At the very beginning of His earthly mission, Jesus began His preaching with the words: “The Kingdom of God is at hand – repent and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15). The Kingdom of God is thus a central part of Jesus’ ministry and mission.
All Israel had been waiting for the Messiah who would re-establish David’s royal house. And the disciples professed their belief that Jesus was Himself “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).
Though His Passion and death clouded their minds with doubt, Jesus’ Resurrection and His appearances in their midst, renewed the Apostles’ expectation that, as the Messiah, He would in fact usher in the kingdom of God. And so it’s not at all surprising that they ask in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles: “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Jesus answers that it is only for the Father to know precisely when His kingdom will come in its finality. In the meanwhile, Jesus makes a promise and gives a command. First the promise: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” . . . and then the command: “Go, therefore, into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”
As mysterious as this is, Jesus chooses to use the Apostles to continue His mission of announcing and establishing the Kingdom of God. He gives them the gifts of the Spirit – as St. Paul says, “He gave some as apostles, others as pastors and teachers. . .” Why? “. . . To equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”
And yet, two thousand years later, where is this Kingdom of God? As we look around for signs of it, we can become more convinced of its absence then its presence. Fully aware of our own imperfections and the many struggles of our brothers and sisters, we can come to think that the perfection of God’s kingdom is “an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive.”
We go so far as to think that Jesus’ Ascension means that He has gone away from us – risen to some physical height, in God’s faraway kingdom, leaving us to carry on by and for ourselves.
It’s certainly true that the Kingdom of God is not yet fully present in our midst. All you have to do is watch the news to prove that. Indeed we can be certain that “the kingdom of goodness will never be definitively established in this world.”
But neither is Christ or the kingdom He proclaimed separate and far from us either.
Through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, we have come to know, as St. Paul writes, that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate use from the love of God.” (Romans 8:38-39)
That is the Kingdom of God – “that is what it means to say that Jesus Christ has redeemed us.”
The assurance of God’s love; the manifestation of that love in Jesus’ self-sacrifice; love’s conquering of sin and death – these are the fruits of God’s kingdom.
And so when we look around, in the here and now, for signs of the kingdom, we have to realize that God’s “kingdom is present wherever He is loved, and wherever His love” is shared with others in self-sacrifice that models itself on the Lord’s own cross.
When we imagine that Christ is far removed from our daily lives, we have to remember what St. Mark records in today’s Gospel: When the Apostles heeded the angels’ advice, and went forth to fulfill the mission Christ had given them, “the Lord worked with them and confirmed the Word through accompanying signs.”
Christ is present whenever and wherever we allow ourselves to be possessed by Him – whenever and wherever we allow ourselves to be drawn into His living for others.
Friends, even to this very day, Jesus gives each and every one of us the gifts of the Spirit to fulfill our Baptismal vocations – to participate as husbands and wives, as mothers and fathers, as doctors, lawyers, teachers, business people, and countless other ways, in the evangelical mission of the Church: to proclaim the good news, to announce and to spread the reaches of the kingdom which is in our midst.
Let us together live “in a manner worthy of the call we have received.”
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