The Kingdom of God
Is Among Us
Jesus said that the Kingdom of
God is among us. Luke 17:20 Or perhaps he said that it is within us. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Either way he said the Kingdom of God
“is.” Not that it will be. That it is.
And either way in locating the Kingdom of God Jesus pointed to us. He didn’t point to God. He didn’t point to heaven. He didn’t even point to himself, although his
signs or miracles clearly point to an in-breaking of the Kingdom into the
world. He pointed to us. Jesus said the Kingdom of God is not will be,
and he said that it is among or within us, and Christianity has gotten Jesus’
message about the Kingdom of God almost completely wrong almost from the
beginning. Christianity has gotten
Jesus’ message about the Kingdom of God wrong at least since Christianity
became Christendom, at least, that is, since it became the established faith of
empire in the fourth century CE. We’ve
been told the Kingdom of God is really the Kingdom of Heaven (Thank you
Matthew!) and the Kingdom of Heaven
really means Kingdom in Heaven. Or we’ve been told that the Kingdom of God
may come to be on earth some day, but that day won’t happen until the Parousia,
until the Second Coming of Jesus, that hoary Christian belief that denies the
significance and the validity of Jesus’ first coming. Yet Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is
among us. Is, not will be. Us, not heaven.
In his essay “The Mystery of the
Gospel,” which is Chapter 1 of his book Waiting
for Gospel, the Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall says that gospel
isn’t something that we are to construct, it is something that has already
happened. It is something that God has
already done. Gospel, Hall says,
is. Not that it will be. It is.
Now. Already. We just don’t know it. Hall’s words reminded me of Jesus’ words from
Luke and got me thinking again about a thought I’ve had many times before. It’s a thought about how we are to understand
the Kingdom of God and the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That thought goes like this.
The Kingdom of God already exists. It is already the ultimate reality of the
world. We humans of course create our
own reality. What we take to be reality
is entirely of our own making. Trees
aren’t green. They reflect certain wave
lengths of light that our brains make green.
Green isn’t an objective reality, it is something our minds create. A glorious mountain vista isn’t
beautiful. It just is what it is. Our brains react to it with a sense that
makes us appreciate the vista and call it beautiful. Beauty isn’t an objective reality, it is
something our minds create. I don’t know
the objective reality of the people in my life or in the world. I don’t know the objective reality of what I
read and hear about world history and world events. I know only that I perceive them, and I make
my perception of them my reality. Does
my perception that I call reality correspond in any meaningful way to some
objective reality outside myself? I
don’t know. I can’t know. I have no way of knowing because my
perception, which is entirely internal and subjective, is all I have.
The Kingdom of God is already
real, but we humans constantly create a reality that is radically and
tragically different from the Kingdom of God.
We take what we experience as the injustice, violence, environmental
destruction, oppression, and exploitation of which we hear so much as reality;
and we make it our reality. We say those
things are what is real. O yes, we also
say that love, care, compassion, justice, and forgiveness are real to some
extent, but they aren’t enough for us to overcome our created reality of
violence and oppression and to live in the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is already here. It is already real, and we live as though it
weren’t.
God calls us to live in the
reality of the Kingdom of God not in the alternative reality that we call the
world. God calls us to live as though
the values of the Kingdom of God were already the universal values of the world
for, really, they already are. Is there
injustice in the world? No matter. Live lives of justice. Justice is part of ultimate reality. Is there violence in the world? No matter.
Live lives of nonviolence.
Nonviolence is part of ultimate reality.
Is there judgment, condemnation, and punishment in the world? No matter.
Live lives of acceptance and grace.
Acceptance and grace are part of ultimate reality. God says:
I showed you what my Kingdom is when I sent you my Son. He told you.
He showed you. He told that that
my Kingdom is already your reality, that it already is among and within
you. So listen to him as I told you to
do at the Transfiguration and live in my reality. Make the Kingdom of God your reality. We must stop waiting for God to do it, for
God has already done it. We can’t wait
for others to do it, for it is up to us to live it. How do we make the Kingdom of God our
reality? We just do it. We decide to do it. We choose to do it. We stop living by the worldly reality that we
convince ourselves is real and starting living by the ultimate reality of the
Kingdom of God.
The world will think we’re nuts
of course. They’ll say you’re not being
realistic, not realizing that we are living the ultimate reality and therefore
are being the most realistic people of all.
They’ll say nonviolence doesn’t work.
No matter. In the world’s terms
it often doesn’t, not that violence does.
In the Kingdom of God nonviolence works, and more importantly in the
Kingdom of God nonviolence is just what’s right. So that’s how we live. They’ll say oppression and injustice are
unavoidable in human society. No
matter. In the world’s terms they may be
unavoidable, but they don’t even exist in the Kingdom of God. They’ll say we can’t afford to save the
environment. No matter. In the Kingdom of God we know that we are
stewards not dominators of a world that belongs to God not to us, so we save
the environment.
How do we make the Kingdom of
God a reality on earth? By realizing
that it already is. By realizing that we
all create our own reality. By simply
deciding to live the Kingdom life rather than the worldly life. There’s no need to wait. There’s no use in waiting. Jesus said the Kingdom of God is among and
within you. It’s already here. So let’s live it. Now not later. It’s the only way to make it real.
© Thomas C. Sorenson, 2013 All rights reserved.
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