Week 4: The Realm of God - Take Home Sheet

TO DO THIS WEEK:
Read Matthew chapters 5-7. Then take one of the parables of the kingdom and rewrite it in your own words, possibly using more modern metaphors.
The Kingdom of God is like….
Pray for God to begin to help you discern how you can help usher in God’s rule on earth.


FURTHER THOUGHTS:

The woman has mixed the flour with the yeast which makes it rise, covers the dough with flour and a cloth, and leaves it to stand in a warm place. Kneading such a great mass of dough is hard work. The poor find it painful. Now they can let their hands drop after work. Here you see how God works and rests, how the kingdom of God is already there in dynamic and rest. Soon its all-embracing power will transform the earth. It is not a matter of elaborating the details of the parable but of making God’s nearness visible; God can be seen in everyday life, beside the bread trough. Jesus wants to open people’s eyes to this. The work of women and men, work for life, is transparent to God’s work and God’s patience. – Dorothee Soelle & Luise Schottroff in Jesus of Nazareth (p. 100)

The kingdom of God calls you to a higher way of living. It’s not just about loving friends and hating enemies. It’s about loving your enemies. This is what the King does, so this is the way of the Kingdom. God is good to all – including evil people. God’s perfection is a compassionate perfection. That’s the kind of love you need to have in God’s kingdom - a compassionate perfection that transcends old divisions of us/them and neighbor/enemy, that loves those who do not yet love you. We will never reach universal reconciliation in the kingdom of God until we move beyond conventional religious morality and believe in and practice this radical, higher plan. – Brian McLaren in The Secret Message of Jesus (p. 127)

The kingdom of God, then, is a revolutionary, counter-cultural movement – proclaiming a ceaseless rebellion against the tyrannical trinity of money, sex, and power. It’s citizens resist the occupation of this invisible Caesar through three categories of spiritual practice. First they practice a liberating generosity toward the poor to dethrone greed and topple the regime of money. Second, the practice a kind of prayer that is a defiant act of resistance against the prideful pursuit of power, pursuing forgiveness and reconciliation, not retaliation and revenge. Finally, they practice fasting to revolt against the dominating impulses of physical gratification – so that the sex drive and other physical appetites will not become our slave drivers. – Brian McLaren in The Secret Message of Jesus (p. 134)