Contrasting Realms

4 Pentecost Cycle B proper 6     June 16, 2024
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-10,  14-17  Mark 4:26-34

Lectionary Link

Biblical readers and scholars might assert that the message of the kingdom or realm of God is a very basic message in the tradition of the words of Jesus which made it to the synoptic Gospels.  The later Gospel of John does not include the parables of the the kingdom of God.  

Another insight regarding the parables of the kingdom of God found in the synoptic Gospel would be the appropriation of their meaning for the writing contexts of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

What does the message of a kingdom of God mean in the years 70-90 of the Common Era for the members of the Jesus Movement who certainly knew the reality of what living in a kingdom, a realm, an Empire, meant.

Surely, it was not lost on the readership of the Gospels the stark contrast of realms or kingdoms.

For the Gospel readers, the kingdom of the Caesar was the reality of the Roman Empire whose laws and armies impinged upon each person within the realm.  As far as anyone could travel, they still remained within the realm of the Caesar.  They lived and moved and had their social being within the realm of the Caesar.  Many of the Caesars were designated by decrees of the Roman senate to be gods.  So, the Caesars were gods and/or sons of a god.

What would it mean in contrast for the propagation of the message about the kingdom of God, the great God of the Hebrew Scriptures, the great God who was called Father by Jesus of Nazareth?

The Jesus Movement of the Gospel settings did not have expansive social reality; there was no Christendom, Holy Roman Empire, or impressive visible evidences of the kingdom of the Christian God.

The Gospel writers had the boldness to perpetuate a kingdom message to contrast the obvious presence of the kingdom of the Caesar, which engaged members of society through laws, administration, armies, and the collection of taxes.  The kingdom of the Caesar was unavoidable and participation in it was not voluntary, but required.

Participants in the Roman Empire believed in other realms; they believed in the realms of the gods and goddesses.  They believed in fate such that the gods and goddesses favored their leaders and marked their interactions through their various mystery traditions.  Through auguries the Roman sought to interpret the messages being received from the gods.

The message of the kingdom of God as presented in the Gospel is a message about a greater realm, one greater than Caesar's visible realm, and one greater than the realm of the gods and goddesses.  This Great God was on the expanding horizons of any human possibility and was all inclusive.

The message of the kingdom of God in the Gospel was not just about the existence of this great realm of God; it also was about the uncanny, the mysterious, the delicious discovery of this Great God within one's own territorial being of what was internal to the epidermis of a person.

The Gospel Kingdom of God message was that enlightenment to this great kingdom was like the mystery of an organic event, the planting of seed that goes from a tiny thing planted in soil only to surpass itself in exponential growth and arrive at a place of producing more seed for more plants.

The Gospel writers were proclaiming that Christ, the Messiah King, through the power of the invisible but knowable Holy Spirit could personally tap a person into the knowledge of being connected with God.  And the results were uncanny, enigmatic, and marvelous.

How could such surpassing greatness have come from something seemingly so insignificant?

The Gospel of the contrasting Realm of God is that the seeming unnoticed Spirit can gradually take over one's life and create such impressive collateral effects as to spread to influence people to become a significant social reality of goodness, love, and justice in the world, in a way in which the realm of the Caesar could not happen.

The parables of the Jesus as recounted by the Gospel writers, was a witness to the mysterious and uncanny enlightenment event which let people know in personal ways their specific relationship with God in identity with the Risen Christ through the experience of the Holy Spirit.

The early members of the Jesus discovered that they could live knowing the realm of God as being primary to their existence and enlightenment, even as they knew in their life situations they lived in the realm of the Caesar with his armies, administration, laws, taxes, and various mystery religions.

Today there are too many people who call themselves Christians who want our governments to force their Christian views on this world and this country.  They would try to replace the persuasive and mysterious work of the Holy Spirit in giving the unique orientation of each person into the enlightenment about the one God who loves and without force seeks to use love to lure us to enlightenment.

May God help us today to know how to live in contrasting kingdoms without confusing the modes of enlightenment through which we come to know them.  And may God's loving Spirit enlightenus and make us agents of love as the valid mode of administration of the God of Love.  Amen.