Life in the Kingdom of God

Homily for the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Isaiah 66.18-21 Psalm 117 Hebrews 12.5-7, 11-13 Luke 13.22-30

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How the world has changed since the days of the prophet Isaiah! 2500 years ago, the prophet envisioned caravans of horses and chariots, mules and camels, bringing people to Jerusalem to pray in the house of the Lord. Today, we’d be hard pressed to find even a single, working chariot, outside of historical reenactments, and as for camels – well, in this part of the world, not many people know how to ride them around the block, let alone all the way to Jerusalem. Even the last five years have seen monumental changes in how we travel, how we communicate, and how we are connected to the world around us. Today, if we wanted to go to Jerusalem, we might buy an electronic ticket through the internet connection on our cell phone, drive a car that gets 50 miles per gallon to the airport, where we would board an airplane to take us to the Holy Land, with a lay-over in Paris; and once we got there, our guide would be waiting to take us by comfortable coach to the site of the ancient Temple, the house of God. And hopefully a stubborn mule wouldn’t block the road as we drove through the Holy City.

It’s so much easier today to connect with people on the other side of the world – it’s one of the many blessings of technology. We know people from east and west, from north and south, because we’ve been there – we’ve traveled the roads and met people along the way. And if we haven’t been there in person, every day we see people and places and events from all corners of the world just by watching the news or even catching the latest movie. But as easy as it is to think globally, to know what’s going on all over the world, the same technology that connects us can also isolate us. In a caravan of camels, people from different families and different towns talked to one another as they traveled together. But in a caravan of cars, we’re each in our own private space, either as individuals or as small groups. The cell phones that make it so easy to talk to the person across town or across the country or across the globe, these same cell phones can turn people in toward themselves when they spend all their time texting their five closest friends, who might even be sitting right next to them. And the news we watch or read telling us about the flooding in Pakistan, or the conflict in the Middle East, or the earthquake recovery in Haiti – well, most of the time, we just follow that news in the privacy of our own home, with no personal connection or stake in what is going on over there.

In the Kingdom of God, things are different. In the Kingdom of God, there is a personal connection between people from east and west, north and south – a connection that’s made possible not by technology, but by the God who brings us together. In the Kingdom of God, community is much more important than privacy. In the Kingdom of God, there is no separation, no isolation, no favoritism – everyone there has traveled the same path – through the cross of Christ – and everyone has gotten there not because of the plans they made, but at God’s invitation. And, believe it or not, the Kingdom of God isn’t found only in heaven. It’s right here. Or at least it should be.