7/13/22

I heard it again the other day, “How can someone call themselves a Christian and support _____?” I don’t have to give party or subject, because both sides of the aisle do it. Certainly, being a Christian has enormous implications for the way we vote and for the positions we support, but we can’t expect the world to understand or appreciate who we are and what we do.

Nor can we allow the agenda of the world to determine our agenda. Even when the agenda is something we agree with (dealing with racism, for example), we don’t receive our marching orders from the world, nor do we borrow the rhetoric of secular society.

The reason? While there may be an overlap in our concerns and the concerns of worldly powers, our calling is to spread the good news of the kingdom of God–a kingdom that is not synonymous with any secular power.

The message of Jesus was good news about the kingdom of God. “If by the finger of God I cast out demons,” Jesus said in last Sunday’s gospel reading, “then the kingdom of God has come to you.” Back in Isaiah 63, the prophet prayed for forgiveness, saying that the people were living “like those whom you do not rule, like those not called by your name.” In the next chapter, Isaiah cries out for the remedy, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down”–which is exactly what happened in Mark 1, “And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove . . .” Then, after 40 days in the wilderness, we read, “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’”

The message of the kingdom is not about pie in the sky by and by when we die. No, the message is about God’s kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven–like we pray every Sunday. The message of God’s kingdom is not about us going to heaven; it’s about God tearing open the heavens and coming down! And Jesus’ proclaiming the good news of the kingdom means that God is breaking into the world and transforming it.

Now, the secular world will hear this and scratch its collective head. At best, some will say Jesus was a great moral teacher. And He was, but that’s not all He was. He didn’t come to give advice about how to live; Jesus came to bring us good news about what God was doing. “But,” one might argue, “isn’t the Golden Rule and loving your neighbor good advice? Aren’t Paul’s words that husbands should love their wives and wives should show care for their husbands just good marital advice?” No, they are much more than mere advice! These are the instructions about a revolutionary way of living–a kingdom of God way of living.

We’re so familiar with Jesus’ words that we forget just how world-changing they are. For example, at the time of Jesus, what we call the Golden Rule was stated negatively: “Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.” Well, that’s really kind of easy. But Jesus came along and turned it on its head: “Do to others what you’d have them do to you.” That is not so easy! To proactively treat people with kindness and forgiveness is very different from simply not mistreating people. This is true about Paul’s writing as well. Last week I wrote about Paul’s essentially creating our modern concept of family through instructions to husbands and wives to care for one another. No one would have thought to live like that in Paul’s day. We forget just how much Paul’s writings about marriage completely turned the relationships between men and women upside down (or better, rightside up).

None of this is merely good advice; it’s a call for revolution. It’s the way we live as citizens in the kingdom of God.

All this talk of revolution and turning the world rightside up might give the wrong impression. Living our lives as citizens of the kingdom doesn’t mean we’re to go around being nasty and judgmental and screaming at people. That never accomplishes anything productive.

Instead, the most effective way of bringing the kingdom is actually doing and saying the things that illustrate life in the kingdom. In the early church, the reason that people became Christians was not because of great theological arguments–at least, not to begin with. The reason people turned to Christ was that in ordinary villages, ordinary people were living in extraordinary ways: caring for the poor, caring for one another, caring for complete strangers, forgiving one another, and creating families that crossed traditional boundaries. No one else lived like that. No one else cared for the poor, the widows and the orphans, the sick and dying, the way that Christians did. Living like this causes people to take notice, and when they take notice, they begin to ask questions: Why are you doing this? How is this possible?

Then the believers would talk about Jesus.

Jesus proclaims that God’s kingdom is breaking into this world and transforming it, and that transformation entails turning this upside down world rightside up. The inbreaking kingdom casts the Light of God into every corner of our lives, causing us to reassess and reevaluate everything we thought we knew. Everything has changed because in Jesus, God has torn open the heavens and come down.

This Sunday, we’ll be looking at a remarkable, short passage, Acts 4:32-37, about the ways in which the church’s life together bore witness to the Resurrection of Jesus. And that’s what we’re called to be–witnesses. And we’re going to begin to ask ourselves questions about how we can reorder our lives as Christ Church so the world can see the power of the resurrection at work within us. Justin Welby, the current Archbishop of Canterbury recently said, “Our country will not know of the revolutionary love of Christ by church structures or clergy, but by the witness of every single Christian.”

Have a blessed week! See you on Sunday!