Reign of Christ - C

Not Someday but Now

Introduction

There are ideas and concepts we all struggle with. I really want an answer, that is one of my problems. I am not good just leaving things alone and letting it all work out. The same comes to my understanding of God... I want there to be answers, I want there to be a plan, I want to know why things happen.

Of course, whether I am talking to God or my girlfriend... Life does not usually go according to plan.

How about you, do you make plans or have expectations? What happens when they don't work out the way you expected?

The real problem is that plans actually make things worse. Not always, but often. And the reason is simply that nothing really works out according to plan. It is a rare day indeed when.

 Things happen eh way you thought they would.

So we go through life disappointed, in large and small ways.

God is coming to establish the kingdom on earth. That is what the people of Ancient Israel thought, and they were disappointed when Jesus did not raise an army to take over the Roman Empire.

Jesus is coming back to establish his Kingdom said Paul; going so far as to even say that we should sell all out possessions and just wait... As the years passed by the disappointment set in.

In 1900 the churches all said this would be the Christian Century and the whole world would be converted by 2000 bringing about the Kingdom of God, a world filled with peace and happiness...

See, expectations get us into trouble.

So what is it that Jesus was talking about? What did he mean when he talked about this so appalled Kingdom? How come it isn't here?

With the Kids

Follow the leader.

The Righteous Branch

 It all starts with a problem. Right? You join Alcoholics Anonymous when you are looking for a solution to your drinking problem. You go to the doctor when you feel sick. You look to God for help when you do not know what else to do.

Israel has always been a piece of real estate that people fight over. Unfortunately it is sort of a gateway between the East and West and has a port on hyena Mediterranean, no matter who you were owning Israel gave you access to shipping...  So 4000 years ago it was the Assyrians, en the Babylonians, then the Romans, then the Ottoman Turks, then the Christians, Then the Palestinians... Everyone has fought against the  Jewish people.

It must have seemed impossible after generations of warfare to hope for peace. But that is what they did... When no one else would see  to help they turned to God. And they prayed and they prayed and the prophets came to the people and said. Do not worry... god has heard your prayers... God will raise up a leader who will bring us peace and goodness and harmony...

Still, they waited. And so it was no wonder that when Jesus came he confused them... What kind of a King is this who talks about peace and seems to love everyone... What type of Kingdom does not bring happiness to the subjects? What kind of army do theses rag tag bunch of fishermen and tax collectors make?

Still... He said the right sort of things... It was confusing.

Remember Me

 So here is the really stark reminder... the crucifixion. In the eyes of world, in the eyes of the Roman’s, in the eyes of his followers and friends he seems to have failed in his mission by this point because Heaven has not come down to earth...

But... what if they are just seeing it wrong?

Here is the thing that everyone, from Jeremiah through Paul missed; the thing that Jesus tried to correct. The Kingdom of God is not a dream for the future. In fact, like I said at the beginning of the service, it is when we think we need to wait, to hope that things get better, that we miss what is right in front of our eyes.

“The Kingdom of God is among you,” Jesus said.

In other words, look around. God is everywhere, God’s Kingdom is everywhere, what you are looking for is right here right now. Ever heard the expression that you are missing the forest for the trees? This is sort of what I am trying to say. We are looking so hard for some imagined future that we fail to see all the good things that are happening right now.

“The Kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus also said.

Which is to say that God is within you, God is working through you, and you are creating your own future.  Don’t sit around and wait for someone else to solve your problems, and certainly do not think that if you are negative then you will ever find the positive.

We have all met people like that, the ones who cannot be happy no matter what, the ones who only see the negative. If they won a million dollars they would say, now everyone will be asking me for cash…

You have probably met the other ones too, the people who are so confident that you feel like you can do anything when you are with them, or are so enthusiastic that they make you feel better…

So what if the Kingdom is something like this? A state of mind? What if when we feel God is with us and the world is good, just like God said, we create a little bit of perfection right here, right now?

 Contemporary Reading: Yours the Praise

by Jim Burklo

Fire who burns inside the mountain

Earth who feeds the trees

Sea who sprays up like a fountain

Wind who sighs the leaves

You, the source of inspiration

You the beauty bring

Yours, the power in creation

Yours, the praise we sing

Seeing the Beauty

I said a lot about all of this way of thinking when we were in the season of Creation this fall. But I wanted to read you the poem and have you at least give it some thought. This has been a real eye opener for me this week… here is what I always thought, Jesus came with a plan, and it did not go well…

But in some conversations with people I trust and respect I came to see a different idea… Jesus did not have a plan; Jesus had a way of life. He was living faithfully no matter what happened. And in doing that, he helped to bring about a way of being, he helped to model a way of being that really does have a lot of power.

In the modern world we might call it the power of positive thinking. In the old days they would have said that we need to have faith.

However you look at it, what we need to be doing is seeing God’s beauty, God’s love, God’s kingdom in everything and in everyone….

Conclusion

So next week we start preparing for Christmas. It is one of our biggest festivals, it is the time when we celebrate the birth of the person who came to show us the way.

And he did. He talked about how the Kingdom was like a treasure you find in a field, or a lost coin found in a house. How it was like yeast which rises the dough… for Jesus the Kingdom was the power of God rising up inside of us to empower us.

