Selling Water By the River - The Ever-changing Unchanging Kingdom of God

This will be the last of a series of bits from Shane Hipps book, Selling Water By the River. There's a lot more in this book and I highly recommend it as material that helps enlarge the heart. (See previous posts part 1,  No One Comes to the Bible without a Lens, Becoming Open to Love Can Be Unnerving, Jesus' Disregard for Established Religious Boundaries.)

In the chapter about gardening Hipps contrasts the special treatment that the famous Mona Lisa painting receives (encasement in a temperature controlled glass box and security guards, etc) and the treatment that a good gardener gives to plants in a botanical garden. These are both very different kinds of jobs.

"Trees don't take kindly to small sealed glass cases that prevent moisture and the sun from getting in. An ancient painting would not take kindly to a whole lot of tampering, touch, and exposure. The key to selecting the proper method of care is understanding the object so the wrong methods are not applied...The same is true when it comes to our relationship to the message of Jesus - the gospel. We must accurately understand the nature of the gospel if we are to treat it with proper care..."

In Acts 8 we read one of many conversion encounters found in the book of Acts; this one is particularly fascinating. Obeying God's direction to head to the Gaza dessert from Jerusalem, Philip comes across the "treasurer of Ethiopia", a eunuch, who was in his chariot reading from the book of Isaiah.

In the ancient world there were a number of reasons why a man was castrated; in this case it was because he served in the queen's service and had to become a eunuch so as not to "cause trouble".

"Some eunuchs would develop feminine characteristics because they no longer had as much testosterone coursing through their bodies. Many dressed in women's clothes with women's makeup and adornments, so they could serve powerful women without too many questions asked. They were considered a third gender and were often outcasts in society. People didn't know where to put them..."

The fact that this man had traveled all the way from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship and had acquired a scripture scroll indicates courage on his part since eunuchs were prohibited by Jewish law (Deuteronomy 23:1) from entering the assembly of God.

"God told Philip to go and share the gospel with a person who is not acceptable according to the Bible. He is from another land, another religion, and has chosen a lifestyle that is both irreversible and strictly prohibited in the Bible. And yet, God sends Philip far out of his way to share the good news with this person. Then Philip baptizes him without any precondition other than the eunuch's desire. So while the eunuch might be excluded from the religious assembly of God, he is welcome in God's kingdom."

Another fascinating thing is going on - Isaiah directly contradicts the law of Deuteronomy (Isaiah 56:3-5)! This shows the trajectory of the Bible - it's a story of ever-expanding love that moves beyond the original established boundaries.

And there's more that not recorded in the scripture about this story...now 2,000+ years later, "over half of all Ethiopians are Christians and a number of them trace the origin of their faith back to this first convert."

Shane Hipps finishes this wonderful chapter with words about the nature of the kingdom of God, proposing that perhaps when Jesus compared it to a mustard seed in Luke 13, He was suggesting that not only would the kingdom grow numerically, but that its nature includes change and reshaping...

"Perhaps  the kingdom does more than transform us; it also transforms itself for our sake. There may be dimensions of God's love that have yet to be revealed to us...it is possible that the gospel takes shapes necessary to better penetrate the hearts of people. A mustard seed in no way resembles the look, feel, or function of a mustard tree...

"Like a seed that becomes a tree, (the gospel) changes, grows, and is renewed

in each culture, context, and generation. The good news began as a message to Abraham of the blessing of land and descendants for an ethnic group. But through the course of history it became the blessing of an abundant life beyond land and children, beyond ethnicity. It became good news for anyone who wanted it...The good news grows and in that sense, changes. And yet...its basic DNA does not change. It both changes and is somehow unchanged."

Finally, Shane Hipps suggests that the kingdom of God is more like a plant than a painting. It's not an ancient artifact that needs protecting: "The kingdom is a lot more like a tree. God is looking for gardeners, not guards. A guard is trained in a defensive stance of fear and suspicion. A gardener is motivated by love and creativity...A friend, who is a landscape architect, once told me about a special kind of cell in plants that is called 'meristematic.' It's a cell that is ever-growing, ever-changing, ever-living. Jesus proclaimed the meristematic kingdom of God. Are we prepared for this never-changing kingdom to change? Are we open to the ways we might understand it anew?"