The Thursday Review: Flag Waving in the Kingdom of Heaven

First posted May 3, 2011 after the Canadian Federal Election of that year; called to mind today as the world still reels from the outcome of the American Presidential election.  

In chapter 13 of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus tells a series of seven parables to help his followers imagine the Kingdom of Heaven.  Among these seven inter-connected and enigmatic word-pictures are some of Jesus' most well-known and well-loved parables, including the Sower and the Soils, the Pearl of Great Price, the Mustard Seed. 

A few years ago when I was studying at Briercrest Seminary, our Seminary Chapel was planning a special "Global Missions" service.  Normally we would use the flags of various nations to help capture and convey the international scope and global range of Christ's work in the world, but as I reflected on the symbolism of flags, it struck me how politicized, and polarizing, and even (at times) idolatrous these cloth symbols (and the concepts of Kingdom for which they stand) can become.  And I started thinking about the counter-Empire and anti-Empire posture the New Testament writers continually assumed.  And I started thinking about the way in which God's kingdom calls us in Christ to a radical realignment of our alligances to and our notions of kingdom.  And I was left wondering if national flags actually belonged in a service dedicated to celebrating the Kingdom of God after all.

And then I remembered Matthew 13, and I wondered:  rather than national flags, what would flags for the kingdom of God look like?  This idea started to germinate in my imagination and eventually I came up with this series of 7 "Kingdom of God" flags, symbolic representations of the seven parables in Matthew 13.

I am posting them here today, hoping you'll find them interesting; but also because I was up until 1:00 AM last night, watching the Canadian election unfold.  And as I listened to the various pundits and analysts earn their keep dissecting the unexpected results this morning, I kept glancing at these seven flags where they now hang on the wall in my office.  They were a helpful reminder that, for all the passion with which I participate in the privilege of Canadian democracy, I am, at the same time, the subject of a Divine King who bestows on me a Heavenly Citizenship which puts even the best-intentioned striving of our earthly nation-builders into eternal perspective.

Matthew 13:3-9.  The Sower and the Soils

Matthew 13:24-29:  The Wheat and the Weeds

Matthew 13:31-32:  The Mustard Seed

Matthew 13:33:  The Dough and the Yeast

Matthew 13:44:  The Hidden Treasure

Matthew 13:45: The Pearl of Great Price

Matthew 13:47-50:  The Net and the Fishes

When the Logic of Secular Liberalism Devours its Own Tail

This spring CBC Radio covered an emerging controversy related to the practice of gender-selective abortions among some communities in Canada.  Recent statistics have shown that some cultural groups in Canada have disproportionately high rates of male birth, and everyone's strong suspicion is that utrasounds are being used to determine the sex of an unborn fetus, and the girls are being aborted.

This report is indicative of the kind of coverage the story received:



The story has rumbled still, now; at least I haven’t heard anything for months, but here’s the cynical question I just can’t shake: if we live in a society that long ago accepted it as a fundamental tenet of women’s rights that no woman should be required to carry an unwanted baby to term, then on what reasonable grounds can we now protest gender-selective abortions, just because the baby's sex happens to be the reason it's unwanted? Put more rhetorically: why is “I don’t want a girl” suddenly an inappropriate reason to terminate a pregnancy when “I don’t want a disabled child” or “we’re just not ready to be parents” have been acceptable reasons for years?

In my view it is bitterly ironic and highly hypocritical that the CBC is worrying this particular bone so self-righteously, when in all other regards it has been such a biased advocate of legalized abortion that it can probably take some (though by no means all) of the credit for the ease with which gender-selective abortions are obtained, and for the moral apathy our culture has towards the entire issue. And it’s telling that in all CBC coverage of this story, not once did I hear anyone connect the dots between the issue of gender selection and the deep moral questions surrounding abortion generally (not once, for instance, did anyone suggest restricting or regulating abortion as a solution; the best they could do was a flimsy proposal to withhold ultrasound results).

But I also see a glimmer of hope at the bottom of this well of irony. Because if people still experience visceral indignation when they learn that some fetuses are being terminated simply because they’re unwanted (the reason notwithstanding) then it suggests that there are still some starting points left for Christians who believe in the sanctity of all life, to talk reasonably and calmly about why there is more at stake than personal choice when it comes to the question of abortion.

A Dominion Day Reflection

Yesterday I bought my first ever package of fireworks. We’re going to a Canada Day barbecue today, and the last thing you want to do is show up empty handed at a Canada Day barbecue. So there I was, standing in line at Walmart with my variety pack of Roman Candles under my arm, and thinking about how it wasn’t always called “Canada Day.”

I’m just old enough to remember this, but the name of our national 1st-of-July celebration actually used to be Dominion Day.  And that's because for more than a hundred years, from the first ever July 1st bash back in 1879, up until it was officially changed to “Canada Day” in 1983, the name of our nation-wide-birthday party was “Dominion Day”

Because up until about 1951, Canada’s official name used to be “the Dominion of Canada.” Because "dominion" means a place where a king rules, and Canada, of course, was established as a constitutional monarchy under the crown of Britain.

In fact, being a constitutional monarchy, the founders of Canada actually toyed with the idea of calling us “the Kingdom of Canada,” but they felt the phrase would be too provocative to our anti-monarchical neighbours to the south, so they settled for “Dominion of Canada" instead. No need ruffling Eagle feathers when you don’t have to. Hence "Dominion Day."

