The Way of the Kingdom

Transcripts are computed-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Today we begin a journey together studying the ways of Jesus, uh, what Jesus was up to, as told to us by the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each week we'll take one piece of Jesus's activity in the gospels and hold it up to the light of faithful inquiry to ask what this way of Jesus holds for us in, uh, these next eight weeks and beyond in our life of faith.

So the central question for us in these eight weeks is this: how is our life together here and now anchored and animated by the work and witness that Jesus continues to call us into? How is our life together here and now anchored and animated by the work and witness that Jesus continues to call us into?

Mark's gospel, which we believe to be the first gospel written, begins with the baptism of Jesus, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. And, uh, Jesus is entirely speechless in this scene, says not a word. John dips him beneath the water and a voice from heaven thunders, "You are my son, my beloved. With you I am well pleased," and as Jesus is God's incarnate human flesh, the Holy Spirit of God descends from the heaven, the heavens incarnate in the avian flesh of a dove.

Now I want you to really stop and think and really hear that part of the story, which we normally just gloss over in our preaching about the baptism of Jesus, especially in an age when we know Christianity has been more complicit in the commodification of the earth as a repository of resources for human consumption than we have been resistant to that notion. We’ve focused for 2,000 years our reflection on the meaning of God's incarnation and human flesh becoming embodied in a person named Jesus. And we have simply glossed over the incarnation of God becoming flesh in the feathery flesh of another earth creature, a dove, in every gospel iteration of the baptism. But that's another sermon.

The very first time Jesus speaks in the gospel, it goes like this: "Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news or the gospel of God saying, 'The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news.'" And that, my friends, is how Jesus sums up his entire ministry in one verse at the outset of the gospel: the Kingdom of God has come near. For the rest of Jesus's ministry, the Kingdom of God is the primary subject of his preaching and teaching and every story that he tells.

But in all the years that most of us have spent in churches or even just around churches, sort of soaking in the cultural messages about Christianity, we've learned a lot more about what we should believe about Jesus than about the notion of the Kingdom of God, even though that is the one thing that Jesus talked about more than anything else. Very quickly, uh, after the incarnate life of Jesus, the church shifted from teaching about what Jesus said and did and instead started teaching doctrines about Jesus, what we should believe, and not uncoincidentally, that shift happened to coincide with the marriage of the Christian Church and the Roman Empire under Constantine in the early fourth century.

Because you see, the Kingdom of God, as preached by Jesus, was an invitation to order one's life according to the way that the world works when God is in charge and the emperor is not. Hear that, when you hear the Kingdom of God coming up in Jesus' teaching. It is a way of saying, "This, friends, is how the world should work if God is in charge and the emperor is not."

So for three centuries, the church was subjugated and persecuted, and then a much more effective means of control, the church went to bed with the empire and was domesticated, not so much about what Jesus did anymore, but about what we should believe about Jesus. Not so much about the kingdom of God anymore, but about right doctrine to believe, and to preach that the kingdom of God has come near is a threat to all established kingdoms, the empire of God or the reign of God over against the empire of Rome and the reign of the emperor or the empire of America or any other empire that has risen and been baptized in the language and symbols of Christianity. And in response to that reign of God come near, Jesus's message in that very first sentence in this very first gospel is this: repent and believe the good news.

Now to understand the real power of this admonition, we've also got to undo a lot of baggage about the notion of repentance that we have likely picked up in the church. What many of us immediately think of, I'm pretty sure, is repentance from some personal sin or shortcoming. For how many of you is that how you hear the word repentance? It's almost the only way I ever heard repentance talked about growing up. And for those of us who grew up as queer kids in more conservative churches, it probably has some spiritually stressful or even traumatic connotations. We recoil when we hear the word repentance because it has been used as a weapon against us, against our bodies and souls.

But to understand the threat to the empire bound up in this message—the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe the good news—repentance certainly cannot mean looking for forgiveness for your personal failings. That is not a threat to the empire. Repentance is to undergo a change. This is the meaning of the Greek word. It has much more to do with a complete overhaul, a transformation of one's life that upends our priorities and actions in relation to a picture of how the world should work if God is in charge and the emperor is not. As Jesus preaches the kingdom, it is not far off in the future sometime to come, because that is also not a threat to the present order. The reign of God has come near, threatening the status quo order of the present.

