by Wendy Gritter

It is interesting to me that the economy of the Kingdom is described as being about ordering things.  It would seem to me that the necessary disordering of things is the only shot we have of breaking through our haze and glimpsing the way of the Kingdom.   

One of the postures that Tim Keel speaks of in his book, “Intuitive Leadership” is the movement from control to chaos.  Now, I thought that I liked change and that I had a pretty good threshold for chaos and the creativity that could emerge from such times of disruption.  What I didn’t fully realize was that what I really liked was controlled chaos – particularly when I was in the driver’s seat.  

In the last number of years, in my work with those marginalized from the heterosexual mainstream, I have experienced a disruption of my assumptions and certainties that was threatening and uncomfortable.  I consistently felt God pulling me out of the driver’s seat and thrusting me into places of tension that I could not find a quick or easy resolution to.  And while the whisper of accusation was readily present to suggest that I’d somehow slipped down the relativistic slope, or that the way I was questioning and thinking would inevitably wound and fracture the very Jesus-community that I loved, or that God himself was shaking his head sadly at the conundrum I’d created for myself, at a deep and audacious place within my spirit came the nudge to press into these questions because they somehow “smelled a lot like Jesus”.   

The questions I was asking about how to relate and engage with my gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered, queer or intersexed neighbours seem to me to be at the heart of our search for a Kingdom economy.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they eclipse the questions of the land, or food, or money or any of the other brilliant perspectives shared by other contributors.  What I mean to simply suggest is that the heart of our search for a Kingdom economy is relational.  What we discover at the heart of relationship is what can help us sniff out the subversive, up-side down economy of Jesus.  And where relationship is lacking, where our questions get lost in the world of the theoretical, doctrinal, systematized and reductionistic, I’m afraid we begin to stink like the empire.  

The picture we have in Isaiah 11 is a profound shattering of the enmity that marks so much of our existence: 

In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together; 
      the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. 
   The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, 
      and a little child will lead them all. 

Our legacy of engaging those who do not neatly fit into our safe categories for gender and sexual identity has often been one of exclusion, oppression and enmity.  In the name of Christ and for the sake of righteousness we have fought over the semantics and constructs of orientation and identity.  And we have left human lives trampled and discarded in our wake.  Regardless of our deepest convictions about the appropriateness of committed same-sex relationships or gender transitions, we are called to live out a Kingdom economy in our relationships with those who experience life at the margins of our privileged and dominant heterosexual and gender normative status.  This will require embodying the kind of humble maturity that can acknowledge the diverse ways that followers of Jesus engage these complex and individually unique realities.  It will require a willingness to face our own anxieties and insecurities around sexuality, gender, difference and ‘the other’.  It will require a pressing in to a truly Kingdom shaped hospitality that makes room and celebrates the spiritually formative opportunity to welcome the stranger.  It will require a willingness to embrace paradox and tension and at times say, “I know not.” 

I recently had a number of delightful personal encounters all in the same day.  In the morning I had breakfast with a same-gender attracted woman who has been committed to living a single, celibate life for many years.  This has been a tremendous struggle for her and she shared about a woman she is currently very much in love with and the great challenge of daily submitting these desires to Christ.  Her faith is robust, honest, authentic.  Christ is her first love, her truest and deepest love.  Her courage and perseverance inspired me.  I then had a morning meeting with a number of pastors from a large church along with several gay Christians.  The pastors were building relationships with gay people in their local contexts and beginning to live in the tensions of denominational boundaries and guidelines, personal convictions, and deep investment in relationship.  The gay Christians in this group came to a variety of personal conclusions about God’s will for how they would live out their experience of sexual identity.  They spoke up poignantly about experiencing double standards and inconsistencies in how they were viewed and treated alongside those in the heterosexual mainstream who believed or practiced in divergent ways.  The pain AND the love in the room was palatable – and no one had a quick or easy answer to the dilemmas facing this group of Christ-followers all deeply wanting to love Jesus and build community together.  Then over lunch I met with a previously partnered, now single, gay-affirming lesbian woman who shared God’s call on her life to “love them to Him”.  She glowed with excitement as she recounted the people God has brought across her path who felt alienated from Him and from the church and the ways she felt God using her to be an encouragement and source of hope for them.  And I was blessed by her passion to share Christ.  In the evening I met with an evangelical pastor and two gay Christians who were trying to create a safe space to build bridges and truly listen to one another.  They were committed to regularly spending time together, simply getting to know one another and grow in their friendship together.  In the midst of this kaleidoscope of people, perspectives, and passions there was a common thread of welcoming some disruption, some disorder, some tension and discomfort as a way to press more deeply into the way of the Kingdom.   

