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Strange Kingdom: Meditations on the Cross to Transform Your Day to Day Life

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Overview

Experience how the power of the cross unleashes meaning and purpose in the midst of your daily life.

This meditative and spiritual reflection by Ken Costa considers the cross and the king who died upon it. Christ’s work on the cross established a kingdom that is strange indeed, if a king died on the cross in order to establish it. It is a kingdom where suffering and abandonment are transformed into the power of presence and live, a kingdom where a King exchanges gifts of great value for worthless dross, where a robber becomes righteous, and a criminal becomes the first citizen of heaven. Spend some time as Easter draws near considering the strange, upside-down kingdom, where broken things are made whole.

“A king who dies on the cross must be the king of a rather strange kingdom.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Strange Kingdom is a joy. In my 47 years in the Christian publishing business, Ken Costa’s compelling and inspirational reflections are unique on the meaning and purpose of the cross of Christ. A must-read for every Christian and a revelation for the spiritually curious.”—Joey Paul, Senior Editor, HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Nashville, TN

“Ken Costa masterfully and meticulously gives us an in-depth look at the cross of Jesus and what it means to us in our everyday lives.” —Robert Morris, Senior Pastor, Gateway Church, Southlake, TX

“Ken Costa’s deep love for God and unashamed defense of the cross of Jesus Christ is mirrored in this book. The perspective of a banker, the mind of a scholar, and the heart of a Christian who wants people to love Christ radiates on every page.” —R. T. Kendall, author and former minister of Westminster Chapel, England

“. . . a fresh revelation of Christ and the power of the cross.”—Joseph Prince, Senior Pastor, New Creation Church, Singapore

“Not since John Stott’s The Cross of Christ have I read a book on the saving work of Jesus that I want to return to again and again as much as this one.” —Miles Toulmin, Vicar, HTBB, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

“This book will encourage your faith and deepen your understanding of what the cross means to people in their day-to-day lives.” —Jentezen Franklin, Senior Pastor, Free Chapel, Gainesville, GA

“His honesty opens a window onto the meaning of the cross and the upside-down world it invites us in.” —Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, England

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400208081
Publisher:	Nelson, Thomas, Inc.
Publication date:	03/06/2018
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.62(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

FOOLISHNESS

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

— 1 Corinthians 1:18

DAVE EGGERS, BEST KNOWN AS THE AUTHOR OF A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (that's his title not my critical evaluation) has recently published another novel, which touches on big questions of meaning and purpose. In Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? the central character, Thomas, has kidnapped half-a-dozen people — including his mother, an astronaut, a congressman, a teacher, a policeman, and the woman of his dreams — and imprisoned them on an abandoned army base overlooking the Pacific Ocean. He does not want them for ransom or revenge but to answer his questions so that he can uncover the meaning and purpose of his life. "Don't we deserve some grand human projects that give us some meaning?"

Thomas is probably a little unhinged. But he doesn't think himself mad. He believes he's the only person sane enough and brave enough to see the terrible void at the heart of our culture. Thomas has realized that "no one had a plan for anything, [there was no one] very smart at the controls" and has come to believe that his generation are rudderless, with no "universal struggle" worth committing to, no "cause greater than ourselves" to fight for.

The only time religion is discussed, Christianity is dismissed as the most ridiculous and downright pernicious of faiths:

You know how I hate Christianity and all that wretched iconography. You know what? You see pictures of Buddha and he's sitting, reclining, at peace. The Hindus have their twelve-armed elephant god, who also seems so content but not powerless. But leave it to the Christians to have a dead and bloody man nailed to a cross. You walk into a church and you see a helpless man bleeding all over himself — how can we come away hopeful after such a sight? People bring their children to mass and have them stare for two hours at a man hammered to a beam and picked at by crows. How is that elevating?

Of course, Eggers's characters are not original in pointing out that it's a little odd to have a man hanging and dying on a cross as the focal image for a world faith. After all, the anatomy of kingdom administrations down through the ages has always operated quite differently from Jesus' kingdom regime. Usually a kingdom consisted of one person at the helm leading the charge, who held a certain pattern or set of values, using power — usually some form of violence — as the vehicle to help bring these values about, which led to victory. Broadly, that was how it worked.

A king was powerful, and his subjects lived in awe and respect of his power and majesty. I recall a visit my wife and I made to Morocco to celebrate my birthday. We went to an oasis in the desert far away from the markets of Marrakech or the kasbahs of Casablanca. During our visit, we were trying to get to the airport to continue our journey, but we were told that all the roads had been closed but we could not find out the reason. The police were out in force, as were the military. We also noticed that in this very remote part of the country where we were staying there were flags flying from houses and pennants from television aerials. A general sense of celebration in the air seemed to produce smiles on everyone's faces, even if we couldn't fathom what was going on.

English goes only so far! Finally, now stranded in the village and unable to go anywhere else, a young Moroccan conveyed to us in halting English the reasons for this interruption of daily life: the king was coming! He had not been seen in the flesh for a decade, but his power and authority went before him and each citizen responded as would be expected to the arrival, not of a politician or even a celebrity, but of a king.

