Thy Kingdom Come (Like Hallelujah)
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you innocently said something you didn’t know was NSFW? With ever-changing informal vernacular in our culture, you may have found yourself in a church lobby talking about how everybody needs a hoe (for gardening, of course). Or maybe you noticed some younger folks getting wide-eyed when you kept going on and on about all the ways you enjoy eggplant (parmesan is delicious, am I right?). Or you wonder why you get a dirty look from someone when you casually mention that you two should hook up sometime (Starbucks or Peets?). If you cannot recall a time when you have been guilty of such social infractions, it only means that you most assuredly have been!
As a pastor’s kid, I grew up in a relatively cleaned up bubble. No one ever swore or even raised their voice. Forget about coarse talk – not in a million years. One of the game shows we watched kept using the phrase whoopie which always got a rise out of the audience. I had no idea what the heck they were talking about. I just knew people said “whoopie!” when good things happened, like winning a game, or a getting a scoop of ice cream. So, I just assumed game show contestants were making a lot of ice cream. Who wouldn’t get excited about that?! I just couldn’t figure out why they sometimes blushed when it came up. Maybe they were eating too much of it? That tracks.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that bedroom talk had been happening in church every week! In fact, because we have so many recovery groups that meet within our walls every day of the week, I have to inform you that racy language is being used all the time. And not the obvious ones you’re likely bringing to mind. Nope. Right under our noses, we’ve been using bedroom talk. And do you know who started it? Can you guess who put us on such a raunchy path? Jesus.
As Neil Douglas-Klotz notes in his book, Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus' Words, the Aramaic expression of the first part of the second line we know as “Thy Kingdom come” is pretty saucy. The Aramaic phrase, Teytey malkuthakh (tee-tee mal-ku-tok) , is what Jesus uttered, which was translated to Greek and then translated again into English for our misinterpretation and misunderstanding.
The Aramaic Malkuthakh refers to a quality of rulership and ruling principles that guide our lives toward unity. It could justifiably be translated as either “kingdom” or “queendom.” From the ancient roots, the word carries the image of a fruitful “arm” poised to create, or a coiled spring that is ready to unwind with all the verdant potential of the earth. It is what says “I can” within us and is willing, despite all odds, to take a step in a new direction. A scepter of sorts that fosters the creative process... The word Malkatuh, based on the same root, was a name of the Great Mother in the Middle East thousands of years before Jesus. The ancients saw in the earth and all around them a divine quality that everywhere takes responsibility and says, “I can.” Later those who expressed this quality clearly were recognized as natural leaders—what we call queens or kings. In a collective sense, malkuthakh can also refer to the counsel by which anything is ruled, the collective ideals of a nation, or the planet. In this line, we ask that the kingdom/queendom come by clarifying our personal and collective ideas in alignment with the Creator’s—toward unity and creativity like the earth’s.
Teytey means “come” but includes the images of mutual desire, definition of a goal, and, in the old sense, a “nuptial chamber”—a place where mutual desire is fulfilled and birthing begins.
Taken together, teytey malkithakh is an invitation to co-create. More precisely, procreate. Queue the Barry White... Below are some ways the Aramaic phrase lends itself to expression. We recall, again, that Jesus was not a Westerner, and was known for his command of language in his teaching. Which of these expressions of “Thy Kingdom come” landed most with people? I wonder how they reacted and responded to it?
Create your reign of unity now-
through our fiery hearts
and willing hands.
Let your counsel rule our lives,
clearing our intention
for co-creation.
Unite our “I can” to yours, so that
we walk as kings and queens
with every creature.
Desire with and through us
the rule of universal fruitfulness
onto the earth.
Your rule springs into existence
as our arms reach out to
embrace all creation.
Come into the bedroom of our hearts,
prepare us for the marriage of
power and beauty.
From this divine union, let us birth
new images for a new world
of peace.
Create your reign of unity now!
Jesus’ line was one of love much more than logic. It was a love song filled with passion. Maybe the tone was like this song made famous by a black female artist in the United Stated only to be made into an Italian aria sung by a talent contest winner from the United Kingdom.
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) was a Church History professor in the United States. His most famous book was Christianity and the Social Crisis, where he highlighted the role of our faith tradition over the centuries in addressing social issues of their day, and the need to continue that tradition in his time and ours. Having pastored a church in NYC immediately adjacent to Hell’s Kitchen, he was all too familiar with the human capacity to mistreat others for personal gain. The living conditions in the apartments for immigrants working in the city were deplorable. In many cases there were no windows, and thus poor ventilation. Illness and disease were rampant in such places. Yet the tenants had little recourse – it was all that they could afford. Rauschenbusch’s cause, which would eventually be coined the Social Gospel (he simply saw it as the Gospel), would awaken the nation and world to the Church’s need to speak into the harsh realities of the day, especially greed.
