Thursday in the 32nd Week of Ordinary Time, November 11, 2021

Luke 17:20-25

Asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus said in reply, “The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.”  Then he said to his disciples, “The days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. There will be those who will say to you, ‘Look, there he is,’ or ‘Look, here he is.’ Do not go off, do not run in pursuit. For just as lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. But first he must suffer greatly and be rejected by this generation.”

At this point in his journey to Jerusalem, if we follow St. Luke, the Lord is still just north of Jericho.  The preaching described in today’s Gospel reading must have occurred in or near a town in the vicinity of that city.

“Asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come.”  The Pharisees May have asked this in order to tempt the Lord into announcing that it would come when he entered Jerusalem, thereby reestablishing the Kingdom of David.  Or this question may show that at least a few of the Pharisees were taking the Lord seriously as a prophet.  They themselves debated earnestly about it just as people today argue about the timing of the Lord’s second coming.  There is an anxiety behind such a question, too.  It is not easy to talk about possible answers to it without the matter becoming very personal.  The Lord answers a different question than was asked of him because their premise is wrong: the Pharisees have their hearts set on a false understanding of the Kingdom of God.  He tells them, instead: “The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.”  The Pharisees could not have been prepared for such an answer as this. For them, the Kingdom of God was a very material, visible place.  The Greek word translated here as “among” is not easy to translate, as the word could mean “within”, “inside”, or “among”, and the choice of any of these options changes the phrase’s meaning.  The Fathers tended to understand the word as “within”.  Bede, for instance, said that this meant that the Lord himself was placed “in their midst” to reign in their hearts by faith.  The Lord could mean both that the Kingdom of God is in the midst of those who believe in him so that they constitute the Kingdom, with him as King, rather than a geographical location delineated by boundaries; and also that he reigns in the hearts of each believer.  The Lord says this primarily to teach the Pharisees that they are mistaken in their notion of the Kingdom of God.

“The days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it.”  The Lord tells the Pharisees that they will miss the true coming of the Kingdom because they are waiting for something that will not happen.  They have their hearts on a fantasy of their own devising.  “There will be those who will say to you, ‘Look, there he is,’ or ‘Look, here he is.’ Do not go off, do not run in pursuit.”  He warns them not to join a revolt against the Romans, as they will do within forty years, for it will lead to the destruction of Jerusalem.  “For just as lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day.”  He tells his followers that the end of the world and the Lord’s coming for judgment will come without warning.  At this time, the citizens of the Kingdom will be gathered into perfect Union with God in heaven.  

“But first he must suffer greatly and be rejected by this generation.”  This teaching would have stunned and confused the Pharisees.  According to the Prophet Daniel, “the Son of Man” was to be acclaimed by all the just and would rule forever.  The Lord is warning them that those who consider themselves just — the Pharisees, for example — would reject the truly Just One.  But this is in accord with the Book of Wisdom 2, 12, 13: “Let us, therefore, lie in wait for the Just, because he is not for our turn, and he is contrary to our doings, and upbraids us with transgressions of the law, and divulges against us the sins of our way of life. He boasts that he has the knowledge of God, and calleth himself the son of God.”