Baptist Preaching: A Global Anthology

22. The Upside-down Kingdom

Part IV—Europe 173 22 The upside-down kingdom (John 18:33-37) Toivo Pilli International Baptist Theological Seminary Prague, Czech Republic BIOGRAPHY Pilli was born in Estonia. He grew up in a Christian family and attended the local Immanuel Baptist church. After high school he studied at Tartu University, with English and American literature as his major subjects. In 1988 he became the pastor of the Elva Baptist Church in Southern Estonia . While being a pastor he continued his studies in the field of theology. He studied in the Finnish Free Church Theological Seminary, Santala, and undertook Th.M. studies at Tartu University. His master’s thesis (1996) was about Estonian Baptist history. From 1993 to 1998 he was the pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church in Tartu, and from 1998 to 2002 he was rector of the Baptist Theological Seminary in Tartu, where he had been teaching Estonian church history and preaching since 1991. He served also as vice president of the Estonian ECB Union (1998–2001) and represented Estonian Baptists in the Estonian Council of Churches (1995–1998). From 2002 to 2006, Toivo worked as a course leader in Baptist and Anabaptist studies at IBTS, Prague, and as the director of the associated research institute. In 2007 he was awarded the Ph.D. by the University of Wales/IBTS for his dissertation entitled “Evangelical Christians-Baptists of Estonia: The Shaping of Identity, 1945–1991.” He is the author of several articles and has edited a number of academic books. He is a member of the Society for Estonian Church History and the Society for Estonian Academic Theology. Pilli is married to Einike, who is involved in adult education and Christian education as a speaker and teacher. As a team, they have been working together on different projects both in church life and in the academic field. They have three boys: Iisak, Siimeon, and Timoteos. SERMON COMMENTARY Pilli begins with Pilate in Jerusalem and ends with Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Those persons bookend a reflective sermon on the nature of the kingdom of God today. The sermon combines artistic and evocative narration with direct critique of a misunderstood kingdom in 174 Baptist Preaching the church and world today. A number of devices carry the weight of the message. The message begins with the congregation overhearing an inner dialogue of Pilate, a reverie contrasting life in Rome with his governing post in Judea. Pilli stands behind the text with suggestions of the stigma of Pilate’s assignment to Judea, as well as comparisons between the power systems of Rome and the Jewish leaders. That is, he brings to the text aspects of the biblical background not apparent on the surface of the text that relate to ancient sources around the career of Pilate. He introduces the symbol of a checkerboard with the turn of phrase that the power politics of Rome and Jewish religion were “only pieces that are of a different color” on the same board playing the same game. Jesus does not even play on the same board. Pilli next moves into the first expression of his major theme: God is working globally in ways we cannot imagine. To solidify his point, he moves from God’s power in the microcosm within the smallest blade of grass to God’s power in the macrocosm. A recurring riff in the message that forms a distinct theme throughout is the larger, invisible, and immeasurable power of God beyond the obvious. This expresses itself in the immanent and transcendent kingdom. In the next move Pilli stands in front of the text and indicts modern Christendom for the same use of power and force that characterized Pilate’s Rome. He rejects the notion of contemporary “Christian” government using force to promote a Christian agenda. Pilli’s understanding of God’s ways in the world requires a small community struggling in the name of Jesus, rather than meeting force with force. Another artistic and evocative approach arrests the listener’s attention when Pilli conceives a dialogue between the listening congregation and Pilate, giving advice to the wavering procurator, warning him that he was facing more power than he knew. This enables Pilli to repeat his focus using a different narrative device. Pilli refers to a number of authority figures as antagonists and protagonists of his view of the kingdom: von Harnack, Schweitzer, Augustine, Hammarskjӧld, Jeremias, Kraybill, Brian McLaren, and Teilhard de Chardin . He plays one off against the other...