He’s Already Here!

​As a 17-year resident of Honolulu, I was always struck by a church in Palolo Valley with a big, black sign above its roof stating, “HE IS COMING SOON.” It doesn’t take a graduate of an elite divinity school to figure out who the “He” in question is. There’s a whole Christian narrative about Christ’s return appearance, the so-called Second Coming, in which Jesus will judge the living and the dead. In this Last Judgment, he’ll promote the worthy to everlasting life in heaven while the unworthy will be condemned to a similar term in hell. The final book of the Christian bible, Revelation, dramatizes the story in lively if mystifying detail...

At the end of the Gospels, Jesus’s disciples seem to think this encore appearance will take place within their lifetimes. In Mark 13:26-27, 30 (New Revised Standard Version), we read, “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. . . .  ‘Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.’” Yet Jesus goes on to say (Mark 13:32), “’But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.’” Although much Christian theology seems to equate Jesus with God, here the former makes a clear distinction: There are things God knows that I, Jesus, the Son, don’t. This idea is confirmed in John 14:28b when Jesus tells his intimate followers, “’If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.’” Just above, in verse 14:26, Jesus comforts his friends by saying, “’But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.’” And two short verses later, he says, somewhat cryptically, “’You heard me say to you, I am going away, and I am coming to you.’” Can these two activities be the rapid succession of events he was pointing to?
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Now, some 2,000 years after Jesus’ death, “he” has still not returned, although these days the idea that Armageddon, the final decisive battle between good and evil, may be happening soon is not so far-fetched. My belief is that Jesus the resurrected Jewish preacher isn’t coming soon. Rather, he, in the form of the Holy Spirit, is already at hand and available to each of us. We just have to conceive it and believe it to receive it. Or as the contemporary 21st-century Irish mystic Lorna Byrne points out, helpful angels including our personal guardian angels are all about. Yet they need to be asked for their help. In like manner, the Holy Spirit can be downloaded as our personal GPS to guide us into behaviors and decisions that characterize our best possible selves and lives. In Matthew 7: 7-8 we are given the simple but profound A.S.K. formula to do this: “’Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.’” To quote Star Trek’s Jean-Luc Picard, let us “make it so.”

May we all open to the Light of the Holy Spirit.