a sermon. I de 1 t ve red in - Duke University Chapel by Mr. Clarence "Smoke" Kanipe Trinit~ - College, Duke University...

Transcription

1 a sermon. I de 1 t ve red in - Duke University Chapel by Mr. Clarence "Smoke" Kanipe Trinit~ - College, Duke University..., Class of 1980 ~ I ' '. March 25, 1979 Scripture lessons: Old Testament--Amos 9=13-15 Gospel--Matthew 13:31-33 Ma r k 1 : Luke 17: : j.'. ' Lucy: Think about this day fo r : a.. moment, C. B. This could very well be the most important day -in your life! When a day begins you never really know w.hat is: :going to: happen. Charlie Brown: You're ~ight, Lu~y, and ' this very ordinary day could turn out to be the most important day of my 1 i fel Lucy: But it probably won 1 tl Jesus said, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. What a glorious promisel Through the person and ministry of Jesus Christ w.e a:re. promised that our 1 i ves can be full, rich, and meaningful. In the word s of the psalmist, our cups overflow; as the first epistle of John puts it, "We are God's children now"; as Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is in our midst. And so this morning my message is quite simple: life as we know it on this earth is - very importa~t~ Everything from sunshine to smog, from people in love to divorces 1 a~d abortions and child abuse, from churches to Moonies and Jonestownli from babies laughing to cancer and nuclear weapons--everything that we call life in the 20th century is very important just because it is life... ~... Too often Christianity has set its sights on life in the hereafter unti 1 after here--after life on. this earth. While the world commits the carnal--srrlof-saving. the flesh and ignoring the-soul, the Christian has all too often tried to save souls which have no bodies. Christian evangelism has usually taken one of two roads. The f -irst is what we might call "turn or burn" theology; it is the plain and simple threat that if you don't believe ih Christ as your savior, then you wi 11 spend eternity burning in he 11. I remember when I was a... youngster in Sunday School this used to be one of the biggest motivators for reading my Bible and saying my prayers and going to church. Whenever I was sick or hurt myself I would think to myself that I.had to be sure J had faith in Jesus because hell must be a lot worse than this, and I just didn't see how I could stand it!

2 .;z_ Road number two is similar but goes in the opposite direction. I once saw a bumper sticker.that sums up this line of thinking. It read: "Christians' Retirement Be nefits are Out of This World". I remember also when I was a young boy--when I was not thinking about how awful hell would be--1 - would s-om~himes think how wonderful heaven would be. Having never seen three of my grandparents, I thought that one of heaven's biggest drawing cards was that I would get to meet three grandparents, and a lot of famous people besides. Jesus talkedi cf.ifferently about the.. kingdom of God~ He talked about the kingdom in the p~esent tense--the kingdom now. He says that since John came "the.900d news of the kingdom otgod is preached"; and he says, "the time is 'fulfil'led and the kingdom of God is at hand''; and he says don't be afraid, for "it is your Father's good pleasure to giv~ you the kingdc;:>m''; l f:ind thi s : 'fdngdom is in the midst of you''. The problem with thealbg ts that are only based on threats of hell or promises ' bf heaven is that they seldom get at the heart of the matter--they hardly eve~ change the essence of life. They see the kingdom in the future, glorious sense, but they miss the kingdom in their very midst. Thefold Tes'tame'nt. prophets hav e many beautifu-l visions of the ~ kingdom of God with th~tr M essiah as governor. And they never talk about pearly gates ' ot \ ivor y palaces or ~:erystals fountains--they talk about this very ei:fr'th on ' wh't ch you and J, l i ve I Let me insist that these are visibns, not photographs. They ~ show us the spi~it of heaven, not the minute details--and this spirit 1 ca nnot be separated from life. on earth. You recall the words we heard from Amos: : ' they shall rebu~ld tne ruined cities. "; ;:. and i nhabi t them-:... they sha 11 p'1 an't vi n ey.a rds and drink the i r wine, :.., _and they shall- make -gardens and eat. their fruit. I wi 11 p 1 a-nt tliem upon the i r; 1 and, and they. shall' never agai-n be plucked up No pearly gates--but vineyards and gardens and rebuilt cities! No lake of fire, for wha~ ~ould ' be more he]lish than not being able to pa _ rti ci pate in this gh>r-i<:>us kingdom? -The.; r eal truth about the :.:e ssence of the kingdom - of God is that i~ i's not so drastically. ;' di'fferent from 1 i fe as ~e ~~ow it on earth; :. Look at the Beatitudes.. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit " ivory palaces? No! "They shall inherit the earth." And perhaps it is only _the meek who can really appreciate-me glory of this promise. One -day t~is earth on which we live, and life itself, will experience the ft.lll and final' transformation of our' Lord's redemption, just as they have now received this ih ' part~ But that transformed life is still inseperablefrom life on.earth. One of our main problems wi~h the kingdom in our midst is the ~arne one that many Jews in Jesus day had: we 1 re looking for the. wrong kind of kingdom! We forget -so easily that the kingdom of God <. i s "like a grain of musta rd seedu, " like le aven, whi ch a woman took _ -: ~nd hid in three measures of flour", ' li._ke ~ seed whic?h, grows secretly. I 1 m sure many of you saw the recent mov l e Oh, God h - George Burns played God, who had decided to reveal himsetf ~a ~upermarket manager named Jerry Landers, played by John Denver. In one scene, Jerry has

