An Inevitable Kindom
July 24
Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Have you heard the one about the little boy whose mother was from Ohio and father from Iowa. He asked his mom one day if he was a Buckeye or a Hawkeye. His mom said, “well, you can be anything you want to be.”
The kid said, “good; I want to be Chinese.”
Smart kid. Alas, there are some things we can choose, and some things we can’t.
We are all children of God. We can choose whether or not to act that way.
The kindom of God is all around us; we can choose whether or not to live into it.
Jesus, the gospels tell us, came preaching about the kindom of God.
The kindom of God is the reign of God’s love.
Let me repeat that: the kindom of God is the reign of God’s love.
Kin-dom, here, rather than kingdom, because under the reign of God’s love we are all sisters and brothers, and there is no birthright hierarchy. Sisters and brothers, then, whether we like it – or each other – or not.
There are some things we can choose, and some things are inevitable.
The lectionary mashup this week brings together two wonderful passages that, taken together, tell us one simple thing: this kindom of God is inevitable. As Paul put it to the Romans, nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing. “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.”
The reign of God’s love is inevitable.
Now, to be sure, it does not feel like that sometimes. Perhaps even often.
The news of the day seems to separate us from the reign of God’s love.
War. Economic chaos. Political quagmire. The seemingly always widening gap between rich and poor.
Our own behavior seems to separate us from the reign of God’s love.
We say hurtful things to the ones we love. Sometimes we do it by accident. Other times, we’re just mean. We do stupid things to ourselves. We put things into our bodies – and our minds – that we not only know we shouldn’t be we wish we wouldn’t. We fail at the things that matter most to us.
As Paul also put it to that same church in Rome:
“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. … I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”
Can anybody else in here relate to that? We don’t need to devolve into group therapy or maudlin sharing to own up to the simple, common, human constant: each one of us, way more often than we want to admit to our selves, does the very thing that we hate in ourselves.
How can we be living in – or even in to – the reign of God’s love when we can’t even make it through the day without falling back into the reign of our own brokenness?
And yet, it is that same Paul, in that same letter, to that same group of persecuted and broken followers of Jesus, who insists that nothing, nothing, nothing in all of creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God.
The reign of the love of God is inevitable.
If Jesus were preaching in these parts today, he’d tell you that the kindom of God is like kudzu. It cannot be controlled. It spreads everywhere. And it covers everything in its path.
It also has no marketable purpose, so it cannot be domesticated. People say of kudzu that it is worthless.
So is the kindom of God – if the measure you use is the market, winning and losing, gaining and keeping, and all of those other cultural values that we use to keep score.
Why bother, then?
Because that way lies salvation. Salvation: a freighted theological word weighed down by so many centuries of accrued abuse that perhaps we ought to jettison it altogether, but one whose root meaning is simply wholeness and well-being, a close cousin to shalom -- hermeneutically if not etymologically. That is to say, salvation and shalom mean the same basic thing.
Jesus offers salvation precisely because he points the way, and paves the way, toward the kindom, toward the reign of God’s love.
In our conversation last Sunday about the meaning of church more than one of you raised the specter of “Jesus problems.” Perhaps it would be accurate to say that you “confessed” to having questions about Jesus.
Now I could say here, in all honesty, that I seriously doubt that any of you have had more Jesus questions than I have, but rather than retrace my own deep doubts it will probably be more helpful to note that this is, after all, nothing new under the sun. The gospels themselves ask over and over, “who is this guy?”
Jesus’ own response is instructive, both for our own personal faith lives but all the more so for getting at our core question of a week ago – what is the church for?
Jesus never says anything that sounds like an orthodox declaration. He never says, “believe in me; I’m the second person of the trinity,” or anything like that.
But he does say, over and over and over again, two key things that are, I believe, crucial for your faith and mine, and crucial for understanding the purpose of the church today.
He says, in all kinds of difficult circumstances – situations that often sound like they came straight out of the news of the day – terrible storms, economic distress, disease and death – in the face of all the vicissitudes of life, Jesus said, “do not be afraid.”
Do not be afraid.
And then he said this, perhaps more often than any other instruction, he said simply, “follow me.”
I believe that out of the intersection of those two simple invitations comes the way of Jesus.
Set aside your fear, and follow Jesus.
That is what it means to be a Christian today. There have been other meanings in other contexts: join the club of the saved; pledge allegiance to the Roman Empire; join the Protestant Establishment. Those have been meanings of the church in other times and places, and we could analyze and criticize them but none of them matter much today.