In my journey I have the painful privilege of building friendship and having conversation with a good number of post-Christian gay people.  These are often men and women who, at one time in their lives, served as leaders in the church.  One recently said to me, “I appreciate that you can see that health and happiness for gay Christians can come from a variety of paths. I believe all of these paths can produce health and happiness for some people. However I would like to add, that for many gay people, like myself, health finally comes only after they have developed the courage to walk away from God.” 

The Kingdom economy is about reconciliation.  It is about breaking down enmity.  It is about experiencing and extending shalom.  It is about prioritizing people’s lives over being right. 

I would suggest that experiencing a Kingdom economy in our relationships with our glbtqi neighbours will require some disorder and disruption.  But as we take the risk to enter those spaces, where there can seem to be more tension than resolution, we will be in the kind of posture in which we can really enter one another’s lives, have new eyes to see where Christ is already at work, and begin to live out the up-side down reality of the first being last and the last being first and the lion laying with the lamb. 
 

by Abe Oudshoorn

I would like to take the opportunity of writing this blog post to reflect a bit on household management. Much of what has been written for this site thus far has focused on the idea of the Kingdom of God as a household, and how it can be organized to best reflect its purpose. I, on the other hand, will look at households themselves, and would like to offer a suggestion and hear your feedback.

My family and some friends spent a good portion of 2009 living within the home we own as an intentional community. This involved three individuals moving into our home, and us learning to both share space and live more purposefully. We met weekly for household meetings, and some of this time was spent envisioning what we would like to accomplish in this adventure. We dreamt of starting a community garden, running an after-school program at the public school down the street, opening more community houses, having neighbourhood dinners, starting a sustainable business, and other exciting activities.

However, our day-to-day activities changed little, we spent most of our time working, doing chores, hanging out with friends, and taking care of children. It seemed that while we were theoretically attempting to move away from money as the core of our existence, in reality we spent so much time making money that we had little time for the things we valued most. We often reflected that we lacked a certain amount of capital dollars that we would require to live as we dreamed (for example starting an urban organic farm), or one of us needed a six-figure job.

So I have been reflecting on this, and have thought about how our household might have been organized. I am considering the idea that each household that desires to enact the Kingdom of God, might start by supporting one member in full-time ‘ministry’. That is, within every intentional household there is one individual free from the need to work to make money, whom is supported by the others in the home. This individual could both work to meet the service goals of the household, and work to further separate the household from the economic system in which we find ourselves.

Imagine, for a moment, if every Christian household supported one member in full-time ministry. This looks quite different than every 400-member church supporting one or two pastors. Could this be one pragmatic step in moving towards a Kingdom economy?  I would love to hear your comments.

We decided to do another commercial this year.  It's quite a bit different from last year.  We have been trying to utilize a lot more art and artists in our advertising and our media this year.  We got Phil Nellis to do this great poster for us, and thanks to Ian from Rocketship Productions here in Sarnia for putting together this stop motion commercial for us.  Seven hours of taking pictures of the same chalk board, and this is what you get!

by Aaron Nicholson

If, as Len has already argued in a previous post, “The whole world is God's household,” and the economy of our world is inextricably linked to the ecology of our world, then it would seem appropriate to focus the ecological concerns within our understanding of the Kingdom and hone in on questions of agriculture.  After all, if we believe that creation is not a great cosmic accident but the careful work of the Creator, then Christians, by implication are to value it, affirming its goodness as declared by God.  Such a realization should not only cause the Christian to rethink her place within the created world, but also affect every aspect of her life—including what he or she eats.  The question at the heart of this post is simply: If we reject the dualistic theology that excludes the created world from the Kingdom and we affirm that creation matters, that our bodies matter, and acknowledge God as the ultimate Source of our food, then how should we understand food through a creational and ethical lens?  This question is not simply one of ivory-tower theology, as it is at the heart of several pressing issues in the world today.  With a world food crisis, famine, increasing GMO technology, ethanol, eating disorders, and fast food—the world is starving for a redeemed relationship with food.

