an earthly revolution
Trust that you belong there.
Mark 10:23-24
“Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
I need to stop thinking about the “kingdom of God” as some abstracted heaven-place that our souls enter when we die. That’s not how Mark wrote about it, because he understood Jesus to be promising something else entirely: an earthly revolution in which God’s way of being in community wins. Not a kingdom at all but a society where rules rather than rulers reign.
Surely the rich cannot be citizens there, because that society works expressly because there is no great wealth disparity. Rich isn’t possible there, because gross wealth always comes at the expense and exploitation of the poor, hoarding wealth interferes with the well being of all others. Those conditions directly oppose the peace and delight Jesus promises.
Trust that you belong there. If you’re reading this, statistically you’ve already passed the citizenship test of “don’t be a billionaire.”
How does it feel to know that you bought your ticket to the new world with the emptiness of your pockets?