Exhibition of the Kingdom

Tonight we finish up with the the sixth great end the exhibition of the kingdom and
This one I think is
Challenging I think interesting maybe a little bit
Offensive is too strong word.
I think this one
Can push us I think this one can be a little difficult for us
So we’ll just start if you had the chance to hear Jesus preach statistically
There’s about a 75 85 percent chance you’re gonna listen to a sermon about the kingdom of God
The kingdom of heaven in other gospels John calls it the world but but
Jesus
Favorite subject and it’s not even close is the kingdom.
He’s constantly Talking about it.
If you open your Bible to one of the gospels
There is about a hundred percent chance you’re gonna find
kingdom of God kingdom of world or kingdom of heaven or the world depending on which gospel you’re in on
One of the pages that you’re going to be looking at it is a constant source of Jesus material
And when he talks about the kingdom
It’s important to know that he’s not talking about heaven even when he uses that word in the sense that we sometimes hear it
It’s not Simply the afterlife Angels clouds hearts golden streets and all of that stuff what Jesus means when he says kingdom is twofold
kingdom literally the the reality of God’s reign upon the earth in the final sense the final reality that
God is going to be king over everything else and The
Participation in that reality in this life and in this world the here and now
so the kingdom is a life that reflects the reality that God is the king a way of living that’s ordered and
Directed by God’s decrees and designs and desires and the kingdom of God is often spoken of by Jesus in opposition to
the kingdom of the world
or the
The the current kingdom the realm of
earthly power and Authority and earthly rulers and the gospel clearly paints a picture as Jesus does that these two worlds
These two realities are in conflict with one another that they don’t get along particularly well.
There’s a choice of what world will we honor?
What set of rules will we live by what kingdom will we belong to Paul talks about it in terms of citizenship?
Which is a big deal in the Roman Empire?
But Paul says you are citizens of the heavenly kingdom your citizenship is not of earth
It’s of something else some other quality some other set of standards that guides our lives
So which king will we obey will it be the Empire or will it be the Christ in?
The Empire the strong prey on the weak
for profit and personal gain
People are valued for what they add to the whole to be used
Where different is marginalized and penalized where the weak are left to fend for themselves and the strong use them and get richer
where resources are consumed by those who can afford them with no regard to the future and
People are just objects and life is temporal and comfort and greed
rule the roost and
This in the first century is the kingdom that Christians saw all around them
That this is the reality of the Empire
This is the kingdom that Israel devolved into
Despite God’s directions and guidance.
This was the world as it is and it was embraced by those who did well in it
but it is not the world that God envisioned for his people and it’s important to get this sense that there is a
contrast and there is
essentially a conflict between
Worldly power and kingdom power kingdom of God power.
It’s a different kind of kingdom that Jesus describes and demonstrates
It’s not new with Jesus
Jesus doesn’t Isn’t the first to describe it,
but it is best seen in Jesus
Centuries before Jesus Israel was called already to demonstrate what it looked like to have God as a king But they failed
They had been given a law to guide them,
but they broke it.
They refused to care for the poor
They pursued wealth over faith.
They followed foreign gods
Because those gods promised better results and better harvest and faster victories and better conquests.
They rejected sexual purity and faithful relationships
they became legalistic and self-righteous to control power and money and
They paid for it dearly when God honored their choices ultimately punishing them with the exile and now Jesus appears and with him a
new emphasis a New unveiling on kingdom life
Jesus embodies this and this is more than anything what gets Jesus in trouble with people who were doing well in the world
Jesus fellowship without castes with the sinners the prostitutes the broken the sick the poor all
Of the people who weren’t welcome at the table Jesus eats with them
Jesus brings healing
Jesus challenges the rich and calls them out
He stands up to the proud and he calls the self-righteous to repentance who believe they didn’t need to repent
He calls on his followers to love even their enemies to bless those who curse you to forgive those who hate you
He teaches sacrificed instead of conquest and giving rather than taking
He proclaims grace and favor
To those who would humble themselves and he teaches that the good of this life is not worth it
if it costs you
Your place in the kingdom
In other words if you choose to live by the wrong set of rules
You forfeit your spot in God’s reign and God’s realm,
which is what the Greek word kingdom means
So again and again in story and indeed and in sermon and in lesson
Jesus shows the kingdom as a different way of life and
rejects the story of the Empire
embracing instead God’s rule and
presents to the people who would listen just a radical reimagining of
what it means to live and how to live and
Ultimately, this is what cost him his life
The Empire doesn’t tolerate this for long
The Empire stamps out challenges.
