Sermon Nine: WAKING UP TO THE NEARNESS OF GOD’S KINGDOM
“Know that the kingdom of God is near.” (Lk. 21:31)a
Our Lord says: “Know that the kingdom of God is near” (Lk. 21:31). Yes, the kingdom of God is within us, and Saint Paul says that our salvation is nearer to us than we believe (Rm. 13:11).
“We should know” first of all how “near” the kingdom of God is, and next when the kingdom of God is near us. Therefore we must think carefully about the meaning of this passage. For if I were a king and did not know it, then I would be no king. If, however, I firmly believed that I was a king, and if everyone supposed this to be the case, and if I knew for certain that everyone supposed it, then I really would be a king. And thus the whole wealth of a king would be mine, and nothing of a king’s wealth would be lacking to me. These three conditions must occur of a necessity if I am to be a king. If one of the three conditions is lacking, I could not be a king. A master of the spiritual life—as well as our best masters—says that happiness lies in the fact that we perceive and “know” and this consists in a necessary urgency for truth. I have within my soul a strength that is totally sensitive to God.
I am as certain as I am that I am a man that nothing is so “near” to me as God. God is nearer to me than myself. My being depends on the fact that God is “near” to me and present for me. He is also near and present for a stone or piece of wood, but they know nothing about this fact. If a piece of wood knew about God and perceived how “near” he is to it, as the highest angel perceives this fact, then the piece of wood would be just as happy as the highest angel. And for this reason people are happier than a stone or piece of wood because they are aware of God and know how “near” God is. And I am all the happier to the extent that I am aware of this fact. I am all the less happy to the extent that I am unaware of it. I am not happy because God is within me or “near” me or because I possess him, but rather because I am aware of how “near” God is and because I know about God. In the Psalms the prophet says: “You should not be unknowing like a mule or a horse.” The patriarch Jacob makes another statement: “Truly, God is in this place, and I never knew it!” (Gn. 28:16). We should “know” about God, and perceive that “the kingdom of God is near.”
When I reflect on the “kingdom of God,” I am often left mute by its greatness. For the “kingdom of God” is God himself with all his wealth. The “kingdom of God” is no small thing. If we could imagine all the worlds that God might create, they would not be the kingdom of God! From time to time I am accustomed to state that it is not necessary to preach or give lessons to a soul in which the kingdom of God is visible or which knows that the kingdom of God is near. For that very reason the soul is instructed in and assured of eternal life. Whoever knows and is aware how near the kingdom of God is can say with Jacob: “God is in this place, and I never knew it!” (Gn. 28:16). Now, however, I do not know it.
God is equally near to all creatures. The wise man says in Eccle-siasticus: God has his net, his hunter’s ploy, spread out over all creatures (cf. Ho. 7:12; Ezk. 12:13). Thus all People can find him in everything, so long as they can penetrate this net filled with creatures and keep God in mind and recognize God in everything. Thus we find a teacher saying that the person who knows God most truly is the one who can find him equally in all things. I also said on one occasion that it is good to serve God in fear, better to serve him in love, but best of all to be able to find love in the very fear itself. It is good that a person has a peaceful life; it is better that a person bear a troublesome life with patience. But best of all is that a person can have peace even in the very midst of trouble. A person can be walking across a field, saying his prayers, and perceive God, or he might be in a chapel and perceive God. If the situation is such that he can better perceive God when he is in peaceful circumstances where he is comfortable, this is due to his own insufficiency and not to anything on God’s part. For God is equally in all things and in all places and he is ready to give himself in the same way and to the same degree in every circumstance. The one who knows God best is the one who recognizes him equally everywhere.
Saint Bernard asks: “Why is my eye aware of heaven and not my feet? This is due to the fact that my eye resembles heaven more than my feet. If my soul is to know God, it must be of a heavenly nature.” What causes the soul to become aware of God and to “know” how “near” God is? The master says: Heaven cannot receive any strange impression. No painful need that would seek to bring heaven out of its course can have any effect. Thus the soul that is to know God must be so established and fixed in God that nothing can make an impression on it—neither joy nor suffering nor love nor sorrow nor anything else could take the soul from its own course. Heaven in all places is equally distant from the earth. Similarly the soul should be equally distant from all earthly matters so that it is not nearer to one than another.
