Saying 113
His disciples said to him, “On what day will the kingdom come?” Jesus said, “It will not come while people watch for it; they will not say: ‘Look, here it is’, or, ‘Look, there it is’; but the kingdom of the Father is spread out over the earth, and men do not see it.”
Once again, the disciples appear to have trouble grasping the ideas that Jesus has been teaching them from the very beginning. I can’t help thinking of saying 12 when the disciples say to Jesus, “We know that you will leave us. Who will be our leader?”
This is when I believe Jesus first offered up a sarcastic reply to illustrate the foolishness of their question by saying, “Where you are, you are to go to James the Righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being,” which essentially means, “If you’re unable to see that you don’t need a leader or a master, then just go over to James the Righteous who will teach you all about the duality of heaven and earth.”
Here, the question is just as foolish. They ask, “On what day will the kingdom come?”, as if Jesus hasn’t been telling them this entire time that the Kingdom of God is here, now, and within all of us.
So, once more, Jesus explains to them that the Kingdom is not “over here” or “over there” but that it’s everywhere, even if we don’t see it with our eyes.
As Jesus told us, and his disciples, in saying 3, “the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you,” and again as he told them in saying 51, after they asked him about when the dead would be raised and the new world come, “That which you look outward for has already come, but you do not recognize it.”
We have one final saying to examine, and it is yet another example of how the disciples of Jesus just really don’t seem to grasp his message.
Perhaps this is for our benefit; to help us see what they can’t seem to understand, or to ask the question: “Do any of his disciples understand what he’s saying?” And perhaps the unspoken answer this question urges us to give is, “I do!”
My newest book, “The Quantum Sayings of Jesus: Decoding the Lost Gospel of Thomas” is available now on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback. If you’re loving these weekly INNER CIRCLE articles every Friday, you’ll love this book which compiles all of them together with newer material not covered in this weekly series.
Keith Giles is the best-selling author of the Jesus Un series. He has appeared on CNN, USA Today, BuzzFeed, and John Fugelsang’s “Tell Me Everything.” He hosts the Second Cup with Keith podcast, and co-hosts the Apostates Anonymous podcast, and the Heretic Happy Hour Podcast.
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