September 4, 2011
"Thy Kingdom Come"
W. Gregory Pope, preaching
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Series: The Lord’s Prayer
Isaiah 65:17-25; Mark 1:14-15
THY KINGDOM COME.
What is the kingdom of God?
It did not originate with Jesus.
It began in the Garden of Eden where we see symbolized, mythologized God’s intention for all creation: an idyllic paradise where all creation was woven together into an intricate tapestry and Adam and Eve had all their needs met. God’s presence overflowed in selfless love expressed in the delights and pleasures of the Garden. “God saw everything God had made, and it was good.”
God so marveled at Adam and Eve that God placed all creation into their hands and made them its stewards. They were to nurture this world with tender care, preserving it as a place where there would be no war, violence, or distrust; no racism, inequality, or prejudice; a place where each member of creation’s family would rely on one another.
But paradise was soon fractured as Adam and Eve chose to follow their own agendas independently of God’s desires, making themselves god. The intricate web of creation was broken and thrown into disarray. God’s intention had suddenly been relegated to a hope, a dream.
Over the next several hundred years, God raised up prophets to remind God’s children that their present situation of self-centeredness, idolatry and social injustice was far removed from the paradise God intended.
God hoped, with human cooperation, to once again restore creation to a place of blessing. The prophets spoke of a time when all nations would live in peace and together worship Yahweh.
The prophet Isaiah had a glimpse of the Kingdom as a world where everything is made new. He said that when the Kingdom comes, children will stop dying because of poverty and violence. Adults will live out their lives to old age, respected and properly cared for. Violence and crime will come to an end. God said through Isaiah, They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.
It is a peaceable kingdom the prophets envisioned, encompassing all of humanity and all of creation, including nature and the animal kingdom. Isaiah says, The wolf will dwell with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the young lion will feed together. (And Cardinals will live in peace with Wildcats. That’s in the Kentucky Revised Standard Version!) The peaceable kingdom.
But the prophets could not get through. So Jesus came as more than a prophet, enfleshing God’s original intention. He called it the “kingdom of God.” He taught and lived in his preaching and ministry its essential characteristics of peace, love, and justice.
Its justice can be seen in Jesus’ friendship with the social and religious outcasts of his day, in his raising the status of children and women in a patriarchal society, in Jesus’ mission to the marginalized, as he proclaimed that day in the Nazareth synagogue the words of Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives to set at liberty those who are oppressed.
The kingdom’s love and peace found voice in his parables about fathers welcoming home wayward children without retribution, punishment, or apology, and foreigners showing compassion to people left behind to die.
Love and peace were the cornerstones of his teachings. If the kingdom of God were written as a manifesto, its text would be the Sermon on the Mount. It paints a portrait of what life is like when the Kingdom is becoming a reality.
It’s a world where people are salt to the earth and light to the world. It’s a kingdom that stops the cycle of violence. Where retaliation is exchanged for a turning of the cheek, a love for our enemies, and a forgiveness without limitation. It’s a life of generous giving and genuine praying. A life free of materialism in order to lay up treasures in heaven. A life of seeking first the Kingdom of God. Treating others the way you would like to be treated if you were in their shoes.
Echoing the prophets about a non-violent kingdom, Jesus says at his trial, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over. The Kingdom of God is non-violent, and so must be our participation in the Kingdom.1
When Jesus was asked about the Kingdom, he could only describe it in parables. Stories of Jesus that unsettle, shock, and challenge the way we see the world.
The Kingdom, he said, was not for the righteous and the holy, but for sinners - tax-collectors and prostitutes and lepers of all people, the outcasts of the land.
And it was through his shocking and provocative parables that Jesus turned upside-down all ordinary expectations about how God works in the world.
Instead of investing stock in the Chase Manhattan Bank, the Kingdom of God was like a poor old woman who lost a dime and swept her house all day until she found it.
He said the Kingdom is as hidden and as humble as a bit of yeast in a batch of dough. It’s found in the unlikeliest of place. Maybe that’s why Jesus said we could only enter the Kingdom like a little child. For not too many of us adults leave ourselves open to surprise. If it’s not logical, rational, or familiar we miss it, don’t we.