That’s what it does
But Jesus lives again and therefore the vision of the kingdom is renewed
Both the coming kingdom and the kingdom that is already present lives on in the followers of Christ who participate in that kingdom and
Order our lives and communities accordingly
So with that as background,
let me stop there
Is that does the term Kingdom does the idea kingdom of heaven kingdom of God?
Does that make sense?
Are there questions or there?
We’re good.
Yeah, Jim
I
Yeah,
how does the term worldview fit in I think I
Think
Maybe it’s chicken egg
In that your your worldview your faith will be part of your worldview
But your worldview will also be determined by your faith
How you see the world will be different as
A person of faith than as a non a person of without faith
And of a different faith.
It may be a different worldview.
I Think for for Christians the basic idea is that faith in Christ and
More correctly discipleship
following Christ
Will help us form our worldview as as a Christian worldview as a kingdom view
Does that help it all make sense?
Okay When you started out,
I thought the Empire was going to be the Roman Empire,
but it sounds more like it’s the
Israeli Empire
The Romans
Yeah, I think I think Bob that we could fairly say that
Empire is
Whoever is in power and the ways in which their practice of power is not in keeping with the gospel
so
Empire in the in the broadest sense
Is worldly power that does not subject itself to godly power
That
that okay that make sense
It’s a good quote,
I don’t know I feel like that’s not mine,
but I Want to write it down?
I
Would argue that the gospel assumes that there will always be a conflict between the world and the cross between the
earthly kingdom and heavenly kingdom
That the two will never be reconciled this short of
this side of Jesus return
Yeah, I think you’re exactly right
And when the church has had the power to try and enforce that the church has historically failed miserably
Because
Christ exercises power in a way completely different
than we tend to
That the love your enemy enemy thing gets really really tough for us.
We’re not good at it
I’m not good at it
So tonight the reason we go through that is the sixth grade in and I think my favorite is that the church is tasked
with the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world
So one of our main tasks of being church is to exhibit the kingdom
To the world to show the world what the kingdom looks like we are to be
witnesses living examples of this
different world this different set of values and rules and stuff and
We’re to stand out as notable exceptions amidst the patterns of the Empire and the world.
We are to be unusual
We are to be outliers.
We are to be different and
We’re to put those differences on display as an alternative reality to the false reality
That surrounds us one of the clashes of the world and the cross
Is which one is real?
And Christians have claimed that when we come to Christ we see things as they truly are
And therefore we recognize anything that that stands against Christ as false
The the ancient Celts used to talk about in nature what they call thin places
places that seemed especially spiritual places where they believed were so beautiful that the
Barrier between the heavenly and the earthly
Was thin enough to feel bold at the same time so waterfalls and and mountain tops and those kind of places
Well the church in that language is to be a thin place
We’re to be
A place where the kingdom is visible
Seen in us
And that’s not just about what happens inside the church,
but what the church does outside
We are to exhibit
to to show reveal uncover
What it means?
To follow Christ the book of order calls the church the provisional
Demonstration of what God intends for the world and and that’s a scary thought I’ve hung around enough churches to think
I’m not sure that’s what God wants for the world right?
I mean we we don’t generally get it that right
That correct that much Um,
which is why we say we’re provisional at best we’re provisional
But one of the things we do in our worship and our ministry and etc is rehearse the kingdom
We practice
being kingdom people
We practice our parts
and how many of you have ever at some point been in a play or musical or
Had to learn a solo or right you you do that over and over and over again
That’s the idea here.
We practice to get our parts right so we can enact those things
That jesus taught and demonstrated
About what the kingdom of god life is like
so
We care for the broken
And we say no to the things that break them
We proclaim and seek to practice wholeness
In love and injustice and in unity.
We practice thankfulness generosity forgiveness
And when necessary we stand up and challenge the empire with a vision
of a different kingdom
That is ruled by a different king
A different reign different ruler
There’s a woman named Uh,
or on hottie roy.
She’s an indian author.
