The Kingdom That Never Came

FROM JESUS TO JAMES MADISON

“Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.”  - “Error”  #15 in the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX

The latter-day religious apologists who clamor for some kind of official display of piety in public life, would do well to ponder these words:  “Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven -- But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6: 1, 6).

Although he said “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ (Matthew 5: 37), Jesus of the Gospels did not at all times go out of his way to avoid ambiguity, confusion and even deliberate equivocation in his pronouncements, when simple decency would seem to call for clarity.  Yet in Mark 4:10-12, Jesus openly and clearly states that he advocates the intentional ambiguity of parables as a working principle in his ministry to the multitudes “lest they should turn again and be forgiven.”  Matthew, Mark and Luke also record Jesus admonishing the beneficiaries of his divine powers to tell no one about it, as well as charging his disciples to tell no one he is the Christ, the implication being that, seemingly, he is.  Even the seemingly more forthright Gospel according to John exuded such an aura of mystery and portentousness that most people coming into contact with Jesus would likely have been sorely perplexed about what to make of this human cipher (Matthew 9:30, 16:20; Mark 5:43, 8:29-30; Luke 8:56, 9:20-21 and practically all of John).  This note of evasion, secrecy and mystery runs throughout the Gospels, and given the extreme urgency of Jesus’ message, it is troubling that hardly anyone has pointed out the problematic nature of such portentousness and deliberate opaqueness from the point of view of our common humanity.  One might reasonably expect that an all-powerful god intent on saving a pathetic race of creatures which he himself created, could have, and would have, presented his message clearly and distinctly, through his son or otherwise, in such a way that would have compelled the assent of every single human soul, past, present and future.

            As it happens, the statements in Matthew denouncing public expressions and affectations of piety are remarkably straightforward.  However, it would be a serious mistake to view Jesus’ words here as an echo of the prophetic ire of Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Micah, all of whom denounced people’s unseemly concern with ritual and the ostentatious trappings of their religion while ignoring the social implications of the sublime morality handed down to them from the time of Moses.  The passage just quoted from Matthew is based upon, and entirely consistent with, Jesus’ own mistaken belief that “there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Matthew 16:28).  Similar statements are found in Mark 9:1, and Luke 9:27, and they are of cardinal importance for the Synoptic Gospels.  Jesus makes it quite clear that catastrophic events culminating in the destruction of the world will precede the coming of the kingdom: “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:34-35).  Again, this ominous message also figures prominently in Mark (13:30) and Luke 21:32).  Indeed, Jesus’ entire ministry makes no sense apart from this dire prediction. Official or unofficial, public displays of piety are obviously utterly worthless in the eyes of Jesus.  What matters above all is whether you are saved now from imminent eternal damnation by believing in Jesus Christ and the coming of the kingdom of God, and “he who does not believe will be damned” (Mark 16:16).  It is highly doubtful that any of the people who were standing around at the time and actually heard Jesus’ prediction would survive for 2000 years or better, a state of affairs that would have to obtain in order to make sense of 20^th Century Christian talk about the coming of the kingdom.

            This urgent note of salvation is sufficiently stressed by the Synoptic Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ ministry, and it cannot be denied short of an egregious misreading, and falsification, of Scripture.  That, however, has not deterred a large number of his more “enlightened” followers from redrawing Jesus in their own image in a vain attempt to find a way out of this dilemma without giving up their devotion to Christ. Some seem almost embarrassed by this most important aspect of the Gospels’ “glad-tidings,” when they do not ignore it altogether.  Many new, popular wines have been poured into the old skin of the New Testament in sometimes grotesque attempts to make Jesus’ flesh and blood, shall we say, more palatable to the tastes of one’s contemporaries, and more relevant to one’s own current affairs.  Most such attempts, however, are likely to leave a bad taste in the mouths of responsible and objective scholars and historians, whose sole agenda is the pursuit of truth.  Truth, of course, may sometimes leave the most unpalatable aftertaste of all.