In Our Midst (Trinitarian Article)

4th century mosaic of Christ from Dorset, England (now in the British Museum): 

the earliest known visual representation of Christ

Fr. Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians

July-August 2016

In Our Midst

“The Reign of God is among you.”  Luke 17:21

One of the great ironic twists in the history of ideas is that the greatest catastrophes of the Hebrew nation in the eighth and sixth centuries before the common era produced its greatest hopes and visions for the future.  When the Assyrians destroyed the Northern Kingdom Israel in 722 and the Babylonians leveled Jerusalem’s walls and deported Judah’s ruling elites in 587, prophets left behind or carried away produced the most ecstatic and hopeful affirmations of God’s love for his people ever written, placing such visions in an ideal future when the Davidic throne would be restored with a just and merciful King (a Messiah), the uneven desert between Mesopotamia and Canaan leveled to make a highway for God’s people to return, and finally, where swords would be beaten into pruning hooks and lion and lambs lie down together in peace.   The coming Day of God, the future Kingdom of God, would set all things right and justify our trust and hope in God.  

When Jesus began his ministry, much of this future hope remained:  John the Baptist preached that the Great Day of God was coming to burn the wicked and set things straight, so we need to repent and be baptized.    Again, ironically and curiously, when John was slain by Herod, Jesus began his public ministry with an affirmation that the future ideal day was no longer far off, but had already begun.  “The Reign of God is in your midst already,” he says, and says that his healings and marvelous deeds are signs pointing to this truth.  This idea that God’s saving act was no longer in the future, but already being realized in Jesus’ person and ministry is the single most striking teaching of the historical Jesus.  It changes how we see salvation and our hope in God.  

Biblical scholar and Church of England Bishop N. T Wright writes:

“The whole point of what Jesus was up to was that he was doing close up, in the present, what he was doing and promising long-term in the future.  And what he was promising for that future and doing in the present was not saving souls for a disembodied eternity but rescuing people from the corruption and decay of the way the world presently is so they could enjoy, already in the present, the renewal of creation which is God’s ultimate purpose – so they could thus become colleagues and partners in that large project.” 

When Jesus asks us to follow him, he asks us to be colleagues and partners in the saving work of God.  When he tells us to take up our cross, he asks us to embrace the “nasty bits” of our life, where God appears least present, where hope is least justified, and let them be transmuted into hope and confidence.

“Blessed are the poor.  Blessed are the starving.  Blessed are those dying of thirst. Blessed are those who mourn.”  None of the beatitudes make sense without faith that the Kingdom is already in our midst.    God’s reign is not far off in the future or abstracted in the eternities, but is present right here, right now, even where we least expect to see it. 

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+