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“A Kingdom so Small and Great”
Matthew 13:31-35; 44-52; August 31, 2014
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When I was a kid I hated for the school year to begin in September. The weather was usually still gorgeous and I would sit in the classroom gazing out the large windows they had back then wishing I could be outside, playing pick-up baseball with my friends, wandering in the nearby woods, hanging out in the local park, or reading adventure novels in the comfortable old glider on our porch.
When my kids were growing up we would go back to my home town of Peoria to visit relatives and I would try to find some time to take Debbie and the children on walking tours of my old neighborhood. In those days, before the distortions of mass media scared parents to death, we kids were pretty much allowed to roam as we pleased, free and wild as packs of coyotes.
The permissible boundary of our explorations encompassed about one square mile. But within those narrow confines we created vast and wonderful kingdoms of our own imaginings. There was the ball diamond, our field of dreams, the old abandoned dry cleaners that became our Fort Apache or a World War II bunker where we had pitched battles. (And because I had a full German officer’s field uniform brought back by my great uncle from the war, I usually got killed… and I died spectacularly!)
Then there was the wooded ravine and creek where we hunted for lizards and turtles. Also included was the far side of a corner of a golf course that had a wooded lot and the remains of a genuine haunted house that was really off limits to us but for that reason all the more enticing.
This neighborhood with its gang of kids was my world for many wonderful years. It was a world separate and different from the world of adults – who had their own lives strange and mysterious – separate also from school, and clean clothes, rules and obligations, unless we created them for ourselves. For instance, Jimmy Streeter challenged me to a foot race where the loser had to pay the winner five dollars – a princely sum back then. I handily won the race but Jimmy welched on the deal that he himself had proposed and refused to pay up. So I thought it appropriate to beat him up, which I proceeded to do. I had him down on the ground and was whaling away on him when he finally cried uncle and agreed to pay up. The following week we were the best of friends again.
We kids did not think it strange that we lived in two separate worlds and we did it quite naturally. But when we grow up and become adults, I wonder if we can still do the same?Theoretical science is just starting to understand there is far more to the natural world than we can currently perceive. String theory and quantum mechanics speculate the possible existence of a parallel universe right next to ours’ and perhaps many other universes existing on different dimensional plains.
In this, our final consideration – at least for a while - of what Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God, I want us to think about his invitation to live in two worlds.
As I start to gather my thoughts for this message, I have just finished my morning Bible study and prayer. I am mindful of God’s presence and God’s guidance through the wisdom of his word. I am sitting on the porch of my screened in patio and glimpse a hummingbird gliding among the flowers in a planter just on the other side of the screen. The morning sunlight causes its’ delicate iridescent feathers to flash vivid purple and green. I experience a moment of complete peace and a sense of harmony with an environment I had, in part, shaped and formed which now has attracted such an exquisite creature.
But soon enough, in the course of the day, I will have to deal with many other things. My e-mail will no doubt contain at least a few messages from people with problems asking for guidance, of which I am quite grateful if I can at least be of some small help. I wonder how my children are getting on, Katie with her husband of one year and her job as a designer in a graphics art company in Crystal Lake, Illinois, and Adam as he continues his advanced training in Fort Benning and is not too far away from his promotion to 1stLieutenant. Meanwhile I am in constant contact with my mother-in-law who is having a hard time coping with her husband’s rapid descent into dementia and struggle with terminal cancer.
In short, I am experiencing the pull of two realities. There is one world we at least catch an occasional glimpse of consisting of beauty, harmony, family, and the satisfying richness of human, natural, and divine interaction. Then there is the other world of facts, figures, of jobs to do and bills to pay. This is the world often marked by conflict, pain, disharmony, worry and unhappiness. It is an exceedingly noisy and totally invasive world that often seems to grab all of our attention from the moment we wake up in the morning until we finally fall into an uneasy sleep at night.
The World Is Too Much With Us
by William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
It seems that everything changes so fast now-a-days. But human nature is just the same as it ever was. People have always been distracted and dealing with problems. Jesus said to his worried followers: “In this world you will have troubles, but take courage! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Do you believe what Jesus has said? Do you see evidence of him having overcome the world? Admittedly it is sometimes hard to see.
For the last two thousand years there have always been those who insisted on marching to the tune of a different drummer. They are aware of the rumors of a different world, a far finer world, governed by a completely different set of principles. This is the world Jesus spoke of when he described the Kingdom of Heaven. By this, Jesus is referring to the presence of God and the rule of God. The Constitution of this Kingdom is our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – “Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs’ is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matt. 5:3)… not blessed are the rich and well off, but the poor in spirit, the humble, those who mourn, the peacemakers, those who hunger and thirst for things to be made right. The Kingdom came when Jesus first came to earth. Now it exists almost exclusively in the hearts and minds of those who follow him. But someday, at the time of Jesus’ second coming, it will exist in totality and be the only reality.
