Kingdom Gospel 1
scot posted on May 31, 2009
“Kingdom Gospel 1″ by Scot McKnight
If “kingdom” is the solution, what is the problem?
Jesus’ gospel message of the kingdom of God is itself a blue parakeet for many today. In fact, many have tamed Jesus’ blue parakeet message of the kingdom and this chapter may well provide a reason why some feel this way. Encountering Jesus’ kingdom gospel not only makes us think, but it makes us think we just might have gotten lots of things wrong. It makes us rethink how we are reading the Bible. It makes us think about what the gospel itself is. It also makes us back up to the elements of the Story – creation, cracked Eikons, covenant community, Christ, and consummation – and see which of these elements are the focus of Jesus’ own preaching. In this chapter we will examine how Luke tells the Story and we will see that his focus is squarely on two elements, Christ and covenant community. Some are surprised by what they see when they read Luke’s Gospel.
I grew up on a gospel that was neat and trim; it was clear and simple. The more I read the Bible the more convinced I became, though, that something was wrong on center court. When some folks read the Bible, they only want to see creation, cracked Eikons, Christ and the consummation (heaven).
The gospel that deconstructs church
Many readers of the Bible read the whole Bible through the lens of the gospel they believe and this is what that gospel looks like:
God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
But you have a sin problem that separates you from God.
The good news is that Jesus came to die for your sins.
If you accept Jesus’ death, you can be reconnected to God.
Those who are reconnected to God will live in heaven with God.
Every line of that statement is more or less true. It is the sequencing of those lines, the “story” of that gospel if you will, that concerns me and that turns Jesus’ message of the kingdom into a blue parakeet. And it is not only the sequencing, it is the omitting of major themes in the Bible that concerns me. What most shocks the one who reads the Bible as Story, where the focus is overwhelmingly on God forming a covenant community, is that this outline of the gospel above does two things: it eliminates community and it turns the entire gospel into a “me and God” or “God and me” gospel. Who needs a church if this is the gospel? (Answer: no one.) What becomes of the church for this gospel? (Answer: an organization for those who want to do that sort of thing.) While every line in this gospel is more or less true, what concerns many of us today is that this gospel makes the church unimportant.
I believe this gospel can deconstruct, is deconstructing, and will deconstruct the church if we don’t change it now. Our churches are filled with Christians who don’t give a rip about church life and we have a young generation who, in some cases, care so much about the Church they can’t attend a local church because too many local churches are shaped too much by the gospel I outlined above. To be truthful, the gospel above is a distortion of Romans. More and more of us, because we are reading the Bible as Story, are seeing the centrality of the church in God’s plan and the gospel being preached too often is out of touch with the Bible’s Story.
Yes, Jesus said something like every one of those lines though he never packaged them quite like that. (Nor did Paul in Romans, to be honest.) Is this the gospel? Yes, this gospel is right. The problem is that it isn’t right enough. I can give a bundle of problems with this packaging of the gospel, but it all comes down to one big problem: this gospel above isn’t the Bible’s Story. It is like taking five stars from the sky, knocking them out of their orbits and solar location, and lining them up like ducks in a row and then saying, “Here’s our starry sky!” The only way to understand stars is to learn their location and their history and their connections and let each star shine in its place in the sky – and the only way to read the Bible is is from front to back. It doesn’t make sense if we don’t read the whole thing and to see how each chapter relates to the whole Story. Once we do we come to terms with the gospel that emerges from the Bible’s Story.
If reading the Bible as Story teaches us anything, and we need to emphasize this one more time, it teaches us that God’s work in this world is to form communities that visibly demonstrate the power of God at work in this world.
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This topic strikes a nerve with me, because I experienced in my own journey of Christianity until now, not received the whole story of the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Not that what I was given or learned was not beneficial for my life and others, but I found myself seeking more, until I began to read the bible as His-story, and listening intently to what Jesus message was about ‘repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near’ and as I read more this story of a King, His Kingdom and His children or citizens began to emerge and everything I had learned on my journey suddenly began to take shape, and this journey now is far from over, I encourage others to seek this story (Matthew 6:33)
Mahalo for expressing what should be and has been happening in our community. It’s refreshing, honest and freeing. We need to reclaim the church as God’s instrument of reaching out with the good news instead of allowing the church to become an instrument of perpetuating traditions. Today’s world rebels against the “Me & God” church and will find a place to give their lives away outside of the church. I’m encouraged others are reexamining modern theological truths that have been off limits and it gives this grandpa hope for the future of the church.
Milton June and Curt, many thanks for these observations … they encourage us to press on.
I agree, using the old symbolism often used of the cross and the vertical being us and our connection to God and the horizontal being us reaching out to others: although our relationship and the depth of our connection with Jesus personally is the core, too often this is where people stop, “the vertical perception” is non existent or minimal. Perceiving and living out the vertical aspect IS what the other part of the heart of God’s message to us is, the connecting with others to “be” (be there, be present, be real)and help them come to a point of “horizontal connection”. Go for it “here and now” community of believers and lets, young and old, move away from our egoistic views and live out the real gospel.
Hi Scot,
I have recently just finished N.T. Wright’s book “Surpised by hope” where he tackles exactly these issues. Through his book, I feel that I have been connected for the first time with the roots of Christianity. It was an eyeopener and there is no turning back. Let the Kingdom come daily on EARTH as it is in heaven, until God will renew the cosmos and all that is within it including us. Literal bodily resurrection, as Jesus was eating fish in the end of Luke’s Gospel does draw a different picture of hope for me and the rest of the world, than escaping earth as fast a possible to be with God in heaven as a spirit like substance that is planted firmly in midair.