In my previous post I posited that the essence of Jesus' teaching is that the Kingdom of God is comprised of all creation and that we humans are the daughters and sons of God. The challenge for Jesus throughout his ministry was to demonstrate how God's Kingdom differed from what his audience was experiencing at the time he was proclaiming its presence.
Kingdoms are hierarchical. At the top was a king or an emperor. Kings ruled by word and the sword. Their words were law and its enforcement the sword. They had armies to carry out the will of the king. Kings had the ability to reward friends and destroy enemies at will. Such imagery is employed in scriptures to describe God's Kingdom also, including some of Jesus' parables about the kingdom to make a point about the seriousness of what Jesus was talking about, but at the core of Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God is something much different than our understanding about the kingdoms in the world of our making. As the writer of John's Gospel has Jesus perceptively putting it, the Kingdom of God has nothing to do with the world of our making. It is a cosmic kingdom that envelopes the whole of creation.
Going back to John the Baptizer, we are not given a full picture of what John taught but we have in the Gospel of Luke a sense of what John was talking about when he was calling people to repent:.
And the people asked him (John), saying, What shall we do (to repent) then? He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you. And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages. [Luke 3:7-14 KJV]
Does this sound familiar?
In this snippet of John's teaching about what he meant by repentance, we see a foreshadowing of what Jesus would follow through with in in his Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6 and in his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. The difference between John and Jesus is how they approached the same message. For John, doing these things was an act of repentance preparing one for the coming of God's Kingdom; whereas for Jesus, acting in a particular ethical way was participating in the Kingdom of God by living into being the children God intends us to be. One could say that Jesus was also calling people to repent by acting in a particular ethical way except that Jesus rarely uses the word. Instead, Jesus calls us to conduct our lives in a way that reflects the righteousness (the presence) of God in our lives. For Jesus, the Kingdom of God was to be sought in this life, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness..." and (paraphrasing) God's Kingdom becomes apparent in our lifetimes. [See Matt. 6]
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The Kingdom of God is reachable within our lifetimes or why else seek something that is not attainable in this life? Jesus then gives a huge clue as to how this kingdom is realized. To seek the Kingdom of God is to seek the righteousness of God, a seemingly impossible task, but again Jesus is not teasing his audience with an impossible task, but something attainable.
Righteousness is term that is thrown around a good deal in religious circles, but what does it mean when our scriptures talk about it? In particular, what does Jesus mean when he is talking about seeking the righteousness of God?
If one looks up righteousness in a dictionary, one will find a simple definition like being morally correct, but if one looks at the synonyms one can use to convey righteousness one will encounter twenty or more to choose from. What struck me in looking through the list of synonyms for righteousness were two words, integrity and justice. In Godspeak, justice means mercy and integrity means to be true to who we are, to the person God intended one to be - a child of God.
In Luke 6:36, Jesus says righteousness is accomplished by following his dictum, "Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful." [οἰκτίρμονες in Greek]. Luke associates the righteousness of God with God's compassion and mercy. In other words, to seek the righteousness of God is to become compassionate and merciful towards all, which is how God enacts justice.
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What I see in the collections of Jesus' sayings known as the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain is Jesus' ethical perspective of the Kingdom of God. Ethics and morality are often used interchangeably, but I would like to make a slight distinction between the two terms.
Jesus' moral compass is set to loving that which God loves - the whole of creation - and in that love we find parity and paradox. In human terms this means loving ourselves as the God who brought us to life loves each of us, to love those around us as we love ourselves, to extend that love to those who do not return our love, to love those who we may see as an enemy or who see us as their enemy with that same measure of love, and to love all that God has brought into being, for in doing so we fully love God. Morality then is to love God in the fullness of loving that which God loves. Ethics is how we engage and follow Jesus' moral compass. Jesus demonstrated unconditional love to every person he met and because of his heightened sense of what being moral meant, he was often accused by those who practiced conditional love as being immoral.
Jesus' ethical perspective of God's Kingdom expanded on John's call to repent by meeting the needs of others in sharing one's abundance and not taking advantage or doing harm to our fellow human being, as noted above. Jesus noticeably never uses the word repentance in any of these sermons. Instead What Jesus meant the Kingdom of God is at hand is that it is present in the here in now and in his teachings he laid out a plan for realizing the Kingdom of God in one's lifetime.
Both the writers of Luke's and Matthew's gospels shared a common source for these sayings. Whereas Luke's account of these sayings is spread throughout his gospel, Matthew's account is a more detailed, direct, and expansive account of Jesus's ethical teachings and perspective of the Kingdom of God covering three whole chapters. Luke's presentation of Jesus' ethical teaching on the Kingdom of God are briefly outlined in his Sermon on the Plain, but more fully talked about in his parables which are only found in Luke, like the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.
Both Luke and Matthew present this ethical perspective by starting with defining who makes up and are included in the Kingdom of God in what we know as the Beatitudes. This list of the blessed is counterintuitive to what the world of our making considers blessed or fortunate. I can only imagine that when Jesus gave these teachings there were probably those who were listening and who felt blessed enough that might have been scratching their heads, over how are the poor or the hungry blessed? What blessing can be found in sorrow? How is anyone blessed when one is hated? What foolishness is this?
