Kingdom in its Fullness

Peaceable Kingdom.

Edward Hicks, ca. 1834, public domain.

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.59908.html

Keeping the Faith: Kingdom in its Fullness

Jesus’ disciple asked, “Teach us to pray.” He responded with the Lord’s Prayer.  

What does Jesus tell us to ask for first? What are we to ask for? “Thy kingdom come.” Ask with boldness and persistence for the arrival of the reign of God. This comes first. Then request what we need ourselves, personally and as God’s people. “Everything comes from you” David prays. (1 Chronicles 29:14) 

For us to take our part in establishing God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven, we need: daily sustenance, for which we are dependent on God; reconciliation, for which we are dependent on God; and to be saved from “the time of trial”, for which we are dependent on God.

Only then can we be built into the eternal temple of praise which is the kingdom of God. When David said, “of thine own have we given thee” (1 Chronicles 29:14) he was offering the first fruits of the harvest, as the people would in the Temple. So his prayer was one of thanksgiving, and one of celebration. 

Of course the “Temple not built with hands” – that is the eternal place of offering – is what Jesus is bringing into daily life. Incarnate in him is the word of God, and making real in the world the kingdom he proclaims is the duty and the invitation he gives his followers: us.

When we pray “thy kingdom come” we are participating in the coming of his kingdom. When we ask for what we need from the one on whom we are dependent for everything, we are saying he is Lord. And when we ask to be forgiven and freed from temptation, we are saying he is Savior.

And we are saying make us instruments of thy peace, thy salvation, thy shalom, thy reign of peace.

In a recent essay on the website of the Episcopal diocese of Arizona, Canon Pam Hyde invites us to rethink dominion - particularly our sense of “dominion over” the rest of creation. Of course this is part of our rethinking what “kingdom come” might look like. 

Maybe it really is like the “peaceable kingdom” depicted in 19th Century American art, where lion and lamb lie down together and human beings, explorers and indigenous people, alike, are able to find a place for all beings. (Isaiah 11:6-9) 

Don’t hold your breath, I hear you say. “What about–?” What about the travesty of settler lifestyles that tear apart the very fabric of the natural world, through mineral extraction and agricultural industrialization? What about the continuing and historic exploitation of one species by another, not to mention one set of people by another?

How are we to live without exerting our dominion, our “power over” others, as if it were by divine right, even divine mandate? Is not this our “manifest destiny” as Americans, indeed, as the human race?

What does it mean to have “dominion over” anything if God is really in charge? Ask Elizabeth II, queen of England: she has had 70 years to think this one over. She may be sovereign, in her realm, but it is only under God, under the blessing, under the mercy, and under obedience.

How do we play faithful to that mercy, how do we conform to that obedience, how do we share that blessing? The blessing that is the coming and immanent kingdom of God, the ‘dominion’ if you will, that is without end as it is indeed without beginning? The truth is, God reigns now. 

If we could only see it. Sometimes it is hard to see. A traffic accident on the freeway, a senseless act of destruction, an unkindness where a helping hand is called for. Cruelty, gratuitous and severe. Capricious catastrophe.

So we ask for the kingdom to come, to become real. In the meantime, the between-time, between the asking and the fulfillment of the prayer, we are the ones who begin to make it real.

We do this in us-sized ways. We do it in small kindnesses, large life choices, common acts in common life, and unseen acts of small mercies.

We ask for the kingdom to come, and then we pray for what we need to live into its reality.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Colossus, we get a picture of a cosmic Christ, one “in whom the fullness of God is pleased to dwell” and one from whom we receive our own “fullness” as his creatures and his people. “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.” (1:19, 2:9-10)

“Fullness” in Christ means a completion of being, a perfection in direction and in action. We sense moments of fullness already; in him our joy will be made complete. 

So dominion and fullness meet in the presence of the Lord. God is the source of all being, therefore the one in whom all authority finally resides; our ‘dominion’ is partial and contingent. And yet our completion, the fulfillment of our calling and our gift as creatures, is already at work through Christ in us. 

