Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12There are statementsso ­ bewildering that they are quoted again and again. Among these is a remark, now a century old, by the French biblical scholar Alfred Loisy: “Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God – and what came was the church.” * I’ll leave to the side the question of what Loisy himself meant by this sentence. Rather, I’ll focus on how it’s understood by those who gleefully quote it. Usually, they understand it as bitterly ironic. Here, on the one side, is the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed: the immense, all-comprehensive, yet incomprehensible trans­ form­ ation of the world under God’s reign – and there, on the other side, is the church that came after Easter: a finite body with all the limitations of any other social structure. Clearly, then, there’s a gaping chasm between Jesus’ proclamation and the post-Easter reality! Here the glory of the kingdom of God; there the bitter paltriness of the actual existing church. I’ll say immediately what merit I find in this approach: None. None at all. For it rends open a cleft between the will of Jesus and the reality of the church in a way that does injustice to both Jesus and the church. How so? First of all, because it was Jesus himself who characterized the onset of the kingdom as small and utterly inconspicuous. Think of his images of the mustard seed (Mark 4:30–32), of the yeast (Matt. 13:33), of the endangered seed (Mark 4:1–9), or of the seed that grows in secret (Mark 4:26–29). Second, because the kingdom as proclaimed by Jesus never lies removed from society. Repeatedly, of course, people have attempted to turn it into that, seeking to project the kingdom into the far-off future, or into absolute transcendence, or into the depths of the human soul. But for Jesus, the kingdom of God is a concrete social reality. God’s basileia (kingly rule) has its starting point in a real people. The transformation of the world through the reign of God must begin in Israel. To be sure, the kingdom of God and the people of God are not identical. But they are strongly connected. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus tells us to ask for the coming of the kingdom. But just before, he has us pray for the gathering and sanctification of the people of God. That is what is meant by the words, “Hallowed be your name.” ** Behind this request is the theology of the book of Ezekiel. *** 1 Alfred Loisy, L’Évangile et l’Église, 2nd ed. (Bellevue, 1903), 155. 2 G. Lohfink, Das Vaterunser neu ausgelegt (Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2013), 51–59. 3 E.g., Ezek. 20:22, 41, 55; 36:22–28. Gerhard Lohfink, a Catholic priest, was professor of New Testament studies at the University of Tübin- gen. Since 1986, he has been a member of the Catholic Integrated Community and lives in Bad Tölz, Germany. This is a translation from German of his talk on November 21, 2015 at a conference commemorat- ing Eberhard Arnold (see overleaf).