Where Is God's Kingdom?

Luke was writing to a group of Jewish Christians whose life circumstances didn't really pan out the way they (likely) thought they would after the arrival of the one they believed to be the Messiah, Jesus The Christ.  

His readers had recently been cast out of their Mother Faith, Judaism.  The temple had been destroyed along with all of the priests and so a group of Pharisees were charged with pulling the broken pieces of the faith back together in an effort to move forward and one of the first things those new leaders did was insist that any sect of Judaism that believed the Messiah had already come was to be excluded from the faith.

The Jewish Christians (who believed Jesus was the Messiah) were one of the first groups to go.  

And so these Christians found themselves excluded from their larger Jewish family and out on their own to find their way through the world as a newly formed spiritual community.

What would "faith" look like for them?

What would "community" look like for them?

What did this mean for their future?

Were they "right"?

Were they "wrong"?

"How do we move the Kingdom of God forward that Jesus spoke of ... especially when we've been cast out and tossed away from our Mother Faith?"

Lots of questions swirled around, I'm sure, and so when Luke writes his Gospel Message, he's writing to them in an effort to reply to some of their questions and help them step forward into whatever their future will be.

For instance, in chapter 17 of his Gospel, Luke has the Pharisees asking Jesus "when the Kingdom of God was coming"and I imagine his readers ears would have perked up at this question.

Right?

Because I imagine that they were curious about how they would or could possibly pick up the torch that Jesus left them and carry the "Kingdom of God" into such an uncertain future ... especially since they now found themselves detached from the faith that birthed them to life.

And so the Pharisees ask Jesus when the Kingdom of God was coming to which Jesus (more or less!) replied, "it's not", HA!

Here's what he said ...

"The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the Kingdom of God is among you."

The Kingdom of God, Luke wanted his readers to know, is already here!  It's not a domain or a place that is "coming", it's not a far away place that will one day make it's arrival on earth.

No.

Instead, the Kingdom of God is found "among you" ... it's found in the ways you treat one another, it's found in the ways you speak to one another, it's found in the ways you love your neighbor and pray for your enemy and care for the poor and love yourself.  In other words, the more intentionally you do THESE THINGS, the more evident the Kingdom will be and the more brightly it will shine forth in and through your lives.

I hope that can be an encouragement for you today, my friends.  

The Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven isn't some far away place that we need to pray to come forth from the dimensions of time and space to overhaul the earth, but it's a way of life that we have the power to make come through our words and our deeds.

Yes - you and me, we can make earth heavenly or hellish ... it's up to us.

"Your Kingdom come, your will be done", Jesus said, "on earth as it is in heaven."

The Kingdom of Heaven is all around us (and even within us, Jesus said in saying #3 in the Gospel of Thomas!) and all that we need to do for it to come is to practice the ways that The Christ modeled for us, one word and one deed at a time.  

Much love,

Glenn Siepert