{"id":656,"date":"2014-11-13T21:40:36","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T02:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/?p=656"},"modified":"2014-12-11T21:44:08","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T02:44:08","slug":"the-kingdom-of-god-is-amongst-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/?p=656","title":{"rendered":"The Kingdom of God is Amongst Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday of the 32nd<\/sup> Week in Ordinary Time<\/h2>\n

Phil 7-20; Luke 17: 20-25<\/h2>\n

Dc. Larry Brockman<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Kingdom of God is among you\u201d!\u00a0 Just how did that strike you this morning?\u00a0 Do you feel that the Kingdom of God is here already?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll bet that Philemon, the person to whom our first reading was addressed, did not understand that.\u00a0 Here was a well to do person whose slave had run away.\u00a0 And now Paul was sending him back as a free man, asking the former Master to accept Onesimus as a brother, as an equal.\u00a0 In those days, a slave was valued property. And although Philemon was a Christian, his culture was a strong influence; and a former slave was not easy to accept as an equal.\u00a0 That must have been pretty hard.<\/p>\n

But you know what?\u00a0 That\u2019s exactly what the Kingdom of God will be like for all of us.\u00a0 There will be no more rich or poor; slave and master; boss and worker; teacher and student; or husband and wife In the Kingdom of God\u00a0 Rather, we will all be on the same footing- \u00a0\u00a0servants to the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father, but sharing the Glory of our Lord none the less.<\/p>\n

And yet, Jesus is telling the Pharisees that one cannot sense the Kingdom, not because it isn\u2019t real; it certainly is real; but because it is already amongst us, but we are blinded to seeing it for what it is.\u00a0 We simply have to recognize that all of us are equal in the eyes of God and rejoice in that.<\/p>\n

When you think about it, it is very clear that God values all of us the same, whether we are rich or poor; master or slave; boss or worker; or student or teacher.\u00a0 How can it possibly be otherwise?\u00a0 God made each of us, and God doesn\u2019t willfully make junk.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that all of us have been blessed in our own way, and these blessings distinguish us from one another in this world by the areas mentioned.\u00a0 But these blessings are God\u2019s gifts to us; they are not of our own making.\u00a0 And so when we move into the next life in the Kingdom, each of us will be glorified for how we lived with our gifts, not how we compared to anyone else.<\/p>\n

Each of us will be content with our own status with the Lord in the Kingdom of God.\u00a0 It is, after all, heaven.\u00a0 So, if we can do the same here and now- be happy for everyone else in their gifts, then we will share now in the Kingdom of God.<\/p>\n

So, our attitude here must be one of humble acceptance of our own gifts, and a lack of preoccupation with our neighbor\u2019s gifts.\u00a0 Such an attitude removes anger, greed, laziness, gluttony, pride, lust, and envy from the scene- the seven deadly sins because such a person is focused on their relationship with God; and they are content with their relationship with God.\u00a0 Not only that, such a person is happy that others have a similar relationship with God.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Kingdom of God is amongst us!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time Phil 7-20; Luke 17: 20-25 Dc. Larry Brockman   \u201cThe Kingdom of God is among you\u201d!\u00a0 Just how did that strike you this morning?\u00a0 Do you feel that the Kingdom of God is here already? I\u2019ll bet that Philemon, the person to whom our first reading was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[317],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}