Scripture: Matthew 6:10; Romans 13:1-2; Matthew 5:3; Matthew 5:5 Series: 2023
A Lenten sermon, part of a series praying through the Lord’s Prayer, focused on ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ Wilson argues that to pray for God’s kingdom is an inescapably political act, surveying how America’s kingless founders read Scripture (Romans 13, the flawed Old Testament kings, Moses as republican lawgiver). Using Archimedes’ bathtub discovery as the governing metaphor, he claims the coming kingdom of heaven ‘displaces’ worldly kingdoms, institutions, and our own desires without erasing our will. The Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount show the concrete shape of that kingdom and how far we are from it. He closes by calling the congregation to let Lent displace their preconceptions, even their politics, and to be transformed to love, sacrifice, and give as Jesus does.
Illustrations: no-king-since-1783, hebraic-republicanism-founders, colonies-romans-13-revolution, archimedes-eureka-displacement
March 5
thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
We haven’t had a king in this country since 1783. It has been a longtime since it has technically been a kingdom. We’ve used words like commonwealth, democracy, republic. Words that harken back to classical times. Some of the great theorists who influenced the founding fathers of this country were not only great scholars of the classics of the Greek and Roman world, but also of the Hebrew Bible. The printing press and reformation allowed many more scholars to study Hebrew. They studied deeply the formation and governmental structure of the ancient Hebrew kingdoms and they called Israel under Joshua and Moses and republic. This took place, especially in the time of the English Civil War in the 17th century, the formative moment for that country and for ours. The Hebrew language revival made republican exclusivism possible by introducing into Protestant Europe the claim that monarchy could be a sin. King James I knew his Hebrew and Greek and the sections of the King James Bible he was most concerned with were 1 & 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles, or descriptions of the Pharaoh as a tyrant. These were lively debates, deeply influential on the founders of this country.
Today, we live in this country without a king. We also say, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. In a world without the ancient monarchy, how should we understand Christ’s kingdom?
Series Intro
My friends, for this season of Lent, we are going to be slowly reading and praying through the Lord’s Prayer. These familiar (or unfamiliar words) are a radical call to seek God’s will in this world. And to understand God’s vision for ourselves and those around us. Today, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Anytime you mention kingdom, you mention politics. I don’t think a lot of Christians like to talk about politics. It’s pretty divisive. I mean, some churches are very into it, but they want to promote their own secular view of politics and use the church as a marketing mechanism. For that, Christ becomes a tool to further your worldly ambitions. The history of the church has seen that many times. Modern people who are trying to promote values are no different. But to speak of a kingdom is to speak of politics. Politics is how people are organized. And in the 1760s and 1770s, people in the 13 colonies were really struggling with how they felt the best way to organize themselves would be. There was a budgetary crisis in England. Parliament realized that the colonies were not being taxed as much as the people in England. So Parliament increased taxes. What happens every time taxes increase? People get mad. Nobody likes it. And so we have the story of many folks trying to be faithful to what they understand is true and good and they supported the king, and others tried to be faithful and true and they denounced the king. And denouncing the king is a pretty radical thing. They had to deal with a lot of biblical arguments against revolution, especially Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 13, where it says:
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
Some have said the founding fathers were disobedient to the Bible because they rebelled against the king. However, many preachers in the colonies found it easy to preach against the king by looking at the Old Testament. Many of them were the descendants of Puritans who had won the first part of the English civil war and then lost the second part. They had found refuge in the colonies. There’s plenty of biblical imagery about abusive tyrants and kings. It’s a pretty unifying thread throughout the Old Testament. Pretty much all kings and rulers have flaws, deep flaws. I think Josiah is the only one who comes off pretty well. Even David has his great flaws. Solomon has his great flaws, Their children are nothing but flaws. There’s not a lot to be said for these forms of government. When the founders looked to the Old Testament for inspiration they looked to Moses as the Law Giver and the original law as filled with Republican ideals. They saw a holy nation without a king.
