Later, in the Liturgy of the Table we are bold to pray, in the words Christ gave us, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
The juxtaposition of this command – love your neighbor as yourself – with this petition – thy kingdom come – is a moment of theological dissonance in each service, rendered relatively innocuous only by their separation in the liturgy. Love your neighbor as yourself; thy kingdom come. But my neighbor – many of my neighbors in my family, in my community, in my city and state, in the world – have yet to experience, acknowledge, or respond to the love of God in Christ Jesus. My neighbor – many of my neighbors in my family, in my community, in my city and state, in the world – are ambivalent, or even hostile, to the Lord Jesus Christ. Knowing this, how can I – at the same time – love them as myself and pray for the coming of the kingdom, if I believe the coming of the kingdom will bring judgment upon them? I cannot love my neighbor – all my neighbors – and pray for the coming of the kingdom unless I am convinced that the kingdom comes not in final judgment but in blessing upon all my neighbors.
I do not know how this can be – God’s thoughts are higher than my thoughts – but I know that it must be, that in some way beyond my feeble theology, the coming of the kingdom must be joy and peace and blessing for all men and women, indeed for all creation. When the kingdom comes and God puts the world to rights in Jesus, he must put the world to rights for Hindu and Muslim, for Buddhist and pagan, for saint and sinner, for Christian and atheist – for all the neighbors I struggle to love and for all the neighbors that God loved unto death in Christ. Only this holds the command and the petition together. Only this enables me to love and to long for the kingdom.
If this sounds like universalism, it is not. It is something far better, far beyond my ability to conceive or understand. I am convinced of this: that on the great and final day when Christ shall usher in the kingdom of God, I will fall on my knees with all my neighbors in stunned wonder and proclaim, “Who could have imagined!” On that day, my love and my longing will be one, and God shall truly be all and in all. On that day, I will know what it is to love my neighbor as myself and for the kingdom of God to come and for the will of God to be done.
