Of Guavas and Golf Courses

(The Kingdom of God According to Jesus Based on Isaiah)

our host: Peasants in a Vegetable Farm

Wanted: Meaning of Kingdom of God. Our sojourn at the fishing village acquainted us with the pre-crucifixion mission of Jesus, that of proclaiming the Kingdom of God. And now, what is this Kingdom of God? The roadsigns from this Stopover 3 to Stopover 12 will help us to find the answer to one question: What is the Kingdom of God according to the First Look? What was Jesus’ understanding of the Kingdom of God?

Jesus and Isaiah. Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God echoes the vision of Isaiah. Isaiah’s writings could very well have been Jesus’ favorite bedtime reading. Isaiah’s words and images tend to reappear in Jesus’ language.

Isaiah: Salvation and Kingdom of God

Isaiah, A Rich Source. Isaiah will then provide us with our first set of signposts. Have you been to a vegetable farm bursting with a spectacular variety of vegetables and fruits? Isaiah’s vision of the Kingdom of God can be compared to that. It is a rich harvest of vibrant details about the Kingdom of God. Accordingly, our roadmap now directs us to a community of fruit and vegetable growers.

The Book of Isaiah—according to the researches of modern scholarship—consists of two or three distinctive parts, authored by Isaiah and by two or three other people, living in different centuries (8th to 6th century B.C.E. 21) In Jesus’ time, no distinction was made among these parts. Neither do we make distinctions. For we are interested in Isaiah ‘as Jesus read Isaiah.’ Here is our signpost:

The italicized words in our signpost are those that Isaiah used to draw his portrait of future salvation. Note that Isaiah’s idea of salvation is not: souls going to heaven. Rather salvation is a bonanza of vivid human boons and blessings. Our hosts, fruit and vegetable farmers, are pleased.

But for a total appreciation of it, we must first take a closer look at one of the roadsigns, Isa 61:2 and get acquainted with the ‘year of the Lord’s favor.’

Jubilee Year. There were two unique years in the biblical calendar. One was the sabbatical year, to be observed every 7 years. The other was the jubilee year, to be observed every 50 years. The year of the Lord’s favor (Isa 61:2) of our signpost could refer to either or both. In our present text, it more likely referred to the jubilee year. Anyway, the provisions of the sabbatical year are incorporated in the jubilee year. The jubilee year is described in Leviticus 25. It is to be celebrated every 50th year.

The provisions of the jubilee year can truly warm the hearts of us in the Third World, with a particular appeal to peasants and farmers, such as our present hosts. For if you are a peasant, a favorite child of poverty for generations, Leviticus 25 tells you that (1) the land and house you were forced to sell due to poverty will all go back to you; (2) your ‘pet’ daughter who has had to serve as a housemaid in Manila or Athens will now be free and come home to you with sufficient economic security; (3) you will do well by letting your farm rest – rest from chemical fertilizers and rest from greed for excessive profit; (4) all the debts you have incurred from banks and usurers are wiped clean. Once more, our hosts, recalling perhaps a relative or two in overseas employment, smile with nostalgia.

Since the biblical jubilee year is hardly found in the pages of our Second Look catechism, I will lay it out a bit, by letting Leviticus 25 speak. It has the following provisions:

Restoration of property (fields, houses) to impoverished Israelites

‘If anyone of your kin falls into difficulty and sells a piece of property (land or houses)’ (v 25), a relative, or he himself, if his situation improves, may buy it back. But surely at the end of fifty years, he ‘shall return to his property’ (v 10,14,27). He ‘returns to their ancestral property’ (v 41). Release of Israelite slaves ‘If any who are dependent on you become so impoverished that they sell themselves … they shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. Then they and their children with them shall be free from your authority; they shall go back to their own family and return to their ancestral property’ (39-41). As a slave ‘you shall return every one of you to your family’ (v 10). This is also a sabbatical year 22 provision. Rest for the land ‘You shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines’ (v 11). This is also a sabbatical year provision. Cancellation of debts This is a sabbatical year provision, only implicitly part of the jubilee year. ‘Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debts. And this is the manner of the remission: every creditor shall remit the claim that is held against a neighbor, not exacting it of a neighbor who is a member of the community, because the Lord’s remission has been proclaimed’ (Dt 15:1-2). Note: When unpaid debts are the reason for people going into slavery or giving up their lands, the release of slaves and restoration of land imply that the debt has automatically been cancelled. Thus, the slave release and land restoration of the jubilee year imply the cancellation of debts.