To pray THY KINGDOM COME is not a prayer for the end of the world. God’s kingdom is not about future heaven, but present earth - “on earth as it is in heaven.”
The Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom was coming. And he said, The Kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is.’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is in your midst.
Following his baptism, Jesus said, The Kingdom of God is at hand. The Kingdom of God is among us.
And the Kingdom is something that grows. The kingdom is like leaven that rises. Like a sower who sows seed. And sometimes the seed of the Kingdom is stolen away by the cares of this world and the lure of wealth. But sometimes it takes root in the lives of individuals and groups and brings forth a bountiful harvest - 30-fold, 60-fold, 100-fold.
The Kingdom of God, says Jesus, is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field. It was the smallest known seed at that time, but Jesus says when it is grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.
The Kingdom of God, Jesus says, is as precious as a treasure hidden in a field or a pearl of such great value, that when you find it, it brings such joy that you would give up anything and sell everything to buy that field or that pearl.
The early church lived out the practical implications of the kingdom - sharing everything they had so that no one was in need, including those from other nations and ethnicities.
The kingdom of God is God’s Dream for the world. It is God working through us and beyond us shaping a new creation, making God’s Dream for the world come true.
The kingdom is here but not yet here. It is present but it is also in the process of becoming, as together with God in the Spirit of the Risen Christ we work as partners toward a new creation where all things are reconciled and made new.
Paul says in Romans 8 that “all creation groans for redemption.” Creation itself is wounded and needs healing. The Kingdom is about the healing of all creation. It’s a word of hope for reconciliation and liberation. It’s good news to the poor, the hungry, the despised, the suffering, the ignored. Prisoners who’ve made mistakes and have lost all hope. Oppressed people - those with no freedom or human rights.
Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of God brings the hope of change to the world. Don’t you dream of a better world, a different world than the one we have now? Well God shares that dream. In fact, God placed that dream in our hearts.
And change begins in the world when God’s people pray THY KINGDOM COME. This prayer is a call to refuse to let the world remain the way it is. It is the acknowledgment that transformation is possible; that hearts and circumstances can change.
There is a young man named Brian. An excellent student, star athlete, leader in the student government at his college, and a concert pianist.
Beyond all these accomplishments, Brian had a dream. It was to serve the poor and oppressed. He wanted to be a lawyer and use his talents to defend people who seemed to be victimized by a system that often denied justice to those who are poor. His dream led him to apply to Harvard Law School. Again he excelled. Again he demonstrated that he had the gifts and intelligence to achieve almost anything. And again he graduated with honors.
As a graduate from Harvard, almost any major firm in the country would have offered him a salary of at least $100,000 a year. But today Brian is pinching pennies. In order to live out his dream he lives in a one-room flat in Montgomery, Alabama, and spends his days saving those from death row who were not given fair trials, and he does his best to make justice a reality for those who otherwise would not have it.
Brian has realized that in Alabama, as in many states, there is one kind of justice for rich people and for whites, and another for poor people, especially minorities. And he sees it as his mission to fight against this reality and try to change things so that God’s Dream for the world can come true. He is trying to make the Kingdom of God a reality. Where all people are treated with dignity and respect, especially the poor.
The test of the kingdom, says one theologian, is the poor. Not because they are especially moral, but simply because of who they are, predominantly victims of abuse, war, hunger, injustice. And as oppression ceases, the kingdom grows. Poverty, oppression, and violence have no place in the kingdom.
There is a woman named Julie. She drives down to Georgia the weekend before every Thanksgiving. She joins thousands of people marching down Victory Drive in Fort Benning, Georgia, to demand the closing of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Formerly known as the School of the Americas, this United States government facility trains foreign military officials, primarily from Latin America, who return to their home countries only to oppress their fellow citizens. Julie believes her protest is a witness to the kingdom’s justice.
It can make a drastic difference in the world if there are Christians who will pray for the coming of the Kingdom and follow the way of the Kingdom.
But I wonder, when we pray, THY KINGDOM COME, if we really mean it. If we are truly sincere in praying for God’s Kingdom to come we will make some radical changes in the way we live.
