Sermon: The Kingdom of Heaven is Rising

Date Preached: Sunday January 27th 2008

Bible Reference:

You must have caught the news last week about the panic and fear that’s been taking hold of the international stock exchanges – panic that we’re just about to descend into a global recession. Wall Street in the US wasn’t trading last Monday because it was Martin Luther King Day - a public holiday –– and everyone just went into desperate panic mode.

Well the warning of an approaching event is always important – (or not ~ as we discovered a few years ago when those gales hit the country and poor Michael Fish said there was nothing to worry about – he never lived that one down!) Jesus is saying there’s one thing that’s supremely important – we need to know that the kingdom of heaven is approaching – and we also need to know what action we need to take. And even though this is absolutely central to everything Jesus was and did – and to everything the gospels say about him – it was (and is) remarkable how few people really grasp what’s going on.

First things first (as Tom Wright says in his Matthew for Everyone commentary) – The gospel writer Matthew normally has Jesus speaking of the Kingdom of ‘heaven’: the other gospel writers normally use ‘kingdom of God’. Saying heaven instead of God was a regular Jewish way of avoiding the word God out of reverence and respect. So we have to get out of our minds any idea that when Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven he’s referring to a place God’s people go to after dying. That wouldn’t make any sense at all here. How could that sort of kingdom be said to be approaching or arriving or coming near.

No – if kingdom of heaven means the same as kingdom of God, then we actually have a much clearer idea of what Jesus had in mind. Anyone who was warning people about something about to happen must have been confident that the people who were listening would understand. And any first century Jew, hearing someone talking about ‘God’s kingdom coming’ would know what this was all about – this meant revolution – nothing less.

Jesus grew up with kingdom movements going on all around him. The Romans had conquered his homeland about 60 years before he was born – they were the last in a long line of pagan nations that had done so. They’d installed a puppet king Herod the’ not-so-Great’ and his sons to do their dirty work for them – and it’s not surprising that the Jews resented both parts of this sordid arrangement and longed for any chance to revolt.

But this wasn’t just an eagerness to be free of imperial rule like most subject peoples, The nation of Israel wanted it because of what they believed:

• about God,

• about themselves and their own identity

• and about their rightful place in the world.

If there was One God (and only one) who’d made the world – and if they were his special people – then it couldn’t be God’s will to have foreigners ruling over them, could it?

And what’s more God had made promises in their scriptures that one day he would rescue them and put everything right, just like he’d done throughout their history. And these promises focused on one particular thing: God would become king – not only of Israel, but of the whole world – a king who would bring justice and peace – and who would make a crazy, misshapen world right and beautiful again. The revolutionaries believed that there should be no King but God – and they longed for, prayed for and were prepared to die for this to happen. So are getting a bit of the picture?

And now Jesus comes along declaring that God’s kingdom – the sovereign reign and rule of heaven is approaching like an express train – and that those who are standing idly by had better take note and get out of the way. Because God’s kingdom meant danger as well as hope. Think about it: if justice and peace are on the way, those who have twisted things to their own ends had better watch out – there’s going to be trouble. They’d better get their act together while there’s still time. And there’s a good old word both John the Baptist and now Jesus used for that (?) “Repent!”

And there’s trouble understanding that word too, People have often misunderstood it. People think it’s about ‘feeling bad about yourself’ ( - now I don’t know about you but that’s easy, because I mess up all the time). But that’s not just what it’s about. It means:

• change direction;

• turn around – go the other way;

• stop what you’re doing and do the opposite instead.

How you feel about it isn’t really the important thing. It’s what you do that matters.

Jesus believed that his contemporaries – lots of self-styled revolutionary leaders and parties – were going in completely the wrong direction (did you see Monty Python’s The Life of Brian on TV recently – all those subtle distinctions between very similarly named political groups?) (Anyway) they were bent on revolution as people usually think of revolution – military-style resistance to occupying forces with an attempt to wrestle back political power.

And this helps us understand something of the temptations of Jesus – because the devil was trying to get him to use his own status as God’s Messiah to launch some kind of movement that would sweep him into power, privilege, celebrity recognition and glory.

The problem with movements like this is that they fight darkness with darkness. And Israel was called – Jesus was called - to bring (?) ‘light’. I once remember Rowan Williams coming to our church in Crickhowell pretty soon after returning to the UK after 9/11. One of the kids in our Explorers Group asked him what he thought of the war on terror and he said that he was doubtful about how effective it would be to continue a conversation in the same war-like vein as things began after the planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.

And the same is going on here – which is why Matthew hooks up Jesus’ early preaching with the prophecy in Isaiah that spoke about people in the dark being dazzled by a sudden bright light – a prophecy that went on to talk about a child being born, the coming Messiah, through whom God would truly liberate Israel at last.

Jesus could see that this standard kind of revolution – fighting and killing in order to put and end to…(well) fighting and killing – was pure nonsense. And to then do it in God’s name – well that would be blasphemous nonsense. (& why do never learn?!)

The trouble was – is – that many of his contemporaries were eager to get on with the fight.

So his essential message (and John the Baptist’s before him) – of repentance was not about feeling sorry for personal and private sins (though of course that would be part of it), but that as a nation they should stop running headlong towards the cliff edge of violent revolution – and instead go – choose another way – towards God’s kingdom of light and peace and healing and forgiveness – of life for themselves and all the world.

• What would happen if they didn’t? Well gradually, as Matthew’s story develops, we begin to realize…

• If people who are supposed to be bearers of light insist on darkness – then that’s what they going to get.

• If people want war then they get it.

• And if people called to bring God’s love and forgiveness into a needy world insist on hating everyone else, then it’s hatred and all that it brings with it that will come crashing around their ears.

And this won’t be an arbitrary punishment or judgment – it’ll be exactly what they’ve been calling for. That’s why Jesus says repent – while there’s still time! The kingdom is coming, and look out if you’re standing in the way.

And isn’t this an urgent message for today, too? I wonder while we’ve been thinking about this passage have you begun to make your own connections? And perhaps even more so for us who live on the other side of Calvary and Easter. Matthew would want to say to us in St Barnabas Church, Waunarlwydd this morning that the kingdom which Jesus established through his own work – his death and resurrection – faces us with the same challenge – to follow just like Simon & Andrew; James and John. I wonder are we working to extend God’s reign and rule in the world?

In our lives?

In the community in which we’re set?

The people we spend most of our time with?

Or are we standing in its way?