The Kingdom of Shalom

The Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist

For many years, from the time the concept of kingdoms in instituted — remember a few weeks back when we heard about the people demanding a king — to the years during which Malachi witnessed, God spoke to God’s people by sending them prophets. After Malachi — a name that might not actually be a proper name but simply means “messenger of YHWH” — there was a 450-year period of near-unbearable prophetic silence. It was a silence that was finally broken with the first prophet of the New Testament period: John the Baptist.

The gospel of Luke gives clues to the time and place when the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah. Details such as “the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” dates John’s story to about the year 26 AD. Luke’s political and religious commentary tells us that the word of God came to John the Baptist when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea. He goes on with other historical detail: Herod was tetrarch (one of four sub-leaders) of Galilee, his brother Philip was tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene. Together, these were Rome’s political powers. Jerusalem’s religious establishment is also identified by Luke: the story takes place during the high priesthood of Annas and Annas’ successor, Caiaphas.

While we don’t look at scripture to give us any kind of encyclopedic outline of history, we can take note of major themes when they are lifted up. The details of Luke’s gospel strongly suggest that the word of the Lord through John the Baptist — this great interruption, this breaking of prophetic silence — comes neither from Rome’s imperial government nor from Israel’s religious establishment in the temple. In fact, it is pretty clear that whoever Jesus’ followers found in the desert was NOT from the leading caste! This beloved of God, this desert prophet who forged a path of holiness and warned of the coming of the kingdom, came not from the power of a business board room, not from the intelligentsia of the university laboratory, not from the leisure of the ski lodge, and not from the drama of the power lunch.

God’s word to all humanity, this timely breaker of sacred silence, came from a wild and woolly man who lived in the deep of the desert, on the fringes of society rather than in its corridors of power, at the periphery rather than at any epicenter. The divine messenger and his message originated in an unlikely place and from an improbable source. Remember Jesus asking the people: “What did you expect? A reed shaken by the wind? …Someone dressed in soft robes?” (Luke 7:24) He was none of that! John would have been far too easy to ignore if what you expected or wanted was something normal, safe, traditional. Neither John nor his message was status quo by any stretch of the imagination.

Some scholars think that John was part of an apocalyptic Jewish sect of Essenes who opposed the temple in Jerusalem (in today’s language, John was definitely anti-establishment…the temple was all about establishment). John the Baptizer was a prophet of radical dissent. Even though his father had been part of the religious establishment as a priest in the Jerusalem temple, John fled the comforts and corruptions of the city for the loneliness of the desert. There he dressed in animal skins, ate insects and wild honey, and preached. Living on the margins of society, both literally and figuratively, he preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John preached and lived and witnessed to a life that demanded radical change: a change of heart, a change of attitude, a change of discipline, a change in how one looked at the law and all the prophets that had come before him.

Marcus Borg talks about John’s message as being one of both indictment and invitation. Here we have this ascetic man with a very austere message, and the gospels say that people just flocked to John. In Mark 1:5 we read that the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalemwent out to him. This is important! This wild and woolly man with a message of change or die, with a foreshadowing of God’s kingdom on earth, was oddly compelling! Very much out of their comfort zones, people flocked to the desert, people confessed their sins, people were baptized in what even then was probably a filthy river, the river Jordan. Indictment. Invitation. (paraphrase, Daniel B. Clendenin)

People needed to repent, said John, because the kingdom of heaven is near. And indeed, once Jesus arrives, the same message continues. “Repent,” preached Jesus, “for the kingdom of heaven is near.” And when Jesus sends his followers out into villages and towns, the message goes with them: “As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’”

Kingdom. All this talk of kingdom. Jesus’ enemies rightly concluded that if Jesus was a king, a Lord, and a ruler who reigned over a realm, then he clearly usurped and upstaged the government in Rome and the temple in Jerusalem. The new kingdom in Jesus clashed with the old powers of politics and religion. This kingdom of God that first John and then Jesus announced and embodied is what life would be like on earth, here and now, if God were king and the rulers of this world were not. Imagine if God ruled the nations, and not the leader to the South, or Kim Jong-il, or Putin, or any of the other tyrants and dictators presently treating creation like their playground. Every aspect of personal and communal life would experience a radical reversal. The political, economic, and social subversions would be almost endless — peace-making instead of war mongering, liberation not exploitation, sacrifice rather than subjugation, mercy not vengeance, care for the vulnerable instead of privileges for the powerful, generosity instead of greed, humility rather than hubris, embrace rather than exclude. The ancient Hebrews had a marvelous word for this, shalom, or human well-being.

Entrance into this kingdom of shalom requires a clear, counter-cultural choice. Today, as we celebrate the Nativity of John the Baptist, we are each invited — by John, by Jesus, by all who follow Jesus — to repent, to confess, and to believe that in following the Way of Jesus, God’s kingdom has arrived. Answering John’s challenge to prove our spiritual intentions by concrete deeds rather than by claims of religious or political affiliation remains a mighty call. To live the Way remains one of the most deeply subversive acts of all time.

The claim of God’s kingdom upon my life, John preached, is ultimate. That means that the claims of the state and religious establishments, of race, gender, culture, and money are, at best, penultimate. Nothing of this world can provide the final word. The earliest and most radical Christian confession was simple: Jesus is Lord. By direct implication, Caesar is notlord or god, and neither are all the other, many false gods of popularity, success, money, sex, power. It is in John’s message that the first steps into the kingdom can be found: turn away from anything and everything that might hinder your allegiance to the Way, make straight our crooked paths, flatten the hilly terrain, and prepare a space for the birth of the Messiah into our own lives. It’s when we do this, when we make room for the kingdom of God within our own hearts, that we subvert and transcend the politics and policies of this earthly kingdom and witness to the new Way possible.

The kingdom of God
isn’t announced with handshakes
(however momentous),
political flourishes,
or speeches that move the heart.
…
it will be known
in thorough healing work:
painstaking attention to particular bodies,
committed lives, strategic action:
the binding and silencing of demons
of hatred and injustice
that will not want to leave
or lose their grip –
the mighty works, in daily life,
of flourishing community.”

Janet Morley
“Companions of God” Christian Aid 1994