God’s plan to bring in the kingdom in and through Jesus also meant being at work in and through those who follow Jesus. Jesus tapped James and John and Martha and Mary and other ordinary people on the shoulder and said, “Hey, come follow me.” And that meant, “Come be a part of this adventure. The kingdom of God has come near! And it is coming near…in and through you.”
As followers of Jesus, we are invited to receive this kingdom. We don’t have to “bring in” or “build” the kingdom. God has been—and is—already doing that. But we do have a job to do. Through us, God wants to get this message about the kingdom out to everybody. God’s gift of love and blessing and reconciliation and salvation has come to us. And, through us, God wants to give this gift to the whole world.
Maybe this is why Jesus spent so much time and so much energy creatively describing God’s kingdom to us. He needed us to understand exactly what we had received so that we could share it with everybody else with confidence.
This message is excerpted from the Bible study “With the Message of Jesus,” by Kelly Fryer, part of the “Act Boldly for Mission,” a 2007 resource of the Women of the ELCA. Today we commemorate Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome, 604.
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