Kingdom of Grace

Dave Brisbin 5.19.19 If you were asked to name Jesus’ main purpose in his ministry, could you do it? There will be many answers of course, but we don’t have to speculate. Jesus told us flat out in Luke 4 that his purpose was to preach the Kingdom of God to all the cities. So if the Kingdom of God is Jesus’ purpose, have we gotten the message? Do we know what the Kingdom is? Just as it was misunderstood by Jesus’ first followers, we misunderstand too, which is why Jesus goes to such lengths to tell us that the Kingdom is not a place but a quality of life to be lived, not future but now, not out there somewhere, but within and all around us, and one thing more that we tend to miss. When we look at Jesus’ life we see him in every possible emotional state, both positive and negative. He often retreated from his work in order to reconnect with his Father, which tells us that the quality of life that is the Kingdom of God is something that is chosen, returned to each moment rather than a steady state entered just once. And if that is true, how do we enter Kingdom right herenow in this moment? And the next? If the Book is right and God is love and love is experienced as what we call grace, then it seems the Kingdom of God is really the Kingdom of Grace. And if that’s true, every time we choose graciousness—kindness, compassion, understanding, mercy—we enter into God’s grace, into the Kingdom of Grace.