After all, generally speaking, through the ages, we have looked at power through the lens of strength, brute force even, yet Jesus' definition of power, in the strange kingdom he inaugurates on earth, is something new and perhaps shocking — a genuine alternative to the power constructs of this world.

Jesus' followers have always had to lay down the viewpoints of their era. And I want us to dare to lay down our default settings and twenty-first-century perspectives and delve into the apparently foolish nature of God. The glory of God's wisdom is hidden from the powers of the world (1 Cor. 2:6–7). And the symbol of the cross hangs over the world in its distorted, twisted imagery of pain and shame, not as a worldly power story, but as a story of love. It offers a different kind of truth, not brittle and fragile, but supple and strong and capable of taking on the world in quite a different way.

The Christian story is all about God dying on a cross, in the shadows, at the wrong end of the Roman empire. It's all about God appearing to babble nonsense to a room full of philosophers. It's all about the true God confronting the world of power and overthrowing it in order to set up his own strange kingdom, a kingdom in which the weak and the poor, the foolish and the marginalized find themselves just as accepted as the strong and the wise. It's all about a change that came from below, rather than being imposed from above. We must, then, explore further the foolishness of this strange kingdom, in the hope that we may, paradoxically, gain godly wisdom.

My passion for understanding the person of Jesus has grown dramatically over the years, with an ever-increasing desire to know him more. This has encouraged me to explore the extraordinary and apparent "foolish" nature of this unlikely king and why this strange kingdom he established should have any meaning in the modern world. How has an upside-down kingdom turned the world inside out?

First then, we see this apparent foolishness being present in Jesus' life.

His earthly life as far as we can tell was uneventful. He was born Jewish, in the small town of Bethlehem. Jesus arrived in the stench of an old stable. Rather than royal red carpets, there was a dirty floor covered in hay and manure, and most likely a family of mice. The hallowed presence of God turns up at the time that Bethlehem was a vassal state and political backwater on the fringe of the Roman Empire. From the very beginning, in the place he was born, to the very end, in the way in which he died, it was through the lens of utter weakness and helplessness that we would witness and see God's love break in to the world. What utter foolishness. The entire scene is underlain with a resounding message: complete weakness and dependency will always be the occasion for God to exert his power. Such a view is foolishness to those whose idea of a king is defined by the worldview of the powerful.

He grew up in a village alongside brothers, sisters, extended family, and friends. He learned a trade and labored in Galilee, a rural northern region whose inhabitants were considered rude and uncultured by the more sophisticated city dwellers. In the stories of his life, we see someone fully human as though he was not God, and fully God as though he was not human. Jesus seemed startlingly uninhibited by social convention or religious rules, by his peers' expectations or even by the natural laws of the universe. He refused to observe the Sabbath, as the religious authorities would like. He dined with prostitutes and tax collectors. He preached a message of radical inclusivity in which neighborliness is defined, not by color, creed, or familial inheritance, but by an outrageous, sacrificial love.

The secrets of this strange kingdom work in upside-down, unlikely, foolish ways because the God we meet in Jesus is unlike anything or anyone we've ever known. Jesus spoke of God not as a Lord but as a father. And Jesus spoke of himself as a son. He told the outcast that their sins were forgiven, but the so-called "righteous" that they would be condemned. He proclaimed that the kingdom of heaven is coming, but refused to lift a hand against the Roman occupation. He was a homeless wanderer without a roof to call his own, and yet he spoke as if all the world belonged to him. And while he got angry at the presence of moneylenders in the temple court, he claimed for himself an affinity with God that goes beyond blasphemy.

He is a mass of contradictions and paradox, and yet he strikes me, even from the distance of two thousand years, as someone deeply compelling. Ever since that day in my rooms at university when I first encountered the Gospel stories, I have been mesmerized by the person of Jesus and the foolish nature of his power, and I remain so to this day.

Jesus didn't command legions or amass millions of loyal followers. He was seen as a religious rebel with a ragtag bunch. If his humble life wasn't enough to illustrate the absurdity of his magisterial claims, his death was surely proof. There he was, nailed to a wooden beam, bloodied and naked, abandoned by his friends. Scorned by the mob and jeered by the soldiers he forgave. Dying in agony, and run through with a spear just to make sure. This isn't what a Messiah or a king looks like. This certainly isn't what God looks like. Even his most loyal followers lost hope and disowned him. Their dreams of a new kingdom were now dashed to pieces on the rocky outcrop of Golgotha where foolishness was epitomized and the wisdom of Rome once again made its mark for all to see.

Furthermore, the Gospels reveal he was Lord over creation: fish swam into nets at his command, he walked on water and calmed the storms with a word. He healed the sick, the deaf, the blind, the lepers, and the disabled. No form of sickness was outside his powerful, creative, and regenerative love. He was the Lord over the demonic. Those held in the vise of Satan were set free with just a word from Jesus; the demons knew they were dealing with the Son of God. Yet, despite being Lord of all, Jesus didn't usher in an aggressive kingdom regime, reminiscent of Roman rule, but a kingdom to be inherited by the poor, the meek, the grieving, and the broken. In other religions, people reached after God, but in our foolish story, God reached out for us. Humility and apparent foolishness are the doorposts into this seemingly strange kingdom of God.

