The early Church lived in great anticipation of this Kingdom's full flowering. The Apostle Paul clearly expected Jesus to return during the lifetime of those to whom he wrote. Nearly 2000 years later, it's rather obvious that Paul was wrong. The fact that God's timing isn't what people expected doesn't really alter any basic Christian beliefs, but the long delay (from a human point of view) has let to a loss of expectation and anticipation. And in the absence of this anticipation, those "days are surely coming" promises have tended to get transferred from God's coming Kingdom to the promise of heaven when we die.
As comforting as this hope of heaven has been for many Christians, it has often caused us to forget that the Bible speaks of a new, redeemed earth. And it has led to many confusing heaven for the Kingdom. And for some Christians, the relocation of the Kingdom from earth to heaven has led them to conclude that the faithful needn't be concerned about the environment, social justice, climate change, and so on.
The notion that God doesn't care about God's own creation, the creation that God called "very good," seems a quite strange one to me. And I see Emergent Christianity's refocusing on the the Kingdom, God's Dream, as a wonderfully reinvigorating move for the faith. A shift that focuses less on believing the right things so you get into heaven, and focuses more on living now by the ways of God's coming Kingdom (a shift that helps reveal this coming Kingdom to the world), strikes me as a more faithful response to Jesus' call to follow him. And it recovers a central tenet of our faith, the hope and promise that "The days are surely coming."
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
No comments:
Post a Comment