Kingdom Story
Read, watch, or listen, then join the conversation below.
This month we’ve been looking at our most beloved Christmas carols and using them as a framework to get a zoomed-out view of the overarching story our Creator God has been telling through the Bible, our Old and New Testaments. It’s a story that has pointed forward to its fulfillment in the person of Jesus from the beginning, and yet, it’s a story that continues even today with a hope and promise of a future fulfillment to come.
What were your thoughts about this kingdom story? Perhaps you had never thought of the Bible as a story at all, or maybe this interpretation of the story was new to you or challenged your thinking. In either case, you’re in good company. Jesus’ disciples had their thinking challenged as well.
There’s a story at the end of the Gospel of Luke about two disciples who were walking along the road to a town called Emmaus, a couple of days after Jesus—their hoped-for Messiah—had been crucified and buried. Luke’s story tells us that these disciples were downcast and disappointed because their expectations of the events that were supposed to happen, based on their interpretation of their scriptural story, had not come to pass in the way they had hoped.
At this point in the story, Luke tells us that the resurrected Jesus appeared to them on the road (although they didn’t recognize Him) and asked them what they were discussing and why they were so forlorn. After they recounted the events that had happened in the last few days and why their hopes had been dashed, Jesus proceeded to re-explain the scriptural story for them from the beginning, in a whole new way. He reinterpreted the events and details of the Hebrew Scriptures they knew so well, and he revealed how they had been pointing to him all along. The story the disciples thought they knew, based on their interpretation of Scripture and what they had been taught, turned out to look entirely different when viewed through the lens of Jesus. Luke goes on to tell us that when the disciples heard this reinterpreted story, they were so moved that their hearts burned within them.
That brings us back to where this Sing Love Louder vlog began, with the desire to allow the new song of Jesus—his words and his ways—to interpret the biblical story for us and to set all our hearts on fire as well. Just like the disciples, when the story God has been telling in the Bible is reinterpreted through the lens of Jesus, our eyes are opened to see things we had never seen before, all our assumptions and expectations are challenged, and everything we thought we knew about God, about ourselves, and about how we view others and the world around us, is radically changed.
Jesus talks about this change in thinking in the gospels. The word he uses is “repent.” In English, and in the context of our religious vocabulary, it has a very specific connotation. But in Greek it’s the word “metanoeo” and it means “to think differently after being with.” The disciples’ thinking about everything they thought they knew was changed after being with Jesus; their thinking about who their God is and what he wants changed; their thinking about who they are and how they view others changed; and their thinking about their purpose and what it means to follow Jesus in his way of love—in his kingdom—changed. As we allow Jesus to reinterpret the biblical story for us in the coming weeks, and as we engage with his words and with each other in meaningful dialogue, hopefully, our thinking will be challenged and changed as well.
We’ll be looking at seventeen words or concepts, some familiar and others distinctly religious, to see how Jesus might have interpreted them and how they fit within the humanity-level story our Creator God has been telling. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself feeling confused, challenged, or in outright disagreement with how these words are presented and interpreted. That’s exactly the point where you’re invited to join the discussion. It’s through our different interpretations and conversations—our wrestling and questioning—that we learn, grow, and oftentimes “repent” together. This “repentence”—this change of mind and heart—not only affects how we live our lives personally, but it has the potential, collectively, to impact the world in a profound way.
As we begin this new year, I hope you’ll consider joining us in this close-up look at the amazing, life-changing kingdom story our Creator God has been telling. And as we allow the story to sink in and allow Jesus to reveal himself to us in new and exciting ways, we may just find that we’ll begin to see the world, and our purpose and place in it, in a much deeper and more meaningful way. What a great way to start the new year! Hope you’ll join us in the journey.