Towards a Humane Order. The biblical jubilee year is about a socio-economic program. It is about social transformation. It is about a humane order for the human community – social, political, economic. The biblical jubilee year is a move against the accumulation of wealth. It is a move towards the removal of poverty. It is aimed at the promotion of equal status in the human community. It is about the restoration of freedom. And note, it is a religious happening! And for the Israelites it was a spiritual event!

There Shall Be No Poor. Why these very humanitarian provisions of the jubilee? The reason is distilled in one simple phrase: ‘There will be no poor among you …’ (Dt 15:4, RSV). In that phrase you will find the spirit and motivation behind the sabbatical and jubilee prescriptions. Yahweh’s desire and dream for the Israelite community is that there shall be no poor among them.

What God Wants. Our farmer hosts are curious. Did the Israelites get to practice the jubilee year? Scholars debate this. But whether the Israelites, human beings like us did or not, the jubilee year remains a testimony to what God wants.

It is a time when God asserts sovereignty in people’s history. God is king. God’s Kingdom will come!

Good news (of liberation and justice) will be announced to the poor and the oppressed.

They will rejoice.

The blind will see, deaf hear, lame walk, the dead will live again.

Captives will be freed.

The provisions of the jubilee year —restoration of property, release of slaves, rest to the land, cancellation of debts—will become reality. Justice will come to Israel and to the nations.

A spirit-filled servant of God will come to establish justice on the earth.

What a scenario! Note again that salvation for Isaiah is not a soul-going-to-heaven scenario. It is the coming of a new earth, experiencing a new and different history.

Isaiah: Kingdom of God. So far, we have reconstructed Isaiah’s picture of salvation. With just one more blink of the eye, we will see Kingdom of God as understood by Isaiah. We do this by noticing that in this scenario of salvation, the (assertion of the) sovereignty or Kingdom of God is one of the details of salvation. It takes only one glance to see that, for Isaiah, Kingdom of God consists in all the other features with which it is associated.23 The Kingdom of God comes, and in its train is a procession of salvific blessings: health to the sick, etc. Fresh from Isaiah’s own consciousness and pen, good news of God’s kingship then means:

eyes of the blind shall be opened

ears of the deaf unstopped

the lame leap like a hart

deaf shall hear

eyes of the blind shall see

‘anawim find joy

poor rejoice

good news to the poor

liberty to the captives

opening of the prison

year of the Lord’s favor

oppressed go free

justice to the nations

justice on the earth

dead will live, their bodies shall rise

Jesus: Kingdom of God

Jesus Re-Contextualizes Isaiah. These Isaianic pronouncements, though composed centuries earlier, were read, studied and meditated on in synagogues and schools in Jesus’ time. Judging from Jesus’ liberal use of them, these Isaianic passages we have just examined must have been the subject of Jesus’ meditations. At the same time they were re-interpreted by him in the context of his own time. For example, these prophecies originally spoke of the good news of God’s kingly power liberating the oppressed Jews from the Babylonian exile (around 586-530 B.C.E.). Now, in the gospels, it is good news of the Kingdom of God for the people of Jesus’ time.

Jesus Echoes Isaiah. What were Jesus’ ‘sources’ for his understanding of the Kingdom of God? One principal source is the book of Isaiah. The next roadsigns are important statements of Jesus. Compared to Isaiah, Jesus is a man of relatively few words. We note, with all the more care how Jesus echoes the ideas, images and words of Isaiah. Still, after an attentive scrutiny of the Isaiah signposts, deciphering the Jesus signposts should be child’s play. Here are the signposts with a brief commentary after each. Each of them reflects Jesus’ understanding of the Kingdom of God based on Isaiah:

Matthew 11:2-6.

Luke 4:16-21.