She’s not a christian
But I want to read you something she’s written because I think it’s very good
Our strategy should not be just to confront the empire but lay siege to it to deprive it of oxygen to shame it
Mock it with our art our music our literature our stubbornness our joy our brilliance our sheer relentlessness
And our ability to tell our own stories
Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they’re selling
Their ideas their version of history their wars their weapons their notion of the inevitability
remember we may be
many
And they may be few they need us more than we need them
Another world is not only possible
She is on her way and on quiet days.
I can hear her breathing
Now those are beautiful words, but they’re angry
And what they lack from a christian perspective is love
They lack sacrifice
And the church must not lack love
but nevertheless
We are those who are in this conflict
We find ourselves as followers of christ at odds with some of the world around us and we must
Recognize that in order to be faithful.
We must stand
We must call out those things that are not of christ
outside
But especially inside
So that we can be faithful in our in our experiment to be the church
It is easy to attack the enemy kingdom and the people who live there it is hard
Exceedingly hard to love them and to want better for them
To show them a better way
We do these things to be faithful to jesus
And also because we are to be the people who have glimpsed a better world
a better way of living
A better way of being faithful
And as we seek to do that we participate in the kingdom of god that will one day be fully realized
But is now here in the presence of christ
So we talk about what is true now is not fully true yet.
It will be
But in the will be we get to practice the now
We get to participate in that coming kingdom
Through our faith and our discipleship in christ
Let me stop there and just ask for comments questions
Have I confused anybody yet?
It would seem to me that we have two opposing forces and the thing that divides it to his sin
And I think christ came to reconcile
The sinner to him which would draw these together and make his kingdom
the possibility
But as long as we have a sin there
It’s going to be very difficult to do that
But that’s why he came is to rip people of sin
Yes, certainly the atoning work of christ
Is is a key element in this conversation.
I think I might add to that gene and at the risk of
Spinning the conversation
I think one of the things we realize is
that there are
Different ways we can talk about sin.
We could talk about personal sin
I could talk to you about where I struggle.
I could talk to you about where I fail
I could talk to you about the things that faith demands that I don’t do a very good job of living up to and my gaps
But in addition to that we could talk about
corporate sin
We could talk about cultural sin
we could talk about the the sins in which
the
the sins which the
Water we swim in the culture we’re in
Not only
Tolerate but celebrate we could talk about greed
We could talk about materialism.
We could talk about callousness and those may overlap my personal struggles
but
Christ didn’t just come to confront the sin in our own lives,
but in our world as well
And I think when we have this conversation
about
displaying or exhibiting the kingdom
We have to realize that we’re talking about both of those realities does that make sense
Maybe not
Yeah,
so
from a Presbyterian perspective
The Ten Commandments do what all law does they show us
the expectation and the direction that God set
though in
In the era after Christ
What they become for us is a picture of a faithful life.
What does a faithful life look like?
It looks like
Honor the Sabbath.
It looks like do not follow idols.
Do not worship idols.
Don’t misuse God’s name
Do not kill which Jesus expands to mean don’t do not hate
And so they are less for us laws in the legal sense than they are a picture
Of what faithfulness looks like as we pursue Christ
So we have I would say that
For protestant Christians the idea of how law is has you is used has changed to some extent
Calvin and Luther Calvin especially calls this the third use of the law, which is
Fairly revolutionary for his day as I understand it
So here’s the real uncomfortable part
This means that whatever label we wear
That we use to modify Christian we have to be very very cautious of
When I say I am an American Christian
when I say I am a conservative Christian
I am a liberal Christian.
I’m a gay
Christian straight Christian Whatever I want to tack on to the label of Christian.
I have to ask myself very carefully
Where did I get that which kingdom did I get that from?
Being American is not the same as being Christian
We we have confused that in the church as has everybody in every country that’s that’s had some power
Doing the things that make you a good American
By definition are not the same things that make you a good Christian.
They may overlap
But they may not
And and we have to ask those questions
Because when we are given a vision of this is what it means to be faithful
We have to ask faithful to what and faithful to who better is a better question
faithful to who
I want to I want to be careful,
but I will say this jen
The church and power historically have had an unhealthy relationship
because power
Sees an opportunity to use the church and the church sees it empower an opportunity
To gain some authority and to move up the ladder
and
There are moments
That they work together
well
But on the whole
That relationship has been dangerous and we see it nowhere better than
Germany of the middle 20th century when the state church
Approved of and advocated the policies of the nazis
And and church and state became one in the same
With the exception of what was called the confessing church
That said no one is god,
but no one is lord
And the word lord means no one is lord, but christ
And every generation of christians and every place that there are christians
We have to do that.