Today, to be a Christian, means simply this: set aside your fear and follow Jesus.
Was Jesus “the son of God”? Well, let’s be honest. We don’t even know what that would mean. Is that some kind of biological statement? If it’s not a biological claim, then it’s a theological one. But we still don’t know what it would mean to be the son of God when one of our principle affirmations is that each of us is a child of God.
Personally, the arguments are only interesting as theoretical exercises and textual studies. I’ve been there and done that, and it changes nothing. Indeed, it’s perhaps notable that Paul did not include “theological argumentation” in his list of things that do not separate us from the love of God! The church is not a discussion group nor an academy. Oh, to be sure, we discuss and we study, but we do so in order to move more effectively into the world in order to participate in God’s active and transforming love for the world.
For the love of God does transform things. In fact, the love of God transforms everything – including you and me.
I would never argue or suggest that the way of Jesus is the only way into the heart of God. I do not believe that is true, and I don’t believe that Jesus believed it either.
But I will attest, I am a witness: the way of Jesus takes one into the heart of God. The way of Jesus brings one under the reign of God’s love.
When I was a kid, growing up in a town that proudly considered itself to be the buckle on the Bible Belt, I heard more than my fare share of talk about “accepting Jesus.” That phrase, and the implied question – have you accepted Jesus? – seemed to be the sum total of what it meant to be Christian.
The funny thing is, Jesus seems to have gone out of his way to be pretty much unacceptable. As Scott McKnight puts it in his recent book about Jesus, the guy didn’t want to be accepted into anyone’s life; instead, “he wanted to take over.”
Just like kudzu. Just like the mustard tree. Just like the kindom. Just like the reign of God’s love.
What is a Christian? Someone who follows the way of Christ without fear for the consequences.
Why does the church matter in this? Two key reasons come to mind:
The church matters because the way of Jesus is not easy. We need each other along the way, to bear one another’s burdens, bind one another up, and love one another; not to mention, holding one another accountable, picking each other up when we stumble and fall, pointing the way when we get lost.
And, the church matters because the way of Jesus is the way of the kindom, which is to say, the way of Jesus is the way of a community, and the church, at its best, is the provisional expression of that community in the world. We are the community that together answers, without fear, when Jesus calls.
Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown? Will you let my name be known,
will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?
Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Have you heard the one about the little boy whose mother was from Ohio and father from Iowa. He asked his mom one day if he was a Buckeye or a Hawkeye. His mom said, “well, you can be anything you want to be.”
The kid said, “good; I want to be Chinese.”
Smart kid. Alas, there are some things we can choose, and some things we can’t.
We are all children of God. We can choose whether or not to act that way.
The kindom of God is all around us; we can choose whether or not to live into it.
Jesus, the gospels tell us, came preaching about the kindom of God.
The kindom of God is the reign of God’s love.
Let me repeat that: the kindom of God is the reign of God’s love.
Kin-dom, here, rather than kingdom, because under the reign of God’s love we are all sisters and brothers, and there is no birthright hierarchy. Sisters and brothers, then, whether we like it – or each other – or not.
There are some things we can choose, and some things are inevitable.
The lectionary mashup this week brings together two wonderful passages that, taken together, tell us one simple thing: this kindom of God is inevitable. As Paul put it to the Romans, nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing. “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.”
The reign of God’s love is inevitable.
Now, to be sure, it does not feel like that sometimes. Perhaps even often.
The news of the day seems to separate us from the reign of God’s love.
War. Economic chaos. Political quagmire. The seemingly always widening gap between rich and poor.
Our own behavior seems to separate us from the reign of God’s love.
We say hurtful things to the ones we love. Sometimes we do it by accident. Other times, we’re just mean. We do stupid things to ourselves. We put things into our bodies – and our minds – that we not only know we shouldn’t be we wish we wouldn’t. We fail at the things that matter most to us.
As Paul also put it to that same church in Rome:
“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. … I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”
Can anybody else in here relate to that? We don’t need to devolve into group therapy or maudlin sharing to own up to the simple, common, human constant: each one of us, way more often than we want to admit to our selves, does the very thing that we hate in ourselves.
How can we be living in – or even in to – the reign of God’s love when we can’t even make it through the day without falling back into the reign of our own brokenness?
And yet, it is that same Paul, in that same letter, to that same group of persecuted and broken followers of Jesus, who insists that nothing, nothing, nothing in all of creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God.
The reign of the love of God is inevitable.
If Jesus were preaching in these parts today, he’d tell you that the kindom of God is like kudzu. It cannot be controlled. It spreads everywhere. And it covers everything in its path.