The sky is equally far from any point on the earth’s surface. So too should the soul be equally far from all earthly things so that it is no closer to one thing than to another. Wherever there is a noble soul, it should be equally far from all earthly things, from hope, from joy and misery—no matter what it is, the soul should keep itself fully removed from it. When seen from the moon, our sky looks pure and clear and without blemish. The teachers call the moon, that heavenly body closest to the earth, the midwife of the heavens. Neither space nor time touch the heavens. There is no corporeal thing which has a place there; and whoever knows the Scripture well knows that heaven has no appointed place. Neither does heaven stand within time, for its course is unbelievably swift. The teachers say that its course is timeless, though time itself stems from its course. Nothing so much hinders the soul’s understanding of God as time and space. Time and space are parts of the whole but God is one. So if the soul is to recognize God, it must do so beyond space and time. For God is neither this nor that in the way of the manifold things of earth, since God is one. If the soul wants to know God, it cannot do so in time. For so long as the soul is conscious of time or space or any other earthly representation, it cannot know God. If the eye is to recognize color, then it must be free from having any color of its own beforehand. A teacher tells us that if the soul is to know God, it must have nothing in common with anything else. Whoever knows God knows that all creatures are nothing. When you rank one creature against another, then the first might seem beautiful or having some other quality. But when anything is placed over against God, then it is nothing.
I must sometimes point out that the soul wanting to perceive God must forget itself and lose itself. For if it perceives itself, then it does not perceive God. But in God the soul finds itself again. Insofar as it knows God, the soul knows itself and in God knows all things from which the soul has separated itself. In the degree to which the soul has separated itself from itself and from all things, to the same degree the soul knows itself fully. If I am truly to recognize goodness, then I must know goodness where it exists in itself and not where it exists in a divided form. And if I am truly to know being, then I must likewise know being where it is in itself—that is, in God. There one can know the fullness of being. As I have said earlier, all humanity does not exist in one human being, for one human being is not all human beings. But in God the soul knows all of humanity and all things in their highest form, for the soul knows them according to their being. If a person lives in a beautifully painted house, other people who have never been inside may indeed have opinions about it; but the one whose house it is knows. In the same way I am certain that I live and that God lives. If the soul would know God, it must know God beyond time and space. The soul who gets this far, and has knowledge of the five things we spoke of earlier, perceives God and knows how close God’s kingdom is—that is, God with his whole kingdom.
The teachers throw out meaningful questions in their lectures about how it is possible for the soul to know God. It is not because of God’s righteousness or strength that he asks a lot of human beings. It is because of his great joy in giving when he wants a soul to be enlarged. God enables the soul to receive much so that God himself has the opportunity to give much.
No one should think that it is a burdensome thing to come to this point, even though it sounds serious and significant. It is true enough that it is somewhat difficult at the beginning when one is separating oneself from himself and from all things. But when one has made some spiritual progress, he discovers that there has never been a lighter, more delightful, or more joyful life; and God is very concerned always to be present to such a person and teach him or her, so that he can bring the soul to that point where God wants it to follow. Never has a person longed after anything so intensely as God longs to bring a person to the point of knowing him. God is always ready but we are very unready. God is near to us but we are very far from him. God is within but we are outside. God is at home in us but we are abroad. The prophet says: “God leads the righteous through the narrow way into the broad path” (Ws. 10:10). This is so that they come to the fullest life.
God help us that we all follow him so that he can bring us to the point where we truly know him. Amen.
