“Revealing the Kingdom” by the Rev. Wahlig, January 29, 2023, Year A / Epiphany 4 – Micah 6:1-8 • Psalm 15 • 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 • Matthew 5:1-12

THEME: God’s Kingdom is the true reality in which the un-blessable are blessed along with those who work to help them.

Do we have any Philosophy majors here? Has anybody ever taken a class in philosophy?

The first philosophy class I ever took was in seminary. I confess it almost ended my seminary career before it got started.

What I did get out of that class was an appreciation for the fundamental question philosophers try to answer:  What is real and how should we live as a result?

Philosophers all over the world have been asking that question for a long time. 600 years before Jesus Confucius pondered that question in China. 200 years later in ancient Greece Plato and Socrates did the same. 

In more recent centuries, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Søren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche and a host of others all tried to answer the same question, “What is real, and how should we live as a result?” 

Over the next three weeks we will see how Jesus answers this question. We start by focusing on one of the most famous passages in all of scripture: the Sermon on the Mount.

In Matthew’s gospel, this is where Jesus’ teaching ministry takes off. The Sermon on the Mount is the first of five blocks of teaching. That number five is not a coincidence. It represents the five books of the Jewish law which are the first five books of the Bible, Genesis through Deuteronomy. Matthew is giving us a subtle hint. He is portraying Jesus as the new Moses, the giver of God’s law and the one who delivers God’s people from bondage.

So when the crowds gather round, eager to hear what Jesus has to say, he gives them a Kingdom perspective on the world. He is saying, ‘This is what the experience of God is really like. And it is like nothing you have ever known.’

He describes a world completely aligned with God’s deepest concerns. In his father’s kingdom, Jesus’ followers attend to the poor, the grieving, and the weak so that together they might all experience life in God’s kingdom. Their hearts are set on doing God’s will, and not merely their own. They work for peace and justice, no matter the cost.

In the Kingdom, the blessed ones are those whom the world considers un-blessable. But let’s be clear. Their blessing is not in their condition. They are not blessed because they are poor or meek or grieving. They are blessed because the Kingdom is available to them. In the Kingdom, the social order of the world is turned upside down.

That’s a far cry from the life they live under Roman occupation. In the Roman world, the ones who were considered blessed were the proud and the powerful, the strong and the well-connected. 

They were the ones who had wealth and influence, and they used it aggressively for their own advantage without thinking twice about others. They were the comfortable, the self-centered, and the self-satisfied.

Not much has changed in 2,000 years. Those who are considered well-off in our culture are the proud, the materially comfortable, and the self-important. 

Which begs a question. If you were writing the beatitudes today, who would you include among the blessed? Think about that for a moment. The unemployed? The chronically ill? The elderly? The poor, the homeless? Maybe the lesser abled, or the mentally ill? According to Jesus, these are the ones who are blessed because the Kingdom belongs to them, and to his followers who help them experience it.

That’s an astounding thought, isn’t it? But Jesus is making a further point and it is even more radical. He is not saying simply that the Kingdom exists. He is saying that the Kingdom of God is the true reality – not the world around us as it appears to be. 

The question for you and me is, how can we know that? How do we know that the Kingdom is real –true reality? 

When Jesus began his ministry he said ‘Repent for the Kingdom of God has come near.” But 2,000 years later we look around and we see poverty and disease, violence and war, greed and persecution, division and hatred – even among Christians! 

Is it any wonder that so many who read Jesus’ promise of the Kingdom either roll their eyes in disbelief or throw up their hands in frustration? From time to time, we all do that, don’t we?

And yet, as difficult as it is to see the Kingdom, the fact remains that Jesus talked about it more than anything else. Maybe that’s why he did: because the Kingdom can be hard to discern if we don’t know what to look for. 

Look at the metaphors he uses. The Kingdom is like a man sowing seed in his field. It’s like a tiny mustard seed that grows into a great bush. It’s like a smidgeon of yeast that eventually leavens a huge batch of bread. It’s like a treasure hidden in a field. It’s like a pearl that takes years to form but is worth more than everything else we have put together.

The Kingdom appears in small ways in the midst of the chaos of life. It may seem minor and inconsequential at first, but nothing could be further from the truth, because the Kingdom is never static. It’s always growing, always emerging in places and among people who are frequently overlooked. 

So, the question is not whether the Kingdom is real. If we know what to look for and where to look, we will see it emerging all around us, the scattered sparks of love catching fire in the hearts and lives of those in need, and those who help them in Jesus’ name. That is the true reality. 

But Jesus wants more from us than just seeing the reality of the Kingdom. He wants us to participate in it.  In the words of Dallas Willard, the great Christian Philosopher, “We stand at the doorway to heaven.” Heaven is not simply the place we go after we die. Heaven is God’s Kingdom and it is present with us here and now. 

What that requires of us is action.  He said, “The only thing that transforms us spiritually is the action of following Christ.” In other words, we have to live differently. When we do, we too are blessed along with those to whom we are a blessing.

Ron Hall found that out first-hand. Ron was a high-end art dealer in Dallas. He traveled all over the world selling fabulous pieces of art in some of the grandest museums anywhere. He and his wife lived comfortably in their home outside of Dallas. From the outside you might think they were a typically successful, happy couple. 

But all was not well at home. Ron and his wife Deborah were growing apart. While he was jetting around the globe, Deborah filled the void by getting more and more active in charity work. Inevitably, their marriage hit the rocks. Ron had an affair and was contemplating divorce.

As Christians, however, they agreed to work on their marriage. One night, Deborah had a dream about a homeless man whom she understood to be the key to changing their lives and the lives of others. As crazy as it sounds, she and Ron went driving around the city looking for this man. They began volunteering in a homeless shelter called the Union Gospel Mission hoping to find him their. 

And one day, the man showed up. His name was Denver and he was trouble. He had spent most of his adult life in a jail cell or on the streets. In the homeless shelter where he got his meals he was rude, aggressive, violent and disruptive.

Nevertheless, Deborah insisted that Ron befriend him. And so began one of the most remarkable relationships you can imagine. Through the simple act of friendship, Ron and Deborah’s lives were changed. By helping to transform Denver’s life, Ron and Deborah got a new chance at their lives. 

Their story became a New York Times best-seller. It was turned into a movie called “The Same Kind of Different as Me.” It is a compelling example of what the Kingdom of God is really like for those in need and those who help them in Christ’s name. 

Deborah and Ron, two imperfect Christians, realized that the Kingdom is real – it just looks a lot different than all those heavenly pictures of God floating above the fluffy white clouds. Instead, they found the kingdom in a down and out homeless shelter filled with people the world had cast aside and forgotten.

For Denver, the Kingdom looked like two awkward, naive rich folks who looked a lot like the same people who had abused him, beat him and chased him out of his hometown in Louisiana. But it was just as real for him as it was for them.

Friends, you don’t have to be a philosophy major to experience the reality of the Kingdom of God. What does the Kingdom look like for you? Where do you experience God’s reign in the midst of this crazy world?

Wherever it is that you find it, you are standing at heaven’s door. When you enter, you can be sure your life will never be the same.

May it be so.