At the same time there were the poor who would have heard that the kingdom of God belongs to them, the hungry who heard they would be filled, the suffering and sorrowful who heard they would find happiness and joy, and those who were hated and felt outcast who would find great reward in the Kingdom of God; all whose hearts were filled with hope and gratitude. In the Kingdom of God paradox and parity abounds where our sense of sight and sound give way to insight and meaning. Things are not as they appear and understand them to be in the world of our making. In God's eyes all creation is equally good.
As mentioned above, Jesus brilliantly conveys this sense of ethical paradox and parity through his use of parables not found in the other Synoptic Gospels. The parable of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son are parables that display the ethics of Jesus' redemptive justice. Redemptive justice is foundational in Jesus' teaching, “Don't judge and you won't be judged. Don't condemn, and you won't be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven." ( Luke 6:37) Restorative justice differs from redemptive justice in that restorative justice is premised on reconciliation; the willingness of the offender to admit to being the offender, whereas redemptive justice as practiced by Jesus begins with forgiveness that shines a light on who the person is, a child of God who is deeply loved by God and whose embrace breaks the hidden chains that enthrall us.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus depicts a man, presumably a Jew who is was brutally beaten up by robbers and left to die. A priest and a Levite see the man and pass him by, but a Samaritan saw the man and immediately checked on him, treated his wounds and put him on his donkey and took him to an inn where he stayed overnight treating the man and then giving the innkeeper money for his and the wounded man's stay and telling the innkeeper to take care of the man and he would repay him for any costs. [See Luke 10]
This parable was the result of a question asked by a scribe regarding who is considered one's neighbor and Jesus takes the law regarding one's neighbor beyond one's immediate neighborhood broadens it to a global neighborhood. The ethics of neighborliness is an ethics of a justice question - what's the right way to treat one's neighbor? As some would point out, the priest and the levite might have avoided the man because he was bloody and they didn't want to be considered impure because they came in contact with his blood. That might have been a factor that led them to pass by, but being in a road that was notorious for robbers they might have also considered that the man was a robber himself who probably got what he deserved and therefore they felt justified by leaving him to his just deserts.
The Samaritan saw the man's suffering and whether the man deserved it or not did not enter into his calculus. The injured man could have been robbed because he made a show of his wealth, or was a Jew who "had it coming" because Samaritan and Jews were traditional enemies. The Samaritan could have entertained such thoughts, but he didn't. He set aside judgment and saw a human being like himself in need of help and so he helps in ways that exceeded any expectations to ensure the man's well-being. Such an unmitigated act of compassion and kindness goes beyond restoration, it becomes redemptive, and it is resurrectional.
Then there is the the parable of the Prodigal Son. This is perhaps the most poignant ethical story in the Holy Bible. It does not appear to be a story of ethics, but ultimately it is. It begins with a moral premise in the form of the prodigal son's immoral behavior and what appears to be the father's lack of moral responsibility towards ensuring his son's ability to handle wealth. What parent would give his obviously immature son his inheritance before his time with absolutely no restriction on how he would use it? What parent would be so foolish? Of course, if one thinks about that question as one reads the story, one understands exactly who such a foolish father is, God.
Naturally, this story does not make a whole lot of sense in the world of our making and that is precisely the point Jesus is trying to make in the story because in a very broad sense, the world of our making is exemplified by the prodigal son and his older brother, two different sides of the same coin. Our attention is initially drawn to the younger son who takes the portion of his inheritance and runs off to live the life of his dreams and so he does until he wakes up in a nightmare of his making. With no skill to fall back on he finds himself taking on the most servile of jobs, slopping pigs and living on the slop he feeds them. It is a wake up moment that leads him back home to his father, knowing he is unworthy to be his son and willing to be one of his father's servants who his father treated well.
The story gets interesting when the prodigal son returns to his father and we learn that the father has been on the lookout for him ever since he took off, waiting for this very moment. The father has not been waiting for this moment so that he can rub the fact that his youngest made a mistake, he is waiting to embrace him and tell him how much he is loved and redeems him as his son as the son who was lost but is now found. This father proves to very wise after all, knowing that life experiences are better teachers than anything he could have said that might have made his son resent him.
Meanwhile his old brother is less than excited about his younger sibling's return. In fact, he is jealous at the extravagant display of his father's love poured out on his younger brother. He complains to his father, "Why haven't you thrown a party for me like this? I've been loyal to you all along and didn't go out and waste my life like he did." The father's reply is simple, "Don't be angry. Your brother was lost and has returned. That is reason for great joy and you should be happy, besides everything I have is yours. You lack nothing."
In this story, Jesus sense of God's paradox and parity is on full display. God loves the seemingly unloveable. The father loves the son who takes advantage of his goodness and wastes it and he loves the son who doesn't understand his love at all, who feels entitled to being more loved than is his wastrel younger sibling because he didn't cause waves and stayed close to home. In the apparent imbalance of the father's reaction to his younger son is found the balance of his love for both his sons. This is the love of God for all his children. There is parity in paradox.
Realizing the Kingdom of God is a matter of engaged ethical behavior that seeks to find parity in the paradox of God's love of all by loving that which God loves. Ultimately, the knowledge of good and evil that we continue to judge ourselves and others ultimately gives way to the wisdom of God's love for all.
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Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
