the kingdom of god is among you

RCL Readings for November 14:
Isaiah 65:17-25, Canticle 9, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Luke 21:5-9

The Gospel today presents us with an interesting predicament. Jesus is speaking about the coming of “the end,” the destruction of the Temple, the persecution of the disciples, all that must happen before the end-times, and the coming of the Son of Man. Did any of you happen to read the rest of Luke, Chapter 21 - the passages following what we read today? It is not a pretty picture - death, violence, destruction, wrath, and great distress upon the earth, and then Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.” Jesus tells his disciples that this great conflagration will happen not only soon, but in their lifetimes, and that also within their lifetimes, he will return.

Scholars call this “the delay of the parousia,” and the early church fathers, as well as theologians and thinkers throuhgout history and to our present day, have grappled with this problem. ANd we have to grapple with it, too. What does it mean for us - for the CHristian community - that Matthew, Mark, and Luke write that Jesus proclaimed the nearness of the end-times? What does it mean that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus would come soon, but that we are all still waiting?

First, I believe one of Christianity’s responses to this problem was the creation of our cyclical liturgical calendar, which yearly calls us to return to Advent, and to live in a period of watching and waiting for the Lord. Advent returns us home to anticipation of Jesus’ coming, and to anticipation of the fulfillment of what he preached. Yearly, Emmanuel - God with us - comes to us. Yearly, we are reminded that God became incarnate in our human condition and lived alongside us.

Second, we are reminded when the lectionary is in the Gospel of Luke that Jesus preached that God’s kingdom was not so far off, but was actually readily available to his followers. Close enough to see.

In Luke chapter 17,

“Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nore will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”

The kingdom of God is among you. For those who heard Jesus speak, it was close enough to see - the kingdom was incarnate in Jesus. Today, we, as very members incorporate in the mystical body of Christ, we are part of that mystery, too. The kingdom of God is among us.

What does the Kingdom of God look like? What does it feel like?

In Isaiah today we read:
“I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth...I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD-- “

In the kingdom of God, justice will run in the streets. There will be no inequality. People will “not labor in vain or bear children for calamity.” There will be no crime, no imprisonment, no prostitution, no unwanted pregnancies, no drop-outs, no unemployed parents, no hungry children, no lack of imagination, no death of creativity, no vulnerability, no exploitation, no despair, no lack of hope, no meaninglessness. No powerlessness, hopelessness, or disempowerment.

In short, there will be literacy.

Reading Camp, a ministry of our diocese that has touched hundreds of children, is about so much more than teaching a struggling child to read. Far more than that, Reading Camp and its mission of universal literacy are about preparing the way of the Lord, and hastening the coming of the kingdom. It is about ensuring that there is equality, that people are not disempowered by circumstance, but emboldened and encouraged by their ability to read, empowered to be actors in our society who can impact the world for good, instead of dependents who live in constant vulnerability.

Reading Camp is about ensuring that all children have the ability to dream, to imagine, and to create. It is about giving children who would never have the adventure of a summer camp experience an experience that will impact them and their families positively, that will give the child the skills he needs to finish his education and be able to support himself and family in the future.

It is about the people of our diocese coming together to transform the lives of children and families in communities across our state. It is about living out our Baptismal Covenant to “respect the dignity of every human being.” It is about ensuring that our most vulnerable members of society are given the same opportunities to thrive as our most secure and stable members. It is about hastening the coming of the kingdom.

On the bulletin board in my office, there is a small piece of paper pinned in the bottom right corner. I look to it every once in a while when I need to remember.

Dear Allison
I hope Clay comes back next year. I hope you have a good time when we have ice cream and s’mores. Thank you for making camp fun and letting me come to camp. I hope I can come back next year.
From Billy.

Billy and his twin brother Patrick live in Pineville (pahn-vuhl) with their father Bill, and they attended Reading Camp at Pine Mountain for their second year this past summer. I have notes from my first conversation with their father, back in 2009, when I was calling all the campers’ parents and preparing for camp:

(grumbling): “This’ Bill.”
“Hi, Bill, this is Allison, the director of Reading Camp. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine. That lady done filled out those papers for the boys. They’re comin’ to yer camp.”
“I’m glad to hear it. And I’ve got it down that they’ll be on the bus.”
“mmm hmm. Now, I want to tell you ‘bout my boys. I’m the only one who’s raised ‘em, and they’re good boys. But, if you need to, you use a switch to make ‘em mind. If they wuz ever hateful, you tell ‘em I told you you could use a switch.”
“Oh, I’m sure we won’t have to do that.”
“Well, if you need to.”
“(haha). Alright. Well, Bill, you just call me if you have any questions.”