It also has no marketable purpose, so it cannot be domesticated. People say of kudzu that it is worthless.
So is the kindom of God – if the measure you use is the market, winning and losing, gaining and keeping, and all of those other cultural values that we use to keep score.
Why bother, then?
Because that way lies salvation. Salvation: a freighted theological word weighed down by so many centuries of accrued abuse that perhaps we ought to jettison it altogether, but one whose root meaning is simply wholeness and well-being, a close cousin to shalom -- hermeneutically if not etymologically. That is to say, salvation and shalom mean the same basic thing.
Jesus offers salvation precisely because he points the way, and paves the way, toward the kindom, toward the reign of God’s love.
In our conversation last Sunday about the meaning of church more than one of you raised the specter of “Jesus problems.” Perhaps it would be accurate to say that you “confessed” to having questions about Jesus.
Now I could say here, in all honesty, that I seriously doubt that any of you have had more Jesus questions than I have, but rather than retrace my own deep doubts it will probably be more helpful to note that this is, after all, nothing new under the sun. The gospels themselves ask over and over, “who is this guy?”
Jesus’ own response is instructive, both for our own personal faith lives but all the more so for getting at our core question of a week ago – what is the church for?
Jesus never says anything that sounds like an orthodox declaration. He never says, “believe in me; I’m the second person of the trinity,” or anything like that.
But he does say, over and over and over again, two key things that are, I believe, crucial for your faith and mine, and crucial for understanding the purpose of the church today.
He says, in all kinds of difficult circumstances – situations that often sound like they came straight out of the news of the day – terrible storms, economic distress, disease and death – in the face of all the vicissitudes of life, Jesus said, “do not be afraid.”
Do not be afraid.
And then he said this, perhaps more often than any other instruction, he said simply, “follow me.”
I believe that out of the intersection of those two simple invitations comes the way of Jesus.
Set aside your fear, and follow Jesus.
That is what it means to be a Christian today. There have been other meanings in other contexts: join the club of the saved; pledge allegiance to the Roman Empire; join the Protestant Establishment. Those have been meanings of the church in other times and places, and we could analyze and criticize them but none of them matter much today.
Today, to be a Christian, means simply this: set aside your fear and follow Jesus.
Was Jesus “the son of God”? Well, let’s be honest. We don’t even know what that would mean. Is that some kind of biological statement? If it’s not a biological claim, then it’s a theological one. But we still don’t know what it would mean to be the son of God when one of our principle affirmations is that each of us is a child of God.
Personally, the arguments are only interesting as theoretical exercises and textual studies. I’ve been there and done that, and it changes nothing. Indeed, it’s perhaps notable that Paul did not include “theological argumentation” in his list of things that do not separate us from the love of God! The church is not a discussion group nor an academy. Oh, to be sure, we discuss and we study, but we do so in order to move more effectively into the world in order to participate in God’s active and transforming love for the world.
For the love of God does transform things. In fact, the love of God transforms everything – including you and me.
I would never argue or suggest that the way of Jesus is the only way into the heart of God. I do not believe that is true, and I don’t believe that Jesus believed it either.
But I will attest, I am a witness: the way of Jesus takes one into the heart of God. The way of Jesus brings one under the reign of God’s love.
When I was a kid, growing up in a town that proudly considered itself to be the buckle on the Bible Belt, I heard more than my fare share of talk about “accepting Jesus.” That phrase, and the implied question – have you accepted Jesus? – seemed to be the sum total of what it meant to be Christian.
The funny thing is, Jesus seems to have gone out of his way to be pretty much unacceptable. As Scott McKnight puts it in his recent book about Jesus, the guy didn’t want to be accepted into anyone’s life; instead, “he wanted to take over.”
Just like kudzu. Just like the mustard tree. Just like the kindom. Just like the reign of God’s love.
What is a Christian? Someone who follows the way of Christ without fear for the consequences.
Why does the church matter in this? Two key reasons come to mind:
The church matters because the way of Jesus is not easy. We need each other along the way, to bear one another’s burdens, bind one another up, and love one another; not to mention, holding one another accountable, picking each other up when we stumble and fall, pointing the way when we get lost.
And, the church matters because the way of Jesus is the way of the kindom, which is to say, the way of Jesus is the way of a community, and the church, at its best, is the provisional expression of that community in the world. We are the community that together answers, without fear, when Jesus calls.
Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown? Will you let my name be known,
will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?
posted by David Ensign at
6:40 AM
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