Chapter Three: The Kingdom Within

"Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will the people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you." Luke 17:21. In this peculiar phrasing, the subject changed from when to where -- time to location. It may sound jumbled, but perhaps that is because what was understood as the kingdom of God was jumbled. The axiom is, "You can't find what you are looking for if you are looking in the wrong place."

It doesn't take a genius to see how distorted kingdom theology was in those days. It still is. The Davidic reign conjured up visions of grandeur and glory of days gone by -- Israel's day in the sun. Just like the black spirituals that were sung and hummed in the cotton rows, there was longing for former glory. The anticipation of the Messiah came in part from great loss. No wonder the carpenter's son was a disappointment to the spokesmen of God -- he was anything but their warrior king David.

Where to begin? Jesus went to the beginning. These hearers needed to deconstruct years of reified preconceptions before they could know what the Christ was all about. You know what? We also carry a lot of mental baggage -- stuff we were taught just like the Jews. A great difference is, ours is developmental. That is, our understanding of kingdom is based on how it played out over centuries. When an idea develops beyond its original intent and scope, we can rest assured that Jesus himself would return to the beginning principles. So...locus -- what is the locus of the dominion of God? "Within you," Christ said.

What is the essence of a symbol? Of a kingdom? First, a symbol should not be confused with the thing itself. Wearing the familiar icon of the crucifix makes one no more a follower than a masque turns you into a red Devil. "Heart" is a symbol -- the most used and least understood symbol of Scripture. Does not the essence of heart symbology belong with goodness and sharing? "Grace" is closely associated with those values. This is the essence of Christ -- a heart man. Soul, heart, spirit -- these are abstractions for the anatomy of the inner man. "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he." So it is written in the Proverbs 23:7. What does it really mean? First, the action described is taking place within the individual. To great extent it is who I am, you are. This then, is not something that someone else controls. It is an ancient symbol that predates writing. In the Jewish Tree of Life, the heart is pictured as the center of the tree where all branches join. The ancient Menorah is the same symbol, joining all branches at the center. It is an age-old concept that crosses all religious boundaries. What we are looking for is to see that what makes a person who he/she is, can't be dissected and measured.

Keep that last statement in mind as you read the following: Jesus said, "Blind Pharisees! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and the outside also will be clean (Mt 23:26)." He quoted Isaiah, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men (Mt 15:8)." Why was the heart the subject of so much of Jesus' teaching? Before answering, let's look at the situation at the time. The Pharisees take a lot of heat for being bad people. They were not evil. In fact, the Pharisees accomplished a lot to revive study of the law of Moses. They were zealous for the law -- this interest they shared with Jesus. What they did not share was a carnal mission. By that I mean that Jesus did not spend his time preaching the faults of others, or on controlling religious form. Have you noticed that most times when the gospels witness Jesus praying, he sought solitude? How about his notice of the poor woman who cast her last coin into the temple treasury? Or his acknowledgment of the gift of the woman who broke the alabaster jar of ointment? There's something about human nature that focuses on the externals more than the internals. It's a lot easier to keep externals because they can be measured. Not only CAN they be measured -- they are.

Now let's look at what's on the inside: I have a friend whose name is Sam. He worked with my wife at a Catholic College. Sam is about forty and has a wife and five children, so he knows what it means to work for a living. At the time he was a maintenance technician. He has four gold records hanging on his wall at home -- songs that he wrote lyrics to. One day Sam was scooping up garbage next to one of the dumpsters where a careless pizza party had left its refuse for someone else to see to. He was reaching his hands into the pile and saw creepy things all over the cardboard -- and he stopped to pray. Not the kind of prayer that says,"Thank you God for these stinking maggots!" But one that asks, "What am I doing this for?" About the time he was getting ready for another scoop, a girl from the playground came up behind him and asked,"Mister are you the garbage man?" And he answered, "No honey, I am a songwriter." She wrinkled her face for a second, then scampered off.

On the inside, I think I understand. When Jesus said "The kingdom of God is within you," he was not on the podium to preach some lofty moral platitude. He was sharing something a lot of people would love to take away -- Possibility. There is a place where God has said, "See, I have set before you an open door that no one can shut," and later, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me (Rev. 3:8,20). Jesus said, "I am the door...the good shepherd: I know my sheep and my sheep know me...I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice...(John 10:7,14,16). These verses are not meant to magically quote and then point to an institution and say here it all is, ya'll come! His words were burning the ears of the iconoclasts of the world. The very idea that God could make his habitation among the hearts of common man was an unpardonable sacrilege. It still is. In a nutshell, the Nazarene was trying to bring God into hearing distance of all. His choice of place where God would rule was within. That was his beginning. Relationship will grow from there, but it will never outgrow the need to be seated in the heart.

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