Our Old Testament passage for today comes from the 65th chapter of the Book of the Isaiah and is one of the best-known and most beautiful descriptions of the Kingdom of God found in the Bible. Hear the Word of the Lord.

"And the Lord said: 'Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth; the old things will pass away and will no longer be remembered ...and the sound of weeping and crying will be heard no more. Never again will there be an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years...They will build houses and dwell in them and plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will people build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people be... They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD...the wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox...for they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain.'"

I'm sure when many of us hear these words, we tend to think that this vision Isaiah gives us of the Kingdom of God is merely a nice, utopian ideal and a reality that God never intended to see fulfilled in the world prior to Christ's second coming. If we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that part of the reason many of us think of God's Holy Mountain in those far-away terms is that we aren't particularly comfortable talking about the Kingdom of God. While we might pray "thy kingdom come" every Sunday, we're not precisely sure what it is we are actually praying for...or that we really want our prayer answered any time soon.

I believe that a major reason so many mainline Protestants are uncomfortable with "Kingdom talk" is because it is the apocalyptic parts of the Bible that most often mention God's Kingdom and the Day of the Lord...and the sad fact is that we have completely ceded those sections of the Bible to sects of Christianity who twist and misinterpret their meanings into a narrative that has little or nothing to do with Scripture and even less to do with the Gospel of Christ. In fact, what's called the Dispensationalist view of the "end times," most famously articulated in recent days by the Left Behind series, was declared a heresy by the early church and is firmly rejected by the Reformed tradition of which we are a part. And yet this is the predominant explanation of the Book of Revelation in modern society and it is the Dispensationalists who provide the picture most Americans have for how God's Kingdom will come.

A few years ago, Time Magazine conducted a major national poll that found that 3 of 4 Americans believed that the Left Behind series accurately depicts the events described in the Book of Revelation. 1 in 4 Americans believed 9/11 was predicted in Revelation; 1 in 3 Americans who support Israel said they do so because they believe Israel must re-conquer the Promised Land for Christ to return; and 1 in 5 Americans believe the world will end in their lifetimes. The danger of this biblically inaccurate worldview is, first, a belief that Christ will not come to this earth until all hell breaks loose...literally. And so not only is it pointless to try to make things better, but in fact working towards peace and to end suffering will only delay the coming of Christ. And second, this theology focuses entirely on personal salvation and points the attention of the faithful to another world that will come instead of the one that God has placed us in.

I say all this because it is important that we understand some of the dangers and snares we face as we seek God's Kingdom, but today's sermon is not going to be a line by line refutation of the Left Behind heresy. I titled this sermon "Proclaiming the Day of the Lord" because in scripture, it is always the Day of the Lord and the proclamation thereof that tell believers that the Kingdom of God is at hand. And my brothers and sisters in Christ, the Kingdom of God is at hand.

When I say the Kingdom of God is at hand, I am not speaking temporally or claiming it will be here next week or next year. I mean that the Kingdom of God is literally at hand, within reach, and able to be grasped if only we would do so.

Jesus mentions the Kingdom of God 50 times in the NT. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus is asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God will come, and he answers, "The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the Kingdom of God is within you." In the gospel of Mark, a man paraphrasing Jesus' words back to him says that we should love God with all our heart, strength, and understanding and that loving our neighbor as ourselves is more important to God than any burnt offering or act of piety, and a smiling Jesus tells the man that with that answer he has come near to the Kingdom of God. At another time, Jesus tells his disciples that the Kingdom of God is what comes when the Word of God is sown into people's hearts so that they believe and follow Christ's example. Jesus also says that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, where the smallest seed can create one of the largest plants in the garden. Or the Kingdom of God is like yeast where just a little bit worked into flour can change the entire loaf.

As I was preparing this sermon and reading all of these ways Christ describes the Kingdom of God, I was reminded of a story a colleague recently told me about the son of one of his closest friends from childhood.

His friend's son, Jeremy, was a likable but odd boy, who always seemed to have his head in the clouds and was somewhat of a loner. His parents found it difficult to teach him responsibility, and he was forever losing things. He'd come home, having misplaced a new sweater or backpack. And they gave up on buying him lunchboxes because he could never keep track of one for more than a week. His parents, being good Dutch Protestants and living in a poor rural community, tried to discipline him so he would understand the value of his things, but nothing seemed to work. Once, he even came home having lost his sneakers. He just walked in barefoot and headed up the stair. When his mother asked him how in the world he could have lost his shoes, he just shrugged, said he was sorry, and that he'd try harder to keep track of his belongings in the future

