Asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come,
Jesus said in reply,
"The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed,
and no one will announce, 'Look, here it is,' or, 'There it is.'
For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you."
The Kingdom of God is of a different kind than earthly kingdoms. Such earthly kingdoms are highly visible and easy to observe. Rulers make laws and exercise authority. If one does not see the leader himself one is still impacted by the infrastructure and bureaucracy setup to support him. One may not meet Caesar but one must still pay his taxes or be counted by his order in his censuses. People had every reason to expect that the Kingdom of God would be a kingdom like this. After all, how could it compete on equal terms if it was anything else?
For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.
The Kingdom of God was not, in the first place, a perfected political order, or a system in which all corruption had been eradicated. Those old an earthly authorities where still in place when Jesus said, "the Kingdom of God is among you". Many who heard probably felt that to be something of a cop out. But those who had faith were able to recognize how what Jesus described was something more, not less, than earthly kingdoms. It did not compete with them on their own terms but was still able to transform the world from the inside out, turning things upside down. It did not go to war with Caesar. It did however outlast him. It didn't conquer through force of arms. But it did conquer hearts.
For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.
The Kingdom of God is among us because Jesus himself is among us and he is, in some sense, the Kingdom in person. Wherever Jesus is present his Kingdom is in our midst. As people come to believe in him and join themselves to him in baptism this Kingdom spreads and its power, though invisible on the scale of global politics, is multiplied, transforming everything just as a little leaven makes a whole batch of dough rise (see Matthew 13:33).
The Kingdom of God will someday come in fullness, in a way that no one will be able to miss, "just as lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other". But during the period of history before that the Kingdom will continue to be marked by hiddenness, and perceptible only to eyes of faith. We will "long to see one of the days of the Son of Man" but we will not see him as physically, concretely, and definitively as we would prefer. But we are meant to know that the hidden Kingdom is still present and therefore keep our peace and not lose our heads.
There will be those who will say to you,
'Look, there he is,' or 'Look, here he is.'
Do not go off, do not run in pursuit.
If we allow the visible absence of Jesus to upset us we will become easy prey to the world. The world will then manipulate and exploit our fear, and we will risk becoming ensnared by this or that political movement or figurehead. We will desperately avail ourselves of whatever savior seems to be on offer if we forget that we already have Jesus, and that the reign of his Kingdom is already progressing according to his plan and on his schedule.
We would often prefer to have earthly power to solve what seem to be immediate and pressing problems. But what we really need is wisdom. We need wisdom as a first priority because if we have power without it we will do little good and mostly make of things an even bigger mess than how we find them.
Indeed, she reaches from end to end mightily
and governs all things well.
No comments:
Post a Comment