The Kingdom seems small and hidden right now;and in most ways it is. But it can be compelling and powerful all the same. It is like a tiny mustard seed that can still grow into a magnificent shrub which can be a place of refuge for many birds. It is like a sprinkle of yeast worked into bread dough without which the bread would not bake correctly.
When people glimpse the kingdom and become enamored by it, it is like discovering a buried treasure that will cause them to invest all they have in order to gain property rights to that treasure’s location. Or it is so valuable they will deem everything else they have to be of lesser value so long as they can appropriate it; like the merchant who considered no price too great in order to obtain the pearl of great price.
But it is so easy to forget this; to become distracted by other things. The world constantly wants to press us into its mold. It is so overwhelming and so compelling.
Against all of this, the Kingdom of Heaven – the kingdom which is both now and not yet – seems pale consolation indeed. And yet we know it is here, do we not?
* Why else to you keep coming to church when so many others no longer do and there are a thousand different alternatives appealing for your time and commitment?
* Why can the verse of an old-fashioned hymn you have heard a thousand times before so move you and invoke a flood of fond memories?
* Why do you give, and give generously, of your finances when everything yells at you to tighten up and be cautious because of uncertain times?
* Why do you hold on to a faith in a personal God who claims to love you dearly even when you experience disappointment, heart-ache, and times of loneliness so deep and dark that you lay awake in the middle of the night wondering if anybody really understands or can do anything about the things that worry you?
Sometimes I think we do not give ourselves enough credit. We think our faith a small and weak thing, we doubt, and so we disqualify ourselves from thinking we are effective bearers of the Kingdom. But to doubt often means your mustard seed sized faith is struggling to grow and become mature. Only childish or naive faith never doubts. Faith and doubt are two sides of the same coin; you really can’t have one without the other. By its very nature, faith is believing in something without the absolute certainty or proof that it exists.
Most of the greatest heroes of the Bible struggled with faith and doubt. More than once, Moses asked God to just let him die because he was so discouraged over how the journey to the Promised Land just didn’t seem to be working out. Or Elijah, who after his dramatic victory over the prophets of Baal suffered a nervous breakdown, ran for his life, and just wanted to give up being a prophet until God slowly and gently restored him. Or the apostle Thomas who was so crushed by Jesus being killed, he would not believe his own eyes when he saw his resurrected friend and had to physically touch Jesus and even probe his wounds before he would believe.
What we have to understand it that there is a big difference between honest doubt and stubborn, rebellious, unwilling belief. Some of the most outstanding Christians have much to say about this, often speaking out of their own personal struggles.
Doubt is natural within faith. It comes because of our human weakness and frailty… Unbelief is the decision to live your life as if there is no God. It is a deliberate decision to reject Jesus Christ and all that he stands for. But doubt is something quite different. Doubt arises within the context the faith. It is a wistful longing to be sure of the things in which we trust. But it is not and need not be a problem.Alister McGrath
Preachers have long compared human beings trying to figure out God to little tiny ants trying to figure peopleout. Our world is beyond the comprehension of ants. Our minds, our consciousness, our entire existence is too much for them to grasp.
In the same way, the God of the Universe is just too great, too awesome for us humans to fully comprehend. If God were small enough to be understood, God would not be big enough to be worshiped. Ants have the same problem when it comes to understanding humans. They can see something, but we are just too big for them to comprehend; what they see much better is what we leave behind. (which is what they're really interested in anyway). Imagine one ant saying to another ant, "Do you think humans exist?" The other ant would say, "Well something is out there and whatever it is, it’s big!” All ants can really see are the gifts we leave for them -- the crumbs, the sandwiches, the cake we leave uncovered.
This is the human experience when it comes to God. We can't see God. We can't touch God physically, or hear his voice audibly. We can only see clearly his gifts-- creation, human love, forgiveness, beauty, creativity, scripture, and the sacraments. Most of all, we see Jesus, whom we are told is the exact representation of God and in him all the fullness of deity dwells (Hebrews 1:3).
I have taken my children back to my neighborhood and told them my stories. I’ve showed them the alleys, the parks, and the backyards where I had my growing up adventures: softball games, cowboys and Indians, World War II, jungle expeditions, hide and seek.
So it is for all of our childhood dreams. When we grow up and become adults what remains of the park, the hills, and the buildings filled with the shadows of childhood, mystical lands, fairy tale adventures? What do we learn when we return to them and stroll with a sighing nostalgia past their shadows, amazed that in spaces so small we should have founded kingdoms that seemed so infinite – what do we learn except that in this infinity we shall never again set foot, and that it is into the game and not the park or the alley that we have lost the power to enter?
But of the Kingdom of the Heavens, we can enter and never leave. In this Kingdom we can go further on and further in until someday, with little care or any regret at all, we cast off this mortal shroud and find ourselves forever at home in the Kingdom complete, realizing we have already been there for quite some time.