Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "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,' because the kingdom of God is in your midst."
Then he said to his disciples, "The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. People will tell you, 'There he is!' or 'Here he is!' Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.
Luke 17v20-25 (TNIV)
There are nuanced ways of thinking about what is the Kingdom of God. Is it a large tract of land with a castle in the middle of it? Is it a continent guarded by battleships and airbombers? Is it a spiritual place where God sits on a throne with a crown and dispenses commands to the citizens? Interestingly, Jesus seems to indicate that one way of thinking about the Kingdom of God is to think about it as a person: Him!
This nuanced perspective brings out the irony of the passage: the Pharisees, while looking right into Jesus eyes as they ask him yet another question, are looking right at the answer. And Jesus extends this irony to his disciples: everyone thought that they would know what the Son of Man looked like because of natural phenomena or political/military developments... and thus they cannot see/believe Jesus when he claims to be the Son of Man.
Sometimes this text (and the rest of the section) gets used to defend the Rapture and the End of Times stuff. Again, keeping this Scripture in context eliminates those scenarios. Jesus is referring to himself as the Son of Man, the days he is describing are the ones the listeners are living in, and the destruction he is referring to is likely the Roman assault on Jerusalem in 70AD. Jesus came, as the Son of Man, not to bring judgment, but prevent this destruction, to bring salvation from their pending assault. At one level, Jesus was unsuccessful, he failed in his mission to avert Israel's doom and turn their hearts back to God. On another level, he succeeded: he was obedient to God - even unto the cross; he did save some of the Israelites (and others from the region); he brought the Kingdom of God to Earth and showed us what it looks like.
We see the Kingdom of God on Earth when we see Jesus at work in His world. We see it in us, around us, through us when we yield to His Way of working on Earth. It can be easy to miss Jesus/the Kingdom of God because we see what we want to see. To the degree that we want to see Jesus and his Rule/God's Way prevailing in the world, we will see it. But it is not something that we are just supposed to "see", it is a way of life to be lived, a gift of grace to be enjoyed, a promise of hope to believe, a beautiful reality to be shared.
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