By Ian C. Mclaren

The good news is not first and foremost a message that gives hope for the afterlife; the good news is not first and foremost a message that one may have inner peace and tranquility; the good news is not first and foremost that one may experience an 'authentic' life; the good news is, first and foremost, a proclamation that the long anticipated rule and reign of God has now come in the midst of human history. The good news proclaims that we may participate in God's new creation if we will repent and accept the new reality.

- Lee C. Camp, Mere Discipleship

With the conference only five weeks away, I thought I would take things back to the beginning and examine what I believe to be the basis for all that will be discussed on April 10th^th. From my point of view, it all comes back to these words of Jesus: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15, NRSV). It is here that all those who wish to follow Jesus are invited to completely reorient their lives and bear witness to the reality that, through Christ, a different way of living has now been made possible.

According to James Dunn, the call to repentance as expressed by Jesus “would have initially been heard as a reiteration of the call of the prophets to turn back to God, that is, by implication, from a life in breach of God’s commandments, from a social irresponsibility which should have been unacceptable in the people of Yahweh;” it is a call “to radically alter the manner and direction of their whole life, in its basic motivations, attitudes and objectives, for a society to radically reform its communal goals and values.” It is a call to determined positive action, taking tangible steps to align one’s life with the Way of Jesus. It requires a decision to leave one way of life and set out on another. In the words of Lee C. Camp, repentance must lead to change; “without change, without deep thoroughgoing change, one could not enter and participate in the kingdom.” Jesus, therefore, was calling people to literally change the course and shape of their present daily lives with a view to impacting the world around them in positive and meaningful ways. Repentance is not solely about personal confession and transformation, but also involves a level of social responsibility in accordance to the arrival of the kingdom of God among us.

Furthermore, the call to repentance is qualified by the call ‘to believe’, whereby Jesus was calling all those that would follow him not to a new set of rules and principles to adhere to, nor to some sort of life-saving equation of repentance and belief equals eternal life in heaven, but to reshape their lives according to his message of good news. He was calling them, according to Dunn, to adopt a new “attitude, an orientation of life, a worldview or mind-set rooted in their innermost being ...  a fundamental conviction that motivated and gave character to the whole range of daily living and relationships;” to truly believe, therefore, “requires a personal, trusting, relational involvement in this comprehensive reordering of reality.” Within the context of powerful and oppressive political, social and religious systems that sought to set themselves as the highest authorities and to absorb all people under their destructive ways, Jesus introduced an alternative Way of living in the world with his proclamation of ‘good news’ for all. He was calling all those that wished to follow him to a life of transforming faith, a complete reorientation of how they were to go about their daily lives. Kingdom economy begins, therefore, with repentance and belief, a literal turning away from the old and believing that through Christ, a different way of living has been made possible.

The implications of this become evident as Jesus begins to call specific people to participate in this different way of living. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus calls specific people to specific actions; in Matthew 4:19, for example, he said to Simon and Andrew, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” While it is to be noted that these first disciples are described as having instantly dropped their nets in response to the call of Jesus, it must not be understated to what extent they sacrificed their old way of life to begin afresh. This giving up of the old way of life is described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer as an act wherein “the (participant) is thrown out of relative security of life into complete insecurity; out of the foreseeable and calculable realm into the completely unforeseeable, coincidental realm; out of the realm of limited possibilities and into the realm of unlimited possibilities.” The call to participate in the economy of the Kingdom is a call that separates the participants from their previous existence. One must be careful, therefore, not to assume that specific commands that Jesus made to individuals in the Gospels are to be read as universal in relation to all that may wish to follow him; what is central, according to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is the question of whether or not one will trust in the Word of Jesus Christ that has been and continues to be spoken among us, believing it to be a stronger foundation than all the securities of the world.

While the call to participate in the kingdom economy involves sacrifice, and the giving up of the old for the new may not always be an easy proposition, the good news of Jesus’ call is that to deny one’s self and follow him is to begin down a road that can literally change the world. Walter Brueggemann explains it well when he says that would-be participants in God’s kingdom are called to follow a God “who disrupts the lives of settled people, who gives them a vocation that marks life by inconvenience and risk.” At the same time, “the ground of the call is the good news of the gospel that God has a powerful intentionality for the world, which, when enacted, will make a decisive difference for good in the world." To answer the call to follow Jesus and participate in the new economy of his kingdom come is to hear the Word of God spoken afresh through him, and to reorient one’s life according to the reality of that kingdom now present in the world. What this looks like in reality will be different for all of us, but may we be willing to make the necessary sacrifices in order to demonstrate to the world that the call of Jesus has not fallen on deaf ears.

Repentance and belief: this is the necessary starting point of all things kingdom economy and the decisive difference for good that it offers to the world today.