COMMENTARY: The Time and Place of the Kingdom of God/The Meaning of Jacob’s Dream/The Kingdom of God as a Kingdom of Blessing—the Blessing That Creation Is/We Are All Kings—If We Are Awake to It
It is generally agreed upon among theologians that if Jesus’ message can be summarized in one sentence that would be that the reign of God has begun. The preaching of the kingdom of God and its arrival lies very much at the center of the message of Jesus.1 This can also be said of Eckhart’s preaching. All the themes we have seen treated thus far in his sermons—the goodness of creation, the reality of inness and pan-entheism, the presence of the creative Word, the equality of all beings, the nobility of being and the special nobility of the human person, realized eschatology, the theme of waking up to all this—all these themes can be summarized by saying that the kingdom of God is near. Eckhart’s numerous scriptural references in this sermon reveal the context out of which he was preaching, a context bathed in the tradition of the kingdom of God literature. Thus, the text for his sermon is found in Luke’s Gospel as follows, and the fig tree referred to is a symbol in Israel for the people of God.
And he told them a parable, “Think of the fig tree and indeed every tree. As soon as you see them bud, you know that summer is now near. So with you when you see these things happening: know that the kingdom of God is near.” (Lk. 21–29–31)
It would seem that Eckhart’s sermon is responding to this same issue—looking for the “buds” in our lives that indicate the presence of the kingdom. Eckhart most assuredly has in mind the reference to the kingdom from just a few chapters earlier in Luke’s Gospel, for Eckhart declares: We should know first of all how near the kingdom of God is, and next when the kingdom of God is near us. How near? Where? and When? appear to be the identical questions that were put to Jesus.
Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was to come, he gave them this answer, “The coming of the kingdom of God does not admit of observation and there will be no one to say, ‘Look here I Look there!’ For, you must know, the kingdom of God is among you.” (Lk. 17:20–21)
Jesus says, in answer to the question When, that the kingdom of God is among you. So does Meister Eckhart—the kingdom is here when we are awake enough to see it. For Eckhart the coming of the kingdom depends upon our consciousness. A person is not a king unless or until one truly believes and is believed to be a king—then I would be a king. The timing of the coming of the kingdom is relative to our preparedness and readiness: God is always ready; but we are very unready. Eckhart associates the kingdom of God with eternal life, which, as we have seen in previous sermons, has already begun. Contemporary exegetes like C. H. Dodd also associate Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom of God with eternal life and realized eschatology. Says Dodd:
The expression “the kingdom of God” is used in Mark 9:43–47, 10:17, 24, 25, alternately with “life” or “eternal life.” The latter expression is an equivalent for the rabbinic term “the life of the Age to Come,” which is in our Jewish sources a far more usual expression than “the kingdom of God” for the great object of hope, the eschafon.2
It is not only Mark who interprets the kingdom as eternal life but also John and, according to Dodd, Jesus himself:
When the Fourth Evangelist presents the works of healing as “signs” of the coming of “eternal life” to men, he is rightly interpreting these sayings in our earliest sources. For eternal life is the ultimate issue of the coming of the kingdom of God . . . Here then is the fixed point from which our interpretation of the teaching regarding the kingdom of God must start. It represents the ministry of Jesus as “realized eschatology” . . .3
Since Eckhart interprets this kingdom as realized eschatology, he too is being true to what we now know to be our “earliest sources” and to that “fixed point” from which interpretation of Jesus’ message must flow. Like Eckhart, Dodd would agree that the long-awaited hope of humankind called “eternal life” has begun here and now. “The eschaton, the divinely ordained climax of history, is here.”4
Eckhart also answers the question of When? from Paul’s letter to the Romans in a passage we have considered earlier. It too relates to our waking up. “Besides, you know ‘the time’ has come: you must wake up now: our salvation is even nearer than it was when we were converted” (Rm. 13:11). The time of eternal life is already upon us and with it our salvation, which is God’s kingdom.
But the second question Jesus answered was a question of place: Where is the kingdom? Jesus says that it cannot be objectified in a place, it is neither “here nor there.” Eckhart follows suit. He calls for a new sense of space consciousness to replace our overly developed place consciousness. Heaven in all places is equally distant from the earth. Similarly the soul should be equally distant from all earthly matters so that it is not nearer to one than another. One might say that the place of the kingdom is relative to our letting go of place, as the time is relative to our letting go of time. Nothing so much hinders the soul’s understanding of God as time and space. God is neither this nor that in the way of the manifold things of earth, for God is one. It is by letting go of objects in time that we begin to experience God. God is where there is no place. This is why Eckhart addresses himself to the subject of sacred places in this sermon. If the kingdom is not identifiable with a particular place but rather with human consciousness, then it would seem that churches are superfluous and even misleading. This can indeed be the case, Eckhart points out. He compares a person’s crossing a field and being aware of God to being aware of God in church. The reason it is easier for some people to find God in church is due to their own insufficiency and not from anything on God’s part. It is not that God is more in church than in the field but that some people are too closed to find God except in church. Such people are in a sorry state of spiritual development, for God is equally in all things and in all places, and he is ready to give himself in the same way and to the same degree in every circumstance. The one who knows God best is the one who recognizes him equally everywhere. People need churches out of the weakness of the human condition; it is not God who needs churches.