We have to be on guard for that when when anything wants to replace jesus as a head
We have to we have to refuse we have to be careful.
We have to be faithful
Okay, I want to read you I want to read you a story, um
This goes a little more generic than the conversation we’ve just been having but this is from a sermon
It was preached by a pastor named tom r jr.
A.
R.
E.
And
Reverend r
is at a huge church in
Somewhere kansas prairie village, I believe
And this is an excerpt of a sermon.
It’s a little long,
but it’s good.
I think you’ll be okay with it
So these are his words
My brother jean was born with a generous heart,
but a limited mind
He will never forget my birthday,
but he will never read a book
He knows my name,
but he calls me brother or in his words.
What a
More than anything in the world jean wants to drive a car
That’s his big goal in life.
He’s 47 years old and his greatest desire
Is to drive a car
Usually it’s a red car.
Sometimes it’s a van.
He wants to get his license
Stop by the gas station and take a road trip
Not long ago.
We were eating in a chonis.
That’s uh Do you guys know chonis?
Yeah, okay
Not long ago.
We were eating in a chonis because jean thinks that’s fine dining
We ordered the cholesterol plate
And we talked about the trips he would take
In a surprising moment that was so real it seemed unreal
He said what a
Do you think i’ll ever drive that car?
I said, yes jean.
I do
He will never drive the car
Not that car
But that’s not really what he was asking
His question is deeper than
that
What jean was asking
is do you believe this is all there is?
Are we there yet?
Is there a time when all that has gone wrong will be made right?
Is there a holy promise
That all that has jumped the tracks can be set right
And all that has been broken will be mended and all that is bruised and crushed will be comforted and all that has gone wrong
Will be okay
What he was asking is do you believe god will be faithful to the promise on which we stake our lives?
To say yes
Is to spend each day looking for signs of god’s faithfulness
To say yes is to wait for the life of jesus christ to show up among us
I don’t know what you think of when you hear
the words kingdom of heaven
perhaps you think of justice rolling down like waters like amis did or
Perhaps you think of swords being beaten into plowshares like isaiah did
You may imagine the hunger being filled with good things like mary did or you may see prostitutes and tax collectors and the poor
Finding their place at the feasting table like jesus did
However, you think about it
Whatever you choose to call it.
There is nothing our world needs from the church these days more than this
That we live like a people
Who have hope in god’s kingdom?
The world needs us to live like a people
Who know?
There is something we are waiting for
This is a tremendous
Challenge to us a tremendous calling to us to exhibit the kingdom
Jesus tells us over and over and over again
What’s the kingdom like the kingdom is like people who barely worked getting paid as much as those who did the kingdom is like
The least being greatest the last being first
The kingdom is the place where the poor are are welcomed and celebrated and the broken are made whole
Where lives are changed and people are healed and forgiven
where
Prodigals come back and their fathers run and hug them instead of telling them.
I told you so
Our task
Is to understand that kingdom
To say no to whatever isn’t of that kingdom
And display that kingdom to a world that doesn’t know the difference yet
And it is
Among our holiest callings
And I I think a fitting place for the sixth grade ends
To
leave us
With that ringing challenge
exhibit the kingdom of god to the world
That’s the task of the church that’s the task of christians
So what do you got
It’s pretty good, I mean not my part it the
The the great ends part
Yeah, well in that that sermon is that yeah,
I wish that wasn’t my sermon, but
I don’t my my brother is sketchy.
My brother is sketchy, but yeah
Comments questions
Well, thank you again for participating I
um, I I hopes you find this I hope you find this helpful I find this helpful every year and
It always gives me something to
Think about some ideas to chew on and so I appreciate you being a part of it
I value the conversation and certainly the time and effort that goes into the food and
to the rest so
Why don’t we close in prayer?
Gracious father as we
Draw to a close in this consideration of what it means to be people of faith and a community of faith
We praise you for the promise of your kingdom
And the one who has shown us most what it looks like
And what it means that we are invited in
And with our citizenship firmly in that realm
And under your lordship
may we as your people
Live and act and speak
And minister in such a way
That those who see us
Apart and together
We’ll see in us a glimpse of the truth that you are the king
We pray it tonight and always
We thank you for the promise of this week as we move toward easter and ask that you be with us
And bless us and make us a blessing in your name
For it’s in that name we pray
Amen