The Strange and Dangerous Kingdom

This sermon is part of a Lenten series on the Lord’s Prayer. This week’s focus is the 2nd and 3rd petitions.

Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI on the 2nd Wednesday of Lent
Texts: Col 1.9-14; Rev 11.15-17; Mt 13.31-35, 44-53

Just what is the kingdom of God? We never really get a straight answer from Scripture. Even Jesus, who came to tell us about the kingdom of God, only told us what it was like, and only then in parables. When we pray, “Thy kingdom come,” it helps to understand what the kingdom of God is.

To understand this, first we have to figure out what the kingdom of God is not. It is not where we go when we die. Of all the things Jesus, the Gospels and St. Paul say about the kingdom of God or the kingdom of Heaven, they never once say that it is where we go when we die. Jesus is very adamant that the kingdom is coming to earth, and in fact is already here. The kingdom is also not a kingdom, at least not in the way we think of it. It is not a nation with a capital or a prime minister. The word that gets translated kingdom can refer to this type of kingdom, but it can also mean the state of being, in this case, the state of being ruled over by God. The kingdom of heaven is the reign or authority of God on earth.

To describe the kingdom of heaven, Jesus spoke in parables, because there is no way to describe the kingdom of God in human terms. We hear some of those parables today. Like the kingdom of heaven, parables do not have one “correct” interpretation, like a fable that has a moral. Instead, they are like art, paintings with words that show an aspect of their subject, but what each person takes from it as they look at it can be completely different. Jesus described the kingdom in parables like this because even though the kingdom of God is one thing, it is experienced differently by everyone who sees it.

Let’s unpack some of these parables. Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure in a field, that when somebody finds it, they sell all that they have in order to buy the field. Why not just take the treasure and leave the field? In Jesus’ time, before there were banks, people sometimes hid valuables in fields. Sometimes they forgot where those things had been buried and sold the field with them still buried there, and sometimes they stayed buried for generations. So, laws were developed that whoever owned the field, owned whatever was buried in it. If this man in the parable took the treasure from the field, the owner could still claim it and charge the man with stealing. But, by buying the field, the man could claim rightful ownership of the treasure. To anyone else, this man would seem crazy to sell everything that he owns to buy an empty, worthless field, but to the man himself, the return is worth the cost.

The kingdom of heaven is like a pearl so valuable that a pearl merchant sold all that he had to get it. If he were going to sell it again, it would be better for him just to keep the money from selling all his stuff, but he doesn’t want the money, he wants the pearl. Just like with the treasure in the field, the thing in question is so valuable that it is worth more than everything the person already has. He doesn’t want to sell this pearl, he wants to own it and enjoy it for himself.

The kingdom of God is like a net that catches all types of fish, and at the end, you have to keep the good and throw out the bad. This might mean that at the end of time, bad people go to hell and good people go to heaven with God. It might also mean that people themselves are full of both bad and good things, and that all of a person, both the bad and the good, is brought into the kingdom, but over time, the kingdom changes a person so that the bad parts get thrown out and destroyed, leaving only the good.

The kingdom of God is like yeast that a woman mixes with three measures flour to leaven the dough. This is strange for a number of reasons. First, three measure of flour is like a half a bushel; nearly 30 pounds of flour, enough to feed roughly 400 people. Second, leaven is nasty. We think of yeast in the nice, sterile jars or packets we get at the grocery store, but in Jesus’ time, a person leavened bread by taking old dough from the last batch and mixing it with the new dough. If you’ve ever made Friendship bread or sourdough bread, it’s like that. This old piece of dough contained the yeast, so it was fermented, it smelled bad, it was considered rotten and unclean. It might even have some mold on it. This is why during Passover, Jews eat bread that does not have any leaven in it, because unleavened bread is unclean.

Finally, my personal favorite, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. Now, like the picture on the front of your bulletin, we think of the mustard “tree” like a giant oak that comes from a speck of a seed. Jesus is playing with some images here. When people talked about Jerusalem, one image they used was a cedar tree, like the ones that grew to the north in Lebanon. Cedars are tall, strong trees prized for the strength and beauty of their wood. Solomon’s temple, the one that was destroyed when Israel went into exile in Babylon, that temple was made of cedar wood. Jesus could have said that the kingdom is like a cedar of Lebanon, and people would have immediately understood that. He’s intentionally calling on that image with the picture of the tree. But, a mustard plant is not a tree. A mustard plant is a leafy, grassy shrub. It gets about 4-6 feet tall. It’s a weed.

