It is true that “has come near” contains a “not yet,” but it is not about God’s action; it is about Israel’s response. The people of God, at this moment, has not yet turned back. It is still in the moment of decision for or against the Gospel. Therefore, the reign of God is near but not yet present. It is being offered to the people of God. It is laid at their feet. They are within reach of it; they can reach out and touch it. But as long as it is not accepted it is only near, and people must still pray: “Your kingdom come!” (Matt 6:10).
In the Synagogue at Nazareth
There is no scene in the Gospel that more clearly illustrates this tension between “already” and “not yet” than Jesus’ preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth, as narrated in Luke 4:16-30. Jesus has returned to Nazareth for a short time, and on the Sabbath he goes into the synagogue, is installed as lector, reads a text from the book of Isaiah describing the eschatological restoration of Israel by the Anointed One appointed by God (Isa 61:1-2), and then says, interpreting the prophetic text: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21).
What does that mean? Luke means to say that in Jesus’ appearance, his preaching, and his saving deeds the book of Isaiah is now fulfilled, and with it all of Scripture. Now, with the appearance of Jesus, the promised future is beginning. Now is the time of fulfillment!
And who brings this fulfillment? Who is the grammatical subject of the fulfillment, concealed in the passive voice? In the first place it is God himself. God takes the initiative. God fulfills. But at the same time Jesus is the “actant” to be supplied. He too, who is entirely surrendered to the will of God, now through his preaching and his mighty deeds is fulfilling the ancient promises.
But then the story goes on and in doing so betrays more and more clearly that—from Luke’s point of view—it summarizes Jesus’ whole public life and actions. First Jesus meets happy agreement. But then the wind shifts. Suddenly the inhabitants of Nazareth take offense at Jesus. The offense lies in the concreteness of the preacher: “Is not this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22). That is: it is true that everyone prays for and dreams about God’s eschatological action, but in the hour when it actually happens it is evident that people had not imagined it quite this way. Not like this! not so concretely! not right here in Nazareth, and above all, not at this moment!
So Jesus’ hearers prefer to push everything off into the future, and the story comes to no good end. The reign of God announced by Jesus is not accepted. The “today” offered by God is denied. And that, that alone, is why “already” becomes “not yet.”
That Nasty “Today”
It was not only in Nazareth that the “today” of the Gospel was not accepted. Later also, in the course of the church’s history, it has again and again been denied or rendered toothless. The reason was the same as in Nazareth: apparently it goes against the human grain for God to become concrete in our lives. Then people’s desires and favorite notions are in danger, and so are their ideas about time. It can’t be today, because that would mean that our lives have to change today already. Therefore God’s salvation is better delayed into the future. There it can lie, hygienically and snugly packed, at rest, inconsequential.
This process of suppression often intensifies the hope for another world. But it can also turn against the concrete church. There is a particular form of contempt for the church that arises directly out of the delay of Jesus’ “today.” I refer not to skepticism or the hatred of outsiders, but to a contempt for the church that comes from the inmost circles in the church itself and is so destructive because baptized people who were, in fact, called to be witnesses to the presence of God no longer believe that God wants to give his salvation in the here and now of the concrete, offensive church.
What went on in the synagogue at Nazareth continues in the church. Therefore it is necessary to engage constantly with Jesus’ “today,” not only because otherwise what is new about Jesus and the New Testament remains unclear, but also for the sake of the renewal of the church. It cannot be renewed if it does not finally accept the “today” that has come to it. For the New Testament people of God everything depends on whether it can believe again that the promises are meant to be fulfilled already, now, and that God is acting today.
For Jesus, God’s “today” was the center of his existence. There had been imminent expectations in Israel long before Jesus, but the “today” in Jesus’ preaching explodes every kind of such expectation. Jesus knows with the utmost certainty that the promised, longed-for, prayed-for future is here, that the reign of God is breaking forth. That is the only way to understand Jesus’ unbending assurance of fulfillment. That is the only way to comprehend his beatitude addressed to his disciples: “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it” (Luke 10:23-24).
It was not only in Nazareth that people took offense at this “today” in Jesus’ preaching. Many other people shook their heads at what they heard, and said, “the world goes on just as ever; nothing has changed, so the reign of God can’t have come!” Jesus answered them: oh yes, something has changed: “if it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the [reign] of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20).
Demons come in many forms. Maybe we can translate this saying of Jesus as: if people who cannot escape their state of possession, their obsessions, the destructive compulsions that have built up in them and around them because of the evils in society and the history of disaster within which they stand, even in the midst of the people of God—if such people are able to breathe again through the power of Jesus, become free and able to trust, then the reign of evil is already broken, and the reign of God is already palpably present.
For the reign of God does not come as lightning throughout the world, not as a universal spectacle from heaven; it comes into the world like a grain of wheat that grows. In Jesus’ deeds of healing the “today” of the reign of God is already visible and tangible.
The Ultimate Ground for the “Now Already”
Ultimately Jesus’ present eschatology is about who God is. Jesus lives to God in a revolutionary new relationship. For him God is so powerful in his goodness and so present in his power that from God’s point of view there is nothing left to happen. Because Jesus lives in full union with the will of his heavenly Father he knows that when God comes he does not come halfway but entirely. And God does not come at just any time, even in the immediate future; God comes today.
We simply do not do justice to Jesus’ message if we talk as if God gives his basileia, but not entirely at the moment; as if he caused it to dawn, but only bit by bit; as if he revealed it, but only in anticipation. We cannot say all that, any more than we could say that God revealed himself in Jesus, but only in preliminary fashion, only in pieces, and absolutely not wholly and with finality.
We can only do justice to the New Testament if we insist that God spoke himself fully in Jesus. Jesus is the definitive presence of God in the world. Who sees him, sees the Father (John 14:9). He is “the Son” in a sense that cannot be said of any human being. Ultimately the unconditional “today” Jesus proclaims is grounded in his unrestricted participation in the eternal “today” of God.