One such alteration is this: ‘to bind up the brokenhearted’ (Isa 61:1), a psychological state, is omitted, and ‘let the oppressed go free,’ a social program, is brought in from Isa 58:6. This substitution indicates that Jesus and/or Luke want to address themselves to social, rather than psychological, conditions of people. Religion is not just the gentle touch of psychological consolation. It is also the strong advocacy of social liberation. Religion and salvation are concerned not just about the private introspective drama of my soul. They are also about people enmeshed in the socio-economic-political (dis)order.

The ‘the year of the Lord’s favor’ is of course the jubilee year of Leviticus 25. Your bible translation may give any of the following translations: ‘the acceptable year of the Lord,’ ‘the favorable year of the Lord,’ ‘the year when the Lord will save his people.’ These translations all refer to the jubilee year. Our peasant hosts get a special thrill from the jubilee legislation and ask if a Christian society today can be serious about it.

Matthew 12:18-21.

Note that even if our three just cited signposts, Mt 11:2-6, Luke 4:16-21 and Mt 12:18-21, do not explicitly contain the term ‘Kingdom of God,’ we know that they refer to blessings of the Kingdom, drawn from Isaiah, and proclaimed by Jesus.

Mk 1:14-15. The reverse situation obtains in our next signpost, Mk 1:14-15. The term ‘Kingdom of God’ is present, but no description of the blessings is given.

Lk 6:20. And listen to the last signpost, Lk 6:20. It has a familiar ring, the Isaianic ring.

Kingdom Is a New Earth, Not Heaven. For Isaiah and Jesus the Kingdom of God is not to be identified with heaven, although for both of them there is indeed a heaven, Yahweh’s abode. For the First Look then, odd as it appeared to me as a Second Looker, Kingdom of God is not to be equated with heaven. One possible reason for the mistaken equation is the mix-up of the following three terms:

‘heaven’

‘Kingdom of God’

‘Kingdom of heaven’

As we shall see more clearly later, for the biblical people, ‘heaven’ is the firmament above. It is not earth below. 26 ‘Kingdom of God’ is earth, a new earth. In the phrase ‘Kingdom of heaven,’ the word ‘heaven,’ is used to substitute for the word ‘God.’ ‘Kingdom of heaven’ then is not heaven! ‘Kingdom of heaven’ is a new earth! It is identical with ‘Kingdom of God.’

We are presently partaking of some boiled kamote which our hosts are serving us. Did you just now feel like a big hot piece is burning in your mouth or stuck in your throat? This may sound too bizarre or too confusing to you. Well, if so, you are not the first nor the last to experience that discomfort. And in fact, others have felt a knot in their gut. One possible reason? Intellectuals have a sophisticated term for it: paradigm shift. However, with some forebearance and a gulp of fresh coconut drink, you should eventually see that it is a shift back to the original Jesus rather than a maneuver to be clever or innovative. Our hosts seem to take a liking to this shift. They say that our catechesis will have nothing to lose and much to gain by taking a cue from Jesus and Isaiah: the Kingdom of God, that final and definitive salvation towards which we are headed and which has been initially experienced in the ministry of Jesus, is not heaven but a new world on earth. But more of this hot kamote in the next stop-overs, hopefully, more agreeable and palatable as we advance.

From Guavas to Golf Courses? Isaiah’s and Jesus’ understanding of the Kingdom of God is as rich and colorful as the small farms we are currently visiting. Bananas, avocados, mangoes, papayas, kaimitos, kamote, patola, eggplant, tomatoes, string beans, lettuce, pechay abound there. But we are told that soon big commercial and industrial ‘developers’ are coming in to change the face of the earth. The colors and shapes will change into golf courses, commercial complexes, tourist facilities for the rich. Our hosts tell us that this change represents a false concept of development. It is a movement away from the vision and spirit of Isaiah and Jesus. They are getting organized in anticipation of bulldozers and graders. They ask whether we are with them. We pledge solidarity, advocacy and prayers.

It is time to take leave of our hosts. But before we do, we feast our eyes on this remarkable spread of vegetables and fruits, rich with all the colors of the rainbow and with shapes more extravagant than a jigsaw puzzle. No philosophizing. No theologizing. Just watching, appreciating, gazing. We feel connected and we move on.