preached (See it all over the gospels). He probably didn’t mention the cross in public, yet he kicked up a storm and had people loving, and hating him, en masse. Yup, that’s the Christian message, as from Jesus himself, all before the crucifiction happened. So it must be more than that. The cross is part of it - a vital part of it - but it’s only the way into something: the kingdom. So what really matters is what this kingdom is, and why we should want to be part of it.
The ‘Kingdom of God’ is a pretty difficult idea to pin down. Jesus gave a load of metaphors for it. He said it belongs to the poor (or the ‘poor in spirit‘ depending on the writer), that it was virtually impossible for rich men to enter it, that you must be like children to enter it, that it is near, that some people are near to it, that some would see it in their lifetimes, that it is like a mustard seed or a growing tree, that the good news of this kingdom was to be preached by the disciples, that he proclaimed it, that you must commit to it and not look back, that it is like yeast working through a batch of dough, that it should be told to the sick, that it is within people, that it does not come by careful observation, that it belongs to such as little children, that he would not take bread or wine after the last supper until those things came to fulfilment in the Kingdom, he told a rabbi anyone entering it must be ‘born again’, what he said for 40 days after his ressurection was described as talking about the Kingdom. When the Apostles preached in Acts it was called preaching the Kingdom. Paul mentioned it is some places too, calling it righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. So it doesn’t work for a neat, tidy religious tract.
That’s a hell of a lot more than ‘pie in the sky when you die’, or preaching hellfire trying to ‘get butts into heaven’ (If you’ve not been in situations where this has seemed like the intention then this whole rant probably won’t make much sense). It is here, now, us; about God in the real, physical, political, messy, sinful, broken, beautiful world of us, the people on this planet. It is also beyond this human life, spiritual, divine and eternal. It’s about love, mercy, compassion and justice for those not like us, who don’t think, look or believe like us. Because to them, we’re the odd ones too. And God loves us and them the same.
And that’s the tip of the iceberg, of course.
I don’t know what I can believe about a lot of things. I’m embarassed by most things labelled ‘Christian’. I’m also not a ‘Bible-believing evangelical’ any more. Because I don’t think that any of this Kingdom stuff is dependent on, or even very often helped by, an absolute kind of divinity placed on the scripture of the Bible, as compiled at the Council of Rome in 382 (but I can’t escape how admirable and affecting a lot of it is to me… even Paul’s stuff). But even just with a humanly recorded history of Jesus’ life and teaching there’s more than enough mind-blowing, heart-breaking, life-defining stuff about this ‘Kingdom’ to spend our short lives on. And you/we/I don’t need to understand it all; only enough to start doing/being it… and we’ll learn it on the way.
Wow, that’s long. Sorry to get heavy - I know, it’s just a blog.
Why ‘crawl if necessary’? Well, it was on the fire notice in our accommodation for the week. It struck me.
Most of this is about humility.
