Monday, March 14
“For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power and the Glory forever.”
For the second time in this short prayer we come up against this problematic word, kingdom. We’ve heard from Debbie about the meaning this word carried in its historical context, an intentional challenge to the tyrants who ruled strictly class-based societies. Jesus’ prayer threatened these tyrants with a new, more powerful authority, one in which God’s vision would be expressed on earth as it is in heaven; that is, in the here and now, and now, not in the afterlife. We’ve also heard from Dawn about the pain which male-centered language causes people who are excluded by it. Such language becomes a means of making people invisible who are meant to be barred not only from positions of power, but from full personhood. In my view, both of these teachings have merit, and the inherent truths in each do not negate the lessons of the other. It is useful to understand the intentions of the prayer in Jesus’ time, and we must, at the same time, understand the gospel through the lens of our own cultural framework.
The last line of the prayer as I was taught to say it aloud as a child stresses the words kingdom, power, and glory. In interpreting this second use of the word, I find a change in emphasis helpful. The key word in this sentence for me is thine. The power and the glory do not belong to humans, but to God. We are again hearing a challenge to human authority and a call to a new order, one which is God- rather than human-centered. And as I believe that God loves all of God’s creation and all of God’s children with an equal and unbounded love, the word which best expresses what Jesus is saying of God in this context is kindom. I believe that the prayer Jesus taught us to pray includes and harmonizes both understandings of a problematic word in its concluding line. The power and glory of God is inclusive; it is the power of many, the glory of all. And this inclusivity, this new order, is a challenge to the old way of thinking, the way of tyrants and bullies, and all those who seek to exclude any of us. For THINE is the kindom, the power and the glory forever. Let us make it so.
God, Source of All Being, help us bring the realm of heaven to earth; help us know that heaven is a place where every living being is valued deeply and equally, and all are loved.
Willie Sordillo