I recall one of my theology professors using the phrase “already, but not yet,” to explain the concept of the kingdom of heaven on earth. For Christians this has already arrived in one important sense with the deep incarnation of the Christ.1 The God with skin on man from Galilee was all about the incoming kingdom. However, you don’t have to be a biblical scholar to realize that all is not yet well in the earthly realm and it never has been. Consequently, coupled with the notion of the heavenly kingdom having already arrived, is the idea that it is a ‘work in progress.’2
Biblical mystics were really big on inspired dreaming, and amongst their dreams was the hope that a time would surely come when justice, compassion, peace and love would reign supreme everywhere. They mused, not unreasonably, that there will be a completion time, a God almighty recreation of all things for the good, at some point in the future. But despite plenty of ‘end of days’ predictions, by other past and present wacky dreamers, no one has ever known when this ultimate purification will occur? (Mark 13:32).
There is something compelling about apocalyptic writing that captures the imagination of every age. But as previously stated in this blog, context is cucial. The mystic scribes who wrote key end times biblical texts like Daniel 10:1-12:4, and The Revelation to John, did so within the context of their own lived experience. They were writing in under extreme duress, in prose code, to offer hope to people who were suffering exile, and or oppression. The point being, that eventually after a lot of painful damn waiting and despite all the apparent evidence to the contrary, God would set these matters straight. Moreover, at that time of ultimate reset, any evil that exits in the world would be cast out, together with whatever disordered self-centeredness that dwells in our own hard hearts.
This is what theologians call eschatological time, when perfection will finally arrive, but clearly we are not there yet. Those of us who are up for the spiritual journey, are supposed to the operating in this “already, but not yet,”3 space. In other words, we take part in God’s waiting game, until the big clean up eventually occurs.
However, while we are doing all this endless waiting, we’ve meant to be having a serious go at advancing the kingdom come in the now. That, comrades, is the real the deal of what’s on offer for Christians. We get to carry the proverbial cross, just like the Galilean did, in pursuit of kingdom come goals. Even though a perfect world of justice, compassion, peace and love, may not materialize during our own lifetime.
There is an alternate view of the kingdom come however, which is entirely internal, rather than external. From this perspective, the whole vast drama of eschatological time plays out within us on our spiritual journey from birth to grave. This is like a micro-version of the macro-narrative of Israel. We each experience in our hearts, the rising and falling, the waiting in exile, and the endless repeating of the cycle again and again. No one gets to escape this journey and those who seek to grow spiritually, have to come to terms with the fact that waiting is a key component of all spiritual growth.
I recently read a beautiful little book by Sue Monk Kidd, who chronicles her own experience of the long and tortuous period of waiting for God. She finds a metaphor during her exile time, in the form of a caterpillar cocoon. Every caterpillar must spin a cocoon and then play the long waiting game in the dark before eventually emerging as a beautiful butterfly. She writes, “Then it hit me, everything incubates in darkness. And I knew that the darkness in which I found myself was a holy dark. I was incubating into something new.”4
All the great mystics and everyone I know who has seriously walked the talk of living the spiritual life, knows about the damn waiting game. In the end, the whatever perfection that is intended for each of us, will materialize in God’s slow eschatological time. That’s just the way of things in the realm of the spirit. Mighty change certainly comes, comrades, but before it does we get to do waiting, lots of damn waiting, usually in the dark. But eventually when sufficiently incubated the butterfly thing happens big time, to our hearts, and to the world.
- Denis Edwards, Deep Incarnation: God’s Redemptive Suffering With Creatures (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2019). [↩]
- Christopher D. Marshall, Kingdom Come: The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus (Eugene: OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2015). [↩]
- Marshall, Kingdom Come, 48. [↩]
- Sue Monk Kidd, When The Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions (New York: Harper Collins Publishers. 1990), 148. [↩]