I’m moved to preach to you this morning, “Whose Kingdom Come?”
60 years ago, on March 7th 1965, people marching for freedom crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama.
In Bolivia, South America, at this same time, a Christian Missionary named C. Peter Wagner was beginning to form the ideas that would become the New Apostolic Reformation.
Central to the theology of the late 20th century was the idea of liberation;
The idea that God is a liberator of the oppressed and that rather than having everyone wait for the time when the Kingdom would Come,
Jesus ministry is meant to liberate us now.
Liberation theology was a reaction to the social injustices that were rampant around the world in the 1950’s and 60’s, and it was built on the experiences of enslavement and servitude that the colonialism of European empires had spent centuries entrenching around the world.
In South America, Gustavo Gutierrez, a catholic priest from Peru, wrote the seminal work that gave words to the movement.
The pre-eminent African American liberation theologian of our times was undoubtedly James Cone, who showed us how Jesus’ liberation movement applied to the situation of the African-American community.
(though, of course, the seeds of African-American liberation theology ran deep within the theology of Dr. King and the whole civil rights movement well before Cone published Black Theology and Black Power in 1969)
One of the central questions of Liberation theology is: Where is the power of God properly situated in the here and now?
How does God’s kingdom come down to earth to affect the lives of people today?
For the civil rights leaders, who walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, God’s power looked like a moral arc that would bring systemic racism to an end and confirm the humanity and dignity and worthiness of black people, and all of those who were oppressed by the status quo and Jim Crow.
For C. Peter Wagner, God’s power looked like a thing that could be yoked to bring on a new prophetic and apostolic age for a foundering Christianity that was being lost during massive cultural change.
Now, I want to stop for a second and just ask a couple of questions.
I just want a yes or no answer: Yes, that seems good; or No, that bothers me a bit.
First question, a world with Christianity is a good thing?
We should pray every day, the more prayer for our world the better?
There is “spiritual warfare” happening around the world and we need to be a part of it?
God wants us Christians to have dominion over the earth?
God wants Christians to stand atop the “7 mountains of society?”
Did I lose you?
Last year, when asked this final question 42% of Christians agreed with that statement.
Now maybe, like me, instead of answering that question, you were wondering to yourself, “what the heck are the ‘7 mountains of society.’
This is a concept born out of the movement that C. Peter Wagner gave voice to in the 1960’s; the New Apostolic Reformation.
The 7 mountains are: media, government, education, economy, family, religion, and arts and entertainment.
In other words, it is a movement for the here and now, a movement that seeks to take control of all aspects of our social lives in the name of God.
It is on the one hand, it shares the earthly focus of liberation theology.
On the other hand, it is the complete antithesis of liberation’s goals.
Rather than seek to free the oppressed of this age, it seeks the power of the colonizer. So it has come to be called dominion theology.
It is like the New Apostolic Reformation and Liberation Theology are brothers that were raised in the same household, have the same moral and religious upbringing, but took wildly divergent paths when they grew up.
Now, you may think that the theology of this New Apostolic Reformation movement is small, because we don’t hear a lot about it.
But, from very small rural churches to the largest mega churches, from former Southern Baptists to practicing Roman Catholics.
From the halls of major corporations to the flagpoles of a Supreme Court justice, the White House and the Department of Government Efficiency, the fingerprint of the New Apostolic Reformation has left its indelible mark.
And just so that we dispel any thought of this being a thing primarily associated with one race; Sunday morning may be the most segregated hours in our country,
But the dominion theology of this movement is heard in the pulpits of white churches, black churches, and latino churches.
It is heard in small churches that we would immediately write-off as cultish, and it is shouted out to adoring crowds in light-flashing, camera-swooping, Broadway quality church services of thousands.
To many of us, the past several weeks have seemed chaotic.
The rate of change since the new administration came into office has been staggering both in its swiftness and breadth.
Institutions like our foreign and domestic aid, the Department of Education, Social Security, the national parks, the Department of Veterans Affairs, that seemed so stable for our whole lifetimes have been or are being deconstructed as easily as if they had been built yesterday.
Given the chaos and some of the unintended consequences that many voters did not expect, you would think that there would be a great uproar about the speed of change,
But that is to misunderstand the spiritual moment we are in.
My friends, we are right now, living in the dream world that the founders of the New Apostolic Reformation have prayed for.
No amount of human suffering will turn the needle, because the dominion theology that lies behind this movement believes that everyone will be grateful when their kingdom comes.
I don’t say all of this to make you more anxious, I don’t think that’s helpful.
I don’t say this, just to be political, I don’t think that’s helpful.
