A sermon given on the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, November 13, 2011 at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH.
Judg. 4:1-7.
Ps. 123.
1 Thes. 5:1-11.
Matt. 25:14-30. (Matt. 5:1-10 used for sermon)
We can think of God’s kingdom as a reality which can only be brought into existence as we respond to God’s call to us.
God’s kingdom is a way of being towards God, towards one another, towards the earth around us that only ever comes into existence when people become reconciled with God and embrace the way of faith in God’s love for the world and seek to embody that love in their lives.
All over the scripture we see God’s desire for humanity.
The perfect society has been called heaven.
So has the perfect chocolate dessert. I had that chocolate lava cake – it was heaven.
Heaven is a perfection -- a place of utter bliss.
The picture of heaven in the Bible is a little different than eating a slice of chocolate dessert.
Heaven is God’s lasting way which outlasts humanity’s way.
Heaven is our true citizenship (Phil. 3:20).
Heaven is God’s building, the house not made by hands, unseen, and eternal (2 Cor 5:20).
Heaven is a great mystery – a future reality in which we put our hope but a reality which is so foreign to our present experience that we are forced by our skeptical and cynical training to concede: “too good to be true”
Karl Barth wrote that whereas earth is the creation that is conceivable to human beings; heaven is the creation that is inconceivable. (McClendon 1994, 87)
Heaven is not yet. We are promised a life everlasting after this one. The promise is of God’s rule and humanity’s enjoyment of peace, justice, and blessedness in fellowship with one another and with God – where there are no longer divisions of race and class and there is no longer shame from sin or fear from death or loneliness from brokenness in our relationships. Heaven is the not yet reality of Christian hope – where, resurrected, we will live as citizens of one King in the only society where peace and justice are possible.
Heaven is therefore unseen, invisible – nowhere on earth do we find this reality. But we find it in the pictures of scripture. God has given us the hope of a reality, a not yet reality, where we will live in God’s shalom, in God’s love and grace and death and sorrow and fear will be no more.
Heaven is not yet. It is held out as our hope. The hope of those who believe God’s grace is the final word. God’s love triumphs over humanity’s hate. That nothing can separate us from God’s love. “What is mortal will be swallowed up by life.” (2 Cor 5:4)
But heaven is a picture which floods the imagination of the one who loves God. Heaven is the reality which the Christian grasps onto by faith. Heaven is the land toward which we make our journey.
This eternal place floods our hearts with a vision of what is true and good.
We delight in the vision of God’s way of life and pray, “Thy kingdom come on earth as in heaven.”
We look with great hope toward heaven, but we realize that we are here on earth and we long for the not yet to be present in our midst.
And this longing is the Holy Spirit among us and in us filling our hearts with love for God and our neighbor and filling us with a desire for light to be manifest in the darkness of human brokenness, of love to be realized in systems of violence and abuse.
And so the Christian existence and the Christian imagination is shaped by the words of our Lord: “the kingdom of God is near.” (Mark 4:17).
The kingdom of heaven’s nearness shapes our living now.
‘God’s future is God’s call to the present, and the present is the time of decision in the light of God’s future’ (Bornkamm in Howell 2011, 130)
And so we hear the African American spiritual when it sings:
“I got a robe, you got a robe, All God’s chillun got a robe, When I get to Heav’n, goin’ put on my robe, Goin’ to shout all over God’s heav’n.”
And clearly this is a community which hopes in the promises of a better life – but this vision shapes the what community seeks here and now.
Liberation in America and Apartheid South Africa was sought by those who had not submitted to the reality of the present system in which they lived but hoped in a land that was not yet. A place where people of all races were equally created by God and equally loved by God. The heaven of the spiritual was a place where these black South Africans would be able to shout “all over” and not just in the officially designated boundaries of the apartheid government.
Heaven gave them a sense that they truly were equal and that God’s justice was not the justice of the present government. Their not yet shaped their living in the now. (McClendon 1994, 90).
Jesus brings us into the project of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. We ARE citizens of that other land and therefore “strangers and foreigners” on this earth (Heb 11:13).
But this does not mean that we are “so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good.”
Precisely because our imagination is so shaped by God’s reality of peace and justice in the not-yet heaven we live it into existence now in our relationships with one another.