There is a further implication to what Eckhart is saying in bringing up the subject of churches in the context of the kingdom of God. He is blatantly and even tantalizingly refusing to confuse kingdom with institutional church. He is making as clear as he can the distinction between the coming of the kingdom of God and any pretensions to ecclesial triumphalism. This position has important political and social ramifications, as we shall see below.5
Eckhart also speaks out on the timing and the placing of the kingdom of God when he introduces on two occasions the exclamation from Jacob that followed on his famous ladder dream. Since the theme of Jacob’s ladder has been the most dominant symbol in Christian mysticism, it is extremely significant how Eckhart does and does not interpret it.6 Eckhart refuses to make a ladder of ascent to God out of the symbols of the dream, as so many male Christian mystics before him and after him have done. Instead, he interprets the dream very much as Jewish exegetes do. The setting for Eckhart’s scriptural citation is as follows:
Jacob had a dream: a ladder was there, standing on the ground with its top reaching to heaven; and there were angels of God going up it and coming down. And Yahweh was there, standing over him, saying, “I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. I will give to you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants shall be like the specks of dust on the ground; you shall spread to the west and the east, to the north and the south, and all the tribes of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants. Be sure that I am with you; I will keep you safe wherever you go, and bring you back to this land, for I will not desert you before I have done all that I have promised you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Truly, Yahweh is in this place and I never knew it!” He was afraid and said, “How awe-inspiring this place is! This is nothing less than a house of God; this is the gate of heaven!” (Gn. 28:12–17)
Eclchart wants us to be other Jacobs who can shout: “How awe-inspiring this place isl This is nothing less than a house of God, a gate of heaven!” But when can we say such a thing and where? When we wake up, says Eckhart. Whoever knows and is aware of how near the kingdom of God is can say with Jacob: “God is in this place, and I never knew itl” Eckhart interprets Jacob’s dream to mean that the kingdom of God is here and now, among us and within us. He makes no effort whatsoever to develop a ladder-like journey from the symbol taken from the dream. The issue is our consciousness—Do we know it? Are we awake?
Eckhart invokes another scriptural passage concerning Jacob and the coming of the kingdom of God. In the Book of Wisdom which Eckhart refers to we read:
The virtuous man, fleeing from the anger of his brother,
was led by Wisdom along straight paths.
She showed him the kingdom of God
and taught him the knowledge of holy things.
She brought him success in his toil
and gave him full return for all his efforts;
she stood by him against grasping and oppressive men
and she made him rich. (Ws. 10:10–11)
Today’s exegetes agree that “the virtuous man” spoken of here is Jacob.7 Thus Jacob is one who has seen the kingdom of God and, says Eckhart, we are to follow in his way. By so doing, we will come to the true freedom of the Spirit, which has become one Spirit with God. The riches promised by Wisdom are nothing less than God. For the “kingdom of God” is God himself with all his wealth. God is the kingdom of God. This means that the kingdom of God is immense like God is. The “kingdom of God” is no small thing. If we could imagine all the worlds that God might create, they would not be the kingdom of God! The kingdom of God is greater than the cosmos itself.
