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.

By Michael Krahn

In Mark 5 we read of a man with an unclean spirit. He had been living among the tombs; he was uncontrollably violent; he spent his days crying out and cutting himself with stones.

When Jesus arrives near these tombs, the man runs out and falls down before him. Jesus, wasting no time, commands the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For some reason, Jesus then honors the request of the unclean spirit to be sent out of the man into a nearby herd of pigs. Upon possession, the pigs rush down a steep bank into the sea and drown.

Let’s set aside for the moment an interesting discussion we could have about human and animal demon possession and look at the reactions of the people effected by Jesus’ actions in the story.

The herdsmen, now suddenly unemployed, flee the scene and start telling people – in other words, the story goes viral, and of course the usual ambulance chasers and journalists and presumably the pig’s owners, rush to the scene. There they see a trail of hoof prints down a steep bank and in the water below the carcasses of some 2000 pigs.
Not a pretty sight.

Returning from this gruesome sight, they find the man who was previously possessed by a demon sitting calmly, now clothed and in his right mind. For some reason this causes them to be afraid and they beg Jesus to leave the area.

Why?

Jesus had just healed a man; he had freed him from derangement. This man went from living in tombs, spending his days crying out and cutting himself, and responding with uncontrollable violence to calm, composed, and clothed.  You would think these facts would be cause for rejoicing. But no.

To replace a herd of 2000 pigs, at today’s prices, would cost a farmer upwards of $500,000. You can see why Jesus is suddenly seen as a threat. How could he show such careless disregard for half a million dollars worth of someone else’s assets just for the sake of saving one lunatic?!? Obviously the pigs’ owner is going to have some questions,
like “Who’s going to pay for that?”

Ultimately, by begging Jesus to leave, the people of that region were telling him that they valued pigs over people. Jesus of course doesn’t see it this way, but he honors their request. Freedom from bondage is not your thing? Ok, I’ll take it elsewhere…

In Jesus vision of economy, in the Kingdom Economy, humans are valued over dollars. So is freedom.

This reminds me of a situation I was involved with a few weeks ago. I met and became a friend of a young man who is a cocaine addict about a year ago. It’s been a long, tough year for him. His mother has prayed for him and begged him to enter Teen Challenge and recently, after a bad user experience, he finally called and set up a screening
interview for himself.

It costs $100 just be interviewed for admittance and another $1000 if you are accepted into the program. This is partly because Teen Challenge accepts no government funding in order to remain a Jesus-based solution to drug and alcohol addiction.

So I gladly took $100 of our church’s money and paid for the interview for my young friend. Of course, even if he does get into the program there’s no guarantee he’ll stay or that he’ll be cured of his addiction. Nonetheless, it was a hopeful development and I was happy to pay for it.

At one of our staff meetings that week we talked about this situation. We dreamed of a world where dollars equaled cures and all agreed that if throwing money at serious problems always worked, we’d spend our days raising money instead of doing the heavy but rewarding work of helping addicts and others in bondage. Of course, this isn’t exactly the way it works.

Even so, there are ways in which a financial sacrifice can make a crucial difference in the life of someone in bondage. That sacrifice might look like an emptier bank account, but it might also look like working a few less hours each week so that you can help free someone in bondage.

The question is, given the choice in cases where the mental health of one individual could be restored, would we choose that restoration at a personal financial cost or would we rather choose to live at a reasonable distance from the deranged man living in a nearby
graveyard?

We choose the latter all the time. Just substitute the word “graveyard” with “psychiatric hospital” or “hostel” or “alley” and you’ll see what I mean.

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.