Eating is not only a significant aspect of life; it is an inescapable reality.  Simply put, to eat is to live; to not eat is to die.  Indeed, all forms of life, human or otherwise, are dependent upon food for survival.  In fact, it has been said that, “The whole of nature. . . is a conjugation of  the verb to eat in the active and  passive.”   While this truth is both apparent and unavoidable, it speaks primarily to a limited view of food—that is, food’s biological function.  Most would agree that food is not simply to be understood as nourishment, but as an activity that speaks to and draws upon all aspects of life, culture, and community.  But even these added dimensions to our understanding of food are not enough.  We must go further and acknowledge that while eating should be seen as an activity relating to all of the aspects of life mentioned above, eating is not simply a physical activity, but a spiritual one—an activity in which a specific theology is embodied.  Michael Pollan hints at this point in his bestselling book, In Defense of Food:

…historically, people have eaten for a great many reasons other than biological necessity. Food is also about pleasure, about community, about family and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world, about expressing our identity. As long as humans have been taking meals together, eating has been as much about culture as it has been about biology.

Food cannot be restricted to mere biology, but must be understood to have spiritual significance.  After all, as Christians we do not simply see the farm, the soil, or the greenhouse (or, dare I say the grocery store?) as the source of our food; rather we understand our food to be a gift from God—an act of grace and providence toward humanity.  Psalm 104 affirms this reality: “You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart.”
 

If food is from God and is given to humanity as an act of grace, it should be understood and received as a gift.  In our modern society with the rise of fast food, convenience foods, calorie-counting, GMO, and eating disorders, we have not received food as gift and we have adopted a utilitarian relationship with our food.  Food, as a gift, then, that should not be taken for granted; rather it should be valued and worked for.
Those who have experienced true hunger or famine know the value of food.  However, those of us who have grown up in the affluence of the west have not experienced a lack of food and, therefore, do not truly understand the value of food.  As a result, we have seen food as nothing more than its caloric value or its ability to chase away hunger, which has led to two opposite dysfunctions.  On the one hand, the fad diets, calorie counting, and diet foods are the driving force behind the utilitarian mindset of the health-crazed populations.  In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver writes:

What the fad diets don't offer, though is any sense of national and biological integrity.  A food culture is not something that gets sold to people.  It arises out of a place, a soil, a climate, a history, a temperament, a collective sense of belonging.  Every set of fad-diet rules is essentially framed in the negative, dictating what you must give up.  Together they've helped us form powerfully negative associations with the very act of eating.  Our most celebrated models of beauty are starved people.  But we're still an animal that must eat to live.  To paraphrase a famous campaign slogan: it's the biology, stupid.  A food culture of anti-eating is worse than useless.

On the other hand, however, those who consume simply for personal pleasure with little acknowledgement of the value of food have catapulted the success of convenience foods, fast food, and junk food, and have contributed to the rapidly growing rate of obesity in North America.  What we are left with, then, are two opposing sides of the same coin—the one is health-crazed and the other unhealthy and overweight—yet both have not appropriately understood food as gift and, as a result, have not valued it.  This is seen simply in what Pollan writes:  
 

For the majority of Americans, spending more for better food is less a matter of ability than priority.  We spend a smaller percentage of our income on food than any other industrialized society; surely if we decided that the quality of our food mattered, we could afford to spend a few more dollars on it a week—and eat a little less of it.
 

One of the reasons why we have paid less for our food, eaten more of it, and valued it less is due to the rising disconnect between the provider and the consumer, resulting not only in a loss of the knowledge of our source of food, but in the work necessary for to bring it from seed to table.  Because food production is labourious, we have sought to cut corners in recent years, moving toward factory farming, GMO crops, and processed foods, in order that the work necessary to produce food would be minimized, or eliminated all together and delegated to machines.  The problem is, however, that with this shift away from the farm as the direct source of food comes a lower quality of food and—understandably—a lower cost for the consumer.  Wendell Berry asks:
 

But is work something that we have a right to escape?  And can we escape it with impunity?  We are probably the first entire people ever to think so.  All the ancient wisdom that has come down to us counsels otherwise.  It tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom.  We have tried to escape the sweat and sorrow promised in Genesis—only to find that, in order to do so, we must forswear love and excellence, health and joy.
 

