The Kingdom

"Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

May I say the obvious .... though no one seems ever to mention it? The Evangelist St. Luke wrote a lengthy Gospel detailing the life of Jesus from the prophecy of St. John the Baptist's birth to the Ascension of Christ. And he wrote a lengthy second volume, the Book of Acts, detailing the ministry of the Apostles from the Ascension of Christ until St. Paul's arrival to Rome. But we lack a "middle volume" entitled "The Teachings of the Risen Christ." May I make a second obvious point: this volume, if it had been written, would have been by far the most important volume of the three. For this would have been the climax of the three-act drama, the scenes in which the Holy Scriptures would have been unlocked and where the deepest meanings of the Advent of Christ would have been revealed. The Gospels actually propel us into a rising action that anticipates this climax. In the Gospel of St. John, the Lord promises,

"The hour is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in figures
but tell you plainly of the Father. (Jn 16:25)

The hour is coming! You can feel everyone saying, "When?!" And in St. Matthew's Gospel He says,

"I speak to [the people] in parables, because seeing they do not see,
and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand ... Truly, I say
to you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see,
and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. (Mt 13:13-17).

But the actual, plainly spoken, directly taught teachings are never to appear. St. John seems to be mindful of this when he says,

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are
not written in this book. (Jn 20:30)

And again,

But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to
be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would
be written. (Jn 21:25)

And this is why our faith, ever after, cannot help but be communicated to us through two great sources: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Indeed, as the Holy Gospels had a decades-long "pre-life" in which they existed only in oral form — as other literatures of Antiquity did — we might say that "in the beginning" all Christians had was Sacred Tradition, with the Gospels being written later on. But let us return to the matter at hand.

If the climax of all that we read is the Resurrection and then the revelations made by the Risen Christ, how are we able to piece out what He taught during that forty-day period before His Ascension? First, we must pay very close attention to what is disclosed in the Gospels including that fifth Gospel called the Book of Acts. Second, we must read the Apostles and the Early Church Fathers, for surely the Traditions handed on to them cannot be dispensed with, at least, not by serious Christians.

This morning, let us attend to the opening words of the Book of Acts very carefully. A once-in-history scene attends the Ascension of the Lord. In these fleeting moments, Heaven is wedded to Earth as Jesus visibly stands with one foot in each. And they ask Him, "Are you at this time going to restore the kingdom?" The question immediately poses another: "Which Kingdom?" The whole question of kingship is deeply stamped on the Jesus stories. He is, after all, called Lord. The Holy Land is about kingship. Anyone approaching this region in the first century far out at sea would have espied the great Temple to Roma soaring high above one of the ancient world's greatest harbors, Caesarea Maritima, bespeaking a Roman Emporer's power. Roman power is never far from one's sight as pagan temples are to seen scattered throughout this once Jewish land. And when Jesus asks the great question, "Who do you say that I AM?" His disciples gaze directly behind him at the Temple to Augustus Caesar at Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea Maritima, Caesarea Philippi. The name Caesar echoes throughout ancient Palestine and beyond. Kingship is always the main subject. "We have one king and that is Caesar," the Jews told Pilate. And this sentence was sufficient to crucify the Son of God.

God, we know, is always deeply offended at the notion of earthly kingship. God tells Samuel when the Israelites demand a king, "They have not rejected you," whom a king would replace, "but they have rejected me from being king over them" (1 Samuel 8:7). And God's Son continues in this repugnance. For it would be the acclamation of Jesus' earthly kingship at the Mount of the Loaves and Fishes, which would signify the last straw Jesus could endure, and He sets His face toward Jerusalem and to crucifixion.

If we are scanning for the phrases that the Risen Christ used to unlock the Scriptures, consider these. It is a startling fact that the phrase the "Kingdom of Heaven" never appears in the Sacred Scriptures (Never!) until Jesus uses the phrase. Following that utterance, we hear it spoken repeatedly. Similarly, the phrase "the Kingdom of God" rarely appears in Scripture .... until Jesus utters these words, after which time we hear it constantly. And what is the Risen Christ's master subject following His forty-day visit with the Disciple, a forty days alone with God in a different kind of wilderness?

In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach,
until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit
to the apostles whom he had chosen. To them he presented himself alive after his passion
by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God.

Just as His life would be the life to redeem all, so this mention of Kingship will restore this word to its proper place, for it would forever after signify the restoration of God as our King in the Person of the fully human Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God.

The Ascension of the Lord takes the human cleverness and irony of a wooden sign, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" (written in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew) and renders it in a majestic sincerity that can never again be touched, but only reverenced. The very phrase, King Jesus, sends chills down my spine!

The prayer that Jesus taught, the perfect prayer, was understood by all who heard it to be apocalyptic, to invite the cataclysm of God's descent: "Thy Kingdom come." What? The Coming of God? The Day of the Lord? This had always been understood to be an awful Day of Reckoning:

"Wail, for the day of the Lord is near; as destruction from the Almighty it will come!" (Isaiah 13:6)

"For the day is near, the day of the Lord is near; it will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations." (Ezekiel 30:3)

"For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; who can endure it?" (Joel 2:11)

"Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness, and not light;" (Amos 5:18)

"Thy Kingdom come"? Why do you desire the Coming of the Lord? "On earth as it is in Heaven"? For earth cannot square with Heaven, cannot makes its brokenness whole in the sight of God, cannot untwist its contorted features back to Heaven's original and pure Creation of earth. But rather, the Creation must avert its eyes from its Architect and Maker. For this is the reckoning: when the Creator holds His level and square up to humanity and takes the measure of its true state of life.

And they stared up into Heaven awaiting that moment ... as well we all might!

And while they were gazing into Heaven as He went, behold, two men stood by them
in white robes, and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into Heaven?
This Jesus, Who was taken up from you into Heaven, will come in the same way as you
saw Him go into Heaven."

"He will come in the same way as you saw Him go." You see, our King as made a path for us. It is traveled in two directions, both going and coming. And He has promised that He prepares a place for us (Jn 14:2-3), that we are to traverse this same path.

He had told the Twelve that they are to sit on twelve thrones as kings (Mt 19:28). Yet, they are not to "lord over" their subjects as earthly kings do (Mk 10:42-45). What is this species of kingship then? How are we to follow Him in this royal tradition of kingly behavior? Why the same way that He did: to ascend. We are to rise above the world that seeks to pull us down and to keep us down.

The Kingdom of Heaven is an inner kingdom, and the path leading to it is an inner journey. My brothers and sisters in King Jesus, this is the business of our lives and the work of a lifetime. Yes, we live in a broken world. Yes, it is apt to pull us in, and all too quickly, with its blaring televisions and yakking radios and its "anything goes" attitudes and culture. But this is not to be our life. Our life is a royal life: Heaven on earth. Heaven here and now. We are to live with one foot here but also one foot there: Ascension life. By the grace of God, we are able to live as He lived, and we are able to leave this world as He left it. I have seen this Ascension light. And I tell you today, that it is yours. It is yours for the taking and the having and the going. And the world cannot take it from you, not if you wish to have it.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.