Arrival of the Kin-dom
NL 335 for April 6, 2025
Text
Luke 18:31-19:10 NRSVUE
31 Then he took the twelve aside and said to them, “Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. 32 For he will be handed over to the gentiles, and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. 33 After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.” 34 But they understood nothing about all these things; in fact, what he said was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.
35 As he approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. 36 When he heard a crowd going by, he asked what was happening. 37 They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth[a] is passing by.” 38 Then he shouted, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 39 Those who were in front sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he shouted even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 40 Jesus stood still and ordered the man to be brought to him, and when he came near, he asked him, 41 “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me see again.” 42 Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.” 43 Immediately he regained his sight and followed him, glorifying God, and all the people, when they saw it, praised God.
19 He entered Jericho and was passing through it. 2 A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. 3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. 5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. 7 All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” 8 Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” 9 Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”
Footnotes
a. 18.37 Gk the Nazorean
Last Time on Tales of Faith
Jesus is continuing towards Jerusalem, and has been gathering a great crowd around him. He has been teaching through parables, and continuing his general message of the Kin-dom of God and emphasis of the least and last (specifically children).
Liturgy
Call to Worship
Leader: See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.
People: Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!
Leader: He will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spit upon.
People: Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!
Leader: After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.
People: Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Amen.
Prayer of Confession (Unison)
Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us. You have spoken through the prophets about your anointed one, and the Kin-dom that you are building; but we understand little. We try to ignore those who are hurting, and silence those who are crying out for mercy. We exclude others for not fitting our expectations, asking them to overcome our shortsightedness. We are quick to judge others for the sins we think they have committed, and slow to receive them as siblings. Jesus, Son of Man, have mercy on us. Welcome us into the glory of your Kin-dom, which is refreshingly different from the kingdoms of men. Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
Leader: Today salvation has come to this place, because we too are children of Abraham. Hear the good news, the Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost!
People: Thanks be to God!
Themes this Week
I think that one of the real themes for this text is the contrast of the Kin-Dom of God and the kingdoms of men.
Kin-Dom
The concept of ‘Kin-dom of God’ (or Kindom) was first proposed by Dr. Ada María Isasi-Díaz. The Cuban-American originator of Mujerista theology (a branch of Liberation Theology from a Latina perspective). The idea is of a group that is based on family structure (kin) rather than a this-worldly ‘King’ (with all of the sinful patterns of power inequity that often comes with it).
Jesus has been proclaiming throughout this gospel the coming of the Kingdom of God, a kingdom that is radically different to the kingdom which in his day was in charge of Palestine, the great Roman Empire, and even the messianic kingdom that they are picturing.
The contrast is perhaps most clear with the Roman Empire, a brutal and efficient regime who uses coercive power (namely violence) to impose its will on all those lands and peoples that they have conquered. Rome began as a republic, using fledgling ideas of democracy, even then it was only land-owning men who had any say in their government. However, in 27 BCE, within living memory of the life of Jesus, the Republic of Rome was reorganized into the Roman Empire, and Gaius Octavius (a charismatic military leader) became Gaius Augustus Caesar (an autocratic commander-in-chief with a lifetime appointment). Under Augustus, the Roman Empire expanded greatly in territory, including the providences formerly ruled by Harrod the Great. They used the brute strength of the Roman Army to impose their will on the people they ruled over: rebellions and insurrections were swiftly dealt with, and the conformist Pax Romana (Peace of Rome) was imposed with the threat of violence. Rome also used the bureaucratic power of forced taxation to keep the people under their control, and to support their bloated empire.