But there's more to it than that.  The story goes that the name “Dominion of Canada” was suggested by a certain Sir Lenorad Tilley, who took the idea from Psalm 72:8.

In the KJV translation, Psalm 72 says: “Give the king thy judgements, O God... He shall judge thy people with righteousness and the poor with judgment. He shall judge the poor of the people. He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace shall endure so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”

Sir Leonard Tilley, we're told, saw that bit there about God’s king having dominion from sea to sea, and he was inspired with this glorious vision of a God-fearing nation having dominion from sea to sea to sea... from Cape Spear, Newfoundland to Tofino British Columbia... and history was born.  To this day, the Latin motto of Canada is  "A Mari Usque Ad Mar." From Sea to Sea.

So I was thinking about all of this, after I got my package of Roman Candles safely home and all. I was thinking about how a lot has changed in Canada since the days of Sir Leonard Tilley, back when the vision of a Christian nation would have seemed pretty plausible; and I was thinking about Psalm 72, and its glorious vision of a God-fearing people whose God-fearing king has dominion from sea to sea and how it’s hard, sometimes, it’s hard to even imagine what that would look like now a days.

I mean, sure, back in 800 BC when this Psalm was written, back when “theocracy” was the only system of government the social studies text books ever mentioned, back then you could maybe imagine it, but 2800 years later, in 2011?

What are we supposed to do with this vision of a “Dominion of God” in Canada today?

Because this is actually, the big question for us as Christians in public life: how are we realizing Psalm 72’s vision of a “Dominion of God” in Canada today? Not just because today is Canada Day (formerly known as Dominion Day), but because the truth is: God demonstrates his dominion through the loving work of his people.

In the loving work of his people. That’s where you glimpse the Dominion of God today. And suddenly Psalm 72 is echoing like a trumpet call across 3 millennia, summoning us to loving action in our world.

Because, what does Psalm 72 say things will look like when God’s King has dominion?

The poor receive justice.

The children of the needy are helped.

The oppressor is disarmed, and political, social, and economic systems of oppression are dismantled.

Peace reigns... in abundance.. as long as the moon endures.

I mean: what is this other than the work of God’s people? This is stuff followers of Jesus are supposed to be about in the world. It’s salt-of-the-earth kind of stuff. Light-of-the-world kind of stuff. City-set-on-a-hill kind of stuff.

And whenever Christians are involved in this kind of work in public life— in our nations or in our neighbourhoods—as we strive to bring justice to the exploited, and a voice to the vulnerable, and freedom to the oppressed, and peace to the troubled—as we answer the call of Psalm 72 on our lives, we’ll discover, I think, that it’s true: God demonstrates his Dominion, through the loving work of his people.

Saul, Empire, and the Reign of God

The other night my wife read me 2 Samuel 21:1-14. Then she looked at me with a furrowed brow and said: "What was that all about?" Three years of famine diverted by the execution of seven male descendants of Saul. Rizpah sitting in sackcloth next to their exposed bodies, scattering the carrion birds until the rains came. David gathering up their bones with the bones of Saul and Jonathan, burying them at last in the tomb of Saul's father Kish. And it's only after all this dark business that God again answers prayer in behalf of the land.

My brow furrowed, too.

We talked through it a bit, and this is the only help I could offer: God withholds the rain specifically because Saul tried to annihilate the Gibeonites. Saul had broken an ancient oath that Israel swore with them under Joshua. Though God had forbidden all such treaties when Israel entered the land, he still holds them to their ill-sworn word, hundreds of years later. And the all-too-human events inevitably play themselves out: Gibeon asks for blood.

And so we witness the final ignoble end of Saul's dynasty. You can almost hear the stone grind shut against the tomb door. Israel had asked for a king "such as all the other nations have," and God gave them exactly what they asked for: a reign of bitter tribalism, broken oaths and violent self-assertion, like all the other nations have. And this is where that trajectory of human empire-building finally clatters still: in the heart-wrenching cries of a bereaved mother, chasing the ravens off the rotting corpse of her son. The utter anti-shalom of an anti-Messiah.

But the Word is whispering at the back of her ominous cries. Because we have tasted the true shalom of the true Messiah, and its trajectory is the exact inverse of Saul's: loving self-giving, perfectly fulfilled oaths, and people of every tribe and tongue sitting down together at the table of fellowship. And his is the only reign the people of God can confess.

I recently read a blogger comment that during the Bush administration, Christians published a remarkable number of books critiquing the evangelical church's acquiescence to American imperialistic ideology. His point was not that these critiques were wrong, but that they had such an easy target in President Bush. He wondered- and I wonder with him- if the same critics will be so vigilant against imperialism under a new presidential leadership, especially when the new seems such better candidate for hope than the old (or were they just disguising crass distaste for Bush in the high-sounding rhetoric of anti-imperialism all along?)

May the Word in 2 Samuel 21:1-14 remind us deeply of what human empire building looks like; and what the reign of God's Messiah most emphatically does not look like.

May he convict us of our own petty tribalisms, oath-breakings, and violent self-assertions.

And may he in turn teach us to name these in any human empire that tempts us to seek a king such as all the other nations have.