One of the puzzles of the Gospel is that Jesus was often telling his disciples not to tell anyone who he really was and what he had just done.

Several reasons have usually been offered. Some say he didn’t want to attract the attention of the authorities to the ministry he was involved in. The land was under Roman Occupation with the collaboration of local religious and political elites. The elites would not have taken too kindly to someone who was widely acclaimed among the peasants as a Messiah.

They would also have felt threatened by the values that Jesus was proclaiming, which were diametrically opposed to everything the elites and military occupiers stood for. Moreover, Roman imperial theology attributed divine titles and attributes to Caesar and anyone claiming similar attributes would have come under close scrutiny.

Another possible reason is that Jesus had not yet finished his ministry and wanted to continue explaining the good news that the kingdom of God was at hand. If the peasants were to focus on him as Messiah, they may have wanted to crown him as their political saviour from the oppression and grinding poverty of the day. More seriously, by acclaiming Jesus as Messiah, the peasants and the destitute would have been distracted from his core message of proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand, a kingdom of love, non-violence, distributive justice and compassion — values which Jesus would have tasked them with upholding.

Jesus could have been worried that more and more people were being drawn to him not because they were interested in this sort of kingdom but because they were more interested in seeing miracles or something spectacular. Word was already spreading about Jesus’ healing powers and miracles.

All this would have distracted from Jesus’ core message of the kingdom — a kingdom which we are told is like hidden or lost treasure.

But where is this kingdom to be found? Ultimately, the kingdom can be found within us.

Before we can enter into this kingdom, however, we are called to repentance, a turning away. Turning away from what? The popular interpretation is that it means a turning away from sin, but it is more than that. It is also turning away from the material world and material concerns and repudiating all that has gone wrong with the human condition and the world.

It also means turning towards something else — but what? Towards the light, towards God. Jesus says the kingdom of God can be found within us, where the great “I am” connects with our inner self.

This means looking in the other direction, inwards — not in a self-centred sort of way but entering into a new realm of consciousness where we realise ourselves as children of the Father, worshipping in spirit and in truth. From this realm, we see the world outside illuminated by the inner light, and we are refreshed by the living water, the spirit within.

Once we shift our perspective like this and focus inwards on the kingdom of God within us, our lives begin to change. This new consciousness will drive us to make a change in the world and this was what Gandhi meant when he said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

We will see ourselves as one with the light from above, the great light that dispels the darkness of our world. As Jesus told his followers in Matthew 5:13-14: “You are salt for the earth.... You are light for the world....”

This new consciousness will open our eyes to see that everything around us is interconnected. Once we see that, it makes it a lot easier to understand the greatest commandments, as Jesus summed it up: loving God with all our heart and soul which is one and the same as loving our neighbour as ourselves. It is all interconnected. If we really love God, we will love and care for his creation and all that is in it. If we truly believe in a God of justice and compassion, we will not be able to tolerate any injustice, discrimination or violence meted out to any of our fellow human beings.

This transformative way of looking at the world turns the world upside down or rather shows us the world the way it was meant to be, where the last shall be first and the poor and those who mourn are raised, uplifted and blessed in the eyes of God.

In this day and age of environmental degradation and climate chaos, we will also see ourselves as stewards of Creation, trying to fix up the mess humanity has created so far in the world outside in our drive for greed and profits. With a new detachment and renunciation of materialistic attitudes, we will be better able to turn away from the destructive materialism, consumerism and greed (both individual and corporate) that has caused so much harm to the environment. We will realise then the futility of personal wealth or corporate profits and search for the real treasures of the kingdom.

At the same time, we have the marvellous assurance that God will provide for us in abundance — just as he takes care of the lilies in the field and the sparrows in the sky — according to our needs.