The Jewish people longed for another kingdom, and in Jesus’ time that meant a Messianic Kingdom. During the time of the Second Temple, from the return of the Exiles from Babylon (538 BCE) to the destruction of the Temple (70 CE), there was a growing hope for a Messiah (anointed one) to come and rule. Rooted in the promise given to David for an everlasting kingdom and dynasty (2 Samuel 7), they believed that a/the ‘Son of David’ would return and defeat the parade of empires that had ruled over the Hebrew and Jewish people (‘Jewish’ being the name given to them by the Greek empires). The hope of a Messianic Kingdom was the hope of national sovereignty, to make their people great again, to restore them to a kingdom like the kingdoms of Israel and Judah before. Given the examples that they had seen of kingdoms, perhaps it is unsurprising that they were expecting a kingdom just like the Assyrian, Babylonian, Median, Persian, Greek (Ptolemaic and Seleucid), Herodic, and Roman ones. Their hope in the messiah was that he too would be a strong military leader who would claim his rightful throne, raise an army and kick the Romans our of Jerusalem, reclaim the land ‘from the river to the sea’ and the land claimed in Torah as their land, and perhaps even rise to be the kingdom of kingdoms, an empire in their own right. The people believed that unlike the dirty Gentiles, they would be able to handle such power and would rule with Justice and Righteousness as led by Torah (despite their own histories of injustice).
Many at this point had attempted to claim the title of Messiah, and bring freedom to their people. The Maccabean revolt won the people a glimpse of national sovereignty under the Seleucids, but they were soon defeated. Zealot groups would rise around charismatic leaders, who would try to beat back the Greeks and Romans with military force, or more likely complicate their rule with assassinations and guerrilla terrorist tactics. These attempts were brutally defeated by the powers. In 6 CE, Judas of Galilee lead a failed revolt, which ended in the mass crucifixion of his followers. Josephus credits this conflict, and the ‘fourth philosophy’ which it represented (the first three were Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes) as leading to the Jewish War which led to the destruction of the Temple.
Jesus, along with others like John the Baptizer, represented yet another way of dealing with the coercive violence of Rome (and the other kingdoms of men), non-violent resistance. Instead of a Kingdom: coercive, using dominating violence, built on hierarchical systems of elites and plebeians, and patriarchal; Jesus preached a Kingdom of God built on mutuality and love, non-coercive, non-violent yet resistive to the violence of individuals and systems, lifting up of the marginalized and outcast, and egalitarian. This Kingdom is so radically different, in fact, that Theologians like Dr. Isasi-Díaz suggests using “Kin-dom” for it, replacing the ‘g,’ and therefore supplanting a king, with a familial structure, ‘kin.’
Son of Man
In the first section, this Kin-dom is displayed in the way that Jesus prepares his disciples for the possible and even inevitable outcome of his non-violent resistance. Like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Mahmoud Khalil, and countless other agitators of the status-quo, Jesus knows that every encounter is going to lead closer to his execution by the state. He has read the prophets, the way that they were treated, and passages like Isaiah’s ‘suffering servant’ passages, and knows that this is the fate of many (if not all) those who speak out against those in power. Not that he is wishing for this to be the outcome, but knowing and accepting that it may be. In so doing, Jesus is metaphorically writing phone numbers on his arm with Sharpie, he is preparing those closest to him for what is to come.
But like so many, they have no idea what he could mean. Perhaps they have a hard time understanding the concept, that their own leaders, and even the Romans who are tasked with keeping the peace, could actually do such a thing. Could actually flog and kill a peaceful and innocent man. Perhaps they were too naive to think that such a thing could actually happen to someone they knew. Perhaps they were still caught up in the visions of the Messianic Kingdom, that Jesus was going to march into Jerusalem and be crowned as King of the Jews, that he would single-handedly raise an army to force the Romans out, and gain their national sovereignty. Whatever the reason, they still do not comprehend what Jesus could mean by these words (or at least the author is presenting them in this way).
A Blind Man
The next vignette is of a blind man in Jericho, a city 18 miles outside of Jerusalem. Jesus has begun a procession to Jerusalem, which will result in what we call Palm Sunday. The crowd is following him, no doubt many, if not all, are considering this a victory march of Messiah. Of course, no one would say as much; they too know the dangers present in such talk. To claim that he was the messiah, the king of the Jewish people, would certainly raise the ire of any Roman soldiers nearby, and could get Jesus killed before he was able to get to the city. It is the unspoken truth, the elephant in the parade.
