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Our Good News: The Kingdom of God

Mark 1:14-15

Well, I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: Being a parish minister is matter of sheer marketing. You can’t give your people that which comforts and consoles them without also giving them that which challenges and charges them. The key is knowing at which point you blow it …

The last two weeks have been challenging and full of difficult charges. At least the scripture readings and sermon messages have been, but I hope that you have found your lives challenged as well because of the scripture readings and sermon messages. As you’ve listened closely to Matthew, chapter 4 and Psalm 62 and “sought your own lakeshores,” trusting in “God alone, I hope you’ve felt challenged. But this past week I picked up the “point at which I might blow it” on my radar. The point at which the balance shifts from challenge to chore and you all “tune me out.”

Two weeks ago, you remember we spoke of lakeshores. I put together a bit of historical information that set, not just the context or background for Jesus ministry, but the “matrix,” the three-dimensional world, that Jesus grew up in and began his ministry in. The reason that Jesus, in all four Gospels, leaves his home town of Nazareth to “make his home in Capernaum by the Sea” Mt. 4:13 is that this is precisely where he needed to be in the first third of the first century CE – with the poor, over taxed, underpaid, exploited peasant fishermen and their families. After the history came the questions for our time: Where are the lakeshores in our world? And why aren’t we walking on them?

…

I visited Ted Merhoff the next day, Monday. He had just moved from the hospital to Oaklawn rehab. Just before noon on Monday I stopped by to catch up and pray with him. Ann was there, as well, and they mentioned that they were sorry to miss church and looked forward to reading or hearing the sermon off the website. I told them that both audio and transcript were up already and they should do that when they needed a good nap later in the day. “That’s not what I heard,” Ann noted.

I asked her what she meant and she told me that Brad and Betsy, and the kids – Andrew and Riley, had stopped by after church the day before and when Ann asked how the service went and how the sermon was, Brad said, “He was mean this morning!”

(I laughed, too!) And I told Ann that I did ask the questions – Where are the lakeshores in your world? And, why aren’t you walking on them? – four times in a few short paragraphs at the end of the message. Perhaps I should have stopped at three.

Close to the point … !

Last week, then … do you remember last week? God alone, God alone, God alone, God alone! Not the “war and violence, wealth and prosperity, isolationism, willful ignorance, or deceit” gods of our headline news, but our God (capital “G”). Our “rock and salvation, our fortress and our refuge.” The propensity for violence that “feels so good” in Monday’s headlines, the desire for money that “can get us so much” in Tuesday’s headlines, our elevation of individuality over community, the willful ignorance, and the cheating in order to come out on top in Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday’s headlines are the gods of a broken and fearful world, I suggested, not the living God revealed in the life and love of our Christ. Our headline news so often contain the “profound, persuasive and pervasive lies” that we so easily give our loyalties to.

After the service week, Matt told me he was going to get me a subscription to another newspaper! Later that day, Ed emailed me a number of news items that recorded the compassion, love, joy, and hope in the actions of men and women around the world and in creation itself. So I was reminded again …

Close to the point … reproaches and rebukes, challenges and charges without also comfort and affirmation … ??

So … this week, as I prepared not just for this sermon message, but for the beginning of our historic Sunday morning study together (oh, if you missed it, come next week, it’s not too late!), as I prepared for both I found the comfort that I use once again to balance the scales of the parish minister. In the words of our gospel we are reminded again of … Well, hear it for yourself. Listen for the word of God … Read Mark 1:14-15 … the Word of the Lord … Thanks be to God.

There you go. There we go. Our words of comfort. In two short verses found, in one way or another, in all of our Gospel “according to’s.” Words of promise and hope and comfort and joy. Good news this week! Verse fifteen in Mark’s first chapter (along with verse seventeen in Matthew’s fourth chapter and verse twenty-one in Luke’s), these verses are our Gospel-good news in a nutshell. They are our comfort and our challenge, but our comfort first. Did you hear it?