To believe in the Greek is more than mental ascent to some notion. It is to embrace a way of life that reflects the good news that God's reign has ruptured the status quo and summons the fullness of our lives into responsive action. We have made it about a rational ascent to some propositions, but it is about a deep commitment of our life to a way of being. When you see “believe” show up in the New Testament, that is the connotation of the Greek word there: the fullness of our life called into participation in the reign of God.

So to sum up this first sentence of Jesus in the first gospel, to be written in a way that subverts all of the ways that it has been distorted and domesticated in our minds, it might sound something like this: “The time has come and will continue to come, for the oppressive ways of the empire to end and for you to begin living life under the reign of God and not the reign of the empire. So reshape your entire life in light of this good news, turn them upside down if necessary. Now is the time to live God's vision of the good life, not Rome's vision and not America's vision.”

And almost the very next thing that happens in Mark's narrative is that Jesus calls Simon and Andrew, who are fishing by the sea, and later James and John, also fishing, and he invites them to come along with him. And they do. Neither Simon nor Andrew nor James nor John were seeking Jesus. None of them had heard him preach or seen any shred of his ministry as far as we know. Jesus called them specifically by name into community with him on the way with him. And they responded. They're not so much willing volunteers in his mission, but people whose lives have been suddenly disrupted by the reign of God come near.

As they go, He, Jesus, is preaching the good news, the good news of the presence of God spilling into the world, affecting the cosmic order of creation. And then Mark illustrates just what life is like when God is present and near to human experience. Remember the progression goes like this: Jesus baptized by John and the Jordan, voice from God coming from heaven, the dove descending. Then Jesus says this provocative phrase, the kingdom of God has come near. Then he calls Andrew, James, John, Simon. Everything in Mark happens very quickly.

And then where this very first day of Jesus's ministry and here's how it goes. One single day that illustrates what it means when the reigning presence of God is so near that it is already transforming the present. It's the Sabbath day and they enter the synagogue where Jesus, seemingly uninvited, begins to teach the people. They were astounded by his teachings. Then a man engulfed in what the gospels describe as demonic power cries out in the middle of the synagogue. "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the holy one of God." But Jesus rebukes him saying, "Be silent and come out of him." And the unclean spirit, throwing him into convulsions and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. And they all marvel at the authority of Jesus, an authority to which the demonic is subject, and his fame starts to spread around Galilee. Day one.

Then from the synagogue to the house of Simon and Andrew, where Simon's mother-in-law is in bed and near death. And Jesus goes to her and raises her, the very same word you'll see again at the end of the gospel of Mark. Then that evening chaos ensues at sunset when Mark says the whole city gathered around the door, bringing to Jesus their sick and their demon-possessed. Word has gotten out, everybody's showing up, and he cured the sick and would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him. That is the end of day one in Mark's gospel.

When the lives of Simon, Andrew, James, and John have been upended by the kingdom of God come near and they're caught up in the presence of God spilling over into the lives of their neighbors. It's quick, it's chaotic, it's disruptive. Not everyone is on the same page about whether this is good news or not.

An astounding teaching in the synagogue, the submission of the powers of evil to his authority, raising up those near death, the entire city gathered around his door and experiencing the healing of their bodies. And four men who were not looking for a change but whose lives have been turned upside down by the reign of God come near, already transforming the present with healing, sustaining, reconciling, liberating, empowering, good news of God, inbreaking and ever coming to disrupt the status quo.

Now throughout the gospel, Jesus goes about announcing the nearness of the kingdom of God. This is a theme that you'll see coming up time and time again. It is the way that Jesus's mission is iterated here. He even calls the disciples to do the very same thing as they go through the towns and cities. Listen to Jesus in the gospel of Matthew as he sends the 12 disciples out on mission: "As you go," he tells them, "proclaim the good news. The kingdom of heaven has come near. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with skin diseases and cast out demons." That's their instruction as they're sent out.

