Thy Kingdom Come

What if today God told you that the Kingdom you've been waiting for is right in front of you? What if the far-off place you have spent half of your life dreaming about actually turned out to instead be the culmination of your efforts in the world right in front of your face; in the neighborhood right outside your window? What if God said to you, "This is it. This is my Kingdom. What have you been doing with it?"

I ask these questions humbly because I wonder if good people of faith have given up on this world. "This world is going to hell," I hear some say. "God save us from this horrible place," others mutter. "Jesus, come quickly," people cry out. I have muttered all of these at some point in my own life.

As we set our sights on something far away and out of reach, we continue to ignore our role in the lives of those all around us in the communities we have been placed into. In hoping for a distant Heaven, we've actually become pretty self-focused. Hear me out.

There seems to be people who wait, and people who refuse to wait, when it comes to the Good News. There are many people of faith who chose to hold onto hope for the world around them even when it seems bleak. They get involved and dirty their hands for the sake of those around them. They see everyone as their neighbor in an interconnected world where the plight of one should be the plight of all, and the brokenness of others is a shared opportunity for a community to repair it.

Sadly, there are also those of us who seem to instead cling to books and Scripture about tribulations and raptures, hiding in our homes out of sight; sitting and waiting; awaiting Jesus' return. We get lost in our focus of believing He will "rescue us" and take us to some place beautiful, safe, and without blemish. Sadly, it's like we're standing in the midst of a ghetto with our eyes closed, waiting for God to take us to a gated suburb.

I must admit that I both struggle and identify with the second group of people because I've spent much of my life believing in that kind of Gospel; one that says this world is destined for destruction and judgment, so why bother? But it's no better than being (and staying) asleep.

If the world is doomed, then who cares if wars and rumors of wars persist? If the world is temporary and decaying, who cares about our climate and the damage our human greed has done to it? If there are people God will save and others He will simply judge and cast away, then who cares about bombing terrorists or executing murderers, rejecting immigrants and dividing them up like cattle? What business is it of ours if there's even an occasional unarmed black man being killed by police officers? Why do I need to care about a homeless guy addicted to pain killers? Why do I need to invest in educating my children and other children when all that really matters is teaching them that they need Jesus and that life is all about waiting for Him to come back and rescue us?

Isn't this mindset just a long wait at a bus stop? I guess it's a good thing we brought a Bible along to read.

The problem with the faith we often fall into subscribing to is that it excuses us from any responsibility in the lives God has given us here and now. It tilts our heads too far upward, above the clouds and above all the people and problems below that God is waiting for us to pay attention to.

If there was no Heaven, would you still have faith? If there was no hell or punishment for not having faith, would you still appreciate grace and forgiveness? Let me ask this a different way- if the result of following Christ was simply a more purposeful life devoted to others and less about self, but there were no consequences for not subscribing, would you still buy in?

I'm half-convinced that many of us in the Church hopped onto the wagon because we thought the forest was burning down around us and we needed a way out, any way out. Jesus made sense to us because He was our life raft. But what if the raft was already on shore? Would you still get in?

I'd like to propose that we need to re-imagine the purpose of salvation through the Gospel. Is the "good news" simply that we don't have to burn in hell and that we get to move to a heavenly resort in the clouds after we die? Or is there something better about it; something that connects us all to each other and to the author of our existence? Would it change the way we see the world, those who are in it, and our responsibility to all of it?

Maybe God's Kingdom is at hand, and it's up to us to help usher it in. Maybe He's waiting for you and me to answer our call to get involved and make things better. Maybe God is calling us to reconcile with His creation. Maybe the "Heaven" we get to partake in when we come to the end of all things is actually a culmination of how we lived out our salvation to those we were placed around in the life we were given.

After all, we pray- "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven". We pray that God's perfect Heaven would be made known in the world we live in now, a world that we have all directly played a part in breaking.

I'm not at all saying that salvation is based on how good we are or how much good we do. That would be heresy. But maybe, just maybe, "Thy Kingdom come" is the part God leaves up to us. Maybe God is saying to us, "I've given you salvation, now what kind of 'Heaven on earth' would you like to be a part of creating with Me?"

If this is it, if this is His Kingdom come, what have we been doing with it?