Because we have tried to escape the work required of us, we have, as Berry aptly put, forsworn, “love and excellence, health and joy.”  The disconnect between the land and the table has also encouraged utilitarian eating in our culture, as it has removed the sense of enjoyment that God intended to be part of the eating experience.  Pollan writes of a study that investigated this very thing:  “In one experiment, he showed the words ‘chocolate cake’ to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. ‘Guilt’ was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of the French eaters to the same prompt: ‘celebration.’”   Because of our so-called ‘nutritionism’ we have entirely lost the pleasures of eating—the tastes, the sights, the smells, the textures, and the overall communal experience that eating was meant to be—and reduced it to a fast experience of refueling the body laden with guilt.  It is true that food is meant to be understood as a gift—one that is to be enjoyed.  After all, the final hope of the Christian is spoken of as a feast; part of God’s blessing toward Adam and Eve is in their freedom to eat of anything in the garden, apart from one tree; and Jesus himself places great significance on the eating experience as seen in his desire to feed the 5000 people gathered, his intentionality of meeting with his disciples for the last time over the Passover meal, and his invitation for the disciples to come have breakfast after he had been resurrected from the dead.  This is what Capon is getting at in his forthright manner, writing, “Man’s real work is to look at the things of the world and the love them for what they are.  That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God’s image for nothing.”   We, then, are to accept God’s gift of food to us for what it is—nourishment for our bodies that is both beautiful to the eye and full of flavour for the taste buds and, ultimately a reflection of God’s creative goodness toward humanity.
 

Feeling somewhat overwhelmed, it is difficult to know exactly where to go next.  It is safe to say, however, that much needs to change—even if only one thing at a time.  As a culture, I believe we need to return to a proper relationship with the source of our food: the farm.  Until we are properly connected with the land and know the value of real food, we are always going to be prone to accept the cheaper and lower quality food that requires little from us.  This could be as simple as planting a garden in one’s backyard or shopping at the local farmers’ market rather than the grocery store.  Furthermore, we must reconnect ourselves with the True Source of our food: the Creator.   We must remember that our food comes from God and is reflective of his goodness toward humankind.  This should not only cause us to receive the food as gift with gratitude, but to also delight in God’s goodness toward us and cause us to desire Him more.  Fr. Alexander Schmemann writes:
 

Man is a hungry being.  But he is hungry for God.  Behind all the hunger of our life is God.  All desire is finally a desire for Him.  To be sure, man is not the only hungry being.  All that exists lives by “eating.”  The whole creation depends on food.  But the unique position of man in the universe is that he alone is to bless God for the food and the life he receives from Him.  He alone is to respond to God’s blessing with his blessing.
 

When we have restored our understanding of food as a gift from God, we will no longer be interested in settling for the cheap imitation.  We will long for its fullest taste, and for food in its purest form.  We will also long to be a participant in the miracle of sowing and reaping, and thus will be more deeply connected to the food we eat and to the One who has provided it for us.  It is only then that we will be able to eat with true pleasure.  Berry writes:  
 

Eating with the fullest pleasure—pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance—is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.
 

Indeed, to eat is not simply to engage in mere biology; it is much more.  To eat is to participate in a mystery that is Divine—a mystery that is in the creation, the sowing, growing, reaping, cooking, eating, nourishing, thanking, and the blessing.  This, then, is one small—but significant way—that Christians should be participating in the work of our prayers as we long for the Kingdom to come.  To approach the table in such a way means to engage in the work of redeeming our relationship with food as a part of the larger work of the redemption of the whole of creation.