And everything that Jesus does when he encounters people is an illustration of what the kingdom of God come near looks like in practice. What he does when he encounters people in their daily lives is what the kingdom of God come near looks like in practice: the healing of what breaks us, the restoration of what separates us from community, the renewal of our body, mind, soul by the good news of grace.

But nowhere, nowhere in the gospels does Jesus sit the disciples down and explain to them in clear and rational terms just what exactly it means that the kingdom of God has come near. Or even what the kingdom of God means at all. The only time he really speaks to them at length about the kingdom of God, he does so in parables. And parables are feral little stories that are unruly and defy simple meanings. In fact, no parable has a single meaning. They're often preached as though there's a simple allegory to understand what they mean, but that again is a domestication of the message of Jesus. No parable has a single meaning. They are characterized by a surplus of meaning.

And I want you to see the power of the fact that Jesus almost only speaks of the kingdom of God in parables. Because listen, everybody, everybody Jesus spoke to knew what a kingdom was. Everyone he spoke to could see the power of an empire every single day of their lives, lived under the rule and reign of the Roman Empire. But rather than using the symbols of empire like armies and riches and power and might to explain the kingdom of God, instead he told them stories like this: He also said, "What can we compare the kingdom of God with? What parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which when sown upon the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on earth. Yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

Everyone knew what a kingdom was. Everyone knew the symbols of empire. And when Jesus went to tell them what the kingdom of God is like, he told them it was like a mustard seed, so tiny you can barely see it, he said. And when it's sown, it becomes a great big old shrub. Often it's translated tree, but mustard seeds are not trees. They produce shrubs with large branches and the birds of the air make nests in its shade. Now these are all agricultural folks he's talking to in this story. So they may get something about the story that we don't get right away.

For example, they know the mustard plant, and no farmer in the ancient Near East would've gone around intentionally planting mustard seeds because mustard bushes are really more of a weed than a plant that you want in your garden, a shrub that would take over if you're not careful, in fact. It germinates really quickly, and once it takes root, it is nearly impossible to eradicate.

To a southerner, it might sound something like, “The kingdom of God is like a great big, beautiful sprawling kudzu patch.” You can't get rid of it, and nobody wants it. This was the image he used for the kingdom of God. When it came right down to the crux of the message, the kingdom of God, what he had been preaching all around the countryside, what his disciples were supposed to be preaching after him, how they were supposed to understand just what in the world they were up to when they were following Jesus, they might have expected to hear something that sounded more like the might and power of Rome just put on steroids. But it turns out the kingdom of God is better compared to an overgrown weed that, once it takes root, is as hard as kudzu to get rid of.

And what you expected to be a big and strong and imposing image of the kingdom, like one with armies and real power, turns out to be more like a weed that grows out of control and never looks like much more than an irritation or a nuisance or an intrusion. But its purpose lies beyond the limitations of your imagination, the parable suggests, and the whole earth symbolized here by the birds of the air, the whole earth is blessed by the presence of something we never knew, we never would've thought of planting intentionally. The birds of the air make their nests in its shade.

And all you ever know at the outset of this strange undertaking, this going about preaching the good news of the kingdom of God come near, apprenticing ourselves to the wonder-working empire, subverting mission and message of Jesus, all you know at the outset is potential, like a tiny seed you can barely even see. Because a seed, if it remains tightly bound in your hand, unplanted, never grows anything at all. “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground,” another parable goes. “How it germinates and takes root and grows. We know not how.”

And we don't know how it'll turn out, either, or even how the mysteries of the wonder-working empire, subverting acts of healing and love and justice produce the healing that the world needs. But we have seen it happen. And we see it happening here, in us. And if we're willing to have our lives turned upside down by the reign of God come near, whatever good happens beyond this day is something beyond our ability to control or manage or even maintain, like a weed growing out of control that will bless the earth beyond our narrow interests and our ability to imagine its grandeur. And all that we have in this life, in this church, is sheer potential, ever ready to be actualized by the mysterious workings of the divine in our midst, the workings of the divine in our bodies, the workings of the divine in this earth if we will let it go. And that is what the kingdom of God is like.