3 -3- just met God in his bathroom and is unloading all his pent-up questions on him. When. h~ asks God wh~. he doesn't do something drastic about all the pain and suffering in the world, God replies something like this Oh, you mean a miracle? I don't do miracles. They're to9 flashy. Oh, once in a while, just to keep my hand in. The last one was the '69 Mets. But God is spe~king of :miracles in Jer.ry's mistaken terminology. A little later he tells Jerry that if he really wants to ~ee a miracle, all he has to do is to look at a fish. Perhaps we could rephrase God's lines to say something like this:. Oh, you mean a miracle? That's all I do- o n e m i r a c 1 e after another I t 1 s a 11 i n a day 1 s work. Your body's a miracle; so are the seasons; you name it. You humans just don't use the right words--you don't see things in the right way. Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed." But it is so much in our midst that we don't even recognize it. In his book Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes the follow1ng words: It is only when one loves life and the world so much that without them everything would be gon~, that one can believe in the resurrection and a new world. Yes, it's only those of us who can catch the glimpse of the kingdom we have on earth--and love it very dearly--only those of us can have any conception of eternal glory. But things are not as rosy as they might seem. You know the old comedy 1 i ne' 11 1 I ve got some good and some bad news". This is the 1 ' bad news" part of this sermon. For just as surely as the kingdom of God has partly come, hell has also partly come. And just as surely as we miss the kingdom of God, we miss hell right before our eyes. All our threats of hell and our caricatures of hell and Satan--Blue Devils that play football, basketball, and things like that--these things have blinded us to the awful reality of hell in the present. 'vje don't love deeply enough to real.ize the hell of the alcoholic or drug addict, the abused child or wife, the student or professor who gets so trapped in books that h~ or she makes them into a god and loses life itself, the millionaire whose life is so. luxurious that he can do anything but enjoys nothing--any of these people will tell you that hell is all too close. All too often Christianity has looked at such people ana-warned that they would get what they deserved in the hereafter to repay them for their sins on earth. All too seldom has it seen the hell that such people experience from day to day. T. S. Eliot is famous for seeing the hell in our daily lives. In The Waste Land he paints a picture of hell he sees as he looks at London: Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

