On Caucus Tuesday, Something to Remember (We Do Not Control God’s Reign)

I came across a nice reminder on this Caucus Tuesday.

In the collaboratively authored Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, the authors develop imagery for properly  understanding the “kingdom,” or the “reign of God.”

The reign of God is pictured as both a gift (from God) and as a realm into which we are invited to enter:

The reign of God is a realm–a space, an arena, a zone–that may be inhabited. Hence the biblical grammar for this reign uses the spatial preposition in. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declares that some ‘will be called least in the kingdom of heaven” and others “called great in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:19). Likewise, Colossians 1:13 tells us that Jesus “has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.”

This realm of the reign of God into which we are welcomed to enter is never equated with a particular human political regime. It is always, after all, the regime of God. But on the horizon lies the cosmic specter of the reign of God fulfilled. So the grammar of “inhabiting” the reign of God includes the prospect of a future destiny. The reign of God is an inhabiting for which we are destined (p. 95).

But it is not up to us, finally, to bring about the reign of God or to usher it in on our own strength, power, ingenuity, or even courageous action. And yet, let’s work with all our might to initiate soundings of that reign, glimmers or glimpses of that reign, foretastes, parables, or witnesses of that reign.

Image Source (slightly cropped)

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