“Jesus announced the Kingdom; what came was the Church!”

June 1, 2025

In the first and second readings of today we find a reference to the final triumph of Jesus, when he will reign over all, when he returns after ascending into Heaven. This idea of a kingdom of God, a “place/time” where/when God/Jesus would reign and all enemies brought to his feet, is found repeatedly in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. And for the Jews in Jesus’ time (including his disciples) the hope for this kingdom, understood as a political kingdom that would finally restore the fortunes of Israel, was pinned on the Messiah who was promised to them.

And so when Jesus came as the purported Messiah, announcing the Kingdom of God (in Mark Luke and John) or Kingdom of Heaven (see  Matthew 19:23-24 where Mathew uses both terms interchangeably) his pronouncements fed into this very hope. But Jesus repeatedly and unambiguously taught that the kingdom he came to establish was not a kingdom like the one they were dreaming of, but a kingdom within oneself.  And so we have Jesus telling the Pharisees: “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20b-21).

Despite Jesus’ repeated teachings on this internal kingdom, that he came to announce, his closest disciples did not seem to have been able to internalise this lesson, for we read in today’s first reading,  (and that too just before his Ascension), they still ask Jesus: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  

With this kind of a mind-set, it is not surprising that Jesus’ kingdom-within-you imagery slowly starts transforming into an external Church imagery, which, over the centuries, gradually begins to be perceived as an earthly harbinger of Jesus’ promised kingdom.  This gradual change in imagery is clearly found in the interesting fact that the term CHURCH occurs less than five times in the Gospels, but over 20 times in the Acts, and over 80 times in the rest of the New Testament, whereas conversely, the term, KINGDOM (of God/Heaven), decreases from over a hundred times in the Gospels, to around 6 times in  Acts and around 8 times in all the rest of the New Testament texts put together.  As Alfred Loisy (1857 to 1940), a Catholic priest and theologian famously said: "Jesus announced the Kingdom, and it is the Church that came".  Loisy was subsequently excommunicated, and from 1910 onwards all Catholic clergy were forced to take an anti-modernist oath that declared as heretical much of the Modernist thinking he represented.  Of course later many of the excommunicated Loisy’s ideas and that of the Modernist theologians whom he represented, were incorporated into Catholic theological thinking, so that the Anti-modernist oath was discontinued by Paul VI in 1967. However, the idea of Jesus’ kingdom as a physical place we will go to after death is still quite common among a large number of Christians.

This idea of creating a physical ‘kingdom’ often (inevitably??) leads to including some and excluding others - something that is so completely an antithesis to the kind of kingdom that Jesus came to announce, a kingdom in which all, saints and sinners (Luke 15:7), Jews and non-Jews (Luke 13:29), those who follow Jesus and those who don’t (Mark 9:38-40) are included. Thus in every nation on earth, including those led by ‘Christians’ or where the majority of the population are Christian, there is an attempt to  establish sovereign territories that significantly include some, and exclude others, - not just for administrative purposes, but often because there is an urge to maintain the ‘purity’ the ‘in-group’ of our ‘kingdom’.  Thus the British PM’s recent anti-immigrant “island of strangers” comment, the US President’s ant-immigrant executive orders, or the Indian Government’s Citizenship Amendment Act that allows all but Muslims in certain adjoining countries in South Asia to claim Indian citizenship, are all examples of this in-group vs out-group mentality. In general, all the many rules that ring-fence our nation states (visas and the like) to allow or not allow people to come in or leave, are not rules about trying to include all who are in need, but to include only those who are like us, or those who are beneficial to our needs, and to exclude those who are not.  

And of course we do this in our own personal lives too, where we often find it difficult to include and accept those who are ‘different’ from us, leading to stereotypes about ‘other’ groups.  This leads to what is termed in India as ‘communalism’ - a notion that separates us human beings into communal groups, each being wary of the other groups, and constantly trying to safeguard ‘our’ way of life.  In India this has led to horrific communal clashes and lynchings, and in other parts of the world to significant ways in which people have been ‘othered’ - like the police brutality against African Americans suspects in the USA, or the targeting of  Muslims in France.

But don’t we all, in our personal lives, in smaller, and often unnoticeable ways, so often exclude others on many grounds? So often we cannot even imagine a belongingness that does not inevitably include an othering of some/many - those others who have a different religion of course, but also those who speak a different language, those who have a different colour of skin, or even differently shaped eyes or hair, or body shapes, those who belong to a different culture, those whose economic status is far below ours, and so on and on.  We are so ingenious in finding ways and reasons to ‘other’ people.  

And so we can accept that there seems to be a natural tendency in humans, when we group ourselves in social groups (communities, Churches)  to inevitably foster exclusion. If this is so, then if we are truly followers of Jesus,  we need to meet this excluding push found within ourselves, with an equally strong push for the inclusion that Jesus desired in his Kingdom. 

First Reading: Acts 1: 1-11

In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.  After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.  While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me;  for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.  While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.  They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.

Second Reading: Ephesians 1: 17-23 or Hebrews 9: 24-28; 10: 19-23

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints,  and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.  God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.  And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church,  which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

OR

For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.  Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the holy place year after year with blood that is not his own,  for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.  And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once and after that the judgment,  so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

 

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus,  by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh),  and since we have a great priest over the house of God,  let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.

 

Gospel: Luke 24: 46-53

And he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day  and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.  And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy,  and they were continually in the temple blessing God.