Everyone knows this except, it seems, a blind man. The Blind man cries out for mercy from Jesus, which is not a surprising thing. Thousands have gathered around Jesus throughout his ministry asking for the same. Thousands have received such salvific healing, in fact we might remember that the blind receiving their sight was one of the stanzas in the Isiah passage from which Jesus preached his sermon in Galilee. The blind receiving their sight was one of the data points that Jesus shared with the disciples of John the Baptizer to see if he was the one that they were looking for.
What is different about this blind man, is that he uses the Messianic title ‘Son of David.” The crowd would not have cared a whit if he was asking for his sight to be blind, they would have seen so many like him before. They are worried, however, that this blind man might blow Jesus’ cover. He is saying the quiet part out loud, and when he is hushed, he cries out all the more. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”
Jesus is not concerned with keeping the secret at this point, the cat has already been let out of the bag. But unlike a despot or a ruler, an actual king on the way to be crowned, he stops to hear the cries of a man who is blind. I am not sure, but I suspect that Julius Caesar would have not stopped to hear the cries of a beggar while approaching the Rubicon. Not only does Jesus stop to hear the cries of the blind man, he stops to ask “what do you want me to do for you?” The answer is an obvious one, it would have been clear that the many was blind. Jesus, however does not assume that he knows the needs and wants of this person, he does not grant the plea as some pennies from heaven, a string of beads thrown into the crowd from the benevolent float rider. Unlike most people, let alone kings, Jesus asks this blind beggar what he would like. He is not here to impose his will, but to grant an earnest request, “Lord, let me see again.”
Tax Collector
The final vignette of this paricape is that of Zacchaeus the tax collector. As such he would have been seen as a collaborator and a traitor of his people. For whatever reason, he has decide to side with the coercive powers of Rome, and has certainly benefited from their patronage in wealth, authority, and privilege (even while enduring the scorn of his own people). He is participating in a system in which he is an unwitting victim as well.
Perhaps because of his collaborator status, perhaps due to his short-stature, Zacchaeus cannot see Jesus through the crowd, something he seems to very much want to do. So he runs ahead (not an action befitting a man of his status), and climbs a tree (definitely not an action befitting a man of his status, or stature for that matter). He throws his ego to the side so that he can get a glimpse of this man who might be Messiah. A man who is known to associate with tax collectors.
His greatest nightmare, and his wildest dreams are realized when Jesus stops, looks at him, calls him by name, and invites himself to Zacchaeus’ house for the day. This gets the immediate grumbling of his fellow Jerichites, repeating the oft-repeated ‘he hangs out with the wrong people.’
After lunch, however, there is a press conference, at which Zacchaeus states or promises that he will make restitution for any defrauding that he has done. The common interpretation is that he has done this defrauding, and is willing to make reparations. However, another possibility is that he promises to give half of his wealth to the poor, and will make restitution if anyone thinks that they have been defrauded, assuming that he has not actually engaged in said fraud.
Jesus then makes a move counter the the Roman one. Instead of purposefully separating him from his community, and using that separation to their advantage; Jesus reminds the people of his status as kin, he too is a child of Abraham. Maybe he has not been the best in the past, maybe he has just been put in an impossible position, either way, the solution is building connection, not more separation.
Questions to Ponder
- What kind of leaders do we expect, what kinds of qualities do they display?
- How well do we receive the counter-cultural message of the ‘scandal’ of the cross?
- How do we treat those who say the quiet part out loud?
- How do we receive and reintegrate those we have perceived as enemies back into the family?
Conclusion
Jesus is in his final stretch on his way to Jerusalem. He knows that those in power, both Rome and the Religious elites, will likely not receive his prophetic critique well, and may indeed kill him. While many are expecting a Messianic Kingdom, with Jesus their new ruler, he continues to proclaim a Kin-dom of God where the poor are listened to, the blind receive their sight, and the marginalized are reintegrated into the family.