The Kingdom of God, no.3

After Jesus was so well received because of his Isaiah 61 sermon in the Nazareth synagogue, the conversation continued.  Jesus moved from preaching good news to the oppressed poor to meddling, or so the Nazareth Jews thought.  To address another type of social evil, Jesus recounted two familiar OT stories.  First, "there were many widows in Israel in the day of Elijah [a time of famine] and Elijah was sent to none of them."  Instead, he was sent to a widow in the land of Sidon.  The second story:  "And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian."  After Jesus told these two true stories with his interpretation of them, "all in the synagogue were filled with wrath,"  Then they tried to throw Jesus over a cliff and kill him.  From "all spoke well of him," to "all were filled with wrath," in the space of a few minutes.  Why this sudden change?

The Jews were God's chosen people---chosen to be a servant people who were to bring the Messiah into the world to bless all peoples, Jew and Gentile.  Over the years some of the Jews had corrupted their high calling.  They reinterpreted their calling from being a servant people to being a superior people.  They saw themselves as a superior ethnos---people, nation, culture.  Non-Jews or Gentiles were now regarded as unclean, idolatrous heathen.  God was the God of the Jews alone.  To keep themselves pure, they separated themselves from the unclean Gentiles.  In a word, this distorted sense of superiority is called ethnocentrism.

In these two OT stories that Jesus summarized, he made the point that God made a special effort to reach out to minister to Gentiles.  Jesus was directly exposing and attacking Jewish ethnocentrism.  In the eyes of the biased Jews, Jesus had committed heresy so they tried to kill him on the spot.

In Luke four, then, we find two social evils that the kingdom of God here on earth must confront: 1) the oppression of the poor, and 2) the ethnocentrism of the Jews.  These evils must not only be exposed, but something better must be put in their place.  The oppression of the poor must be replaced by Jubilee justice.  The ethnocentrism against other ethnic groups must be replaced by reconciliation and equality.  At the end of Luke four, Jesus says, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose."  Our purpose, our calling today, is also to preach and practice the kingdom of God---the kingdom of justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit.

The third key verse to understanding the kingdom of God is Rom. 14:17.  In the NIV, it reads: "The kingdom of God is . . . righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."  However, the New English Bible translates this verse as: "The kingdom of God is . . . justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."  The Greek word dikiaosune means both justice and righteousness.  The traditional English translation of righteousness is understood by most readers as: "I am made individually righteous through Christ."

My paraphrase of Rom. 14:17 reads: "The kingdom of God is . . . . justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit."  This translation communicates that the kingdom of God includes justice and that shalom is more than inner or spiritual peace.  Shalom also means harmonious social relationships, a total sense of well-being which includes physical health and economic sufficiency.  The individual-in-community experiences justice and shalom (See Perry Yoder's Shalom for an indepth analysis of shalom.)

If a person in community experiences justice and shalom, this is solid ground for authentic joy.  A person receiving only charity may experience a fleeting joy, dependent on a handout each day.

Just as we cannot be born again apart from the Spirit of God, so we cannot experience the fullness of the kingdom of God apart from the Spirit of God.  There is more to the biblical ministry of the Holy Spirit than personal blessing.  The person and power of the Spirit is essential to provide the wisdom and power necessary to destroy ethnocentrism and oppression.  These social evils are deeply embedded in the cultural values and social institutions of our society.  It is more difficult to cast out these demonic values from society that it is to cast an evil spirit from an individual person.

Often ethnocentrism and oppression are cleverly disguised and portrayed as good by mixing them with the religion of society.  Lee Harper said the following about her life in Mississippi: "For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among these things that appeared just."  The supposed superiority of Euro Americans is covered by an appeal to out Judeo-Christian heritage.  It takes divine wisdom from the Spirit of truth to sort this out.  Once ethnocentrism and oppression are recognized and exposed, it will still take enormous power to destroy these negative values and replace them with justice and shalom.  Here again the person of the Holy Spirit is crucial.