We will give more of our money away to help fight hunger and poverty in the world.
We will seek out our enemies and ask their forgiveness, restoring relationships.
We will rearrange our lives to include time for loving one another and worshiping God.
We will take better care of God’s creation.
We will work toward the end of violence and crime by getting to the issues that underlie violence and crime, like poverty, oppression, and injustice.
We will choose vocations and encourage our children to choose vocations that will bring about these Kingdom values and make a change in the world.
We will give our lives to these Kingdom values.
As the Church, we are representatives of the Kingdom. Our calling, our mission, is to pray and work for the Kingdom of God. And if we cannot honestly pray THY KINGDOM COME, it may be that we are satisfied with what we have and who we are, beneficiaries of the way things are and we don’t want things to change.
It is most often the poor, the hungry, and the oppressed, who really pray for the Kingdom, for they are the ones who feel the need for the Kingdom to come.
To call ourselves children of the Kingdom, followers of Jesus, praying for the Kingdom is not enough. We must give our lives to the Kingdom.
When we pray THY KINGDOM COME we are asking that with God’s help the kingdom would flourish within us and among us. Jesus said, The Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.
The prayer of repentance is the prayer for change. Repentance is to undergo a complete change of mind, heart, and direction in one’s life. And to individuals, to nations, to churches, Jesus says to us all: Turn away from the madness, the cruelty, the violence, the vengeance, the prejudice and the blindness. And turn towards acceptance, compassion, hope, justice, and love. Repentance is to turn from the kingdoms of the world and turn toward the kingdom of God.
Though we may pray THY KINGDOM COME with our lips, many times our heart is praying, “No, no, no, my kingdom come.” As one preacher put it: “God’s kingdom cannot come until our kingdom goes.” Praying for God’s kingdom to come means I cannot continue to live my life for myself. It means giving God access to every part of my life. Conversion, turning toward the Kingdom, involves a commitment to a whole new way of life.
As one writer boldly stated: “Every time we beseech God in seven words requesting that heaven be brought to earth, we’re praying for a revolution where love overthrows the long, sad reign of fear and drags the demons of selfishness kicking and screaming into the light of a new day. Consequently, we’d better be sure we mean it before we say ‘on earth as it is in heaven,’ because every time we speak those words, we are asking God to turn everything upside down and inside out, including us.”2
To pray for the coming of the Kingdom of God is the beginning of healing for our world, for your life and mine.
Another writer put it this way: If the kingdom of God were a box of cereal, the list of ingredients would read: forgiveness of sins, welcome of the outcast, feeding the hungry, sharing what we have, loving our enemies, a community of friends living in righteousness, peace and joy. The Kingdom of God, Paul said, is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Do not miss the joy of the Kingdom. In other parables Jesus compared the Kingdom to a wedding, a worldwide banquet. In the words of Isaiah, there will be “for all peoples a feast of rich food and well-aged wines.” There will be rejoicing, and yes, even for us Baptists, there is dancing in the Kingdom.
The Kingdom of God is joy. It is as close to us as some precious keepsake we’ve been looking for for years and finally finding it. It’s like finding a jewel worth a king’s ransom. It will cost you everything you have to get it. But it will give you more than you could ever want. It’s beyond your wildest dreams. Because it’s God’s Dream.
The movie Tucker was based upon a true story about a man who had a dream to build a new kind of automobile in the suburbs of Chicago. At one point in the movie, one of the characters turned to a friend of this automobile visionary and said, “Don’t get to close to him! You may catch his dream.”
May that be said of us! Don’t get to those people at the corner of Birchwood and Frankfort! You may catch their dream!
And if you don’t want change, don’t get too close to God. You might catch God’s Dream for the world. And it will turn your life upside down.
Buechner was right: To pray this prayer is to let the tiger out of the cage; it is to unleash an awesome world-changing transforming power.
Dare we let the tiger out of the cage? Dare we pray THY KINGDOM COME?
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1. John Dominic Crossan, The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer, HarperOne, 2010, 91-92
2. Bob Lively quoted in William J. Carl III, The Lord’s Prayer for Today, Westminster John Knox, 2006, 45