November 22, 2015 – Proper 29B
© 2015 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Text and audio of other sermons preached at St. John's, Decatur, can be found on its parish website.
“My kingdom is not from
this world,” Jesus says. Well, he ain’t joking. Has there ever been a time when
God’s kingdom—when God’s reign of love and peace and salvation—seemed further
away than it does right now? Terrorists have brought the battlefield into our
back yards. Gun violence and murder have come to our small town. Our nation
seems to have lost its moral compass. Christianity is shrinking—both in numbers
and in influence. And the fastest growing religion in the world—in fact, the
only religion that is growing faster than the world’s population—is Islam.
And all of those factors have combined with the timing of our political cycle to create a perfect storm of ungodly proportions. As a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I have never felt greater disappointment in our political leaders and candidates than I do right now. In an attempt to satisfy the demands of the electorate, politicians are saying things that, in any other context, would be dismissed as fear-mongering and hate speech. And we are buying into it! In this political season, candidates are appealing to our desire for power and prosperity by promoting unabashed greed. In this season of fear, politicians are capitalizing on our irrational anxieties by calling blindly for more walls and more guns and more bombs. That might be a good way to run a state or a country. That might be a good way to get elected. But that way of being, living, and doing is antithetical to everything that God’s kingdom stands for.
In fact, those are
exactly the things that Jesus tells us to let go of. What does he ask us to do?
Sell everything that you have and give it to the poor. Turn the other cheek.
Love your enemy. Lay down your life. So what does that mean that God’s kingdom
looks like? Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who
hunger and thirst. Blessed are those who suffer. If that is going to be a
reality, what is God asking us to do? Welcome the stranger. Bless those who
persecute you. Render to no one evil for evil. Live peaceably with all. Those
aren’t campaign slogans. They’re the pillars of God’s kingdom. And that kingdom
is getting harder and harder to find.
Standing before Pilate, having
been arrested by his own people, Jesus declared, “My kingdom is not from this
world.” Remember: the Jewish leaders had accused Jesus of leading an
insurrection against the Roman Empire—of pretending to be a king who rivaled
the authority of the Emperor. But Pilate looked at the humble prisoner before
him and thought, “What sort of a king is this? Where are his followers? And why
have his own countrymen betrayed him?” So Pilate asked him, “Are you the King
of the Jews?” And, while we know him to be the King of Kings, Pilate saw Jesus
as nothing more than a radical preacher whose threat was not to any earthly
empire but only to a religious hierarchy that had no place for him or his
message. Naturally, that Roman prelate was looking for a king who reigns in
power, but that’s not the sort of king that Jesus is. Instead, Jesus’ kingship
is nothing like the kingdoms of this world. It is one of weakness and
vulnerability. It is one in which the king himself wears not a crown of gold
but a crown of thorns.
Jesus said, “My kingdom
is not from this world,” but what does that mean for us? “If my kingdom were
from this world,” Jesus continued, “my followers would be fighting to keep me
from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
That’s a really big “if,” and it’s one we need to remember. If Jesus’ kingdom were an earthly
kingdom, then fighting would be an appropriate response. But it’s not. So what
is an appropriate response to the threat of violence for those of us who claim
God’s kingdom to be our own? How is the reign of Christ demonstrated when our
lives are inundated by fear? By laying down our arms, by setting aside our
hate, by searching for the humanity of our enemies, by choosing love, by
opening our doors as well as our hearts, and by accepting the vulnerability
that is indicative of the kingdom of God.
But how is that possible?
In this climate of fear, how can we surrender everything that we hold dear—even
our own lives—when our instincts tell us to defend ourselves and protect our
own interests? The only thing that makes that possible is the cross. The cross
is what turns the ways of the world on their head and demonstrates once and for
all that God will turn weakness into strength, vulnerability into invincibility,
even death into life. The cross is what frees us from the need to win the
victory for ourselves. The cross is what makes it possible for us to put to
death our own needs for protection and survival and success and let God achieve
all of those for us. When Jesus died on the cross, God raised him from the dead
not so that he could come back and rule over us in earthly power but so that we
might die with him and then be raised to life everlasting. That is the power of
God. That is how God’s kingdom works.
We must be sure that our kingdom matches our
king. Jesus’ kingdom is not from this world. If we want to claim him as our
king—if we want to worship him as our Lord—we cannot remain tied to the
kingdoms of the earth. We cannot embrace the old ways of winner-take-all and
I’ll-get-what’s-mine and let’s-take-care-of-our-own if we want a place in God’s
kingdom. Instead, we must embrace the cross as the way of true life—the posture
by which God welcomes all people unto himself. We must become followers of the
crucified one. We must let his sacrificial, vulnerable love become the model
for our lives—not just a dream for the future. As we will sing in a few minutes
when we present our offerings at the altar, “The Church of Christ is calling us
to make the dream come true: a world redeemed by Christ-like love; all life in
Christ made new.[1]” We
must allow that kingdom—God’s kingdom—to come in our hearts, in our lives, and
in our world—not tomorrow, but today.
[1]
“As those of old their first fruits brought” by Frank von Christierson; © 1961
The Hymn Society.
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