This has been a perennial question of New Testament scholarship, so at one level attempting to offer a concise and coherent account may seem presumptuous. Yet, if one steps back from the minutiae of detail, the basic lineaments of the Kingdom emerge with reasonable clarity. In any case, this is how I have come to respond to the question!
The language of salvation is unavoidably a language of protest against the present. It is the expression of a hope that things will be otherwise than they are. In occupying the ground between what is and what is to come, that is to say between the ‘now’ and the ‘not yet’ of the eschatological tension, and wishing to root this firmly in Jesus’ own mission, perhaps the key motif available to theology is that of ‘the kingdom of God’.
The Gospel of Mark begins with this programmatic announcement:
Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mk 1:14,15)
In word and deed, in parable and miracle, in words of forgiveness and in table fellowship with outcasts, Jesus does not merely announce the Kingdom; he enacts it in anticipatory realisation. The Kingdom emerges as a transformation of the world, within the world, and for the sake of the world. Jesus’ healing miracles, for example, are not so much bizarre, inexplicable aberrations of the ordinary, as the emerging lineaments of a new reality which is the fulfilment of the ordinary (C.f. Bauckham and Hart, Hope against Hope, (London: DLT, 1999). Historians of the New Testament agree.
“…[Jesus] probably saw his miracles as indicators that the new age was at hand…A new time would come in which pain, suffering and death would be overcome, and the miracles pointed towards it…his miracles were signs of the beginning of God’s final victory over evil.” (Sanders, 1993, p.168)
“[Jesus] indeed envisioned his healings and exorcisms not as evidence of personal greatness, but as indicators of the nearness or presence of the Kingdom.” (Geza Vermes, 2009, p.285)
The kingdom of God is not simply a new religious interpretation of the world, nor merely an altered religious consciousness; it is rather the enacted anticipation of this world, in all its concrete particularity and complexity, renewed. A brief examination of some of the key elements of Jesus’ activity will make this clearer.
- Jesus announces ‘good news to the poor’ (Mt 11:5; Lk 4:18) – he spends time with the crowds, sinners, tax-collectors, prostitutes and in so doing bestows on them a new dignity.
- Jesus’ periodic meals with ‘sinners’ (the wicked) were a sign that they would share the Kingdom (Sanders, 1993, p.184) – a form of adaptation of the eschatologically redemptive symbol of the banquet (Isa 25:6-8, c.f. Mt 8:11f,; 22:1-14, Mk 14:25 and parallels) (Ibid., 185f)
- Jesus’ introduces the proximity of God in such a way as to drive out of creation those forces which oppose life: he heals and performs exorcisms (e.g. for the woman with haemorrhage (Mk 5:24-34)); for lepers (Lk 5:12-16); and even for the dead (Lk 7:11-17).
- Jesus’ calming of the storm (Mk 4:35-41) is of more than metrological interest. In bringing the sea under control, the sea which was a symbol of chaos opposed to creation, there is here, perhaps, a fore-token of the new creation (c.f. Rev 21:1).
- Jesus announces forgiveness of sins (Mk 2:12) and speaks of the creative righteousness of God that accounts just the unjust (Lk 18:9-14). As Sanders (1993) observes, “[a]n appreciable part of Jesus’ teaching consists in the assurance that God loves each individual (c.f. Mt 6:26, 10:29-13), no matter what the person’s short-comings, and that he wishes the return of even the worst. God’s love of the outcast, even those not generally obedient to his will, is the theme of some of Jesus’ greatest parables (e.g. Lk 15)” ( p.194).
- Jesus’ freedom towards the Sabbath (Mk 2:23-3:6) not as a higher ethic but rather a fulfilment of the Sabbath as an anticipation of redemption (c.f. Dt 5:12-15) , another consequence of the transfiguring ‘at-handness’ of God.
Yet, we might ask, why it was that Jesus’ ignominious death, and the absence of the final arrival of the Kingdom at that time, did not mean the end of kingdom expectation? The answer lies, of course, in the resurrection appearances which were sufficiently overpowering to send what had been frightened and, we must imagine, dismayed disciples back from the relative safety of Galilee to dangerous Jerusalem to await Jesus’ expected return from heaven. In other words the resurrection meant that the disciples did not give up on the idea that the Kingdom would come (Sanders, 1993, p.276). And despite subsequent concerns over the ‘delay of the Parousia’, premature claims equating Christendom with the Kingdom, or reductions of the Gospel’s significance to simply the inner, subjective life, the Kingdom expectations remains.
The resurrection, however, holds far more significance than simply the re-validation of kingdom expectation. The highest realisation of the Kingdom occurs not in the course of Jesus’ historical mission but in Jesus’ own person. This is not only because, in the incarnation of the Son made flesh, the worldly is already inhabited by the divine; it is supremely because in the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, and here alone, matter permanently oversteps the limit of transience and death. Ultimately, as Jürgen Moltmann affirms, the resurrection of Jesus will entail the new creation of all that exists (Theology of Hope, 1967, pp.201, 211). His resurrection is not merely the illustration, ahead of time, of the saving future. Rather it is the anticipation and the source of the resurrection of reality. The new creation equates, thus, with the realisation of the kingdom of God to its highest and furthest extent. It is constituted by the transfiguring consummation of creation – purified from sin, death and every disfiguring negativity – and caught up into conspicuous participation in the loving relations of the Trinitarian being of God.
If this theology of the Kingdom is to be of relevance to chaplaincy, it is vitally important to perceive the Kingdom not as an alternative reality to this one, but rather as the consummation of present experience. It very much has a this-worldly reference; this is what gives it its relevance and orientating power. We might say, therefore, that in Jesus’ company, life becomes what it is meant to be: the sick are healed; the nobodies become some bodies; the oppressed find freedom; and those whose lives are going round in endless circles discover new hope and direction. If chaplaincy entails the introduction of the presence of Jesus and the Kingdom he brings, both explicitly (and more often) implicitly, then what we are about is not the introduction of a religious veneer, but nothing less than the renewal and revitalisation of life.
The church could be understood as that part of the world that consciously understands itself to be caught up in this anticipatory transformation of the Kingdom. However, the Kingdom is not limited to the church; it can be found wherever God is at work, through the Holy Spirit, to bring about ‘life in all its fullness’ (Jn 10:10). If chaplaincy is about serving the interest of Jesus Christ then it both includes the construction of church, but also moves beyond it. It is also about creating, watching for, and celebrating signs of the Kingdom beyond the boundaries of church: in conversation; in acts of kindness; in the search for truth; in the opening up of new possibilities. Chaplaincy has to do with life in all its fullness wherever this may be glimpsed and so is called to be a credible and efficacious sign (sacrament) of God’s saving interest; that is a sacrament of the Kingdom of God.
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