Well, that way is still a valid thing to choose to follow, and today we have been thinking about where it might lead. I invite you to take some time this week and consider how God is at work in you, and to consider how you see the Kingdom all around d you.

Christ the King - B

From Kingdom to…

Introduction

Today is the last Sunday in the Christian calendar. It is the Sunday where we wrap up the old, conclude all of our thoughts, and prepare to move on once more into the season of Christmas. So what do you say to sum up Christianity?

Over the years we have said it slightly differently – but to think of this Sunday historically one has to think of that time when the disciples were arguing about money, and Jesus asked whose head was on the coin… 

“Caesar’s,” they answered, “well then,” said Jesus, “Caesar is the king and give him the money.”

As the disciples thought about this more and more they decided that Jesus should be their king, not Caesar. And maybe it is a political rebellion fermenting, or maybe it is a metaphor and Jesus is king of our hearts, but so was born ‘Christ the King’ Sunday.

Of course, the argument against this comes from Jesus himself, who said such things as “My Kingdom is not of this earth,” and “the Kingdom of God is among you.”

He was the guy who argued that the way the rulers of this world work is often contrary to the way of goodness, of love, of God.

The reason Jesus was killed was political, he was branded a traitor and crucified for political dissidence, the Romans thought he was a troublemaker…. So what was this Kingdom Jesus was talking about, and what does it mean for us today?

That is what we are going to be exploring throughout this service.

Politics of Faith

There have been three phases of this movement Jesus started; and each one changed its followers, and the church. I want to give you a really brief history lesson and then perhaps we can see a little more clearly how we got from Jesus preaching about love to the state of the world today.

First, Jesus came to reform the Jewish church. That was his mission; that was the scope of his influence. It took Paul to see that there was a chance to spread the message a little further – and so Christianity started out as an illegal, underground, missionary movement. For the first 300 years, if you were a Christian and caught, you were executed. This is when most of what we think of as the New Testament was written, during a time of fear, a time of persecution.

In 312 AD Constantine took on his co-emperors in a battle called Milvian Bridge. He decided to paint a Christian symbol on his soldier’s shields, maybe get the help of this new God… and he won, becoming the sole emperor of Rome. Overnight Christianity went from an underground movement to the official church of the government.

Now, believe it or not, this lasted forever, let’s say until the late 1960’s. Church was the civic branch of the government. We ran universities and hospitals, we gave money to the poor and organized the food banks; you went to church simply because you were a good citizen… and everyone went…

Most people thought this was the Kingdom Jesus had talked about – we sent missionaries to the far corners of the world and there were Christians everywhere. Governments consulted with the pope, with the ministers, with Billy Graham even before making decisions. Everything was getting bigger and better all the time.

But… as we all know… something was flawed in this… wars continued to erupt, disease continued to ravage the land, poverty just kept getting worse, and people were not really all that loving; especially to the outcasts that Jesus always said should be the focus of our love….

It took the hippies of the 60’s to point out the chink in the armour; but as soon as they drew attention to how the old institutions, like the church, did not actually live up to their claims – everything began to unravel.

The Kingdom of God is like…

Jesus used a lot of images to try and tell us what this peaceable kingdom he was proclaiming was all about – it was like a mustard seed which grows into a huge plant, it was like a vineyard where everyone was treated equally, it was like a banquet to which everyone was invited.

I think of it this way – heaven on earth.

And what Jesus was trying to get across is that heaven is the state of being where we are all loved and valued the way the God would love and value us… His first sermon quoted a prophesy from Isaiah in which the captives are set free, the poor are fed, the debts repaid… That is his idea of the Kingdom of God.

He had no better word – Kingdom made sense… God is the King. A lot of people argue now that the political language, the idea of a king, of a kingdom – none of it makes sense when we are talking about the world Jesus sought to create. Some people change it to the reign of God.  I have even recently heard it called the “Kin-Dom” and place where we are all kin.

I think that is all semantics. I wish I myself had a better word to suggest to you, maybe some of you could think up a poetic way to describe it… But what is it that we are talking about, really?

Well, Jesus went and called together people from all walks of life. He told them that they should look out for each other, that they should even go further than that and find the most vulnerable people in society and help them. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, bathe the sick.

He was not just talking once or twice; he was saying this should be our way of life, our attitude, to put love first. Jesus in fact treated women more like equals than anyone else, talking to them about their lives and their faith, he sat down and ate with the outcasts of society who no one else would talk to, and he stayed at anyone’s house who would ask him in.

He understood that compassion and dignity, that love and equality, would make the world the type of place it was supposed to be… and that is what he tried to get across to his followers.

“The Kingdom of God is among you…” he would say; it is not the future, it is not life after death, it is right here, right now… the question is, can you see it?

Putting it all Together

So I still think it comes back to that moment with the coin; all of what it means to be a Christian summed up in one sentence… whose face is on the coin.

In other words, who is at the centre of what you do – is it money, politics, ambition, greed, the things of this world; or is it love, compassion, patience and hope, the things of God.

I think the Kingdom is as simple and as easy as that – we are called to put love first, to put God first in our lives; and if we can, when we can manage to do that, the world will change.

We begin another year next Sunday in the church. We begin by thinking about how simple things, like a birth in a manger, can make huge differences. It is something to think about.