I started with an impersonal God as a kid. Growing up in church, I learned the stories fo Jesus and knew the ethic. I would listen to pastoral prayers awhile before my mind wandered off (or I fell asleep). I knew all the parts to the most-loved hymns. I knew the story well and believed it. But God was not personal.
Jesus became Lord for me the summer before my junior year of college. Par for the course, as a young adult I was doing my best to make a case for humanity’s total depravity until it caught up with my in the form of heartache, followed by some bad old-fashioned Christian-specific shame and guilt. I literally had a come to Jesus moment where I experienced profound grace, followed by deep gratitude and allegiance. It was at that point that Jesus became my Lord. I addressed my prayers to “Lord”. It worked well for me, keeping me in line for a while, and giving me a way to express my devotion in somewhat scripted ways. Referencing Jesus as Lord was truly liberating, freeing me to a new level of faith that I hadn’t yet experience. I loved Jesus as Lord, and I was his dutiful, grateful servant. My experience gave me very personal insight into Jesus’ parable directed toward religious leaders who were great at telling others how to live their lives yet failed to take their own advice:
“Why are you so polite with me, always saying ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘That’s right, sir,’ but never doing a thing I tell you? These words I speak to you are not mere additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundation words, words to build a life on.
“If you work the words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who dug deep and laid the foundation of his house on bedrock. When the river burst its banks and crashed against the house, nothing could shake it; it was built to last. But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a dumb carpenter who built a house but skipped the foundation. When the swollen river came crashing in, it collapsed like a house of cards. It was a total loss.” – Luke 6:46-49 (MSG)
I could relate to building a life without a foundation – I lived through the wreckage. I could proclaim the strength a strong foundation provides – I was living it. What I didn’t realize is that this parable also provided a measure to not just gauge my own faithfulness, but one to judge others as well. How well were those around me toe-ing the line? I could surely identify the ones who clearly weren’t. Paradoxically, the story meant to humble the self-righteous eventually made his humbled kid self-righteous! Perhaps it should have been expected, given that the word “Lord” implies hierarchy. In a hierarchy, everyone knows where they stand in relation to others. In this case, Jesus was always on top with the rest of us below – but the ranking in that field below mattered. As Diana Butler Bass notes in her book, Freeing Jesus (120):
“Jesus is Lord.” Historians refer to it as an early creedal affirmation, but it was really more of a theological slogan. At its simplest level, the Greek term kyrios, meaning “lord” or “master,” quite literally meant the one who owns you. Slaves called their masters “lord”; students often referred to revered teachers as “master”; and workers might call their employers “lord.” In a world where millions were held in slavery and millions of others lived in poverty and powerlessness at the bottom of a rigid social hierarchy, claiming Jesus as “Lord” announced one’s liberation from oppression. “Jesus is Lord” made sense in an empire of slaves, as submitting to his lordship amounted to spiritual freedom, especially in the new community called the church where, apparently, female slaves held leadership positions and Roman social status was upended. Baptism was the rite of initiation into this egalitarian community. All Christians were baptized into their new master, Jesus, according to Paul, who includes an early baptismal creed in his letter to Galatians: “There is no longer slave or free . . . for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (3:27–28).