Where is this great treasure, this pearl of great wealth? We are told it is now, but where is it? It is as near in place as it is in time. It is not only now, it is also here. But where is here? Near as God. Near as my being and closer than my being. I am as certain as I am of my own life that nothing is so “near” to me as God. God is nearer to me than myself. My being depends on the fact that God is “near” to me and present for mel But where is this nearness of God? It is, quite literally, everywhere. If we are truly bathed in a divine sea because we live in God panentheistically and God lives in us, then the kingdom is everywhere and in everything and everything is in it. God has his net, his hunter’s ploy, spread out over all creatures, says Eckhart, borrowing an image from Ezekiel (12:13) and Hosea (7:12) that pictures the panentheistic world-view beautifully. God is the net; we are the creatures within the net. The person who knows God most truly is the one who can find him equally in all things. We need to see the net to see creatures—and God—properly. But Eckhart insists that for humans it is not enough that we be in the net—we must become conscious of our being in the net, ever awakening to this awareness. We need to expand constantly, filling the net with our awareness of the divinity enclosed therein. God wants a soul to be enlarged. God enables the soul to receive much so that God himself has the opportunity to give much. This enlargement or expansion is characteristic of human consciousness and human will. It alone makes us happy. We can find him and know him in everyone if only we wish to perceive this fact. In arriving at this awareness, there has never been a lighter, more delightful, or more joyful life.
What distinguishes us from a stone or tree or mule or horse is not that God is more distant from them, for God is intimate to all that has being. What distinguishes us is that they know nothing about this fact. We can be happier than a stone or piece of wood because we are conscious of God and know how near God is.
I am all the happier to the extent that I am aware of this fact. I am all the less happy to the extent that I am unaware of it. I am not happy because God is within me or “near” me or because I possess him; but rather because I am aware of how “near” God is and because I know about God.
This is what it means to know that the kingdom of God is near. And to be alive and conscious and spiritually awake. God is equally “near” in all creatures. The question of God’s nearness, then, is not a question at all. The only question is our own awareness, our nearness to what is and the way things are. God is near to us, but we are very far from him. God is within, but we are outside. God is at home in us, but we are abroad. We are capable—but God is not—of putting distance between us and God, but even then the distance is ours, not God’s.
A person should never in any way think of himself or herself as far from God, either because of some sin or weakness, or for any other reason. If at any time your great sins drive you away, so that you cannot feel to be near God, you should nevertheless feel that God is near you. For it does great harm if a person removes God far away from himself. For, although a person wanders far away or near, God never goes far; he always remains standing near and if he cannot remain within, he still does not go farther away than just outside the door.8
We have seen Eckhart identify the kingdom of God with the kingdom of heaven, with eternal life, with God. He also links the kingdom of God to the blessings of God. He does this, for example, by invoking Jacob’s dream, as he does twice in this sermon, for in the Genesis account of the dream of Jacob, God promises that “all the tribes of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants.” Blessing is the motif of Jacob’s dream, and the blessing is here and now. “Truly, Yahweh is in this place and I never knew it!” Eckhart’s entire creation theology is a blessing theology, as we have seen in the previous eight sermons. All of life is a gift and blessing from the Creator, including being, life, equality of being, and shared divinity. Such blessings God is a “thousand times more eager to give than we are to receive.”9 The kingdom of God demands our receptivity. Eckhart and Jesus insist on this. “Whoever does not receive the kingdom as a little child will never enter into it” (Mk. 10:15).10 While the Gospels link the coming of the kingdom to repentance and metanoia or change of heart, Eckhart’s parallel idea is: Wake up! Repentance and metanoia for Eckhart mean: Wake up to the truth of our fishnet existence in the graced blessings of the Creator. The kingdom is prepared and ready, if we are.
Contemporary biblical scholars like Kenik and Westermann are criticizing what has been called a one-dimensional understanding of salvation, one that ignores the praise-blessing motif of the Scriptures and concentrates solely on salvation as deliverance. This results in a “serious distortion of the biblical data “ notes Westermann. It spiritualizes and privatizes the saving event. “From the beginning to the end of the biblical story, God’s two ways of dealing with mankind—deliverance and blessing—are found together . . . Here lies the error that led Western theology to a number of further misinterpretations of and deviations from the message of the Bible.”11 Eckhart, being true to a creation-centered spiritual tradition, does not ignore the blessing tradition of biblical spirituality. In the creation theology tradition, creation itself is the first of all God’s blessings. “In the primeval history (Gn. 1–11) blessing is found in the context of creation and extends to all living creatures,” notes Westermann (p. 29). In his study on the Psalms, Professor Mowinckel relates blessing to creation. “First and foremost, blessing is life, health, and fertility for the people, their cattle, their fields . . . Blessing is the basic power of life itself.” Blessing is so holy because it is the Creator’s work.