From the time I received Patrick and Billy’s applications, I knew the boys and their father would be some of the most interesting people I had worked with. The boys’ teacher forms read, in all caps, “NON-READER.” On the part of the application where teachers can check each child’s strengths and weaknesses, the boys had no strengths. Every weakness was checked, and then those words, “NON READER.” The parent-guardian form had been filled out by “that lady,” (Deb Obermann from St. Mary’s in Middlesboro) because Bill was illiterate and could not fill it out himself. His signature was simply, “Bill,” not “William Miracle or even Bill Miracle,” just “Bill,” in a scrawl-like cursive that looked like a first grader’s.

The boys arrived at camp on Sunday very sullen, shut-off, and internal. They were gruff, they were abrasive. Most volunteers had an immediate reaction of “uh oh, these kids are trouble.” I have to admit, I didn’t particularly like them. However, part of the transformational nature of Reading Camp is that there’s this quiet understanding that permeates the staff, that informs how you treat the children, speak to the children, and eventually feel about the children: the ones who are the hardest to handle, the easiest to dislike – those are the ones that you commit to loving, the ones that you don’t give up on. Those are the ones who need the encouragement and patience of a caring adult the most.

Patrick and Billy remained gruff and mean until Wednesday morning, when it finally seemed to “click” for them that everyone at camp cared desperately about them, that no one cared that they struggled so much to write their name, and that the teachers were ecstatic when they finally named all the letters of the alphabet. They formed a close bond with Aaron, a young man who was a writing center teacher – and Aaron worked patiently and tenderly with the boys on their writing. Billy and Patrick really wanted to write letters to Marcie, a young woman who was our Pleasure Reading “librarian.” It took Aaron’s coaxing, prodding, encouragement, and help with every letter of every word, but by Friday morning, the boys had written their letters to Marcie, and they beamed when they handed them to her. It was a sobering moment for the whole staff – an awe, a “hush,” and not a few tears that these boys had been able to achieve something their public school teacher never thought possible. And I guess, an awe at the fact that in the course of a short week, we had fallen in love with those two stubborn boys.

The year passed, and the majority of our volunteers from that first summer returned again in 2010, and all of them wanted to know if the twins were coming back. And, they were! I picked Patrick and Billy up in Pineville and brought them to camp – and I cannot describe to you the level of excitement that was pouring out of those two. They knew what they were coming back to – an environment where it was okay to make mistakes, where people were patient, where people really cared about them, believed in them, and were going to help them to learn. A place where they could be children: curious, joyful children who wanted to learn. And I’ll tell you, their approach to camp this year was a 180-degree turn around from 2009. They were telling the other kids how to behave in the learning center. They were focused and engaged with each teacher, working SO hard to write more letters, stumble through simple books.

Billy and Patrick are like so many other Reading Camp children - forgotten by the system, disempowered by their circumstances. Children that we would never know, never come to love, and who may never learn to read were it not for Reading Camp But God works in mysterious ways, and uses us as vehicles to transform His world. Billy and Patrick are now receiving weekly reading tutoring from a member of St. Mary’s in Middlesboro, we are in contact with their school guidance counselor and principal, and a Reading Camp volunteer from New Jersey has become their anonymous benefactor, and will be until they complete high school. Because of Reading Camp, these boys are not forgotten. A very small piece of the kingdom has come into their lives. And they brought a piece of the kingdom into ours, too.

So, even though Christianity might be waiting for Jesus’ return and the coming of the kingdom of God, we cannot forget that Jesus said : “The kingdom is among you.” And, we cannot forget what that kingdom looks like: a transformed world without pain, sorrow, despair, or impotence, a world of justice, hope, respect, joy and eternal peace.

The medieval rabbis of the Kabbalah developed the concept of Tikkun Olam, or the healing or repairing of the world. It was believed that the Messiah would not come until all persons worked together with God to heal the world, to care for the poor, the widow and the orphan.

Perhaps that is what God is waiting for. Perhaps God wants us - his children - to work with him to heal the world of its pain, to care for its most vulnerable members, to bring into the lives of those around us a glimpse of the coming kingdom of heaven.

There are glimpses of the coming kingdom of heaven every summer at Reading Camps throughout our diocese. Won’t you join us in bringing the kingdom into the lives of children and their families? Through support of Reading Camp, I promise you - not only will you heal the world, but you will be touched as well. You will glimpse the coming of the Kingdom.


The Kingdom of God is among you.


Amen.