A friend of mine often responds to “How are you?” with “I’m livin’ the dream.”
Sometimes, I’m not sure if he’s being serious or sarcastic. Maybe it’s both, depending on the day, or the type of dream.
Perhaps Jesus establishes us as dream-livers, as those who are, indeed, livin’ the dream. But this is not to speak of dreams as things that are not real, as opposed to reality. Rather, it’s thinking about dreams as alternate realities that may, in fact, be as true or more true than that which we call “reality.”
Afterall, Jesus enters the scene in Mark’s Gospel proclaiming, “The time has come…The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mk 1:15, NIV). But, perhaps those hearing him might have been a little perplexed, even disbelieving. The life they lived didn’t feel like what the “kingdom of God” should feel like, they may have thought. The kingdom of Herod and his temple…sure. The kingdom of Caesar and Roman occupation…unfortunately. But, the kingdom of God…?
At this, we may be able to relate. Jesus proclaims to us, “The kingdom of God has come near” – or “is at hand” in many other translations. But our lives perhaps don’t feel like what we’d imagine is God’s kingdom. We’ve no Herods, but we have plenty of bosses and demands occupying our calendars and days and nights. We’ve no Caesars, but we have plenty of empires rising and crumbling. What did Jesus mean – “the kingdom of God is at hand” – really?
Here’s a proposal. What if Jesus meant it? What if Jesus meant that in some way that was hard to see, and is still hard to see, his presence announced or inaugurated a reality every bit as real, or more, as that which we do see? To see Jesus in the gospels, or in First Century life, is to see the sudden injunction, the physical presence of a reality heretofore imagined, dreamt, and hoped for. As it says in Hebrews, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word” (Heb 1:3, NIV). In Jesus, we see the fullness of what God is like, making all the places Jesus roams the reality of God’s kingdom. And, as we profess in the Nicene Creed, we believe that Jesus’ “kingdom will have no end” (UMH, 880).
Perhaps this feels a little too sci-fi or comic-booky – a little like a metaverse or something. And maybe that’s as it should be. We may, in fact, be able to see ways in which Jesus’ kingdom is a dream come to true, and in other ways, we find it more fancifully imaginary. Perhaps that’s about our perspective, our discipleship, our imagination and vision, and also the reality of sin in the midst of our world and hearts. But, when we read the gospels, we see not just Jesus but the character of the kingdom of God. He walks, bearing the dream of the kingdom in his being, so that we all may see that his reality is truly our reality, by his grace.
This month, we’ll be exploring some of these themes through our preaching and worship. We’ll focus on scenes from the Gospel of Mark in which women in the scenes see the vision or dream of God’s kingdom in Jesus and respond with acts of discipleship. The series will draw upon the work of Jeffrey W. Aernie’s Narrative Discipleship: Portraits of Women in the Gospel of Mark (Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2018). Here are the scenes and passages we’ll read and explore together:
Sept. 8 – Simon’s mother-in-law (Mk 1:29-13) and the bleeding woman (Mk 5:25-34) – showing the restored life of the kingdom of God;
Sept. 15 – the Syrophoenician woman (Mk 7:24-30) – showing the declarative speech of the kingdom of God;
Sept. 22 – a poor widow (Mk 12:41-44) and the woman who anoints Jesus (Mk 14:3-9) – showing the sacrificial character of the kingdom of God; and
Sept. 29 – Mary, Mary, and Salome in Mark’s passion narrative (Mk 15:40-41, 47; 16:1-8) – showing the cruciform, or sacrificial and selfless, shape of the kingdom of God.
Through worship this month, we’ll see Jesus embody the dream we’re all living by his grace. We’ll see the ways in which who he is and what he does display the character or shape of the kingdom of God. And we’ll see women within the Gospel of Mark who show us what livin’ the dream of the kingdom of God looks like, so that we too may follow Jesus in his kingdom way.
Comments