Where I went to college in Idaho, in the next town over they had a community garden. This garden was run primarily by the church groups in town. One day, somebody decided that it would be fun to plant some mustard in this garden because of this parable. Then people could see what it was Jesus was talking about. They set aside a corner of the plot for the mustard and planted a few of these seeds, which really are incredibly tiny, and they got a good crop of giant, bushy mustard plants. But, these plants dropped all sorts of seeds and soon, the mustard was spreading beyond its area. The gardeners were constantly pulling up new mustard shoots, but even with all that, they were still loosing the battle.

That fall, when the vegetables had all run their course for the season, the garden was tilled under like it was every year. They figured that should take care of the mustard problem. However, the next spring, before they got a chance to plant anything, mustard started sprouting throughout the entire garden. It grew like wildfire—there was no way they could manage it. They did finally get rid of it, but it took three years and lots of hard work and herbicide.

Jesus might well have said that the kingdom of God is like a dandelion seed as a mustard seed—it would mean about the same. Like the mustard seed, the kingdom of God cannot be contained: though we might put aside our own little enclosure for it and try to tend it and care for it, it is not long before the kingdom escapes our carefully appointed area for it and takes over our lives and our world. Just as Luther writes, “the kingdom of God comes indeed without our prayer of itself!” We pray “thy kingdom come” so that we might be on the side of the mustard, spreading and thriving with God’s help, rather than on the side of the harried gardener, trying in vain to pull it up and reign it in.

This is the inherent danger in praying both “thy kingdom come,” and “thy will be done:” so often we assume that we know what God’s kingdom is or what God’s will is. We assume that we have the answers, and we work so hard to make everybody else see things our way. Aldous Huxley writes, “The third petition of the Lord’s prayer is repeated daily by millions who have not the slightest intention of letting anyone’s will be done but their own.” We trust ourselves to interpret God’s will, but we end up doing only our own. We preach and rave and rail about the kingdom and God’s will and slam all sorts of condemnation on the people who don’t fit into our vision of that kingdom, but we would be wise to remember what Annie LaMott writes in her book Traveling Mercies, “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

In the end, only God knows what God’s will is, only God controls the kingdom. We pray the Lord’s prayer so that the kingdom and God’s will might come in and through us and that we might be included in God’s kingdom, not so that we might make it happen or so that God will make it happen according to our wishes. The kingdom of God is coming, with a wonderful and terrible fury. The humble will be exalted and the exalted will be humbled, the hungry will be fed and the full will be sent away empty, first will be last and the last will be first. God’s will is to break up and sweep away all the sin and poverty and arrogance and inequality and false piety and self-righteousness that plague this world and replace it with the coming kingdom of God. What is truly ironic is that in order to be a part of God’s kingdom and escape the turmoil which comes with it, we ourselves have to be broken up and swept away. Luther writes that the old Adam or Eve in each of us has to be drowned—killed—through baptism, and we must be raised as new creations in Christ. Anyone to sees themselves as God’s instruments for punishment or righteousness or cleansing in this world is in for a big surprise when that moment comes.

With these intense and sometimes frightening images of the kingdom of God, why do we pray these prayers at all? What makes us think that God’s kingdom and God’s will are even in our best interests? This reassurance comes from the opening words of Jesus’ prayer, the words that remind us to whom we are praying: “Our Father in Heaven.” As we pray for God’s unknowable will and God’s inconceivable kingdom, we take comfort in knowing that God truly is our Father, our Abba, our Daddy, and that God’s will and kingdom are gifts given in love.

The Great and Terrible Day of the LORD

Delivered at Trinity Lutheran Church, Pottsville, PA, Proper 27, Year A
Texts: Amos 5.18-24; 1 Thess 4.13-18; Matt 25.1-13 

Normally, we speak of Jesus’ return with hope and joy, as well we should. We look forward to the Day of the Lord as a time of prosperity and happiness, when the sick will be healed, the dead raised, the hungry fed, the naked clothed, and the prisoners released. That is what we have been promised. Paul reminds us that on the Last Day, the Lord will come down from heaven and everyone, living and dead, will be raised up to join him. This will be a time healing and goodness. However, Amos warns us that the Day of the Lord has another side, a darker side. To see why the prophet was such a pessimist, first we have to understand what Amos saw in his world.

