The Already and the Not Yet

Connection/Tension

(Play video from Raymond MacDonald)

New series Vineyard 101: Finding Identity in our Distinctives.

What happens when you miss the point of a story? Usually, it means you will find it uninteresting and irrelevant to your life. Or you will try and impose your own meaning because you’ve missed its meaning.

For example, many people have watched the Lord of the Rings and walked away assuming the point of the story was about destroying the ring of power and ridding the world of the evil of Sauron. That certainly needed to happen, but the real point of the story was getting the rightful king on the throne, for it would be from his reign that peace and prosperity would return to Middle Earth.

Again, when we miss the true point of the story - of any story - it can leave us with the impression that, while interesting, it is completely irrelevant to our lives. Or, we will try and impose our own meaning to it, missing its point entirely.

I think Christianity has often made this mistake regarding the message of Jesus. We’ve made it into a message about how to get to heaven. And while eternal life is an one outcome of the story, it’s not the point of the story. When we assume this is the only point of the story, the story become very irrelevant for our current life because it only seems to deal with the next life. Once I’ve got my ticket to heaven punched, there’s nothing else to do. Or worse, we will impose other meanings onto the story - often self-centered ones - that have nothing to do with the real story.

As a movement, the Vineyard understands that the story of Jesus is not primarily a story about how to go to heaven, but about how God is bring heaven back to earth through his anointed king. Our phrase for this distinctive is The Already and the Not Yet. What this means is that We find the meaning of Jesus’ story in his message about the kingdom of God.

Text

Mark 1:14–15 “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’”

Jesus coming on the scene created a stir. He was announcing that the long awaited kingdom of God was near. Any cursory glance at the gospels will show that the kingdom of God was his primary message. But in saying this, what did the people hear, and what did Jesus actually mean?

For Jesus’ audience, what they heard was that the time for their long exile to be over. For 500 years they had lived under the thumb of foreign powers. For them, the kingdom of God meant God’s anointed king - a messiah - to come drive these foreigners away so that Israel would be restored as an independent nation again. This is what peace and prosperity and kingdom meant to them.

And this expectation is what made Jesus’ message so confusing. He didn’t act anything like how they thought a messiah would act. He talked about the kingdom of God - a lot - but it didn’t sound anything at all like what they were imaging. Jesus said in his kingdom the first would be last and the last first. How upside down is that! He spoke nonsense about loving your enemies, doing good to those who persecuted you, and going so far as to say that if a Roman soldier forced you to carry their pack one mile, carry it two. Is he nuts! Jesus was doing all these things that sure looked like someone who was anointed by God, including healing the sick and casting out demons, but he never spoke a word against the Romans, never tried to raise an army, never offered violence as a way to deal with violence. It was all very un-messiah-like. Maybe, they thought, Jesus didn’t know how to start a revolution and needed help, so at one point, after he had miraculously fed over 5,000 people, they tried to take him by force and make him king.

But the kingdom of God revolution that Jesus was starting looked vastly different from their vision of military violence and political self-determination. For Jesus, the kingdom of God wasn’t about being free of Roman occupation, or even about how to go to heaven when you die. It was about bringing the rule and reign of God back to earth. The kingdom of God is the active rule of God on earth, where God’s will in heaven is enacted upon the earth. Your kingdom come. How? Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. For the Vineyard, this is where we find the real meaning of Jesus’ life and message.

But not only did Jesus’ image of the kingdom look vastly different, its timing was different as well (see Jewish expectation slide). For the Jews, their expectation for the kingdom of God was that it would end this present age and usher in the age to come. But even here, Jesus offered a different understanding. He said the kingdom had begun with his coming, but it wouldn’t come in its fullness until he returned (see Already/Not Yet slide). Jesus indicated that the age to come was beginning with his first coming, but this present age would still continue. This age and the age to come would run on parallel tracks until Jesus returned putting a final end to this present age. This is what we mean when we say the kingdom is already and the not yet.

