J=L

I recently heard an interview with Cambridge physicist and theologian John Polkinghorn in which he described the beauty of mathematical equations. The simpler they are the more elegant they are and yet in their simplicity they can contain a profound and deep set of relations that have a direct correlation with the way the world is. Einstein’s E=mc2 is, perhaps, the most famous example. It is helpful, I think, to see the Kingdom of Heaven-or the Kingdom of God—in a similar way. The equation that makes sense out of all of Jesus’ teachings on the Kingdom is the simple equation, “Jesus is Lord.” Or, J=L.

Plumbing the depths of “J” we find this interesting contrarian revelation. We look for a cedar and find a shrub. We look for palaces and find a manger. We look for royalty and find peasants. We look for a following of the powerful and prestigious and instead find beggars, lepers, tax-collectors, fishermen, murderers, and prostitutes among his friends. We look for the war-horse and instead find the young donkey. We look for a throne and find a cross. We look for the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and behold, we see the lamb who was slain (Rev. 4.5,6).

What this tells us about “L,” or “lordship” is significant. John Howard Yoder writes, “Jesus was, in his divinely mandated . . . prophethood, priesthood, and kingship, the bearer of a new possibility of human, social, and therefore political relationships. His baptism is the inauguration and his cross is the culmination of that new regime in which disciples are called to share.”

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. That is enough to shake up our imaginations and set us on a path of discovering the radical—and hopeful—nature of God’s rule, His kingdom, and the depth within the equation “Jesus is Lord.” In this time of ours with its high stakes political campaigns, the posturing of the powerful, and the promise of a hope through change that is still a hope based upon the promise of empire, we will do well to remember that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed. This means we will look for the Kingdom in places we don’t normally look. It means that God’s rule will often be very different from the rule that governs the nations of the world. It means that submitting to the lordship of Jesus will cause us to look like contrarians and non-conformists, following that greatest of contrarians, the Lord himself.