Excerpted from Devotions for Advent

It can be easy to gloss over familiar words, missing their potent
meaning. Praying the rhythms of the Lord’s Prayer, “Your Kingdom
come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” ought to strike
us as the plea it originally was, begging the Lord to manifest his Kingdom
in us, here, today. Despite all the careful apocalyptic calculations and
wearied hearts, God has been faithfully answering these words of the
Lord’s Prayer since the days of Jesus.

Of course, we still long for the return of Jesus Christ, the ultimate
defeat of evil, and all the other wonderful promises we so eagerly anticipate,
but in our discouragement and impatience, we would do well to remember
that the church is the manifest Kingdom of God in the present. It is not only
our responsibility but our great privilege and honor to exercise Kingdom life
right here and now.

 

. . . But the church is not a fortress community waiting for a future
kingdom. Rather, we realize that the Kingdom of God has already arrived,
in part. The risen King dwells with his people through the Holy Spirit,
bringing them the salvation of the Kingdom in the present and the hope of
resurrection to a redeemed world in the future. Indeed, the church is God’s
eschatological community, drawing the future into the present, living out
Kingdom values and inviting the world to experience its power now.

Imagine the church as a glimpse of the future living in the present.
It is a community where people of every tongue and tribe and nation,
separated by race and class barriers in this world, live together as the people
of God. Every brokenness inflicted by sin is healed. God’s Spirit falls on
women, old people, and youths—released from the mark of second-class
citizens in a fallen world. The people of God live in harmony with all
creation, then set out to live as if the future is here—with all that entails.

The future is about a community in which the barriers that separate
people from God, other people, and creation are no more. Every broken
relationship, every wounded heart, every chronic pain of body and soul
will be healed. In the church, this community of the future has already been
inaugurated by Jesus Christ. As God’s eschatological community, we hope
for ultimate redemption in the future. But in the present, we break down
barriers and bear each other’s brokenness. Through this here-and-now
experience, Christ’s bride, the church, begins to take on the beauty that
will be hers when he comes to claim her as his own.