God's Reign/Realm/Kingdom... and Frederick Buechner

You wouldn't really expect any other 1,900 year old literary collection to reflect the cultural sensitivities of a completely foreign contemporary setting, but that's exactly what many of us do with the Bible. We are surprised and sometimes taken aback when we expect the Bible to express itself one way, and what it really says is something strikingly different.

Case in point. Many contemporary thinkers and church people are uncomfortable with the phrase "kingdom of God." Some are uncomfortable with the "male-ness," the "assumed patriarchy" of something called a "king-dom." Those who pay attention to these kinds of concerns have attempted to alleviate that tension by translating male terms for monarchs and monarchies with non-gender-specific words (eg. "Sovereign" for "King," "realm" or "reign" for "kingdom" and the like. That makes some old favorite hymns a little difficult to sing ("Lead on, eternal sovereign" doesn't roll off the tongue for many as does "lead on, o king eternal), but it kind of lets folks at least talk about what the Bible means when it mentions it.

Another way to approach the whole "kingdom of God" discussion is the way author Frederick Buechner does in his remarkable little book Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, published the year I graduated from college. In Wishful Thinking Buechner offers brief essays on a number of very common but often misunderstood and confusing personalities and ideas in a way that makes them accessible. Here's what he writes about "The Kingdom of God:"

"It's not a place, of course, but a condition. Kingship might be a better word. 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,' Jesus prayed. The two are in apposition.

"Insofar as here and there, and now and then, God's kingly will is being done in various odd ways among us even as this moment, the kingdom has already come.

"Insofar as all the odd ways we do God's will at this moment are at best half-baked and half-hearted. the kingdom is still a long way off, to be more precise and theological.

"As a poet, Jesus is maybe at his best in describing the feeling you get when you glimpse the Thing Itself -- the kingship of the king official at last and all the world his coronation. It's like finding a million dollars in a field, he says, or a jewel worth a king's ransom. It's like finding something you hated to lose and though you'd never find again -- an old keepsake, a stray sheep, a missing child. When the kingdom really comes, it's as if the thing you thought you'd never find again is you."