Raising children in the 90s meant for us that the cartoon “Arthur” got watched at our house. However, my wife always rightly objected to the theme song played at the beginning of each show. After starting out pretty well, advising children to pay attention to “everybody that you meet” and to “learn to work and play and get along with each other,” the song moved on to some lines that begin with “You got to listen to your heart,” and ending in “Believe in yourself [echoed], well that’s the place to start.” But it’s not.
Maybe it’s the result of a generation being raised on Arthur, but my wife and I can now watch a movie or television show and sense with frightening certainty the moment when one character advising another in difficult straights is about to say, “Believe in yourself,” or “listen to your heart,” or “just look inside.” It’s “in our DNA”–to use another not quite accurate catchphrase of our time–this notion that the solutions to our problems and the resources for good living are within us.
I once preached this week’s sermon text for a series entitled “Things Jesus Didn’t Say (But People Think He Did).” It’s Luke 17:20-21 and the problematic phrase is that last part of verse 21, which has often been translated, “the kingdom of God is within you.” As more recent translations show, that’s not right. What Jesus actually said is more like, “the kingdom of God is among you,” or as the new NIV version we are reading together at Valley Covenant this fall puts it, “the kingdom of God is in your midst.”
What difference does it make? It’s absolutely crucial. Jesus did not teach what popular culture teaches, that we are going to find peace, wholeness, strength or salvation by looking within. And we are not going to find the kingdom of God there.
The notion that Jesus taught that God’s reign is internal to our own selves fits not only pop psychology, but popular politics about the place of religion in our lives. It’s regularly understood that American freedom of religion depends on spiritual questions being wholly and completely a matter of private and internal opinion and disposition. Believe what you want in your heart, but don’t bring those convictions out into the public square where they affect anyone else.
Jesus had so such thought of a private, internal faith when He told the disciples “the kingdom of God is in your midst.” Yes, verse 20 says, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is.’ But the “invisibility” of the kingdom is like that of air or of other essential forces like love. Such things are not simply visible or locatable because they are ubiquitous, everywhere around us and among us.
We are reading through the whole Gospel of Luke this week as Valley Covenant participates in the Covenant Community Bible Experience. The story of Luke makes it plain that what Jesus meant by “the kingdom of God is in your midst” is that the reign of God had already come among His disciples. As they witnessed Jesus teach and heal and befriend outcasts, they saw the kingdom as a present reality happening in their midst.
Likewise, entry into and participation in the kingdom of God for contemporary Christians is not a matter of having some internal spiritual condition or focus. It’s a matter of joining in the story those first Christians saw unfolding among them, in their life together and in the people around them. Through the living presence of Jesus, the kingdom of God is still in our midst.