kingdomready.org

I came across this fantastic quote in “A Community Called Atonement” by Scot McKnight of jesuscreed.org

The Beattitudes are normally misunderstood as a list of virtues. The Beattitudes, however, are not a virtue list: they are a list of the kinds of people in the society Jesus maps for his listeners. Those who are responding to his kingdom vision are the poor and hungry, those who weep and those who are despised by the powerful - and those who are not responding are the rich, the well fed, the party-prone, and those are who approved by such powerful folks. No, this is not a virtue list but a sociopolitical statement: the work of God in Jesus and through the kingdom is to include the marginalized, to render judgment on the powerful, and to create around the marginalized (with Jesus at the center) an alternative society where things are (finally, by God) put to rights. Here we come into a vision of the kingdom of God on the part of Jesus that is an extension of the Magnificat and the Benedictus and Jesus’ inaugural address. pg 12

Unfortunately, in my opinion, McKnight mistakenly equates the Church with the Kingdom. I do believe that the Church is to be a signpost of the Kingdom. But that statement, in effect, says the Kingdom is not here, and the Church is not the Kingdom. Of course the Church is to live with the qualities of the Kingdom - that is what makes them the Church, and Kingdom-people!

The beauty of Jesus’ presentation of the Kingdom of God, the true restoration of Israel, and the world through Israel, the hope of all the prophets is two-fold. One, God does it. Contrary to other Messiah-claimants of Jesus’ time, God is the one who brings the Kingdom through the Messiah. All these claimants tried to bring it by themself. Two, it truly is other-worldly. It’s characteristics do not resemble whatsoever the establishments of justice made by this present evil age.