CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith and Life for the Years of Winter…
“The arc of history bends
toward justice.” I like that phrase, and its sentiment, but there is little
evidence that it is true. Indeed, there is a lot of evidence that it is not
true. The same injustices are done over and over, howbeit with stronger weapons
and more hypocritical reasoning, with violence and chicanery, to children and
women and colored folks and poor folks.
So what about the
contradiction involved in looking for the Kingdom of God if we’re not making
any progress? Christians have praying for the Kingdom to come for a long time,
and it seems at least as far off as it was 2000 years ago.
This is one place where the
rapturites and the apocalypticists have it right. There will be no will of God
done “on earth as it is in heaven” until Christ returns and puts an end to
history in a final judgment, whether one interprets that as angels riding down on
clouds or the sun exploding and burning up the whole shebang. They have it
wrong in thinking they can predict when that will happen or that doing so has
any importance. That is their particular version of original sin.
In teaching us to pray for
the advent and presence of God’s kingdom, I think Jesus is talking about two
different things. One is the kingdom to come, to come on the last day. The
other is what C.H. Dodd called “realized eschatology,” the now kingdom.
The important thing for
each of us is not to focus on the Coming Kingdom but to live in the Now
Kingdom--to do the will of God, to live in the ways of Christ--who is the Word
of God, the communication to us about what God wants. We have no control of the
Coming Kingdom. We have real control of the Now Kingdom. Whenever and wherever
I do the will of God, when I live in the way of Christ, the Kingdom is
realized, the Kingdom is present, God’s will is done on earth as in heaven.
That is when the arc of
history bends toward justice.
JRMcF
“The mills of the Gods grind slowly, but they
grind exceeding fine.”
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