We have the challenge of living into that in-coming and already-here state of being.

How can we possibly do this by ourselves? As individuals, as a church, as a society, as the human race? 

We don’t have to do it alone: for the one who creates us is the one who redeems us is the one who inspires and empowers us. By our side, along with us, God is present in the Spirit, and in each other.

We are not there yet, not yet in the kingdom to come, but we work to make it so, and we long for its arrival. In the grace of God and under the mercy. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. John Leech studied history and religion at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His professional education was through the Graduate Theological Union and Seattle University. He serves as a priest associate at the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew in Tucson. An edited version of this essay appears in the Keeping the Faith section of the Arizona Daily Star, Sunday July 24th 2022 page E3.

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.

James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. Grand Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2014.

David L. Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary. Year C, Volume 3. Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV. The Anchor Bible, v. 28-28A. New York: Doubleday, 1985.

https://azdiocese.org/2022/06/rethinking-dominion/

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.59908.html

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007.

On the Machair

Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42)

All the devotions my bishop requested of me while I was under his care before ordination was to say the daily office, morning prayer and either evening prayer or compline. It's not just the law (in England); it's a good idea (everywhere). Years later when I came under the guidance (once again) of the prior of the Hermitage, he and I discussed the basics of associate membership (amici, y'all, is the preferred style in Italia). Daily prayer, weekly Eucharist, annual retreat. You are already doing it.

And of course you pray for me and I'll pray for you. As we say to each other when we say farewell.

Yes, I will, Robert, and I know you do; you always have.

Which brings us to the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, when they asked. It was simple. Not long or elaborate or particularly showy, just the basics. 

Praise, putting ourselves in right place in the universe: you are hallowed, and may you be hallowed - here as in the eternity; that is in practice as well as in the immovable verity of God's existence. 

May we bring with you the reality of that kingdom into practical realization, and act in accordance with thy will, in all our being, our doing, our lives, public and private. 

Sustain us today; it's up to you: we rely on your providence. And we ask for it. We do not demand it as right nor forget that we are the children of thy favor. As are all beings. (We are all on that hazelnut together, in the palm of your hand.) 

We have done wrong, been wrong, gone wrong; you can redeem it, as we can redeem our own unworthy attitudes and extend the grace you have shown us to our dealings with others. Save us from the time of trial and temptation, of giving up and doing ill, and pull us out of the pit we dug ourselves. 

It is all yours; that we said in the beginning we say again: and what was in the beginning is in the last what lasts. Omega and alpha: the God who gathers us to himself is the God who has sustained us is the God who is redeeming us and making us well, all to be well, as he is the God who made us in the first place.

So we turn to him, him who is without gender, beginning or end: we unworthy worthily redeemed, created, sustained. Platitudes and all.

And beyond, that fearsome truth: he lives.

Psalm 23    Dominus regit me

The LORD is my shepherd; *

    therefore can I lack nothing.

He shall feed me in a green pasture, *

    and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort.

He shall convert my soul, *

    and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness for his

                                Name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil; *

    for thou art with me;

    thy rod and thy staff comfort me.

Thou shalt prepare a table before me in the presence of them

                                that trouble me; *

    thou hast anointed my head with oil,

    and my cup shall be full.

Surely thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the

                                days of my life; *

    and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. (Isaiah 53:9, KJV)

He himself who was the shepherd - who is the shepherd - bore the pain of sacrificial self-giving, for us.

On the Machair, the open grassy seaside sloping ground on the west side of the isle of Iona, sheep safely graze. Most of the time. They have to watch out for airplanes, using their pasture as an airstrip, and they have to look out for flying golf balls. But they do have the fold, the (in this case) concrete - or stone - enclosure where they can gather and be gathered, safely. Other than that they graze.

O Good Shepherd ...

https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g186581-d191342-i103952809-Machair-Isle_of_Iona_The_Hebrides_Scotland.html ("Take a swing at your ball, but try not to hit the grazing sheep...")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOWX2-l788A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6cJR9copFw

Acts 2:42-47

1 Peter 2:19-25

John 10:1-10

Psalm 23

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Easter/AEaster4_RCL.html

Jesus invites us to follow and serve

When I was young Grandma Maxine came to visit.