Jesus’ kingdom vision, the already and not yet, is the center we live out of in the Vineyard. For us, this is the thread the connects the Old and New Testaments as a single story that is centered in Jesus. We live in this in-between time between Jesus inaugurating his kingdom, but still waiting for its final consummation. If we miss this, we miss the primary point of Jesus’ life and ministry.

Gospel/Response

The already and not yet of the kingdom has some very practical applications for us:

We understand that each of us has a mission as an ambassador of the kingdom of God. Through leading, service, giving, we all play our part in partnering with Jesus to expand his rule and reign.

We understand that we have been thrust into an war with those things that are opposed to God’s rule and reign. Our warfare is not against people, but against the places where Satan’s rule still brings darkness in the form of injustice, despair, disease, and death.

We understand that we are called to announce that the kingdom has come in Jesus. People can begin to experience the presence of the kingdom now by surrendering their life to the Lordship of Jesus.

We understand that we are called to demonstrate the power of the kingdom by continuing the powerful work of Jesus. Living in the already/not yet tension means that we go out with complete faith that Jesus’ kingdom truly has invaded this world, and as representatives of his kingdom we can lay hands on the sick and expect healing to happen. But this tension also means that God’s will is not the only will at work in the world, and that the will of sinful humans, and the will of satan, is also still present, and so not everyone we pray for will be healed.

The Vineyard’s understanding of the kingdom of God affects everything we do. It explains why we do what we do. We are called to live in light of the in-breaking kingdom that Jesus began. And even though it’s not yet here in its fullness, we can begin to live in light of it now as kingdom citizens.

The kingdom of God informs why we take care of orphans in Africa, why we collect candy for Carnall, why we host a Christmas pantry, and why in the future we will adopt kids from Carnall for Christmas, why we will run Alpha, and everything else we do. It’s not so we can keep you busy or take your money. It’s all done in the hope that in some small way the people we serve will see a glimpse of another kingdom and come to its light. This is what we mean every Sunday when we repeat our vision to embody the love of Jesus to our neighbors.

Tim Worgan once told me he had a parishioner tell him he only wanted enough Jesus to get to heaven. While I admire his honesty, I’m not sure that’s how it works. If Jesus’ message of the kingdom is not exciting to you, if being invited to participate in it isn’t inspiring to you, you might as well move on. I don’t do a lot of messages about five steps to a better marriage, how to biblically manage your money, or how to get along with cranky people. I believe the Bible can inform us about those things. But I don’t think its main message is about how you can live your best life now - at least not the way we normally hear that. I do think living out of the kingdom of God as your center will result in your best life, but it doesn’t mean an easy life. But for me, Jesus and his kingdom is really the only thing I’ve found that’s worth giving my life for.

And so we come back to where we started. Mark 1:14–15 “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”” The good news, where we get the word gospel, is not about going to heaven. Its about God’s kingdom coming to earth in Jesus Christ. And Jesus’ call today is the same as it was then. Repent.

If you are not a Christian, Jesus offers you a new centering story, one that is not situated on yourself and making yourself happy, but on him. It is an invitation that will demand everything from you - don’t let anyone tell you differently. But the surprising thing about Jesus’ kingdom is that by losing, we really win. If you want to enter his kingdom then I invite you to take the next step of baptism. Come talk to me or go to the link on the screen (next step slide).

If you are a Christian, what you have heard this morning may be a very different story than they one you thought the Bible was telling. That’s not your fault. The church of the last 100+ years has reduced the message of Jesus to how to go to heaven. But God has a much bigger vision in mind than that. He wants to see heaven come back to earth. That is our future, not as angels playing harps on a cloud in the sky, but as fully-embodied humans as God always intended us to be living on an earth that is how he always intended it to be. God has something way bigger in mind for you than just getting you into heaven. To the extent we make it about going to heaven we will miss the point of the. Worse, we will make the story about our self. And so we must also repent. Change our mind. Embrace the life of the kingdom that Jesus is offering.

Jesus has a mission and vision for your life that spring from his story and what he is doing. It is a mission and vision that comes from living out the already and not yet of the kingdom of God.

Response: anoint people as kingdom reps and pray for vision/mission.