20. The Kingdom of God is best described as a party, a dance, a celebration, or a feast that God has invited me to share with Him.

(Before looking at the questions below, take a few minutes to think about this statement. Invite Jesus to speak to you about what He would like you to notice.) 

Can you imagine being at a dance and dancing with Jesus? What would be harder for you to imagine, you being there or Jesus being there?

When you imagine Jesus, is He serious, reserved, fun loving, upbeat, or…? How does His personality shape what you think the Kingdom is like?

Is it possible that God designed our bodies to require regular eating so that we could have opportunities to share that experience with others? In other words, are meals only to meet our physical needs or also to nourish our relational needs?

In your image of the Kingdom, where are the relational spaces that God has designed?

What are the places that you most easily experience God?

The phrase “Kingdom of God” as Jesus used it can be difficult for us to imagine. The Hebrew people of His day had long understood the Kingdom of God to be the nation of Israel. They understood that the Kingdom God invited them into was “flowing with milk and honey.” It was good, rich, and abundant.

God’s Kingdom desire for Israel was that people would live in unity with each other, care for each other, and worship God together in annual celebrations. God’s rules and guidelines, when followed, made it difficult for people to abuse or oppress each other. When Jesus came, all of this would have been part of the Jew’s understanding of the word “Kingdom.” Jesus did not diminish the quality or abundance of the Kingdom, He simply shifted the nature of the Kingdom from physical to spiritual. The problem is that

our understanding of the word “kingdom” does not carry the same background and nuancing that it did for the people of Jesus’ day and culture. We also struggle to imagine what a spiritual Kingdom would look like. So, we might ask

“What would Jesus call the ‘Kingdom’ if He were to come in our day and culture?” Whatever He would call it, Jesus would first want us to understand that it would be really good and pleasurable for us. Second, Jesus would want us to know that He would like to experience it with us And third, that it would include other people.

Several times when teaching about the Kingdom, Jesus used the image of a banquet or wedding feast. Jesus’ first miracle was at a wedding feast in Cana. There are indications that the early church fathers understood this wedding at Cana to represent Jesus, as the groom, and the Church, as His bride, coming together at a wedding feast.

Surely there is no word that adequately describes what Jesus invites us into when He calls it the Kingdom of God. Whether we use the phrase that He did, “Kingdom of God,” or substitute something like feast, party, dance, or celebration,

we will need to acknowledge that no word will serve to convey all that Jesus has created for us to enjoy with Him.