And yet Jesus teaches people to pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a political claim. It’s not a religious one that you can hold onto and separate from the rest of your life. To pray God’s will be done is a political act. I say this to be provocative because Jesus is being provocative here.
To call for the coming of God the Father’s kingdom is to displace the politics of the world. This world is run on scarcity. There are limited resources and the people who possess those resources and control those resources have great power. A good way for us to imagine the coming of the kingdom of God is to think back to the Greek mathematician, Archimedes. He was trying to measure the volume of an object. He couldn’t figure it out. And then he sat in a bathtub and watched as the water went up because his body and displaced the water. And so in order to measure the volume of the object, he didn’t need to measure the object itself, but the volume of water that it displaced. That’s when he jumped out of the bathtub and ran down the street naked, screaming, “Eureka. Eureka. I found it. I found it.” Displacement.
The coming of the kingdom of heaven displaces the worldly kingdom. The calling on the kingdom of heaven to come displaces the kingdoms that are already here. Whether or not they have a king or a governor or a president or a prime minister, they’re displaced by the kingdom of heaven. They are not eternal. There is no president in heaven. There are no senators in heaven. There are no mayors or governors or county judges. These are all positions and institutions dependent on our fallen world and the coming of the kingdom of heaven displaces them.
God’s will displaces the will of the world, but it doesn’t displace our will. This is the key to what is going on when we pray to God, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We ask God’s will to merge and transform with our own, to displace the worldly desires of our hearts and to transform our own desires.
When was the last time that you witnessed the way you understand the world displaced? When was the last time you witnessed your worldly desires displaced by heavenly desires? That is the call of every time you pray the Lord’s Prayer. That is a radical call, an enormous call, as big a claim as anything you would make in your life. It is a call to a changed life. Sometimes by repetition, we make this call ordinary and plain. We domesticate God’s will to fit inside of our own self-conception. We domesticate God’s kingdom fit inside the comfort level of the status quo.
The kingdom of God is not vague. It’s concrete. We see what it looks like in the Sermon on the Mount. The Lord’s prayer takes place in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. And we see here in these words, what God’s kingdom looks like in reality. We see how far away we are from it.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Do we feel like the poor in Spirit are blessed right now in our world? If they are not, we’re not in God’s Kingdom.
Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Do we feel like the meek of being blessed right now? Over the last 2000 years, many Christians tried to bring about the kingdom of heaven by bringing about their own kingdom and calling it Christian. This is not what Jesus is talking about. To pray, thy kingdom come is to let go of ambitions of power and authority and offer to Jesus Christ all we have.
“Since we desire, power and autonomy—that is the essence of human pride—had Jesus exercised power first, we would have followed him only out of admiration for his power. We would have followed him, hoping primarily to gain a share of that power… are the logic of the cross is that victory goes not to the strong, but to the just, who submit to the justice, in power of God.”
To pray thy will be done is to let go of ambitions of self-righteousness and goodness apart from God. To pray on earth as it is in heaven is to pray that all of the cosmos be unified under the lordship of Jesus Christ. The Lord’s prayer is a radical prayer.
My brothers and sisters, the season of lent, May you open yourself up to its power. May you seek to have your worlds displaced. May you seek to be transformed here and now. Come, Holy Spirit. Pray thy kingdom come thy will be done. It is a prayer of conversion and transformation. Pray that God be with you. Pray that the life of heaven may be the life on earth. The life on earth is not the standing period until heaven, but the life of heaven may be on earth. May we love as Jesus loves. May we sacrifice as Jesus sacrifices. May we give as Jesus gives. May we see the destruction of the world as contrary to the will of God and work for God’s justice in this place. May we not be satisfied in ourselves.
In this season of Lent, as we discern and pray as a church, may we pray God’s will be done consistently. May we be willing to look back again at our preconceptions and assumptions about what we think God is telling us to do and be open to heaven displacing our life on earth, even our politics. God is making all things new.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, may your kingdom come. May your will be done. May these words of yours be fresh and strange and transformative us for us this day, In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.