Today’s liturgical Gospel reading comes from Luke 17:20–25.
Asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus said in reply, “The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.”
The Kingdom’s arrival is not observable. Jesus puts it plainly. This itself should be enough to defuse all the wild apocalyptic expectations. But it’s much easier to point to the real dangerous and imagined catastrophes as a way to predict the imminent arrival of God’s Kingdom.
It’s happened since nearly the beginning of Christianity. If something awful is happening, that might be a sign of the end. If society is not particularly “moral” or Church leadership is corrupt, it becomes easy for the prophets of doom to manipulate and stoke people’s fears for their own benefit.
Jesus, though, identifies himself with the Kingdom of God. God’s kingdom is among you. One meaning of the kingdom’s presence, as Leo Tolstoy wrote, “within you.” This points to the truth presence of God’s Spirit in each of us.
A related meaning directly addresses the Pharisees’ question. The Kingdom is not observable. It’s unlike the Roman Empire or Solomonic Kingdom. The Kingdom is wherever Jesus is.
But where is Jesus? He tells us in the last line of today’s reading. “But first he must suffer greatly and be rejected by this generation.” Jesus is at the cross.
In Matthew 25, Jesus personally identifies with all who are poor, hungry, unhoused, widowed, orphaned, and imprisoned. It’s not that these folks are “like” him. They are him.
St. Paul puts it provocatively, “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Colossians 1:24). He “completes” Christ’s sufferings, and we participate in his sufferings too when we suffer.
He asserts in Romans 8:22–23 that the entirety of the cosmos suffers, and we along with it. “We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, and not only the creation, but we ourselves.”
Suffering is unavoidable. Instead of feeling ashamed of our human weaknesses, we can find consolation in our solidarity with one another and the entire cosmos — and in knowing we all share in Christ’ suffering and he in ours.
If someone points to all the world’s upheaval and claims it mean God’s Kingdom is about to appear, they’ve missed it because the Christ is in the suffering. In relieving the suffering for “the least” of his sisters and brothers, we relieve his suffering.
Wherever there is suffering in the cosmos, we find Christ Jesus. In serving others in their suffering, we’ll find God’s kingdom if we have the courage.
