A third view of the Kingdom of God reacts strongly to the individualism and private spirituality of a privatized religion, and sees in Jesus’ words a socially transforming message. In 1917, while the kingdoms of this world were at war, while revolution stalked Russia and set up a dictatorship of the proletariat, while labor strikes were sweeping across North America, Walter Rauschenbusch delivered four addresses at Yale Divinity School. He had been pastor at the Second German Baptist Church in a suburb of New York City politely called “Hell’s Kitchen.” He had seen children working 14-hour shifts in dark and dirty factories. He watched pregnant women hemorrhage to death while standing at their industrial posts. He said funeral prayers for men who died in tragic accidents, whose families would be turned out into streets at the loss of income and lack of insurance or pensions.

He was supposed to preach the love of God, the grace of God, the providence of God from his pulpit, week after week, Sunday after Sunday. But where was God on Monday, while the bosses treated their workers like slaves? Where was God on Tuesday, when pollution took the life of a sickly child? Was the gospel limited to things “sacred”? Was salvation only for people’s souls, while their bodies could rot in Hell’s Kitchen?

Rauschenbusch searched the scriptures and prayed as Jesus taught, “Thy Kingdom come!” Then he challenged Christians to look for a kingdom that was bigger than the church, a kingdom that stepped into the world on Monday and organized labor unions, that fought political battles on Tuesday, and demanded social justice on Wednesday. He called for people of God who took a piece of heaven and set it to grow here on earth.

A fourth possibility, when we look for a way to read these parables of the kingdom, is that Jesus is primarily focusing our attention on the future, and keeping our eyes trained toward the skies. We know that some day the Lord who spoke these parables will come back again, and then the fullness of His kingdom will become a glorious reality.

Now, however, we live in the kingdom of Satan, the prince of this age, the ruler of the powers of darkness, as Paul put it. So we hide ourselves into our corners and protect our little ones as best we can, until someday we will see Jesus return and then we will live in his kingdom. The old gospel song testified to it like this:

“This world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through;

My treasures are laid up, my faith is all secure.

The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door

And I don’t feel at home in this world anymore.”

We Live as Citizens

We have all been touched by each of these views of the kingdom of heaven. Yet today, as we read Jesus’ parables again, it is important to hear the undercurrent of what He is saying. First of all, the idea of “kingdom” implies citizenship, or at least allegiance to a governing authority. This is Jesus’ theme in his Parable of the Treasures (vv. 44-46). Among the pieces of properties that we collect in this life, says Jesus, we may someday suddenly stumble upon a treasure that collects us. It possesses us. It demands allegiance from us.