A few weeks ago, we learned where and why he began his ministry by the sea, on the lakeshores of Galilee. This morning we are reminded what he preached and taught and modeled. We are reminded what the Good News of Jesus Christ was to the people in first century Palestine and what it still is to people, to us, in the twenty-first century. Anyone …?

The Kingdom of God has come near, or “is at hand!” Luke’s gospel announces, “In fact, the Kingdom of God is among you.” That’s the good news of Jesus Christ. The forgiveness of our “sin,” our reconciliation with creation and Creator – one another and God, the salvation of our souls, the resurrection of our lives, are all part of this “Good News,” the Kingdom of God that, Jesus proclaims, “Is here, at hand, among us.” That is our comfort. On all the lakeshores of our world, behind all the headlines of our newspapers, planted more deeply than all that is wrong, or evil, or sorrowful in our lives and our world is the Good News of Jesus Christ: The Kingdom of God is here … on earth, within us, among us, far beyond us, but in the world.

This teaching, this ministry of Jesus of Nazareth was different from any prophet’s message or ministry that came before him, different even from his cousin John’s message. (I dare say, that Jesus’ own message and ministry was different even than that of the church that gathered in his very name by the fourth or fifth century and remains different today. But that’s a history lesson and a sermon for another time.) IN Jesus’ time, you see, in the words and warnings of the “apocalyptic prophets” of Jewish expectations the Advent of God was always in the future. “Imminent,” John said, “soon.” But still “not yet.” Not so for the one we call Christ.

Now I don’t want to be too hard on John or others who were surely fully convicted of the very real need for the Empires of the world to do justice and live righteously, but you can say “the Kingdom of God is coming” for as long as you want. In fact, the Jewish prophets of old had been saying it for quite some time! In further fact, countless Christian “prophets” have been prophestying the imminent Second Coming for the last two-thousand years. But to say “the Kingdom of God is here?!” That’s something else altogether. It’s a “paradigm shift within Jewish … expectation,” Dom Crossan writes. From “an imminent arrival” to a “present reality.” That’s the good news of Jesus Christ: God is here … with us … now. That is our comfort.

To be sure this good news is not a comfort for all. It wasn’t a comfort to the Roman Empire or to the privileged elite of the first century, including the Jewish aristocracy. If the Kingdom of God is here, then what does that mean about the Kingdoms of this world? What implications, what allegations, does such a profession place on anyone, anyone of us, who doesn’t live with compassion for all? Who doesn’t turn the other cheek? Who doesn’t pray for those who persecute him? Who doesn’t love her enemies?

Ah, but that’s back to a “challenge!” Time enough for that later. This morning, we’re balancing – comfort and good news. The same newspapers and television news shows I used last week include “Kingdom” news, too. They may not make the headlines as often or in as big a print, but they are there:

Thirty-three percent of trash is recycled / 92%of U.S. drinking water is clean / teenage pregnancy has been reduced by 44% since 1999 / U.S. unemployment has dropped by 5.9% / smoking among high school students is 15.7 % – a record low / since 1975 the survival rate of cancer patients has increased rom 50% to 68% / four states have voted to raise the minimum wage / every four minutes a building in the United States begins using solar power / young people are more likely to volunteer and give back more than at any other time in history / fifty thousand flights take off and land safely every day / new drugs and cures for illnesses are begin developed each day / and most importantly, seven billion people continue to live in this world.

They may not make the headlines as often or in as big a print, but they are there.

And so is … the Kingdom of God. Here in our midst. The perfect reminder of that is before us every month, and then some, in our Communion table. The perfect reminder of who Jesus was, what he taught, how he lived, and how his Way continues to live in us. We will gather around and share in the feast in a few moments, promising once again to remember. For as often as we eat this bread and drink from his cup, we too proclaim the Kingdom of God on earth … as it is in heaven.

Let us sing, profess our faith, offer our lives, and gather for the joyous feast of the Kingdom of God.

Amen.

Reverend Joel Weible, Pastor

Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church / February 1, 2015

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