“The Kingdom of God is at hand.” 

Matthew 10:17 

“My kingdom is not of this world … but

now my kingdom is from another place.”   

In 1933, the same year as he resigned his professorship at the University of Munich, Austrian Jewish Philosopher Martin Buber told a Christian colleague that he greatly admired Jesus Christ, but nevertheless could not accept him. He acknowledged that such an attitude must seem like obstinance to Christians - Jews steadfastly awaiting another “Messiah” that is.

But Buber opined that the church "rests on the faith that in the coming of Christ, the redemption of God for the human race had been bestowed”. The church believes that the “reign of God” has already begun. We believe that, because that’s what Jesus said, many times in fact, such as in Matthew 10:17.   Then again, Jesus said; “My kingdom is not of this world.”  So, which is it?

Martin Buber insisted that the Jewish people could not accept the Christian premise that God had established his reign in the world through Jesus, and that history had been changed and the world redeemed from its sinfulness and brokenness.  He said; “We (Jews) sense its unredeemedness.”   Mind you this was 1933!  Over the next 12 years a lot of the “unredeemedness” of the world was evident.  We Christians who wonder about this can only conclude that in Jesus, God was announcing a kingdom that would come in stages: the “now stage” evidenced by the Jesus who reigns through His church in human hearts, and the “not now/not yet” stage that awaits its revealing.   

That is what the church often refers to when it prays - "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”   We tacitly acknowledge in our Lord’s prayer what Paul described in Romans 8 as the creation’s “groaning” – in totality and each of us with it - as we (and it) awaits with eagerness the “redemption of our bodies.”   The kingdom of God must (and surely does) exist alongside and in the midst of actively rebelling “kingdoms of this world.”     

This week we’ll conclude our short series of sermons on the subject of “civic citizenship”. And further, we will look at the question of adopting (and maintaining), in the face of all the “unredeemedness” of the world, a hopeful and Christ-centered world view.  It will be our opportunity to discern how to “think Christianly” in contrast to “thinking nationalistically”, even as we affirm and live out the calling to be contributing Christian citizens.

I hope you’ll join us for this weekend’s worship.

Because of a cross,

Pastor Ken