Entering the Kingdom of Heaven

Learning to say, "I’m one of God’s beloved oddballs, just like everybody else."

Julius Henry Marx was born in a room above a butcher shop on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on October 2, 1890. You may know him as the late Groucho Marx.

On stage and screen, Groucho wore a greasepaint mustache and eyebrows, glasses, and a cigar, and adopted an exaggerated, loping stride. Without the costume and the goofy walk, he may have been able to go mostly unrecognized in daily life.

But it wasn’t just his look that made Grouch Groucho. It was brand of humor. Delivered with a deadpan expression, he mixed sarcasm, satire, and clever wordplay. Groucho makes us laugh. And while our defenses are down, we find ourselves thinking.

For instance, Groucho once said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”

It may seem like an odd leap to you, but Groucho’s quip made me think about the Kingdom of Heaven. I mean, in the Lord’s Prayer we say, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

It sounds like we believe that God should reign on earth,…