What caused Rauschenbusch to speak up? He was one of many scholars in his day who could easily recognize the role of the prophets in the Old Testament and the teaching of Jesus and others in the New Testament that supported the claim. Why him? Ultimately it was because he fell in love. With God. And he never got over it. Once he fell, the teytey malkithakh never stopped flowing from his lips. Like a lover consumed with desire, so was he captivated by God. Such love given and received changed the way he saw everything, especially the plight of the poor. While his intellectual understanding was sound, it was his heart that shifted him. You can sense it in his reflections:
Enter into God. In the castle of my soul is a little garden gate, Whereat, when I enter, I am in the presence of God. In a moment, in the turning of a thought, I am where God is, This is a fact . . . When I enter into God, all life has a meaning. Without asking I know; my desires are even now fulfilled, My fever is gone in the great quiet of God. My troubles are but pebbles on the road, My joys are like the everlasting hills. So it is when I step through the gate of prayer from time into eternity.
The Life of God in our Souls. The life of God in our souls lends grandeur to the scattered and fragmentary purposes of our life by gathering them into a single all-comprehending aim—the kingdom of God, which is the hallowing of God’s name and the doing of God’s will. It guarantees that our aspirations are not idle dreams nor our sacrifices fruitless toil, but that they are of God and through God and unto God, and shall have their fulfillment and reward. When the vast world numbs us with a sense of helplessness and ignorance, prayer restores our sense of worth by the consciousness of kinship with the Lord of all. Even when our strength is broken, when our hopes are frustrated and nature seems to cast us aside, we can trust and wait. By holding up the will of the Holy One as the norm of action and character, religion spurs us on to endless growth.
Father Richard Rohr speaks into this reality in the following excerpts taken from his book, Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go:
Jesus came to teach us the way of wisdom by bringing us a message that offers to liberate us from both the lies of the world and the lies lodged within ourselves. The wisdom of the gospel creates an alternative consciousness, solid ground on which we can really stand, free from every social order and every ideology. The preaching of the gospel pulls the rug out from under us, and we have to put our life on a new footing. First, we have to act. We have to cross over a threshold and live differently, so that we’re compelled to think differently and ask challenging questions...
We can’t [discover this] with our minds [alone]; we simply must act. The problem isn’t solved in the head but in the gut, in the whole body (including the head, but that doesn’t come until later). That’s what I mean when I speak of the risk and leap of faith... First, we agree to give ourselves, and then we will understand, not the other way around. Otherwise, we get caught in all kinds of protective reasons why we don’t need to give ourselves to life and we never make the dive.
First, I have to act, and then I’ll understand—meaning the whole person will understand. Then I’ll know what I know. But I really won’t know why I know, nor will I be able to offer proof to anyone else. It’s the mysterious wisdom of faith, the wisdom we learn only when we are on the way. Nobody else can teach us this lesson, neither the pope nor biblical authorities; we have to go down this road ourselves... Persist at that deeper place in yourself where the “both-and” is located. This is the place of the soul and the place of wisdom toward which we have to move. Don’t be afraid! Fear comes from a need to control, and we are not in control anyway.
The faith that has the power to transform lives is not born from intellectual pursuit but comes from another zone. This is why Jesus taught his highly educated yet ignorant guest, Nicodemus, that the only way you enter the Kingdom of God is from being born again, or born anew. This doesn’t mean we cast aside academic pursuit – hardly! Deep, careful thought helps us construct ever-new models of understanding the Divine, life, and the world in which we live. It really is an act of faith, an opening up, the teytey malkithakh being passionately expressed over and again. Being so full of desire that you are consumed by and for your lover. Being so assured of their desire that you are overwhelmed by their love. This isn’t a head trip. It’s a heart-trip of passion that, when engaged, blows one’s mind as the first step toward transforming it.
I am grateful to have been raised in the faith, informing me of the stories and traditions that give us Christianity. But it was the leap of faith into the arms of God that changed me, altered my vision, transformed my thinking, and see me free to love fully.
Part of musical genius Michael Gungor’s story was learning to lean into this aspect of faith which this line of the Lord’s Prayer calls us utter. May you feel his passion, and may it stir yours, that you might, from your deepest places, dare to cry out along with him:
Let the waters cool ya
Let the spirit move ya
Feel the fire on your lips and
Sing your hallelujah
Sing your hallelujah
Kiss my mouth like hallelujah
Lay me down like hallelujah
Oh my soul sing hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Baby don't let the preachers fool ya
Don't let the dead men rule ya
Let the lord crawl up your spine and sing your hallelujah
Kiss my mouth like hallelujah
Lay me down like hallelujah
Oh my soul sing hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Kiss my mouth like hallelujah
Lay me down like hallelujah
Oh my soul sing hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah