O God, forgive the sins of the preacher, for they
are many; that people will hear only of your grace ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
“Your
kingdom come.” We pray those words perhaps more than any others. Weddings,
funerals, hospital visits, public liturgies, and individual devotions all have
the Lord’s Prayer at the center, and at the heart of that prayer is the
petition “thy kingdom come.” It’s a rather simple prayer in that it’s only
three words – your kingdom come – but it’s an incredibly subversive,
comforting, and challenging prayer. To pray those three words with the fullness
of our soul is the work of a lifetime.
At
this point in the Gospel, Jesus is in the thick of his ministry of teaching.
All of Jesus’ actions are about proclaiming and demonstrating the Kingdom of
God. In today’s Gospel text we have two parables about the Kingdom and over the
next several weeks, we’ll hear many more stories and parables that point us
towards the Kingdom. But it all begins with this prayer: “Father, hallowed be
your name. Your kingdom come.” Now, when the passage from Luke was read, maybe
you thought “Wait, something is missing.” And you’re right – the version that
we’re used to saying is based more on the version recorded in Matthew than
Luke. But Luke still captures the essence of this prayer – it’s about Kingdom’s
coming.
So
what is the Kingdom of God? Well, there’s no easy answer to this. Jesus
resisted giving us a definition; instead, he told parables about it. But if we
had to describe it to someone who didn’t know what we were talking about, we
might say that the Kingdom of God is the reality, not the place, where God’s
love has sovereign rule over our hearts, minds, and actions so that the
abundant life intended for us is realized. And so when we pray for this Kingdom
to come, it means that we are praying that God’s will be done, not our own. It
means that we have an eye towards abundance instead of scarcity. It means that
we seek beloved community instead of fearful division. For God’s kingdom to
come, it means that all of our kingdoms must be usurped.
The
way theologians from St. Augustine back in the 400s up to Will Willimon in the 1990s
have described this reality is that we are resident aliens. By virtue of our
Baptism, we are citizens of the Kingdom of God, but we live in a foreign land.
Though the Kingdom of God is present among us, it is not fully manifest. Again,
the Kingdom is not a place, it is a reality. And the reality of the world is
that we still are plagued by sin and death, we are still fearful, we are still
selfish, we still have wars, famines, and divisions. So we live in a reality
that is not fully the Kingdom of God, but that Kingdom is the place of our new
birth in Christ, that Kingdom is the place of our ultimate rest, that Kingdom
is the domain in which we find our deepest and truest identity.
And
so just as if you were to live in a foreign country with different customs,
norms, currency, and language, there is some tension and difficulty in being a
resident alien. If you’ve ever been or lived abroad, you know this. Well, the
same is true in our faith. Being a citizen of the Kingdom will sometimes
contradict what it means to be a consumer, an employee, an American. This
tension is what I will focus on for the remainder of this sermon. And instead
of giving you answers, I’m going to share my struggles with you around this
tension because not every question has a solution that can be given in twelve
minutes.
One
of you asked me a question recently – “Father, do you find it difficult to
preach given all that’s going on in our country right now?” It was a sincere question,
and I truly appreciated it being asked. To be honest, it’s an incredible
burden. There is blatant racism, xenophobia, and hatred coming from the highest
offices of our nation. There is a humanitarian crisis along our southern
border. Our insatiable consumeristic appetites are causing environmental degradation
which may doom all life on this planet. And there is a Church that has become
largely irrelevant because we have reduced faith from being a way of life to an
opinion. And in all honesty, I don’t what or if I should say anything about it.
As
I’ve said before, what is said in this pulpit should never be the opinion of
the preacher. My opinions about politics or society are worthless. I’m not an
expert on those issues, and even if I were, my opinion isn’t the Word of God,
and I’m very aware of that. My image of the preacher comes from a painting
called the Isenheim Altarpiece, and in it John the Baptist appears with his
statement that “Jesus must increase and I must decrease” written over his head
as he is holding the Scriptures in one hand and pointing to the crucified
Christ with the other. Every single word that I say from this pulpit is my
sincere effort to point towards Christ, not myself. Every sermon is essentially
a reflection on what it means to say “thy kingdom come,” but the challenge is that
our lives are not lived in that Kingdom, and so there is a conflict between
that prayer and the world in which we live.
On
the one hand, I think that pointing to Christ means taking on the role of the
prophet. Today, our first reading was a powerful prophetic sermon by Hosea.
Though Hosea puts it a bit more bluntly than I might, he tells Israel that they
have gone astray from the ways of God and will find their demise because of
that. I very much doubt that Hosea enjoyed going to people of power and
influence and calling them whores. That’s not the way to win friends and
influence people. But whether we want to hear it or not, sometimes the Holy
Spirit does give us a hard word to speak.
And
the fact of the matter is that if God really took on flesh and came to us in
Jesus, and if Jesus really endured the Cross out of love for us, and if he
really rose from the dead then that should count for something. A faith that
cannot or will not speak to our modern lives is a worthless faith that ought to
be abandoned just as the worship of Zeus has been left in history.
We
heard St. Paul caution in Colossians against being taken captive through
philosophy and empty deceit. As someone who has been trained, ordained, and
commissioned to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, come what may, cost what it
will, lead where it might, I feel compelled to hold up a mirror so that light
of Christ might be reflected on the stories that we see in the news. To be
clear, it’s not about ever taking a partisan position, but the Kingdom of God
often intersects directly with the kingdoms of Wall Street, City Hall, and
Congress.
Now,
if I’m completely honest, I’d confess that I’ve been a bit cowardly on this
over the past year or two. I have not said things that I think I probably
should have, I’ve not preached the Gospel because I’ve been afraid of how people
might react to a sermon a that points out the contradictions between our
self-made kingdoms and the Kingdom of God. But there’s a reason for that
hesitancy, or maybe it’s more of an excuse, I’m really not sure.
The
prophetic task is one part of the preacher’s role, but the pastoral is another.
I’m as tired of and disgusted by all of the stuff in the news as much as
anyone. To constantly be paying attention to the antics of politicians is a distraction
from things that really matter. And to preach in a prophetic way will often be
heard in a divisive way, even if that isn’t the intention. I also believe and
trust that you all are smart enough to figure this stuff out. I choose to
preach focusing on the love, mercy, and grace of God – because if we can get
that aspect of the Kingdom into our bones, then the transformation of our
society will follow. So in one sense, whether or not I speak about what is in
the news doesn’t really change anything, but what might change someone is
hearing about the amazing grace of God. And so I’ve been focusing on that.
But
I’m conflicted about that. Have I abandoned part of my task as the preacher by
not more explicitly and clearly pointing to these places of conflict between
our prayer that “thy kingdom come” and the way we live our lives? I really don’t
know. If you think that I’ve been silent on issues and have been too fearful in
my preaching, then I ask your forgiveness; and if you think I’ve been too bold
and divisive, I ask your forgiveness.
One
of the roles that I take most seriously as your priest and Rector of this
parish is that of the pastor. That word “pastor” has linguistic connections to
shepherding, and not at all in a derogatory way, I do think of this congregation
as the flock that God has given me to care for. Many times in the last year, I’ve
been full of trepidation about the words that I planned to say. Because the
most important thing to me is pointing to Jesus Christ in a way that people will
see what I’m pointing to instead of staring at my finger that is doing the
pointing. It would be incredibly easy for me to preach against what is in the
news – but some of you would stop coming to church. And studies suggest that
you would be far more likely to stay home than you would find another church.
The Kingdom of God doesn’t come when shepherds are running the sheep out of the
flock. The flock is diminished when people leave it because they are a part of
the family of faith and because their generous gifts of talent and treasure
leave a gap in our ministries. Whether I’m right or wrong for it, I try to err
on the side of grace and not giving people reasons to leave the flock. That
prayer, “thy kingdom come” has a much better shot of taking root in our lives
and world if we’re together. But I’m also aware of the danger of a shepherd who
doesn’t do anything about the wolves that are trying to befriend the sheep.
There’s no such thing as a perfect balance between the two, as praying “thy Kingdom
come” is always about the discomfort of being a resident alien.
“Thy
kingdom come” is perhaps the most important prayer that we can pray, but also
one of the most challenging. Praying for God’s kingdom to come will cut right
down the middle of our allegiances, priorities, and preferences. I am humbled
by your trust in me to stand on that fault line and preach the Gospel as a
resident alien to a flock of resident aliens. Please know that I trust you to
be open and honest with me. If you are angered or frustrated by what I say or
do not say, I sincerely welcome you to talk with me about it, and I resolve to
be less fearful about it going forward because I trust and respect you.
Because that’s a vision
of a Kingdom – imperfect people trying our best to live in the grace and peace
of God. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we don’t. May we always remember that
the struggle is with making ourselves obedient to the prayer “thy kingdom come,”
and the struggle is not with each other. So you can see why “thy kingdom come”
is such a bold and important prayer as it is about nothing less than the entirety
of our lives and our world. It is a challenging prayer because in it, we recognize
that our kingdoms must decrease, that God’s might increase. But thanks be to
God that we have each other as we strive to seek first the Kingdom of God.