My home pastor once described Amos to me as the Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Old Testament, one who spoke up for the rights of the oppressed. Amos was a farmer from a little town in Judah, and God called him to prophesy to Israel in the north. When he got there, he saw a very religious people, a people who kept the word of God’s law to the letter… and no further. They worshipped God as they were commanded, but they were hypocrites. Israel at that time was experiencing unparalleled prosperity, and because of that, people had begun to trust more in their own wealth than in God’s promises, more in their own business practices than God’s commandments.

Now, everybody is conditioned to look out for number one, but God wanted these people to be different! When God handed down the Law through Moses, God intended for holiness and justice to be inseparable: as part of their worship, God’s people were expected to care for those who could not care for themselves.

Instead, the people of Israel had forgotten their obligations to the powerless among them, and thought that their religiosity would save them. But because they resisted God’s justice in their lives, Amos warned, even their worship was an abomination to God, because it made a mockery of God’s love and forgiveness. On the Day of the Lord God’s justice would roll down like water and surge around them like a flood, and nothing would stop it.

These rich and prosperous people, Amos promised, would be unpleasantly surprised when that day came. They were focusing entirely on themselves and their own gain, and what they had would be taken away and given to those who had nothing. They were simply not prepared for the Day of the Lord, instead, they were prepared only to make a profit and live comfortably.

This message still applies to us.  Much of our suffering comes from resisting God’s will in our lives. We chase after what we think will make us happy and avoid what we think will hurt us, but oftentimes these pursuits of ours are contrary to God’s will. Instead, God calls us to do things that may make us uncomfortable, and may even cause us pain, but will be to God’s glory and our benefit in the end; God calls us to forego our own pleasure for the sake of God’s work.

On the Day of the Lord, our wills will be brought into submission to God’s, and for those of us who place our own needs and desires ahead of God’s call, this will be a painful and sorrowful transition. However, as Christians, the Holy Spirit has already begun to change us from within by God’s grace. The more we listen for God’s call in our lives, the more we are open to God’s changing work within us, the more pain and sorrow we will save ourselves from on the Day of the Lord.

However, if we are like the Israelites of Amos’ time, we are in for an unpleasant surprise. When we reject God’s work in our lives, when we live only for ourselves, we harden our hearts and resist God’s changing power and we fail to prepare for God’s coming. On the Day of the Lord, God’s justice is coming.

We know that as Christians, we are still sinners, and God accepts us as we are, but that does not erase the fact that God calls us to be different. God calls us to do justice for the poor and powerless, and God also calls us to treat one another with justice and love. We will fail at this sometimes, but God calls us to keep trying, because we are God’s people, not the world’s people.

Jesus’ parable adds an element of urgency to this warning. Ten bridesmaids prepare for the groom’s coming, five bring extra oil and five do not. Five were prepared for the groom’s arrival and were allowed into the banquet, five were not prepared and were left outside in the dark. Be prepared, Jesus tells us, because when the groom comes, our time for preparation is up.

A wedding in Jesus’ time was a big affair, but unlike today when the ceremony is scheduled for a certain day and time, only the groom knew at what hour or what day he would arrive. When he arrived, he was obligated to send a rider ahead announcing his presence. Sometimes the wedding party waited days or even weeks for the groom to show up, sure of only one thing: that he would come.

These five foolish bridesmaids, then, had plenty of time to prepare and plenty of warning, and yet they were still not ready. The citizens of Israel waited for and expected the Day of the Lord, but they were not prepared. Can the same be said of us?

Jesus uses this parable to illustrate that we should be ready at all times, because we do not know when he will come again. 2000 years ago, when everyone expected Jesus to come back within their lifetimes, this was not as hard to remember. But today, we have lost this sense of urgency. Sure, we know that Jesus could come back tomorrow, but we also know he probably won’t. As a consequence, we are not too concerned with whether or not we are ready. “We’ve got time,” we say, “we can get things sorted out before it’s too late.”

Jesus urges us in this parable not to live like we have time, but to live like the end is near. Maybe Jesus won’t come back tomorrow, but tomorrow there may be a car accident, or a heart attack, or a tornado. We can never know how much time is left for us to prepare, and so we must make the most of what we have. Be prepared, Amos says, because the Day of the Lord will bring God’s flood of justice. Prepare now, Jesus tells us, because it is coming, and it could be here at any moment.

