CITIZENS OF THE KINGDOM Isaiah 11:1-10 Romans 15:4-13 Matthew 3:1-12 Second Sunday in Advent, 8 th December 2013 John the Baptist bursts onto the scene in Chapter Three of Matthew s Gospel. He appears in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming: repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Matthew uses the term the Kingdom of Heaven to avoid offending Jewish sensibilities; Luke and Mark use the Kingdom of God. The terms are interchangeable. This is potent language, whichever term is used. There grew up in the intertestamental period, between the ending of the Old Testament and the start of the New, an expectation of the future which involved the decisive intervention of God to restore His people s fortunes and liberate them from the oppression of their enemies. The way for this event would be paved by the coming of the Messiah. This was the long-awaited, divine turning point in history. Matthew does not explain who John was to his readers: clearly John was sufficiently well known that this was unnecessary. He does however describe him as wearing clothes made of camel hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and living on locusts and wild honey. In other words he was a man who had adopted the simplest of lifestyles, which gave him great freedom of speech and action. Matthew s readers would have been alert to the similarity with Elijah, who is described early in 2 Kings as wearing the same distinctive clothes, which made him instantly recognisable. Matthew is drawing a deliberate comparison, suggesting that John had similar authority so, when John baptises Jesus, Matthew is saying that Jesus begins his ministry with the blessing and endorsement of the prophets. At the start of Jesus s own ministry, after his baptism and his sojourn in the wilderness, his primary message was the same as John s: Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near. How should we understand this? What does the Kingdom of Heaven mean today? 1
Let s keep this simple. The Kingdom of Heaven implies a King. A King means authority. A Kingdom is a situation of one man, one vote: the King is the man, and he has the vote. John is very direct: before the coming King arrives, get your act together and repent, because He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire: the Holy Spirit to cleanse within, the fire to cleanse without, so that you may be made pure, fit for purpose. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. The implication of John s question is stark: are you wheat, or chaff? How easy it is to play this down, especially at warm fuzzy Christmastide. We sing of little Jesus meek and mild, infant holy and lowly, and this is part of Christian truth, but as we know from the Narnia stories, Aslan is not a tame Lion. The King is coming. We cannot stand aside from the need for judgement, and repentance, and action. Proclaiming the Kingdom is not always easy, and living as a citizen of Heaven is hard to do without compromise. It is no accident that John the Baptist did not depend on a wealthy merchant for sponsorship, or on the Romans for food. His simplicity left him free. Similarly, Jesus had, as he put it, nowhere to lay his head, but this also meant that he had no debt to finance, no leaking roof to fix, no quinquennial review to struggle with. Simplicity brings freedom. Freedom allows space not only to discern the signs of the time, but also to comment upon them. So what does the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven mean for us? It means, at the very least, a profound reordering of priorities. If Christ is King, we are his subjects. We are citizens of the Kingdom. We do not march to the beat of this world. We acknowledge a different authority. We cannot always obey the State. Sometimes we will need to act, to stand up for what is right, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer was willing to do, or indeed as Nelson Mandela was willing to do. Christians should always be in the vanguard of any move towards justice. While the Kingdom of Heaven certainly has political and social implications, these are expressions of something altogether deeper. When the Pharisees asked Jesus, as recorded in Luke 17, when the Kingdom of God would come, he responded The Kingdom of God is among you some 2
translations have within you. He spoke of this in the highest terms, comparing it to the pearl of great price. He was clear that this was no earthly kingdom, observing that you cannot serve both God and Mammon, and telling Pilate that while he was a King, his Kingdom is not of this world. The Kingdom of Heaven is where Jesus rules. The Kingdom of Heaven is a place of shalom, of peace, of reconciliation and forgiveness, where the eyes of the soul are cleansed, where cynicism which acts like a cataract, obscuring the inner vision is lifted away, where hope and innocence are restored. The Kingdom of Heaven is where we are able to choose to be honest, vulnerable, faithful, kind, making ourselves conduits for the restoration of those around us. The Kingdom of Heaven is where Jesus work of healing