Luke 18: 18-30
Revelation 21: 1-2a
Christianity 101: The Kingdom of God
All good things come to an end… Except this one thing. All things in this world pass away, but that may mean they are replaced by something else. Tonight, our sermon series comes to an end as well, but it is in no way ironic that it ends with a discussion on the kingdom of God. We have discussed Love, Taking the Bible Seriously but Not literally, Hell (or a lack there of), Sabbath taking, Grace, and now conclude with perhaps the one thing that remains on most Christians mind…the end of the journey of life. Let us begin.
Prayer
In today’s forms of Christianity , we spend much of our time being prepared for the Christianity that includes the what’s next. We have been highly involved in theological debates about what happens when people die and about the heaven that comes after that final breath that we all take. We hear stories all the times about people who have had near death experiences. And we create works of arts and movies based on what we believe to be the heaven we are all preparing for. I’m not going to take a lot of time on these images tonight, but what I am going to talk about is what Jesus says in terms of life after death… or perhaps we should begin by saying life eternal.
Jesus didn’t speak a whole lot about a heaven, but instead about the kingdom of God, manifest on this earth in this place and in this time. He constantly asked the disciples to look around him and find the kingdom of God, the place where God was breaking in upon a world that had become broken and missed the point. Some might even say that Jesus came to a world that had lost it’s own sense of the image of the intended kingdom and provided the example then and there. It makes sense when Jesus so often told the disciples that the kingdom was right then and there. What if Jesus was the incarnate and manifest kingdom of God himself. Right there in pre-modern Palestine.
Whether or not we believe that, we can be sure that Jesus did spend a whole lot of time talking about the kingdom of God and how it was here and now. But what exactly does the kingdom of God look like? Well, we have some details.
Love
Throughout this series we have talked about Jesus’ use of Love. Love the Lord God and of course love your neighbor as yourself. This is Jesus’ representation of the kingdom of God. But more than that, Jesus spoke about the renewal of creation. To love your neighbor was to love all of the creation of the world, setting it aside and finding ways to be careful stewards. We sometimes get to thinking that our job is the subdue the earth, but instead Jesus more often would say in my opinion we are supposed to see the beauty of the world and preserve, becoming a part of it all. So the kingdom of God then becomes about loving your neighbor, and what that means includes caring for the poor, for others, and overall finding a way to make everything come into greater sustainability.
Overcoming Hell
Secondly, we have the example of hell, which we have noticed is more aligned with the giant garbage dump outside Jerusalem. Those things that can’t be used are cast into the fire and perish. And Jesus declares many things to be not worthy and usable in the kingdom of God. Greed, hatred, rape, malice, murder, war. All these things are perishing, or what I like to say, going extinct in this kingdom of God. Instead of these things going to a place we call hell, they are going to cease being. In the kingdom of God, these things are former things. And Jesus hasn’t presented us with the image that people will perish, but our actions and our motivations will cease and instead we will be renewed with a new spirit. The kingdom of God will manifest itself within us just as much as within the world at large.
Proclaiming the Laws
The kingdom of God also includes an element of Jewish law-abidedness to it. Jesus was living as a Jew and saw the kingdom of God as also being built around the following of the ritual laws. Obviously, we may not be looking to be single fiber clothing, we do want to consider that taking time for the Sabbath and following the commandments are a part of the kingdom of God manifest on earth.
Pointing back to God
Finally, Jesus is constantly pointing back to the God as the source of all thing, not necessarily himself or any of us. Thus, a reminder that all things of this world that have value to us are going to mean very little. This is where the passage about the rich ruler comes to play. The Rich man, who Luke was probably calling out as a Greek leader, comes to Jesus and asks how to inherit eternal life. But when the general answer is satisfied, Jesus tells him to sell all his things. Later Jesus tells the disciples that it is easier for the camel to through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Now for some of you, this needle thing now has more significance. Let me tell you. We’ve got camels all over the ancient world, and this needle seems like a relatively easy image in modern context. But the eye of the needle was the small hole in walls where people could enter on their camels into fortified structures. It was not an actual needle. People who carried things with them had to strip them off to get through this needle because it was so narrow. We have to point back to God, giving up all earthly expressions of wealth in order that the kingdom might be manifest. Our greeds, our idealism of wealth, they mean nothing. The kingdom of God is not about the haves or have nots. It’s not about those who have power and those who have none. The kingdom of God is about setting the playing field back to equal, proclaiming freedom to captives, a place where there is no Jew or Gentile, man or woman who can be oppressed or afflicted, there is no lesser or morer, but rather is a place where we come to understand that we are all children of God and the ultimate place where fair is truly fair. The things of this world that prevent this are cast aside, and the people who carry those greeds and wants will have them striped from them. They will be broken by grace and love and hope. The kingdom of God will manifest itself for us all from within and from without.
And then God Points it back toward us
And when that happens, behold, I see upon the clouds the new Jerusalem descending. Coming down to earth. The new Jerusalem. The kingdom of God is not some far away place. It’s here, on earth. it’s not a golden road, it’s earthy, like the soil and the trees and the world without environmental pollution. It’s a world made new.
People have said for a long time don’t worry. You’re just passing from this place to the next. The challenges of the world will be better when you get to heaven, the next place. But the Jesus from the gospels actually tends to tell us this is not true, but rather the kingdom is breaking in here and now. The place we are going is here. It’s not a far away place, but a place where this world is made new again, maybe not like in our figurative Eden, but surely in a way where God’s intentions are made manifest in the world and our motivations are cast aside. And when we break in this kingdom, we find eternal life, where there is no need for time and when this age passes away and a new age begins.
The kingdom of God is here. It is all around us. It is what we say “already but not yet.” It has already been made manifest before us, in our actions, in our community, in this moment right now. But it’s not yet, because the whole world has yet to see greed, hatred, war, malice, rape, murder go extinct. We believe it is coming, we look for the inbreaking, for the thin places, but we go forward in love, with hope, and we proclaim that through our actions our world might see a renewal.
So as we close our sermon series, as we celebrate the wonderful blessings of community, food, and fellowship, let us forward in looking for the kingdom in our midst, making the kingdom be created more and more in our world, and let us celebrate that God is with us and we have found Love and Grace, and Hope and Peace to be the things that win our in the kingdom of God. May it be so. Amen.
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