When asked when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus responds, “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” (Luke 17:20-21).
During my lifetime, I can remember four or so instances where fundamentalist preachers declared that the Kingdom of God would come in a particular year or in the near future. In the 1970s, there was the book “The Late, Great Planet Earth.” As the year 2000 approached, some warned that “Y2K” would mean the collapse of the power grid, the internet and the international banking system, chaos would result, and the Son of Man would come on the clouds of heaven. Of course, that never happened. One preacher even sent out a booklet saying that, although Jesus said, “But of the day or hour, no one knows; neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32), he was sure of the month and the year of the Second Coming. He, too, was wrong. Both the Seventh-day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses were founded on the prediction of Jesus’ imminent coming. And unfortunately, there are some fundamentalist Christians who are hoping for a war in the Middle East between Israel and Iran, for they believe that this will force Jesus Christ to come again and bring about a thousand-year kingdom.
What all of these get wrong is to see the Kingdom of God as a place, a political or national or international entity. As Scripture scholars have pointed out, it is better to translate the Greek as the Reign of God, rather than the Kingdom of God. In fact, this is what we pray for each time we pray the Our Father. We pray: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Where God’s will is lived out is where God’s kingdom has broken into the world. When Jesus says, “Behold, the Kingdom of God is among you,” He is speaking of Himself. Jesus lives out the Father’s will in obedience and shows us what the fullness of humanity is called to look like.
At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus gives what I like to think of as His inaugural address in the synagogue in Nazareth. He reads from the prophet Isaiah: “‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.’ … He said to them, ‘Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.’” (Luke 4:18-19, 21). Jesus then goes out to begin His work of healing, of freeing the possessed, and restoring lepers to health and community. God’s will is one of mercy, healing, reconciliation, forgiveness and love. Each time we see this happening, we get a glimpse into what the fullness of God’s reign will look like in heaven.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus gives us a new commandment: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). As a sign of who we are called to be as His disciples, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. “The greatest among you must be your servant.” Jesus goes on to speak of the vine and the branches. Will we allow ourselves to root more deeply into Christ and, through the Holy Spirit, bear much fruit? Will we open ourselves to allow Him to live in us, and we in Him?
If we do this, then the Kingdom of God will begin to break more fully into a hurting and hungry world. Then glad tidings will be brought to the poor, captives to consumerism and substances will begin to be freed, those blinded by envy, lust and anger will begin to see, and all will work together to create a world acceptable to the Lord. Then truly we can say, “The Reign of God is coming among you.”
Jesuit Father John Michalowski is the parochial vicar of St. Peter Church in Charlotte.