continues, day and night, restoring balance and unity. The Kingdom of Heaven is where accumulations of sin and its debris, of mammon and its rubbish, of hatred and its horrid legacy, are all cleared away. Every time we come to the foot of the cross in repentance, every time we ask forgiveness, every time we accept with a believing heart the bread and wine, the Kingdom of Heaven is working within us. The linked events of Jesus birth and death, the incarnation and the cross, demonstrate both the process and cost of reconciliation of God and man, man and man, man and woman, man and woman and child. And all of this the corporate expression of shalom is a force for evangelism, born of unity, because as we are knit together into one body so we have something to offer to the world. Without shalom we are like an empty wine bottle, a sign that wine exists, but otherwise useless. With shalom we can offer the true wine of the Kingdom. Last week Pen and I heard Justin Welby setting out his vision for the Church, and I believe he was expressing some key building blocks of the Kingdom. Justin has called the Church to focus on three core themes: prayer, and reconciliation, and evangelism. These are immediate outworkings of today s Gospel reading. 3
First, you cannot pray, really pray, unless you find space for your spirit, as John the Baptist did. Out of the wilderness comes wisdom. If you fill your life with noise you cannot hear the silence. You cannot hear the voice of God. Second, prayer leads directly to reconciliation. Prayer that is, standing in the presence of the Most High leads to clear-sightedness, to a recognition of what is true, and so to repentance. Once we see a situation clearly, we can distinguish between what is true and lasting, and what is error, and of the moment. As a consequence we can see beyond what divides us, one Christian from another. We can be reconciled before the throne of heaven, and come together in worship. Third: Reconciliation leads directly to evangelism. In John 17 Jesus prays for the church: May they be brought to complete unity, to let the world know that you sent me. As we become reconciled to one another as we get past the rows about homosexuals, or women bishops, and all the other issues large and small that put sand into the works we can start to speak truth more clearly to the world. As Paul expresses it in the passage from Romans that we heard just now: May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Evangelism is an awkward word for many people, but at its heart the idea is that you should be willing to share the good news of Christ the healer, Christ the servant King, with the world. And the world remains hungry for truth. Yesterday the journalist and priest George Pitcher spoke to the Big Boys Breakfast, and gave us examples of how, in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown and the scandals over bankers bonuses, men and women in the City of London are coming to recognise that ethical business, and frequent specifically Christian-based business, is what is missing. The world badly needs what we have to offer. At the most basic, fundamental level, our friends and neighbours need us to be true to our faith. This is not about social action, important though that is. As Justin Welby put it, the church is not the Rotary Club with a pointy roof. We do not change the world by being nice. We have to offer our neighbours and our nation a vision, a clear understanding of what it means to belong to the Kingdom. 4
Here is an example. We live in an ageing society, one that is struggling to come to terms with an increasing life span. With the chancellor s autumn statement this week, which spoke of the need to raise the retirement age, there have been a lot of comments which imply that if you are not economically active you present a problem. I see no reason why people should not continue to work while they have health and opportunity. But that is a long way away from perceiving older people as essentially a burden on society. People are never redundant in the economy of heaven. God doesn t make rubbish, and He has work for us to do whatever our age. I quote to you from Psalm 92: The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the LORD, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, "The LORD is upright; he is my Rock, there is no wickedness in him. This is just one example where the world gets it wrong, and where the Kingdom has different values. Whatever your age, here are three things you can do to be part of the coming Kingdom. Keep things simple. We don t have to impress anyone with presents, or what we wear, or outdo our neighbours with our Christmas lights. By all means celebrate, but stay focused on what really matters. Allow space for silence and prayer, so that we can discern what is good, and what is ephemeral. Ask God collectively, and as individuals, to give us a vision for the future for St John s, and the part we should play in this community, for the next year and the next decade. Without a vision the people perish: Hastings needs us to be true to our King. 5