Main news for 5 August 2018

Speaking of the Kingdom, the Savior certainly has in mind the Kingdom that He Himself brought into the world, not the one usually imagined by the people listening to Him. His listeners, as a rule, imagined a strong earthly state, living according to the laws of the Torah and therefore enjoying God's protection, headed by a righteous King to whom God had given special authority over the world and over people.

Such a kingdom, of course, could also be open not only to Jews, but everyone else, in any case, would have to become Yahwists and accept Judaism in order to make use of what the Messiah would bring into the world. Jesus, meanwhile, is speaking of something else: of the Kingdom as a spiritual reality that exists independently of any earthly structures and institutions, whether state or social. This Kingdom enters the world through Him, and relationships with Him and with His heavenly Father open the way into it. The true Kingdom of Christ is a space of relationships, above all the relationships that bind Christ to the Father.

And anyone can enter the space of their relationships, regardless of language, nationality, or cultural or religious tradition. Christianity is not a religion and not even a spiritual practice, but life in the Kingdom, and therefore in the space of the Father and the Son's relationships. Here the question of who is first and who is last is not so simple. In essence, it has no meaning here at all: in the Kingdom each person receives the fullness of life that he is able to contain. But who will share in this fullness earlier is a real open question.

It would seem that in Judea in Gospel times there were many people whose main goal and meaning of life was precisely the expectation of the Messiah and the Kingdom. But their expectation became for them a kind of religion, or more precisely, part of their religious life, which was naturally based on Judaism. And religion tends to become something valuable and self-sufficient in itself, often covering over the goal for the sake of which it arose and exists.

On the other hand, there were many people in the world who were seeking (often without realizing it) precisely the Kingdom and its life, often not knowing where and from whom to seek it. And if religious messianists often found it very difficult to be reconciled to the Messiah as He is, then seekers of the Kingdom, burdened by no religion, could come to Him far more easily and naturally. This is not surprising: Jesus Himself says that it is hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom. And here it no longer matters whether the wealth in question is material, cultural, or religious.