Glimpses of the Kingdom
The Kingdom to come and the Kingdom at hand
Dear Friends,
I hope you found Diana’s reflections on Job moving and helpful. It’s not a book many of us have read and it doesn’t appear often in the Sunday Lectionary.
We now have a week’s worth of Devotions from Professor Graham Handscomb, a member of Christchurch URC in Chelmsford and Honorary Professor at University College London (UCL). Graham writes:
Over the next week we will focus, in our Daily Devotions, upon Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God, based on parables in Matthew 13. The parable was a foundational element in Jewish teaching for thousands of years and was well established by the time of Jesus. It usually took the form of a short narrative to illustrate a moral lesson or spiritual truth. The Greek origin of the word, parabolē, has a meaning which suggests “comparison” or “throwing alongside.” This helps us to understand the function of parables as using images from nature or daily life and laying them alongside the deeper truth they intend to reveal.
Jesus often used parables containing pithy, potent images to help convey profound spiritual truths. And he brought this mastery of parable story-telling to provide powerful glimpses and insights into the concept of the Kingdom of God. His teaching centred on the arrival of God’s active reign to rescue and restore a broken world. It challenged the status quo and accepted notions of power and authority in the world. Instead, the teaching calls for repentance and complete transformation of the heart over mere religious conformity.
There is a marvellous ambiguity and tension at the heart of Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom. On the one hand it refers to (as the Early Church teachers particularly emphasised) a future heavenly realm to which disciples should look forward and aspire. But, on the other hand, Jesus powerfully talks in terms of the Kingdom being a present reality to be responded to and entered into now! Both are true. So, Jesus proclaimed not only: “Your Kingdom come” but also: “Your will be done on earth as in heaven.”
The parables in Matthew 13 provide a range of potent images of how God’s Kingdom is already at work in the world. It calls upon listeners, then and now, to live their lives on the basis of that kingdom, in the midst of the many difficulties and challenges we face, until its full purposes are accomplished.
In Matthew 13 the forward movement of the Gospel story and Jesus’s destiny towards Jerusalem is paused to bring us wonderful Kingdom parables. In true parable form we are treated to a rich range of marvellous images used to compare what the Kingdom is like. Profound theological truths are expertly conveyed by the use of the most accessible illustrations. We are given vivid pictures and insights into the glorious promise of the Kingdom to come and the invitation to further the work of the Kingdom in our day to day lives now. I hope you find the devotions helpful.”
With every good wish
Andy
The Rev’d Andy Braunston
Minister for Digital Worship