She taught us two things on that visit. One was how to spit watermelon seeds. We were eating watermelon, the four boys, out on the back lawn, and she asked, do you know how to spit watermelon seeds? No. Well, let me teach you. She lined us up at the edge of the lawn. Just past it was a place my father had put down rich soil for a new garden. We ate - and got the seeds into our mouths - and we spat.

The seeds launched out into the new soil beyond the lawn's edge - and disappeared. But six weeks later - watermelon. First the vines, then the melons.

The other thing she taught me was the Lord's Prayer. It took a little longer for that to bear fruit.

When bedtime came she was going to put us to bed but first, she said, you must say your prayers. I'd seen Disney cartoons, and movies I suppose, and seen pictures of children kneeling by their beds, so I knew how to kneel and put my hands together - but I had no idea what to say. So then and there Grandma Maxine taught me the Lord's Prayer.

Jesus took his disciples aside and began to teach them what was going to happen. The Son of Man must die and be buried. On the third day he will be raised - but this must happen. What good will it do? Why? And he told them, a grain of wheat must die and enter the earth and disappear. Otherwise it remains a single grain - but this way it bears much fruit. So the Son of Man.

By this means he will become bread from heaven, bread for the world. What are we supposed to do? Follow and serve. How? By taking this bread, becoming bread too. By following him in obedience to the Father, not putting ourselves first - dying to self interest - but putting first the kingdom of heaven.

Let us pray the prayer that Jesus taught all of us...



For Wednesday 28 March 2012, ecumenical service, Lent Together, with three congregations, including St Alban's Episcopal and Bethel Lutheran Church at Edmonds Lutheran Church.

Holden Evening Prayer
Now the green blade riseth...

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Teach Us To Pray

Together we pray:

Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
now and for ever.
Amen.

–from A New Zealand Prayer Book


The Lord's Prayer is the prayer of a community, Fred Craddock writes: the prayer of a community (us, we) not of a private individual (I, me, mine), and the primary desire of the community is for the coming of the kingdom of God, the reign of God.

Shalom (the peaceable kingdom of God: home of peace, righteousness, satisfaction, completion, wholeness, health; kingdom of justice and mercy)

alecheim (be with you)

Shalom alecheim, peace be with you, suddenly saying it sounds like a radical act.

May the kingdom of God be with us, you and me.

The temptations: three in the desert - bread, authority/power, prestige/glory - and the last (save yourself - and us!)

are (as Edward Schweitzer pointed out) mirrored/reverse-order matched by the petitions of the Our Father:

give us each day our daily bread

your kingdom come

hallowed (revered) be your name

... [forgive us our sins] ...

Do not bring us to the time of trial - this, poignantly, before he faces his own death.

We will never lack God's sustaining presence as we seek his will and follow his way - as revealed in Jesus Christ.

Guidance, strength, and perseverance are given to us in the Holy Spirit.

Father, we pray - ABBA - provider, protector, an intimate address

Holy be your name - may it be revered by all people

May your saving reign begin now -

Provide us with life-sustaining bread, as you gave manna to the wanderers in the wilderness.

Reconcile us - may we be reconciled in right relationship to God and to each other.

Strengthen us - to persevere in the face of temptation, of doubt, of the impulse to turn away from following you.

Guide us - into your holy kingdom, your place of peace.

For yours is the life-giving kingdom and in the power of love is your glory. Amen.

Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.

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God be in my head, and in my understanding.
God be in mine eyes, and in my looking.
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking.
God be in my heart, and in my thinking.
God be at mine end, and at my departing. Amen.

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To God the Father who loved us,
and made us accepted in the Beloved.
To God the Son who loved us,
and loosed us from our sins by his own blood,
To God the Holy Spirit
who sheds the love of God abroad in our hearts,
To the one true God be all love and all glory
for time and for eternity. Amen.

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(Prayers from the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of Ireland, 2004)

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