Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church
Just How Near Is It?
This anxious question is as old as Christian's faith: How Near? How near is the kingdom of heaven? Near when angels announce a holy birth. Now? Near when Jesus unrolls a scroll in the synagogue, declaring the acceptable time. Now? Near when miracles of sight and sound and speech, bread and water and wine astound. Now? Near when the Son of David trots into Jerusalem on a donkey, talks of paradise at Golgotha, abandons the tomb. Now? Hear when parades of calculations and predictions, numbering of days and decoding of signs make their guesses. Now?
John the Baptizer, eagerly baptizing converts and then, if hesitantly, Jesus himself--John the broadcaster, on behalf of a Savior for the world--gets arrested and executed. The hailed Messiah, Jesus, takes up residence in a tiny fishing village in a land overtaken and occupied by an empire of corruption and death. It would seem---or it should seem, if it does not ---to anyone paying attention that the kingdom of heaven, if anywhere at all, was nowhere near.
"Repent" was Jesus' inaugural message. Such a hard thing for people enduring in the hardest of times to hear. Repent of what, for what? By that time, ancient promises made in the name of God must have worn thin at best, if they had not already been tossed out as defective. In how many ways had unreliable promises and hopes for some heavenly kingdom been smashed in the collisions with each dawning day that proved to be just a copy of the grueling one before it?
Repent. turn around. Pursue life in another direction. A gutsy dispatch! But it caught fire. It spread. It drew crows because everywhere Jesus went, all through the everyday places of hard-hit dreams and suffering spirits and pained bodies --- exactly in those places---Jesus showed himself to be the heavenly good news that heals, the joyful reason to repent of fear. So, welcome and become the kingdom of heaven now and here.