At every point, his very ordinariness seemed extraordinary. He went through life one day at a time, one meal at a time, just like his contemporaries, but he never seemed rushed, never appeared out of control, never lacked time for the people who approached him. Jesus would constantly get out of his own skin and place himself in the midst of someone else's story. Jesus didn't see the outcasts as irredeemable; he saw them as invaluable and irreplaceable — not outcasts, but offspring.

Was it foolish for the Son of God to choose to submit to the political and imperial powers of his day? Was it foolish to forgo coronation before crucifixion? To suffer as a criminal when he could have been crowned king? Powerful regimes usually change people from the outside in; but Jesus' influence changed people from the inside out.

The theme of Jesus' earthly life is one of flipping the expectations of the world on their heads — and this theme continues to the end. When Jesus was lured into danger by the deceit of a friend and arrested on false charges by men who were jealous of his influence, he looked with love upon the traitor and healed those who came with swords and clubs to imprison him.

It had become the most polarizing week in the history of humanity. But it was a week that had started with the sound of timbrels, and with children shouting "Hosanna!" and putting palm branches at his feet. They greeted him as a king, but by the end of the week he had been cast out. The book of Luke makes it apparent that this is what true power looks like. This is what it looks like when the promises of Scripture are fulfilled and Israel's Messiah returns at last to his people. He will not come in a blazing fire, or in the pillar of cloud and fire, but as a young prophet, weak and vulnerable, riding into the city on a donkey (Luke 19:28–41).

His trial was a travesty of justice, yet he refused to plead his innocence — and his silence was majestic. How foolish, we think, not to defend himself. But what seemed like silence was really a pregnant pause as Jesus prepared to birth a new kingdom on the other side of his death.

When Jesus eventually died — nailed to a beam, hanging on a cross outside of Jerusalem — it was at the time of the Passover. But there was nothing particularly unusual about that. The great festivals were often times of unrest and insurrection, making the Romans jumpy and overzealous in their punishments. This death, however, was different. This crucifixion ushered in a new creation, a new world that would be celebrated on the first Easter Sunday.

As the onlookers mocked him and called him "king of the Jews," we remember his dialogue with Pilate. Jesus did claim that he is the king of a kingdom, but he said that this is a very strange kingdom, one for which the world has no grid, no reference, no framework. Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place" (John 18:36).

All these glimmers of the extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary mark this man, this Jesus, as utterly unique among the handful of miracle workers who crisscrossed Israel; unique among the rural laborers who plied their trades in Galilee; unique among the many who were tortured and killed by the Romans; unique, in fact, among the millions who populated the Roman Empire; unique, indeed, among all the billions of humans who have ever lived. It was precisely the strange meshing of the ordinary and the extraordinary that proclaimed his uniqueness. It was God's ability to use small, seemingly insignificant encounters to set the stage for significant impact. With every strike of the hammer, it looked as if the dark would win. But it was God's masterstroke.

This isn't what a Messiah looks like. This certainly isn't what God looks like. Even his most loyal followers lost hope and disowned him, their dreams of a new kingdom dashed to pieces on the hill of Golgotha. And yet. And yet. Somehow this was not the end. On the day after Jesus' death, it looked as if whatever small mark he left on the world would rapidly disappear. Instead, his impact on human history has been unparalleled.

Of all the extraordinary miracles of this extraordinary rabbi, he saved the best for last. He returned. He appeared. He rolled back the great stone that covered his tomb, and he encountered one of his most devoted disciples, a woman called Mary. He sent her to the others with a message: "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John 20:17). Even here, Jesus turned earthly convention on its head.

The first apostle, the first messenger of the greatest hope the world has ever known, was a woman. Not just any woman either, but a woman who, if tradition is to be believed, had once earned her keep through prostitution. Because of her status, Mary couldn't even testify in a court of law. By earthly standards she was a foolish choice to carry the message of the risen Messiah. Wild-eyed in her determination to tell the story, barely able to contain her excitement and stumbling over her words in a rush to get them out. What a fool she must have looked. That is, until Jesus turned up himself, and her foolishness was vindicated. And the disciples started to believe, once again, that their Jesus, their rabboni, is the Messiah. Is the Savior. Is God. Someone without beauty or majesty or attraction, but who would nevertheless flip the world upside down, turning weakness and pain into strength and healing.

This is the suffering servant the prophet Isaiah prophesied about:

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

(Isa. 53:2–3)

The apostle Paul wrote: "Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools" (Rom. 1:22).

Doesn't that just say it all? It's not as simple as saying that the message of the Cross is foolishness, as if we should be ashamed of it. This is the foolishness of God — a foolishness that shames human wisdom. To those who can understand, the foolishness of God is not the end of wisdom. On the contrary, said Paul, it is "wiser than human wisdom." It is true wisdom. The true order of things. The pulse and heartbeat at the center of all that exists. The soil out of which everything lasting and permanent grows. True wisdom is God's opinion on the matter, the presence of the mind of Christ in every situation.

(Continues…)

Excerpted from "Strange Kingdom"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Ken Costa.
Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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