4 -4- : ' I '... Jesus also ~new how hellish this life could be.. l;er"haps as much as anything. i.n the Gospe.ls, we see him casting out de'mon.s. What kind of world is this with demons, if it is not one in whi~h hell is frighten{~gly real? And most of the time the people with whom we see Jesus keeplng company are just those who are experiencing hell. He eats wit~ tax collectors and sinners, talks with prostitutes and adultresses--all the ones who were not nice by respectable standards. But Jesu~ doesn 1 t seem to care. He says he came to he a 1 the s i;ck, not the well. He came to sh~re the burden of hell in peop1~ 1 s liv~s, and to in~roduce them to the kingdom of.. God. And so it is our responsibility~.. as disciples of this Jesus, to change as much of hell as we can into the kingdom of God. It is a stern word that Jesus ~ speaks--the kingdom has come in my person, but unless you are willing to take up your cross and lose your very life you will never find the kingdom or true life. And so at the very end of the Gospe 1 of John we find Jesus saying to Peter, ''If you 1 ove me, feed my sheep. 11 Ia others words,. 1 If you love me--me--then, you must suffer t~rough the hell on earth that you see destroying other people~ You must share the burden of hell because~ know what true life is and yoh know tnat anything else is hell (thoug perhaps a disguised hell) and.. ~ol know that I shared the burden of e l~at I worked for the kingdom of God, because I am love. Our good friend Charlie Brown knows about-nerr-trom first-hand expert ence... In one cartoon, he s tan'cfs on the pi tcher 1 s mound muttering to himself : C.B.: Boy, I must be stupid! I must be out of my mi8d to stand up here and take a beating like this; My team hates me 1 1 m a lousy pitcher My stomach hurts Boy am I stupid! Linus: Charlie Brown, you cant go on like this! The days are going by, and you're not enjoying ltfe at all. The moments you spend here on the p.itcher 1 s mound are moments to be treasured, You won't be. a.kid forever, Charlie Brown, s6 treasure.these moments! Charlie Brown gets his confidence up and fires in his next pitch. It comes back about 10 times as fast as it went in. It knocks him flat.. on his back, knocks off his hat, his. glove, everything but his bermuda,shorts. As he lies there, Charlie Brown comments that "this is a -. difficult moment to treasure." And so it is. But Christianity insists that hell is an important part of our earthly lives. It is central to the gospel message that the hell that we find on earth is making our souls ~ ready to receive their eternal inheritance. You may be familiar with the old version of the Ap.ostle's Creed--before it was revised to be "nice". It said, "Jesus was crucified, dead and descended into hell". Paul writes that "if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature", and he surely means that part of betng.''in Christ" is to go through hell with' him. Hell helps make us into n~w creatures--we don't come out the same way we went in. Yes, hell.is a part of life, and yes, Charlie Brown, hell is a moment to be treasured.

5 -5- In saying how important life as we know it is, I hope I haven't implied that eternity is unimportant. No indeed. It is in fact so important that we really can 1 t grasp its greatness fully. It is the final goal for which this life is preparing us. But it is not Important enough to blind us to the glories of the kingdom of God or the horrors of hell right now. The kingdom has already been ushered in, but not everyone knows it. At another point in Oh. God!, a council of theologians has been organized to give Jerry someqliestions to ask this God that has revealed himself to him. One of the questions concerns the meaning of life. God responds something like this: Each individual's existence means exactly what that person thinks it means at any particular time. Nothing more, nothing less. As Christians, followers of the king, you and I must share the 99od ~of the king and the kingdom with a world that doe~n 1 t know 1t. We must see the kingdom ourselves, help others to see 1t, and change hell to the kingdom. A few years ago, there was a popular song called "Today 11 Its last verse had the following lyrics: I can 1 t be contented with yesterday's glories, I can 1 t live on promls~s, winter to spring, Today is my moment, now Is my story, laugh, and I'll cry, and sing. In his book The Great _Divorce, c. s. Lewis sums what I've been trying to say: But what, you ask of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in He 11 : and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself. The kingdom is in our midst. And if we can't see it here--today--we won't be able to see it anywhere at all. Father, grant us the eyes to see, the ears to hear, the faith to believe, the love to work for your kingdom. Amen