Furthermore, Bass points out that the roots of this moniker are found in the Jewish tradition:
“Lord” appears in Jewish contexts of the time. Because the name for God in the Hebrew scriptures, YHWH, was considered too sacred to utter aloud, whenever that term appeared in the text, the word adonai, “Lord,” was used in its place. In the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures, the Septuagint, kyrios was the translation of the Hebrew word adonai. Thus, Greek-speaking Jews referred to the Jewish God as Kyrios, “Lord.” – Bass, 121
We may not be cognizant of the implications of such language, but we cannot kid ourselves into thinking our language is benign. While language at times liberates us, it also immediately limits us, too. There’s no way around it. In this case, using “Lord” implies a hierarchy, further concretized by Jesus’ use of the phrase “Kingdom of God/Heaven.” The Lord is the one who owns the manor, the region, or the whole empire. How might that play out in a tradition that was informed by Imperialism from the time of Constantine forward? As Bass notes, “Kingdom is a corrupted metaphor, one misused by the church throughout history to make itself into the image of an earthly kingdom. Indeed, Christians have often failed to recognize that “kingdom” was an inadequate and incomplete way of speaking of God’s governance, not a call to set up their own empire (149).” And yet we did. First, we rode the coattails of the Roman Empire, and then, when the Church grew strong enough, it was its own expression of empire. This is still evident in the Catholic Church, but to lesser degrees exists in most denominations. The Southern Baptist Convention represents the most powerful body of conservative Evangelicalism in the United States, flexing its power every election cycle as it influences its members to vote according to the issues it has deemed most important (to the neglect of others). Ironically, this group that claims to be founded on Jesus’ teaching and example, barely resembles him in an increasing number of onlookers in our culture. As actor and comedian John Fugelsang noted (Bass, 138):
Jesus [was] a radical, nonviolent revolutionary who hung around with lepers, hookers, and crooks; wasn’t American and never spoke English; was anti-wealth, anti–death penalty, and anti–public prayer; who was never anti-gay; who never mentioned abortion or birth control, never called the poor lazy, never justified torture, never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarenes, never asked a leper for a co-pay; and who was a long-haired, brown-skinned, homeless community-organizing, anti-slut-shaming Middle Eastern Jew.
So, we can now see that “Lord” as as title is problematic, in part because it seems so inherently entwined with the idea of “Kingdom.” Yet, as Bass points out, perhaps we need to rethink our understanding what Kingdom meant for Jesus and might mean for us:
Isasi-Díaz argues that “kin-dom,” an image of la familia, the liberating family of God working together for love and justice, is a metaphor closer to what Jesus intended. In the words of theologian Janet Soskice: In Middle English the words “kind” and “kin” were the same—to say that Christ is “our kinde Lord” is not to say that Christ is tender and gentle, although that may be implied, but to say that he is kin—our kind. This fact, and not emotional disposition, is the rock which is our salvation. To say “our kinde Lord” was to say “our kin Lord.” Jesus the Lord is our kin. The kind Lord is kin to me, you, all of us—making us one. This is a subversive deconstruction of the image of kingdom and kings, replacing forever the pretensions and politics of earthly kingdoms with Jesus’s calling forth a kin-dom. King, kind, kin (149-150).
As a white man living in a country that is still led by white men more than others, I don’t think I can fully appreciate the potency of the idea of kin-dom. I represent the apex predator, after all, not the oppressed (despite what may be reported by some news outlets). I wonder if white guys like me actually prefer the Kingdom and Lord paradigm because it perpetuates the Imperialism we have enjoyed for so long. Jesus as Lord may rule over us, but we rule over everyone else. I can live with that! Or can I? If kin-dom is more accurate, that’s going to require some retooling, isn’t it? It implies not only that I cannot settle for a hierarchical relationship with Jesus and the Divine, but I cannot settle for it anywhere else. That’s quite unnerving.
Chucking the hierarchical lordship and kingdom paradigms (as understood in this era), what are we left with? Relationship. I suppose an argument could be made that relationships exist in the other paradigms, but not the kind that are mutually fulfilling, and not ones that operate on love or shalom. For love and shalom to exist requires a relationship not built on roles and reciprocity, but on equality, equity, inclusion, and belonging. These words are often used to describe the goals leveling the playing field for all human beings regardless of ethnicity, skin tone, or sexual orientation. They are the right words.
Such thinking leads me to ask some questions. Have you ever been in such an equitable relationship? Have you ever been in one that wasn’t quite there? What were the differences? How did each make you feel? What did each require?
Questions to think about...
What language for God has been powerful and helpful for you in your past? Has that language’s effectiveness changed over time? How?
What language for God is working for you now? How does the foreknowledge that your current language may not be your future language affect how tightly you hold that language?
How does the reframing of the word kingdom impact your view of God, yourself, and others?
All quotes, unless otherwise noted are from Diana Butler Bass’ book, Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence. HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.