The Sunday News
Rev Paul Damasane
WHEN the prayer continues one is met with the reality of the purpose of Jesus Christ and the church on this earth. It also speaks of the mission. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven! The state of heaven needs to be replicated here on earth. When Jesus the Christ came to this earth he was to establish a kingdom, not some organisation but a kingdom. He is called the King of Kings and we generalise that Jesus is the King of the likes of Mswati III, Moshoeshoe and Zwelithini! Bayethe!! Yes he is the King of these kings but there is more to it than that.
Thy Kingdom come, not because it had gone to some other place but rather that we seek the authority, force and benefit of the Kingdom to come. The will of the King in Heaven should be implemented here on earth. The very conflict of Islam and Christianity is based on the kingdom principle. The Muslim say the Jews and the Romans killed Jesus because he had been sent to establish a Kingdom. The king was killed before he became King hence the inscription on the cross INRI.
When we ask for God’s kingdom to come, and for God’s will to be done, while our attention is directed towards God’s acting, we are still speaking of this world, and of ourselves, as the theatres in which that action will take place. May your kingdom come here among and in us. May your will be done here among and in us.
In other words, when we pray for the coming of God’s Kingdom and the doing of God’s will, we insist that the hallowing of God’s name, far from being an otherworldly or even inner-worldly happening, pertains to this world and to our whole selves, our souls and bodies both. When we pray for the coming of God’s kingdom and the doing of his will, we anchor the call for the hallowing of God’s name in the public sphere, not in the narrow sense of our political life together (though it certainly includes that), but in the public world of what we do with our bodies whether inside or outside our homes.
And that, throughout history, has meant trouble for Christians. The gospel was of a kingdom not a mere religious philosophy or thought. It was and still is a gospel of the rulership and total control of God in our lives. But the first Christians did not come into an Empire with yet another dying and rising god mythology. They did not come with a philosophy about the immortality of the soul. They did not come preaching a good world of spirit to which the initiated could escape from the contaminated world of matter. They came with the Gospel — that God had entered into human history as a human being and accordingly, that heaven was not remote and that matter was good.
They came bringing the message that this God they worshipped as Jesus the son of Mary, announced the coming of the Kingdom of God as an earthly reality. They came preaching that this God was crucified by both Jewish and Gentile leadership for so challenging the principalities and powers of this world. And the real shocker? They preached that death was not the end of Jesus of Nazareth, but he was raised to life — in his body, a body that retained its wounds — and then taken into Heaven, there to reign over his Kingdom and from which he would soon be publicly revealed. And at that time, even Caesar would bow the knee. Hey! Chineke ebube chukwu!
And until Caesar did bow the knee, the martyrs wagered their very lives on the fact that he was defeated anyway, and though he held the power of death, he could in no way harm them. They were already sharing in the resurrection life of this Jew named Jesus.
This message was revolutionary! This unfortunately is the message eroded in the new westernised Christian dogma that belittles the kingship of Christ. It belittles the kingdom and the establishment of you and me as kings and priests in this world. This message, many magistrates and emperors of the time understood, had to be stamped out. For no matter how “good” the Christian citizens of the Empire were, their loyalty could always be called into question. If they refused to offer incense to Caesar as the “price of admission” to public life in the Empire, then they could not be trusted to bear the Empire’s good in their hearts. And of course, the first Christians did not. For they had been claimed by a Lord and God other than Caesar, they saw themselves as citizens of another Empire. An Empire that had to do as much with their bodies as with their souls, an Empire that dictated how they would live in this world as much as how they would fare in the next. Were a Roman magistrate to have overheard a Christian praying the prayer Jesus gave us, he would have been shocked — and rightly so. For he would have heard one who prayed expressing hope for the end of the Empire — Your Kingdom Come (and replace the one that’s already here); Your will be done (and not the will of the one who sat on the imperial throne).
For them, this strange revolutionary blending of religion with public life was on the wrong side of history. Intellectually insufficient and politically powerless it was only a matter of time before it withered while the glories of Rome endured.
The prayer is not about the vain repetition we make of it now. It was a declaration of the taking over of the lives of the people by one Jesus the Christ who then became Lord and King over their entire lives. That is where the western form and presentation of Christianity failed us. The need to accommodate the Caesar and the urge to maintain an orthodox Catholicity made us lose the depth of the Kingdom principles that the mission of Jesus Christ was.
That is where the African can save Christendom. His understanding of God is not the compartmentalised Sunday type of relationship but a lifestyle of total control and rule by God. We need to see the Lordship and will of Christ as a daily lifestyle.
I am getting carried away in the Spirit!
I could continue . . . but let me sheath my pen for the coming week notwithstanding that I am not done with this.
Suffice also to say the kingdom is still here.
We are still here.
And . . . with our brothers and sisters in the ancient faith, we continue to pray, your kingdom come; your will be done. And, I hope, we continue to mean what they meant: your kingdom come and finally replace the false kingdoms of this world; your will be done ahead of those who will to rule our lives. And not only do we pray it. We ought also to live it! We continue to live out this revolutionary Gospel that this world, no matter how fallen, is good. That this world is even now being redeemed and renewed by God’s Holy Spirit, that, indeed with the Cross and Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, the redeeming work is done and we await now only its final appearing. He is King!
We are his kingdom! Shalom!
