`The kingdom of God has come near to you.'

In our Gospel lesson for this Sunday, Jesus sends 70 apostles out with this message, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” Luke 10:9 It is a deceptively simple statement with awesome ramifications, should we choose to witness to them.  In light of this weekend also being the celebration of the United States’ independence, it offers a sobering moment of reflection as well.
Perhaps it will be helpful to dig a bit deeper into this message. What does the phrase “kingdom of God” or “realm of God” mean?  Is it a place, a destination?  Can we only get there through death? Does it exist in 2016 or only in “biblical times”?  My understanding is that all of Creation is God’s realm, that God’s presence and perfect ordering is expressed in that Creation, of which human beings have been given the great honor to be stewards over it.  However, due to our own limited understanding of God’s presence, we choose to subjugate Creation to our own desires and forget God’s presence.  Jesus invites us again into an awareness of God’s presence, that realm, to see it for what it really is, not what we have made it.  When we are in God’s realm, we are in right relationship with Creation, our neighbors and ourselves again. All is restored to the way Creation was intended by God. It is not a destination but a reality here and now.
The second part of the message, “has come near to you,” seems simple, and yet magnifies our own agency in God’s realm.  I believe it is possible for God’s realm to be near us without us being aware of it if we CHOOSE not to notice.  In fact, in the longer Gospel passage appointed for Sunday, that is exactly what happens to some people.  They choose not to welcome God’s presence, and so God’s realm comes near and then passes them by.
We must choose to seek God’s presence in the world, to see health and salvation happening around us rather than death and destruction in order to proclaim with truth and integrity that God’s realm is indeed near – here!  It is not enough for God to offer revelation to God’s people.  We must seek that revelation and respond to it, offering our witness and action to God’s presence in our lives. 
I believe the same is true for celebrating our Independence Day.  My thinking on this has been highly affected by two books I have read recently call Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and America’s Original Sin by Jim Wallis, both of which I highly recommend.  They both deal with the sin of racism in the United States and current realities that are the result of years of injustice and institutionalized racism. 
We can choose to enjoy our July 4th celebrations by watching fireworks, listening to patriotic music, or having an excuse to eat too much.  But those expressions miss the invitation the anniversary of our independence offers us.  I think it would be a better use of our time and energy to considered if the American experiment has worked.  From my study I can absolutely answer that it has for a small group of people for which it was intended to benefit, but for many others, the ideals of freedom, truth and justice remain only ideals and dreams. 
Those of us who call ourselves followers of Christ cannot be satisfied with this reality.  We cannot allow the realm of God to pass us by and NOT want to claim it as reality for ourselves and our neighbors here and now.  And the GOOD NEWS is that we can!  We have the ability to change how we treat each other in our society, change cruel systems and transform unjust structures, but we have to notice them first and then talk about them over and over and over and over again until we have the will to invite God into our midst to take actions to change.
It has taken us over two centuries to get into the predicament that we are in in our society.  It should not take the same amount of time to transform ourselves and reclaim the message we were given two thousand years ago, “The kingdom of God has come near.”  This is how we should celebrate our independence. It is time to reclaim this message and share it again with those who have lost hope in an experiment that failed them.  It is time to proclaim the realm of God as expansive enough for all people and not just a chosen few.  It is time to take action as part of the Jesus Movement in 2016.
In Christ,

Rev. Valerie+

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