Matthew 6:10

Beginning in the late 19th and continuing into the early 20th centuries, there was a movement among Protestant Christians known as the social gospel movement.  Those who were a part of this movement wanted to apply the teachings of Jesus to social problems, especially to issues of social justice, such as excessive wealth, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, bad hygiene, child labor, inadequate labor unions, poor schools, and the danger of war.  The theology of the social gospel movement was based on the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Peter Gomes, in his book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, writes that the kingdom of God “was something to be brought into being in this world by the application of Christian principles to the least in society.”

The social gospel movement included a passion for social reform and a radical critique of the status quo, and it strove to “make a passive Christian society live out the implications of its Christian profession,” according to Gomes.  This desire for social reform came out of the experience of personal salvation, and that personal salvation expressed itself in the desire to make the world a better place for others by means of the gospel.  Some of the accomplishments of this movement include the abolishment of child labor and regulation of the number of hours worked by mothers.  Reformers also opened settlement houses that helped the poor and immigrants improve their lives by providing services such as daycare, education, and health care.

The social gospel movement was determined to make some changes in society, and it did.  To pray with honesty and integrity the words, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth,” means that we are serious about making some changes, not only within our society, but first within ourselves and within our churches.  Our lives do not always reflect the priorities, values, and concerns of the kingdom of God.  The preaching of Jesus was radical, and even subversive, according to Thomas D. Hanks.  It is radical and subversive because it goes against conventional wisdom and common practice.  The revolutionary message of Jesus has, for the most part, not been applied by believers.  G. K. Chesterton is said to have remarked, “Christianity is not a faith that has been tried and found wanting, but a faith that has been wanted and never tried.”

Why is it so difficult for us to work toward establishing the kingdom of God on earth?  Why is it so challenging?  It is because the coming of the kingdom of God means the departing of some other things that we might not want to give up.  The coming of the kingdom of God on earth will upend our list of priorities and change our understanding of what really matters in life.  We have to make changes in our own lives before we can work to change the world.  As Peter Gomes writes, “the last thing the faithful wish for is to be disturbed.” 

John Killinger says that “if we were truly sincere in praying for God’s kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, it would mean some radical changes in the way we live.  Many of us would go to the bank tomorrow and withdraw our money and give it to fight hunger and poverty in the world.  Some of us would spend the afternoon going to see our enemies and asking their forgiveness.  Others would be thinking about how to reform their companies and businesses to give customers more value and to show more care for the employees and their families … We would all rearrange our daily schedules to include more time for loving one another and worshiping God … If we can’t honest pray ‘Thy kingdom come,’ it may be because we are satisfied with what we have and who we are, that we don’t see any need for change.  It may be because we have so much, and are so comfortable with the way things are, that we don’t want anything to change.  We don’t want to have to support the poor; we don’t want to forgive our enemies; we don’t want to reform our companies…; we don’t want to spend more time in loving and worshiping.”

We cannot deny that the Christian life should be all about the kingdom of God.  The first sermon Jesus preached was to proclaim that the kingdom of God was coming.  It was the subject of many of Jesus’ parables and teachings.  It is at the center of the Lord’s Prayer.  But what, exactly IS the kingdom of God?  There is more than one meaning for this phrase in the gospels.  Sometimes it means the power of God that was active in Jesus’s work as a healer and exorcist.  Sometimes it refers to the presence of God.  It can refer to a community.  But the best definition, according to Marcus Borg in his book, The Heart of Christianity, is that the kingdom of God “is what life would be like on earth if God were king and the rulers of this world were not.”

What would life be like on earth if God were king?  Jesus tells us, just as he told John the Baptist, when he asked if Jesus was the One they had been waiting for.  Jesus answered by saying that the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them.  But the kingdom of God is about more than that.  It is also about a radical reversal in economic systems.  In Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, Jesus says, “Happy are you who are poor, because God’s kingdom is yours.  Happy are you who hunger now, because you will be satisfied.  Happy are you who weep now, because you will laugh … But how terrible for you who are rich, because you have already received your comfort.  How terrible for you who have plenty to eat now, because you will be hungry.  How terrible for you who laugh now, because you will mourn and weep.” (Common English Bible)  As Peter Gomes points out, “Good news to some will almost inevitably be bad news to others.  In order that the gospel … might be made as palatable as possible to as many people as possible, its rough edges have been shorn off and the radical edge of Jesus’ preaching has been replaced by a respectable middle … When Jesus came preaching, it was to proclaim the end of things as they are and the breaking in of things that are to be: the status quo is not to be criticized; it is to be destroyed.”