The Bible tells us what God wants: Micah 6:8 reminds us, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” We prepare for the Day of the Lord by living out God’s justice in our lives now. In order to have a good relationship with God, we must have good relationships with our brothers and sisters. “Whoever does not know love does not know God,” we read in 1 John, “Those who say, ‘I love God’ and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or a sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen.”

This commandment means that we should not only care for the poor and needy around us, but also for one another. Where we have disagreements and arguments, God calls us to treat one another with love, to be reconciled to one another now while we still have a chance, because there may soon come a time when we no longer have time to make things right. Like the 5 wise bridesmaids, the time to buy our oil is now, not when the bridegroom is approaching.

My friends, now is the time to act. Today, as we gather here in church, we are aware that the end of the church year is approaching. Soon we will celebrate Christ’s arrival among us with the festival of Christmas. Just as we now know that Christmas will soon be here, and that nothing can stop or delay that event, we know that Christ too is coming, and nothing can stop or delay him. We have limited time to prepare for him to come. We can rest secure in the promise that we will not be left in the outer darkness on the Day of the Lord, because Jesus has promised us entry with his blood on the cross. But on that day, will we be rejoicing at his return, or lamenting that we are not prepared? Will we all be celebrating with light hearts, or will the grudges and the hurts that we carry with us keep us from enjoying the wedding banquet of the Son? When the flood of God’s justice crashes over us, will it break us against the rocks of our own regrets and shortcomings? We know that the day is surely coming, and Jesus warns that we cannot know when it will arrive, and so we must be prepared now.

We need not fear for our salvation, for God loves us and assures us that we are saved through the cross of Christ. But as we take comfort in that promise, let us not forget that there is yet work to do in this world, to live out God’s justice in our lives both to the poor and the oppressed, and to one another in this very church. We will sin, and we will hurt one another, but what makes us different from the world is that we have the love of God, and that love that enables us to be reconciled to one another as the world cannot reconcile, that love allows us to forgive one another as the world cannot forgive.

And so, as we prepare for the Day of the Lord and Christ’s return, let us abide in God’s love, and always be prepared for God’s love to change us. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit will keep us and guide us in that love and transform us by it so that when the Day of the Lord arrives, we will be among those rejoicing at the feast, not among those standing in the corner whose bitterness and regret prevents us from enjoying the celebration.

Let us ever abide in God’s love and as we abide in that love, let us be changed so completely by that love that we are not afraid of the pain and sorrow that may come from following God, because we have God’s promise to guide and comfort us. Let us use this time God has given us to buy our oil now, to make ourselves ready for the return of Christ, to prepare to meet our God. Let us now be reconciled to one another, let us worship God with our love for one another, let us fully rejoice in God’s promise by embracing one another in Christian love.

Honor, Shame, and Weddings

Delivered at Trinity Lutheran Church, Pottsville, PA. Proper 23, Year A
Texts: Isa 25.1-9; Phil 4.1-9; Matt 22.1-14

I don’t know about you all, but I’m a little confused. What we just heard from Matthew really doesn’t seem to fit with what we hear from Paul and Luther. Jesus’ parable today tells us first about a group of people who when they were invited by the king to the wedding for his son, chose not to attend, and then about one who attended, but chose not to wear a wedding robe. All of these folks were then punished by God, not allowed to come into the wedding banquet.

This is totally at odds with what we are taught in our tradition. Paul tells us that nothing, not heights nor depths, angels nor rulers, not even life or death can separate us from the love of God, least of all any choice we might make, and that we cannot choose to believe because faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Luther also says that nothing we do or say can ever take away our ticket into the kingdom of God.

Both of these arguments are scripturally sound. Both of them come straight from the Bible. Which one is right? Who do we listen to? Was Jesus right? Or was Luther right? The answer to this question is not an easy one for us to grasp. Than answer is both.

Yes, that’s right, you heard me, they are both right. One thing that we must all get used to as Lutherans is living in paradox. We believe we are both sinner and saint. We believe that the kingdom of God is both here now on this earth and that it will come when Jesus returns. Well, here’s another one for you: God is both forgiving and judging.

The point Jesus is making with this parable is just that: God both forgives and judges. To really understand this parable, first we need to understand the culture to which Jesus was speaking and Matthew was writing. This culture placed the highest value on honor and shame. Absolutely everything a person did, from the job they had, the person they married, the clothes they wore, how they behaved in public, it was all about gaining honor and avoiding shame. Everything was about public appearance. This is part of the reason that tax collectors and prostitutes were so hated in that culture: they brought shame to themselves, and worse, to their families, because of the people they associated with and the jobs they held. On the other hand, it is also the reasons the Pharisees were so highly regarded, because they were very honorable people, holding honorable jobs and being honored by everybody. They made themselves and their families look good, and so people respected them.

