In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

In the gospel reading, we heard the Lord talk about having the faith of a grain of a mustard seed. Elsewhere he uses the grain of a mustard seed as an illustration of the coming of the kingdom of God. He says, “The kingdom of God is like the grain of a mustard seed,” which is the smallest of all garden plants, and yet when it grows it becomes the largest of garden plants, and birds make their nests in the branches. So it starts small, and it becomes bigger with time.

St. John the Baptist, his ministry was summed up by one line, which is: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” And Christ, after he was baptized, began his ministry with the very same statement: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The kingdom of God had already come, but it was a reality that was unfolding, and it will come in its fullness at the end of the age. In the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This doesn’t mean that God is not already reigning. He is the King of the universe. The problem is, he has elements of the universe that are in rebellion against him, who do not see that reality or did not acknowledge that reality. So we can speak of the coming of the kingdom of God in different senses.

St. Augustine points out that a blind man can’t see all the colors, the dazzlings things that we see around us, the lights, all the things, the beauty of this creation; a blind man doesn’t see that, but if his eyes were opened, if he was able to see, then it would be a reality that would come to him, but the reality was already there; he just didn’t see it. So when we believe the Gospel, we begin to enter into the reality of the kingdom of God, and we do that by making God the Lord and Master of our life. The Pharisees asked Christ when the kingdom of God should come and were told in the Gospel of Luke that he said, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation; neither shall they say, “Lo, here,” or “Lo, there,” for the kingdom of God is within you.”

The kingdom of God becomes a reality when the heavenly King, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, dwells in us and reigns in us and purifies our life. But of course there is an ultimate fulfillment that we look for that we’re also praying for and looking to, and that’s when Christ will come and evil will be destroyed and his reign will be fully established; sin will cease. For the righteous, this is a blessed hope. St. Paul tells us:

For the grace of God that bringeth salvation have appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

St. Paul also tells us of that age:

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

So we don’t know exactly what we have to look forward to; we just know that it’s going to be a lot more, and more amazing, than we can even imagine.

But for those who have rejected God, Christ’s coming is not going to be a day of rejoicing; it’s a day to be feared. The Prophet Amos warned people who were in rebellion against God; he said, “Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord. To what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness and not light.” People who reject God will also come under the reign and rule of Christ. They will no longer be able to continue in their sins. But it’s not going to be out of joy. They will acknowledge Christ as king, but for them it will be a time of sorrow and great regret. St. Paul tells us in the epistle to the Romans, “For it is written as I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God.” And then in the epistle to the Philippians, he says:

At the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

So everyone is ultimately going to acknowledge the kingdom of God. They’re going to acknowledge who Christ is. For those who acknowledged him in this life and for whom the kingdom of God became a reality before the final judgment, that will be a great day of rejoicing; it’s our blessed hope. But for those who have rejected God, it’ll be just the opposite: it’ll be a day of great regret and sorrow.

This petition, one thing you should understand is it reflects an aspect of Hebrew poetry which we refer to as parallelism. Hebrew poetry… In English when we want to do poems, we often will have rhymes in our poems, but in Hebrew they have ideas that sort of “rhyme” in one way or another. There are lines that will say the same thing twice, and they say that because it emphasizes the truth that’s being stated, but it also in Hebrew was a way of adding beauty to a prayer. For example, in Psalm 23 (or 24 in the King James), it says, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof; the world and all that dwell therein.” So “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” is stating the exact same thing as saying, “the world and all that dwell therein.” Then sometimes we have the opposite side of the coin of parallelism. For example: “For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, and the way of the ungodly shall perish.” So God knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish—it’s two sides of the same coin, stating the truth.

But the kind of parallelism that we have in the Lord’s Prayer in this petition is what’s called “climactic parallelism,” which basically means it’s sort of a stairstep. The second part of it repeats what’s in the first part, but it adds something to it; it tells us a little something more of the first part. So “thy kingdom come” is the first part; “thy will be done” restates that, because when God’s will is done, that’s where the kingdom of God is. But then it adds this statement: “in earth as it is in heaven.” That’s informing us what it means to have the kingdom of God. Just as God’s will is obeyed in heaven, so it will be obeyed in earth. When the kingdom of God comes in its fullness, that will be the reality everywhere in the universe.

But when the kingdom of God comes to us as individuals, that should become the reality in our life, that God’s will is done in us the same way that it’s done in heaven, that we obey, that we do his will, that we seek to do his will with all our heart, and with joy. Why do we pray that God’s kingdom would come? It’s not because God’s kingdom is not going to come if we don’t pray; God’s kingdom is going to come regardless in the ultimate sense, but whether God’s kingdom will come in us, whether it will become a good reality for us or whether it will only become a bad reality for us at the end of the age because we rejected him is the one thing that’s a variable. That’s where we need to pray; that’s where we need to open up our hearts to God if we want it to be a reality in our life in this age. We need to be taught by God, and we also need to be empowered by God as we hear from the doxology, which is a line from Psalm 142, “O Lord, unto thee have I fled for refuge; teach me to do thy will, for thou art my God.”

If we enter into the kingdom of God, we have to do the will of God and turn away from evil. Christ says in the gospels, “Not everyone that saith unto me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” That’s not to say that a Christian who’s already begun to enter into the reality of the kingdom of heaven never errs, that they never fail to do God’s will. But the difference is that if you’re a Christian, if the kingdom of God is at work in your life, when you sin, you have a sorrow. You want to repent; you don’t want to be separated from God. If you’re a careless sinner, if you’re just going on and doing whatever you want and not worrying about it, the kingdom of God is not a reality for you; you need to repent and believe the Gospel, because the kingdom of heaven is at hand, but it’s not a reality in your life yet. It needs to be, but it isn’t yet.

So how can we be enabled to do God’s will? St. Paul tells us, “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” So if you are struggling to overcome sin, what you have to do is to stop being a conformist. We have a lot of people who think that they’re non-conformists. They run around and they pat themselves on the back because they don’t do what everyone else tells them to do. But the funny thing about these kinds of non-conformist is when they’re all in a group they all look alike, they all act alike, they all talk alike. They’re conforming to each other; they’re just conforming to a different group. They’re not conforming to their parents’ expectations in many cases, but they’re conforming to the expectations of their friends.

But to be a Christian means that we don’t conform to this world. We don’t live like everybody else. We don’t live according to their values. They’re going to mock us. They’re going to make fun of us. They’re not going to understand the life that we’re trying to live, but we’re not going to be “cool,” and we just need to be okay with that, because if we’re okay with God, that’s all that matters. Being cool with people who hate God is not what we want; we want just the opposite. We’re told by Christ that “if they hate me, they’ll hate you.” And if you’re living for God, they’re going to hate you. We want to pray for them. We want them to come to know God so they won’t continue to hate you and God, but as long as they hate God, if they’re not thinking that you’re cool, that means that you’re doing the right thing.

We also pray that it will become a reality for the rest of this world and all those that are around us. St. Peter in his second epistle says, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” It’s God’s will that everyone would repent and come to the knowledge of the truth. We want everyone to be saved, so how do we do that?

When we pray these words, we need to pray that God’s kingdom becomes a reality in us, because if it becomes a reality in us, then the light of the Gospel, the light of Christ, will shine for those around us. And by God’s grace, if we make the kingdom of God a reality in us, it will begin to become a reality to those that are around us. So let’s make it a reality. Every time we say that prayer, remember what it is that we’re praying for, that God’s will would be done in us, that we would strive, that we would work, that we would labor to do his will, but also that we, by drawing close to God, will draw others around us to him as well. Amen.