I say this because it’s Lent and our Scriptures and tradition demand two things of us today.
First, the Gospel demands an answer to the question, “Whose Kingdom Come?”
And Second, - once we have answered that question and recognized the way that sin has convinced us to seek our own dominions – Christian tradition demands that we repent and return to the Lord, the one who has true dominion.
Our gospel lesson today, as is customary for the first Sunday in Lent is about temptation.
This focus on temptation is not just to make you feel bad, if your Lenten discipline only lasted four days… or less.
We hear that Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit and that he is led out into the wilderness.
We can tell by the temptations that Jesus’ experience is supposed to reference and recall the 40 years of wandering that the people of Israel did in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt.
Jesus is offered bread, like the manna in Exodus 16,
He is offered dominion and power if he will worship what is not God, like the golden calf episode of Exodus 32, and he sees the whole land that he could control like Moses band of scouts in Numbers 13.
Finally, Jesus is lifted up to the top of the Temple and told to test whether God’s angels will keep him from being dashed against the stones.
The Gospel reading ends by telling us that the “devil departed until an opportune time,” but we never actually “see” the devil again.
And this, actually, if we’re astute readers of Luke’s gospel is a bookend moment for Jesus.
This first lifting up juxtaposes the other great lifting up of Jesus that will happen at his crucifixion.
In both situations, Jesus is lifted up by the tempter;
Once by the actual personified character and later by the sinfulness of those who hold dominion in this world.
In both instances, Jesus is tempted to get himself down.
Jesus, then, shows us how trust in God hinges not on the devil’s temptation to exploit spiritual power, nor on his temptation to take earthly dominion.
As much as Jesus’ ministry was about the here and now, about the liberation of souls and freedom for the oppressed, His Kingdom Come was not about a dominiation of a political reality.
And, if that is the case, then when we see a theology that seeks dominion of this world;
I’m surely not the only one who wonders, if the god that dominion theology worships is not whispering in their ears from the pinnacle of the Temple rather than from the divine chambers of heaven.
Whose Kingdom, then, is being welcomed to the earth?
Now, if we find that we have been ushering in the wrong kingdom, then it becomes incumbent on us to return back to God.
And, this may surprise you, but for this final section of my sermon, I’m not going to focus on “them.”
What I want to say to you is that this sermon is for you and for anyone you know, who doesn’t know what to do as they see a Kingdom coming that is based on dominion rather than liberation.
The message is this, It’s time to return to the Lord.
In the past 40 years, millions of Americans have left the church.
I know that many have had good reasons, but some have just fallen away as the culture shifted.
Many who have left the church opine the fact that Christianity has become what it is, and probably even use that fact to justify their retreat from it.
In fact, what has happened is that many people of good conscience have abandoned the church and allowed bad theology to take hold of the body of Christ.
The brain and the heart of the body have said that the church is only meant for the hands and the feet; those who serve the poor, or those who attempt to use Christ to take control of things.
I say to those who have left today, it’s time to return.
It’s time to put aside whatever is holding you back and to battle for the soul of Christianity.
One of my favorite comedians, Ronny Chieng, said in one of his stand-up routines after the election,
“a lot of my friends tell me, I would die for this country, I would give up my life for this country. And I say to them, our country has slipped into 40th place in the world in our math scores. Instead of dying for our country, would you consider doing math for our country. Do math… for our country.”
Like the general Naaman in 2 Kings, who wanted to be healed of his leprosy, we are often tempted to want to do the big thing in order to be healed.
Instead of being crippled by rage or exhaustion,
Instead of opining and wringing our hands about what “those people” are doing.
Jesus is calling for a return.
This season of our national life is a wake up call.
What we have been doing to make our society better by being “good” people, or by being “spiritual, but not religious,” or by “going along to get along;”
Privatizing our spirituality, instituting a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on our religion;
What we have been doing in the church is making it about numbers.
We really want you here, because our budget needs you, because our pews need you.
No, we need you here, because it is only together that we are going to save the soul of our nation and its people.
If we want bad Christian theology, dominion theology, to give way to the Gospel of Jesus’ redemptive and liberating Love,
We need a mass movement of people with love in their hearts to return.
That is the message for this Lent.
The only way to defeat bad theology is good theology.
No amount of running away, or sticking heads in sand is going to save us from ourselves.
What kingdom do we want to come?
If we want it to be the dominion and power of theocrats, we’re doing a great job of giving the world to them as they worship a golden calf.
If we want it to be the liberating and life-giving love of Jesus that lifts up the poor and the oppressed,
Then we have some work to do.
See you next week in church.
Comments