Looking now at Jesus’ parable, we see that this king invites some people to the wedding feast for his son. To receive this invitation was a great honor, something that would bring a lot of prestige to the person who was invited, and yet, these people all refused. They didn’t even give excuses, they just didn’t show up. This would bring a great deal of shame to the king, and because of his position, also would constitute rebellion: to disregard the king and the king’s son, the heir to the throne, is to disregard the authority that king has over these people. Here, the king shows how forgiving and kind he is. Instead of arresting and hanging all those who refused to come on grounds of treason, he invites them again, this time telling the servants to convince the guests to come, if not to respect the king, then at least to eat the food. Again, the guests refuse, but even worse, they mistreat and kill the king’s servants, another sign that they do not respect his authority. Now, the king does the only thing he can do: to protect his honor and preserve his authority, he declares war on the cities of these guests and destroys them.

But, the king is still in a bind. He needs to fill the hall to honor his son. Here again, the king shows his generosity and grace to his subjects: instead of inviting more “worthy” people, people who were powerful and deserving of such a great honor, the invitation goes out to ordinary people from the streets, both good and bad. In a similar manner, God genuinely extends the invitation to the kingdom to everybody, regardless of who they are or how they live their lives. However, once the guests are inside, the king sees one who has not dressed for the occasion.

Here again, it helps to understand the culture. To come to any wedding without making an effort to honor the host who has first honored the guest with the invitation is a serious shame to the host. At the king’s wedding feast, this is as much an act of rebellion as when the first guests refused to come at all. This guest has acknowledged the goodness and generosity of the king by attending the banquet, but still refuses to respect his authority by shaming him with his inappropriate attire. And so, like the first guests who rebel against the king’s authority by ignoring the summons, he punishes this treasonous guest in a similar manner.

Though this may seem at first a far cry from the all-loving, all-generous God we know, we can see in the king God’s bountiful generosity and mercy: he gives the first guests a second chance to attend, in spite of the shame he suffered from them, and he opened the invitation to everyone, even and especially those who had no right to come.

Because this parable is directed against the chief priests and Pharisees, we know that we are the guests who have been called in from the streets. We have no right to be invited to the kingdom, and we have done nothing to deserve it, yet God invites us anyway. But at the same time, we are reminded that though nothing is required of us, God does expect something of us: that we conform our lives and our wills to what God wants, that we respect God’s authority, because there will be a final judgement which we must all face when God comes to look over the guests at the banquet.

Though this seems to be where our beliefs about God come into conflict with the parable, it is actually where we get the rest of the story. You see, instead of being expected to dress ourselves and to make our own choice whether or not we will respect God’s authority, Paul writes that faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Bible tells us that God gives us the robes to wear, the robes of salvation and the clothing of righteousness. God invites us, and then God makes us worthy. We do not need to fear the final judgment because when we are judged, God has promised through Jesus that we are vindicated. When God comes to look over the guests in the kingdom, instead of seeing us and all our flaws and mistakes, God will see Jesus and his worthiness, and we will be allowed to stay and enjoy the feast.

The point of this story is that we are all unworthy, yet we have still been invited. Because none of us has any claim to be welcome in God’s kingdom, none of us has any right to feel entitled to it or to judge others by our own standards, because that job belongs to God. However, neither should we take this invitation lightly, thinking that just because we got in, there is nothing more that we need to do. Instead, God seeks to change our lives, to push us to go out and live as those who have been accepted into the wedding feast by living out God’s love to others, and most importantly, to continue to invite others, all others, from the streets and the gutters as well as the ones living in the high-rise apartments.

This invitation we have received is no small thing. It has come at a high, high price. God’s grace may be free, but it is most certainly not cheap. The price of this grace was the death and resurrection of God’s only son, the one whom the wicked tenants of God’s vineyard killed, the one who was innocent but was murdered by people just like us trying to exert their own power and authority over God. This invitation we have received is one we could never hope to pay for on our own, but God has bought us the ticket anyway. And though God does not require anything in return, God does expect us to live out that same generosity and that same mercy and that same love to everybody else, because this invitation was not cheap.