THY KINGDOM COME… [F, 8-30-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—THY KINGDOM COME… [F, 8-30-24]

 

I feel a bit like my life has been shortchanged, since Kingdomtide and I were born the same year, and Kingdomtide certainly hasn’t gotten much respect. Fortunately, I did not die along with Kingdomtide in… well, it’s never been given an official death date. Indeed, much like I, Kingdomtide just sort of keeps puttering and sputtering along.

From 1937 on, all the Sundays between Trinity Sunday [usually early June] and Advent [late November] in the ecclesial calendar were designated as Kingdomtide. Well, yes and no. Denominations never agreed on whether or when to celebrate Kingdomtide. Like the temperance movement, and church support for the labor movement, Kingdomtide was mostly Methodist.

Methodism was always primarily about action rather than theology. John Wesley said, “If your heart is with my heart, then give me your hand.” We don’t have time to worry about theological differences. Let’s get on with building the Kingdom of God on earth. Let’s feed the hungry and visit the sick and do unto others as we want them to do unto us. And to be sure we don’t forget anything, let’s do it on a weekly and yearly schedule. Methodically.

That is what Kingdomtide was supposed to remind us to do—build the Kingdom of God on earth. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We were not just to pray it; we were to do it. {Build it and they will come?}

But we rarely celebrate Kingdomtide now, even in Methodist churches. The church calendar just gives us a whole lot of “The {Numbered} Sunday after Pentecost,” all the way to Advent.

The liturgical color for Kingdomtide is green, a color that symbolizes growth, at the end of a season [summer] when the world is as green as it’s likely to get. It follows Pentecost, the birth of the church, so green can be for growing the church as well as bringing in The Kingdom of God. Like Kingdomtide, itself, though, I think the church bureaucrats chose green for Kingdomtide just because it was the last color left over after the more popular church seasons got their pick.

Traditionally—if anything started in 1937 can be old enough to have a tradition--Kingdomtide started on the Sunday nearest August 31, the Festival/Feast of Christ the King, so that it had 13 Sundays before the start of Advent.

Yes, the season of Kingdomtide is much neglected, but we Kingdom-building aficionados aren’t bothered. We still get top billing in that prayer everybody prays every Sunday.

John Robert McFarland