Obviously, if you are the beneficiary of the status quo, if you are one of the rich, then the gospel message about the kingdom of God is going to feel very confrontational.  It means that you are going to have to make some changes in your life and advocate for changes in our society that will address the needs of the poor and needy.  Jim Wallis states, “The gospel gives us different priorities from those of the popular culture, and offers us a different agenda from that of the political economy.”  Marcus Borg stresses that those who take seriously the prayer for God’s kingdom to come on earth will need to get involved in addressing systemic injustice in our political and economic systems.  We will have to confront the reality that some people in our nation still have no voice.  We will need to tackle head-on the fact that the wealth in our country is concentrated in the hands of too few people, while the number of poor and hungry people is growing.  We should advocate for God’s justice, which is concerned for the poor and the power-less and the hungry.  A key element in Roman Catholic social theology is that Jesus had what is called a “preferential option for the poor.”  This may be the hardest thing for many good people to hear.

Another feature of the kingdom of God is that it is radically inclusive.  Jesus associated with all kinds of people: religious people, and people the religious community of his day rejected as outcasts.  Jesus spent time with prostitutes, tax collectors, women, non-Jews, and enemies of Israel.  Peter Gomes writes, “Jesus embraced as his own those who were excluded by the respectably religious of his day, and … he was not only a friend to sinners but a friend of those whom the righteous chose to avoid.”  There are those who still feel excluded from the church.  Imagine if you were poor and had nothing that you felt was appropriate to wear to church.  Or imagine if you were a person of color and the nearest church was made up only of white people.  Or what if you were homeless and had no place to take a shower before going to church.  Or try to picture the struggle that a gay or lesbian person might go through before daring to enter a church whose official policy condemns them as “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

We need to work to make our churches more inclusive and welcoming to all people.  Peter Gomes writes, “If the gospel is truly good news, it has to be good news for everyone, for it is either an inclusive gospel or no gospel at all.  Prejudice, paranoia, the politics of exclusion – all these little systems have their day, and there are moments when they appear to prevail, but the church … will eventually do the right thing once it has exhausted every other alternative.”

Finally, the kingdom of God will come on earth when the people of faith get outside their church buildings.  One thing we have certainly learned in the past year is that the church is NOT the building; the church is the people.  the kingdom may not come at 9:00 (or 10:30) on Sunday morning to the faithful who are gathered for worship.  The kingdom may come, instead, at 11:00 on Tuesday, when the faithful are serving lunch to those who have no food.  Or it may come on a cold winter night when a homeless person is given a warm place to stay.  It may come when you strike up a conversation with someone in line at the grocery store who has never come to church because they were afraid they would not be welcome.

Stephen Joubert, in his article, In Sync with Jesus,* says that too many Christians hide out in “religious aquariums” that we call churches.  We enjoy comfortable spiritual temperatures, with highly predictable gatherings in religious comfort zones.  We have regular feeding times, those designated convenient times on Sundays.  We are cared for by maintenance personnel, the friendly paid church officials.  And we have the right filters to keep the water clean.  But sooner or later, we will need to leave the aquarium and go out into the sea, and fish who have spent too much time in the aquarium will die in open waters.  Joubert encourages us, “Stop wasting precious time in religious safe harbors.  Stop planning irrelevant religious activities to save a few somebodies, someday, in Saint Elsewhere.  Turn the world upside down.  Set new standards.  Talk a new talk.  Walk a different walk.  Become a living expression of Jesus.”

It reminds me of something I read in the book, Dream Like Jesus, by Rebekah Simon-Peter.  She says that the biggest, most compelling dream of Jesus was, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  She writes, “This dream was so big that it shaped his entire ministry.”  Jesus envisioned a world where “all the love, light, beauty, bounty, humor, harmony, acceptance and forgiveness, creativity and magnificence, unity and inclusion, joy and justice, peace and plenty we associate with God, would be manifest here on earth.”  She says that this great dream of Jesus was so powerful that it gave rise to an entire world.  “Before Jesus shared his dream, there were no disciples, no apostles, no Gospels, and no church.  Christianity flowed out of the generative power of Jesus’ big dream.  Reality shifted because Jesus declared his vision of the Kingdom, and an entirely new world emerged, founded on this dream.  That’s the power of a dream.  It changes reality.”

Every time we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth,” we are inviting a change in reality.  We are praying Jesus’ big dream and we are making it our own.  We are claiming the power to change the earth by inviting heaven to come into it.  And we are offering ourselves as agents of that change.  Do you have the courage to pray this prayer with all your heart?  Are you willing not only to pray for change, but to be the change?  The kingdom of God is coming, Jesus said.  Let it come in us and through us.

• Joubert, Stephen. “In Sync with Jesus and the First Perfect Stormers,” in The Church of the Perfect Storm, edited by Leonard Sweet. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008.