Life, the power of life, and blessing came to be regarded as holy because they have their origin in the Holy, in the Deity. God is the creator and preserver of life . . . Each Israelite encounters Yahweh as the one who creates and bestows life and blessing and by so doing upholds the world.12
This tradition of blessing and creation is Meister Eckhart’s tradition.
One experience that is common to the blessing/creation tradition is the blessing that eating is. Eckhart links the heavenly kingdom to the heavenly feast, which is a celebration of the kingdom. Eckhart says:
Our Lord said to one of his disciples: “Those who follow me will sit at my table in my Father’s kingdom and will eat my food and drink my drink—the table which my Father has prepared for me and which I have prepared for you” (Mt. 1958; Lk. 20:29). Happy is the person who has come to that point that he or she draws with the Son from the same source out of which the Son draws. It is there that even we will receive our happiness and there where his happiness lies, wherein he has his being; in this same ground all of God’s friends will receive their blessedness and create from it. That is the “table in the kingdom of God.” May God help us that we may come to this table.13
Here Eckhart links the table of the kingdom of God with the blessings of a divine meal. Elsewhere we saw that Eckhart identified the kingdom with the following of Jesus and we see from the scriptural citation in this sermon where he got this idea. Eckhart links happiness and blessedness with the celebration of the kingdom. The very table of the kingdom of heaven, then, is to be identified with the community celebration that all being engages in around the table of the ground of being. All beings rejoice at their own being and gather around this table. It should be noted, too, that Eckhart emphasizes how “all of God’s friends” will be blessed at this table, just as In the present sermon he begins with the statement that the kingdom of God is nearer to us than we believe. This emphasis on the plural, “us,” rather than the singular, “me,” is welcome and refreshing, for many spiritualist theologians since Eckhart’s day have overly privatized the translation of Luke’s Gospel as “within me.” Eckhart, as we have seen, abolishes the l/you and in/out dualisms in favor of a celebrative feast of “all of God’s friends.” Further development of this theme of the heavenly feast of Eckhart will be found in the Commentary to Sermon Thirty-seven.
Eckhart links the kingdom of God to the blessedness and happiness of persons in still another way. In one sermon he says that the kingdom of God consists of five things, and in another he says blessedness consists of four things. They are as follows:
The Kingdom of God
Blessedness lies in Four Things
In this parallel schema we can see how Eckhart identifies the kingdom of God with blessedness—”All people desire blessedness/’ he declares.16 But the elements of both the kingdom of God and of blessedness overlap, and, since the elements of the kingdom are all blessings, so too is our blessedness. Both the kingdom and blessedness are a blessing. It should be noticed also that the kingdom of God is identified not with institution nor with privatized feelings toward him but with the cosmic presence of God found “in all things” insofar as they exist and insofar as they desire. The kingdom of God is a kingdom of panentheism, or, in Eckhart’s image borrowed from Ezekiel, a kingdom of a fishnet encompassing all being. The happiness or blessedness which Eckhart referred to in Sermon Nine is a blessedness of knowing how near God’s blessing is. Such people will know that the kingdom of God is near. An awareness of the proximity of the blessing makes human consciousness so divinely happy and blessed. Such an awakened—or repentant—individual is also aware that he or she is of royal blood . . . then I really would be asking. And thus the whole wealth of a king would be mine, and nothing of a king’s wealth would be lacking to me. We shall explore later (Sermon Thirty-six) Eckhart’s development of the royal tradition in the Hebrew Bible. But here, in the context of this sermon on God’s kingdom, it suffices to point out that those who belong to the kingdom of God and know it are indeed kings. All creation is of royal lineage, but the human species are kings because they can know they are. For if I were a king and did not know it, then I would be no king. Long live this royal race!