Kingdom Metaphors

Jesus loved to speak about the Kingdom of God in parables, metaphors, and stories as ways to describe different facets of the kingdom in ways that our human minds can grasp. Over the last couple months I've heard in sermons or read in books or morning liturgy several other metaphors that captured my imagination and helped my mind wrap around the idea of the Kingdom now and Kingdom come. I figured I'd share a few of them here in case others found them useful or at least thought-provoking along your own journey.

Venn Diagram

Our church's sermon series back in the winter went through the Lord's Prayer line-by-line and the guest speaker for the "your kingdom come" section introduced the idea of the Kingdom like a venn diagram, where the Kingdom of God is slowly, yet daily eclipsing the fallen world...and I may have missed the main point of that sermon as my brain began to explore different facets of that metaphor. Naturally, Kingdom metaphors fall apart at some point, but one angle intrigued me. If the Kingdom was "at hand" (Mark 1:15) with Jesus' arrival 2000+ years ago and has been invading the fallen world ever since, how come the world feels even more broken these days?

Sure, we can all point fingers, but what if the perceived increase in sin and immorality is just the fact that it is getting cramped here in the fallen world. As the Kingdom of God circle eclipses the fallen world circle, evil can't sprawl like the suburbs. It instead concentrates--bottling up and pressurizing evil in a smaller and smaller area--or era of time. That would explain our perception, but that shouldn't lead us to despair or fatalism. We have hope in a bright future, and, as citizens in God's kingdom, we have a job description (Philippians 3:20). Just as Roman citizens were supposed to bring empire culture, beliefs, and lifestyle to the places they lived, so are we to bring the culture the Kingdom into our ordinary days and communities. Though the days may seem dark, the darkness cannot overcome the light (John 1:5).

Shattered Glass

Back in my advent readings last year, one of the SheReadsTruth writers described Adam and Eve's actions in Genesis 3 as taking a bat to the windshield of Creation. The form holds, it doesn't shatter, but it is cracked all over. Quite the vivid mental picture. The fractured world needs fixing but repair jobs of merely human effort won't do. A total transformation was and is required and began with God's son. And with the great commission, we are all called to continue the mission of restoration. To go and make.

A Hebrew phrase and associated interpretation I learned about recently seems to capture this idea well. "Tikkun olam" or "repairing the world" acknowledges that the world is fragmented and our actions as God's image bearers can help mend Creation. We can't fix the cracks ourselves, of course, but we can allow God to use us as tools and supplies. Reminds me of how diverse the body of Christ is described in Paul's letters. Each of us has our own gift to use and role to play.

Brick by Brick

This last metaphor came from a passing mention in a morning prayer that I'll quote below: 

Jesus, we believe in your kingdom coming. Even amid pain and despair, we believe that...with each unknown disciple who stretches her arm as a bridge between a broken world and a holy kingdom--you are laying a brick for the New Jerusalem. Amen.

Paul describes us as soldiers (2 Timothy 2:3-4) and ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20). Ambassadors pursue the King's interests and soldiers fight for the King's interests. Yet somehow diplomacy and invasion look an awful lot like a restoration project in the life of Jesus and the early church. I think they recognized that something about what we do in the here and now that affects the eternity we already live in. How that all works, I don't know.  But if the past, present, and future are all simultaneously wrapped up in eternity, then what we do (or fail to do) in the here and now has eternal implications. Like Tolkien's character Niggle who spent his whole life trying to paint the perfect tree to only finish a leaf, but later find the leaf he painted on the great tree in the allegorical heaven of Tolkien's tale. What we do in the 'already but not yet' world of today somehow creates something real in the Kingdom. What are you building?