Christians protested unjust government, Christians protested injustices like slavery because they had a vision of a community where there is no longer divisions of race and class – no longer violence and abuse of some against others but all exist in loving communion with God and other human beings.
So the kingdom is near but not yet. It is already becoming, but not yet become.
And we in the inbetween are blessed because we have been claimed by a reality which is greater and higher than the realities which exist in the world. Precisely because we believe in heaven we can see through the injustices and lies of this present age and live in defiance of it – speaking out against instances of hatred and abuse, of deceit or inequality.
I think this is what the beatitudes speak to. We are blessed – not in the common understanding of blessing – but blessed because we are participating in the journey of those who hope in a better land, a land characterized by reconciliation and love, justice and peace.
Jesus’ hearers believed in that hope too. That promise was their pursuit just as it is ours. And so Jesus called them blessed because the Roman empire certainly wasn’t giving them that message. The Romans all around Jesus’ hearers were seeking their version of blessedness which was a blessedness at the expense of the exploited lower classes, a blessedness dependent on injustice, a peace dependent on violence.
Jesus called blessed those who are poor in spirit – because theirs is the kingdom of heaven – that higher reality –that truer goal, that unseen and eternal vision. They are poor in spirit because they do not delight in the present experience but put their hope in God’s future – God’s way breaking into their present.
Jesus called blessed those who mourn – because they will be comforted. The comfort is already here in the promise of God’s comfort, but it is a not yet reality that we look to in our mourning. Death and loss is not the final reality – God’s life, God’s restoration in our future is the last word.
Jesus called blessed those who are meek – because they will inherit the land. They don’t seek to dominate their life circumstances, the ones around them, because they trust in God’s provision for them, they are secure in their identity as loved by God and can love the neighbor who makes himself the enemy– meekness is the strength of love in the face of hate. They will inherit the land – they are co-inheritors of the kingdom, of God’s heaven in which they place their hope.
Jesus called blessed those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, because they will be filled. The Greek word for righteousness also means justice. Both senses are implied. Those who long for justice in this world, in the nation, and in their community and who long for their own soul to be changed by grace and love and result in a life of love for neighbor and devotion to God. Those are blessed because the will be filled in the ESCHATON. They will be filled now in part and THEN in full.
Jesus called blessed those who are merciful, because they will receive mercy. Those who are merciful are those who are shaped by the vision of God’s great mercy – God’s heaven where mercy triumphs over judgment. They are blessed in the reality of God’s great love for them – the love that they receive in faith and shapes their life and turns into love for others.
Jesus called blessed those who are pure in heart because they will see God. Those who love God more than money, those who love God more than success or power, they are blessed because of their sight is not clouded by darkness of selfish ambition but are able to clearly see the God who is love in the person of Jesus Christ and because they will see God in the not yet heavenly reality which shapes their life in the present world.
Jesus called blessed those who make peace because they will be called God’s children. They will be called this in the not yet of God’s heaven but they will also manifest that life in the now of their present existence. Those who pursue peace are those who have been changed by their acceptance into God’s family by God’s reconciling initiative, forgiving them of their sins and violence. They now forgive others’ sins and violence and seek peace living out the reality of their relationship as child of God on earth as it is in heaven.
Those who are blessed by their participation in the unseen, eternal kingdom will be those who will meet resistance from those who find their blessing in the visible kingdoms of this earth and who depend for their livelihood and contentment on unjust or violent or deceitful systems. They will defend their injustice against the one who testifies to God’s reality of justice and they will defend their lies against the one who testifies to God’s truth. And so the ones who find their citizenship in heaven will meet persecution because darkness cannot stand light. And the response of the insecure to the exposing of their insecurity is to seek by any violent means possible to regain their false perception of their security.
And so we see in the Beatitudes our blessedness as a people called out of the world’s systems to a promised land of God’s design. Our blessedness is not the blessedness promised in advertisements and Hollywood films. It is a blessedness of God’s love which changes our lives and redirects the gaze of our souls.
It is a blessedness shaped by God’s future – breaking into our present. And this is the Christian existence of hope. A hope which refuses the limiting hopes of the society and seeks the hope of God on earth as it is in heaven.
No comments:
Post a Comment