“Understand the Kingdom of Heaven” is the lectionary scripture focus this week for some Christian churches. Specifically, we are in The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter Thirteen, where Jesus makes several diverse comparisons regarding God’s Just and Peaceable Kingdom. His comments typically begin, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like……” I won’t bore you with repeating what you can go and read for yourself, but what I would like to note about God’s Kingdom and eschatological times (i.e. the end times) is an article from the Christian Century magazine that arrived today in my mailbox.
The article by the Reverend Jesse Zink of the Montreal Diocesan Theological College is titled “Shall all be well?” In the article he shares that an end time virtue is -- of all things -- HOPE!! As a psychotherapist in a Catholic Health clinic in the midst of all the social unrest of the present moment, hope has been very much on my mind the past week. Why, because it seems in such short supply. Particularly so as secret police, both disguised as military and under order of President Trump and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, illegally detain American citizens in Portland, Oregon, who are exercising their First Amendment right to protest. Somehow idiots from POTUS on down to the DHS Secretary to the DHS frontline fool masquerading in military garb and waltzing around in Downtown Portland brandishing a firearm think they have it right what they’re doing. Many of my patients however think otherwise. Over the past few months, young adults to seniors have stated to me a similar sentiment, “Brad, I am with the protesters. What Trump is doing is wrong. What am I to do? What can I do? With the pandemic being what it is, I can’t be in those crowds.”
With nearly every single person, I have responded from the place and space and passion of spirit and heart and soul of ministry and said, “What are you going to do? I HOPE you are going to vote. I also HOPE you are going to encourage every adult you know who feels as you do, to also vote.” For a few moments at such times, limited as I am in terms of my own means of support for the protests due to being high risk for death if I catch COVID-19, I do sense a kinship with the 14th century English mystic whom Reverend Zink speaks of in his article. Her name? Julian of Norwich. As Reverend Zink states in his article, Julian knew pandemic. She saw one third of her city die from the Bubonic Plague or Black Death. Sick and near death herself at age 30, she had a series of mystical visions involving the Christ. She later wrote a book detailing these visions titled “Revelations of Divine Love”. At one point during a vision, feeling that sin contributed to the magnitude of the pandemic of her time, she ask Christ why God had allowed sin into the world -- for if sin had not been allowed all would be well. Christ responded, “It behoved that there should be sin. Nevertheless, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Without full awareness, I see that I was myself coming from such “Christ Thoughts” the past few months when responding to my patients’ observation/questions of, “I am with the protesters, what am I to do?” I was assuring them by advocating that they vote in the upcoming election, that “…all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." I state this because in my dreams I have seen the defeat of our pandemic just as it was defeated in Julian’s time. Further more, in my dreams, I have witnessed the coming day of God’s Just and Peaceable Reign here on Earth and no longer shall the pestilence of divisiveness by the likes of POTUS and enablers have power. I am assured of this for in my dreams, as a present day mystic, Christ motioned me to come stand beside him high on a mountain top and with love in his eyes I know not how to describe, he extended him arm over all God’s immense and mesmerizing creation and said, “In all these places shall you minister.” This promise could not be if all manner of thing will not be well.
I don’t know what sense of make of all that I saw in my dream. What I do know is that my days are comprised now in offering teletherapy from my home office as a provider for my Catholic Healthcare employer. The mission and ministry of the organization speaks to me profoundly and fosters hope within me as, "We continue the healing mission of Jesus Christ...." For in our healing ministry, we neither lose heart nor do we lose hope that a day soon approaches wherein the pestilence of divisiveness of the present moment shall be drawn to a close by our Higher Power
For me, I consider my home office and teletherapy a front that I have opened up to battle the sins of the present time and a front by which I mean to fully foster HOPE amidst the sins of those thinking they’ve cornered the market on what constitutes God’s Just and Peaceable Reign. For me, when the time comes that Trump and all his enablers are lawfully forced by an election to end the pestilence they've become and perpetrated, then the peacefulness and tolerance of the Buddha I meditate with daily will surely attest “...all is well, and all manner of thing shall be well."
We have much to learn from the grand diversity of our human family and the endless hope we so capably make possible for the Kingdom of Heaven to one reside be among us -- even when we find that we much protest.
May God's Peace be with you!
Brad Shumate
Free of Encumbrance
Eugene, Oregon
USA