Continuing our ramble through Luke 17, we begin the working week with a look at the coming of the Kingdom of God. “The Kingdom of God is in your midst!” says Jesus in verse 21. Is he referring to Himself as the embodiment of the Kingdom? Perhaps, as He spoke He was right in front of them. So too, the Kingdom of God is in our midst today as Jesus lives within and amongst us by the Holy Spirit. It is not enough for us to spend our lives seeking “signs of the kingdom”, as tantalising and sometimes helpful as those might be. Jesus, in whom all the fullness of God was and is, has inaugurated the Kingdom through His victorious life, death, resurrection and ascension. The Kingdom of God is not (just) miracles, signs and wonders, captives set free, caring for the poor, it is Jesus, Himself, who through the kind of love and mercy I will never understand calls us to draw near this morning and every day. We are to keep looking to Him, not being distracted by the shiny “new” appearances of the Kingdom over here and over there. Love and relationship between God, us and one another is the ultimate goal and outworking of the Kingdom, so that God is glorified and given His rightful due in worship.
33-36 is another fairly well-known passage. Again, as in other parts of Luke, it seems to me that Jesus is fairly cantankerous here. I often wonder what kind of tone of voice these words were delivered in. “Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it”. What? What are we to hold on to? All this metaphor and hyperbole hurts my brain on a Monday morning (sorry Lord). I think though, that it might be a continuation of a verse we looked at last week, Luke 16:13, where Jesus tells His hearers that we cannot have two masters. So too, here I think, Jesus is uncompromising in His rhetoric and call. Do we love our life and our stuff more than we love God? Do we love ourself more than we were meant to? Conversely, do we love ourselves too little to see the true value we have in the eyes of God and to trust Him to bring through His desire and plan for us? Much easier in words than in practice, let’s try and trust God more today than we did yesterday and be thankful for the life, love and hope of Jesus.