by Andrew Fulford

Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The LORD called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. (2) He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow; in his quiver he hid me away. (3) And he said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified." (4) But I said, "I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my right is with the LORD, and my recompense with my God." (5) And now the LORD says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him; and that Israel might be gathered to him-- for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD, and my God has become my strength-- (6) he says: "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." (7) Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: "Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you." (8) Thus says the LORD: "In a time of favor I have answered you; in a day of salvation I have helped you; I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages, (9) saying to the prisoners, 'Come out,' to those who are in darkness, 'Appear.' They shall feed along the ways; on all bare heights shall be their pasture; (10) they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them. (11) And I will make all my mountains a road, and my highways shall be raised up. (12) Behold, these shall come from afar, and behold, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene." Isaiah 49:1-12

The above is the second of the prophet Isaiah’s “servant songs”, and I think it is a remarkably detailed picture of God’s kingdom economy. Obviously a lot more than a simple blog post could be written about its contents, but a few things stand out to me.

Firstly, the economy described in this song is an international economy. The images of mountains being turned into roads depicts (11), if nothing else, an increase in travel from the nations to Israel. No doubt this is because, already, the salvation of the Lord has been taken to the ends of the earth (6). In God’s kingdom economy, the nations no longer hide behind mountainous walls of conflict and fear, but instead open their gates to each other, to join in a global gift-exchange.

Secondly, God’s kingdom economy is described as a place and time where human flourishing is complete. Desolate places will be given back to human cultivators of the land (8), prisoners and those who dwell in darkness will be freed to rejoin human community (9), those who are hungry and thirsty will be fully satisfied, and everyone will be sheltered from the harsh elements brought upon this world by sin (10). This is a world of light, order, and fullness, the epitome of what God intended creation to be (cf. Genesis 1).

Thirdly, this kingdom will incorporate not just all peoples (6), but all strata of society as well: in the kingdom of God, not just the lowest of low (like the prisoners mentioned above), but the highest of the kings of the earth will come to bow down before the King of the Jews (7), submitting to his righteous, just, and saving rule. Obviously, the economies of these peoples (and thus the whole earth) will thus take on a just and equitable character, like that of their Ruler.

In addition to these striking images of the kingdom economy, Isaiah also tells Israel (and thus us) how this state of affairs will come about.

Primarily, this kingdom will come about because “one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers,” (7) will fulfill his Father’s predetermined mission (1-2), despite its apparent failure during his lifetime (4). This Servant, who is Israel-in-Person (3), will be vindicated by God (4, 7-8), and thereby will be given as a sacrament of God’s covenant (8) of peace and salvation to the people, both a sign and the means by which that sign will become reality. Further, the servant-king will draw in the nations by being a light to them (6), and apparently by means of the proclamation of his life (1-2, and the whole passage in context). Ultimately, the servant’s work will cause YHWH to be glorified throughout the whole earth (3, 6).

In addition, I think this passage implicitly tells us something about our role in bringing about this kingdom (and its economy), especially in light of the rest of Isaiah (cf. 54:1-3, 66:18ff): the renewed Israel, the body of Israel-in-Person, will travel on God’s highways out to the nations, to call them to submit to God’s newly installed king, the Saviour of the whole earth. It is evident from one of the passages just cited above (66:18ff) that this proclamation will not be met with total acceptance, and so we already see a pattern that is more directly expressed in countless ways elsewhere in scripture: the church will in a sense be a re-presentation of the Servant, in that like him it will proclaim God’s kingdom, suffer in doing so, but then ultimately see vindication in the obedience of the peoples.

This last thought, that the church is to re-present Christ, is in some ways a common thread to all aspects of the life of the church, and a helpful way to meditate on the mission of the church in bringing about God’s kingdom economy. In prayer, the church prays to the same Abba by the same Spirit that animated Christ, asking God to bring his kingdom (with Jubilee of forgiven debts) to earth. In baptism, each member of the church is united to the death and resurrection of Christ. In the Lord’s Supper, the church re-presents Christ’s work to the Father, calling for him to fulfill his kingdom promises, and simultaneously unifies itself to Christ as his body. In prophetic proclamation, it proclaims the truth it was given to convey, just as Christ was sent into the world to proclaim what his Father gave him to say. In works of power, it opens the eyes of the blind and sets the captives free, just as Christ was anointed to do. In acts of service, it empties itself of riches for the sake of the poor, just as Christ did for it. In all ways and in all places, the church works to make Christ present to all people, and in this manner brings the kingdom of the Servant to the ends of the earth.