My colleague told me this story because tragically, Jeremy was killed in an auto accident earlier this year while a junior in high school, and my colleague attended the memorial service with the family. He said that when they showed up, they were stunned to see hundreds of students filling the pews. The pastor asked if anyone would like to say any words about Jeremy, and one after another, Jeremy's classmates came forward to talk about how kind and generous he was, of how he was always helping others. One boy told how his single mother couldn't afford to buy him shoes one year, and after complaining about how his feet hurt during PE, Jeremy pulled him aside, unlaced his sneakers, and gave them to him. A girl told how she came to school without a jacket one winter and how when Jeremy saw her shivering, he simply took the one off his back and gave it to her. For almost 45 minutes, students came forward to tell their own story of this odd, quiet boy who gave all that he had. Needless to say, his parents were undone, and the students grew closer through their sharing. For Jeremy, at such a young age, had been acting as an anonymous agent of Christ, spreading the leavening of God's Kingdom throughout that community. Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. The Kingdom of God is like yeast. And I'm sure he would say that the Kingdom of God is like Jeremy.

Because for Jesus, the Kingdom of God was not a far-distant time or a new creation that would be brought about only after his second coming. Instead, it was something that each of us could experience and share with those around us. But central to Christ's understanding of the Kingdom was the idea that it required action.

I think if you asked most people what the opposite of faith is, they would say it is doubt. But I would argue that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but apathy. For if faith is a strongly held conviction, then its opposite is simply not to care about that conviction.

Throughout Scripture and the history of the church, there has always been a tension between faith and works. This tension is epitomized in our understanding of the Kingdom of God. Is the Kingdom of God something that we are called to believe in and trust God to bring about? Or is God sitting up there in heaven wondering when we're going to get off our keisters and do something about the mess around us?

I recently came across an old poem that, with some minor tweaks on my part, I believe answers those questions nicely. It goes like this:

One night I had a wondrous dream/ Two sets of footprints there were seen,
My Lord and I walked hand and hand/ And left our footprints in the sand.

But as I watched our tracks progress/ Suddenly, to my great distress
Only one set of footprints I did see/ And I wondered where my Lord's might be.

So I asked him why, when I needed Him most/ I would be abandoned by the Lord of Hosts?
He said, "My precious child, I thought you knew/ That was when I carried you."

But then some stranger prints appeared/ And I asked the Lord, "What have we here?
Those prints are large and round and neat/ But Lord, they are too big for feet."

"My child," He said in somber tones,/ "For miles I carried you alone.
I challenged you to walk in faith,/ But you refused and made me wait."

"You disobeyed, you would not grow,/ The walk of faith, you would not know, So I got tired, I'd had enough,/ And I dropped you there right on your duff."

"For there comes a time when you can no longer ride
Where, if you're to walk in faith, you must decide
Whether to rise and take a stand,/ Or just leave butt prints in the sand."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu perhaps made that point a bit more eloquently when he said that one of the greatest mysteries of our Lord is how the omnipotent God we worship chooses to be impotent in the world, unless God's work is manifest through the collaboration of human beings.

In 1 Corinthians 12:27, Paul tells the Church that we are the body of Christ. One of my all-time favorite songs by Casting Crowns has a refrain that poses one of the most important questions facing the modern church: If we are the body, why aren't His arms reaching? Why aren't His hands healing? Why aren't His words teaching? And if we are the body why aren't His feet going? Why is His love not showing them there is a way?

In this country, 36 million people live in poverty. 35 million Americans are so poor that at least once a month they cannot afford to buy food. Of those 35 million people, over 13 million are children. Put another way, just shy of 1 in 5 children in this country has parents who regularly have to face the reality that they will be sending their child to bed hungry because they cannot afford groceries. 9 million children in this country have no health insurance.

Another fact: In America, only 5% of churchgoing Christians tithe. If every Christian who went to church in this country tithed, the Church would have $380 billion dollars a year at its disposal for mission, which is an amount about equal to the entire United States non-defense discretionary budget. It would cost less than $10B to provide every child in this country with health insurance and about that same amount to ensure no child ever went hungry again.

Of course, the Kingdom of God requires more than that we merely give money, and it requires more than simple or even significant acts of charity on our part. For, as the prophets repeatedly remind God's people, it is neither compassionate nor economical to worry only about the consequences of poverty and hopelessness while ignoring their roots.

We all know the story of the Good Samaritan. A traveler is accosted by robbers, beaten, and left for dead on the side of the road. After he is ignored by several holy and righteous men of that time, along comes a the Good Samaritan, who sees the injured stranger, he binds his wounds and takes him to a place where he can be nurtured back to health. But what if the story had not ended there? What if the next day the Samaritan had been walking along that same road and again came upon a man who had been set upon by robbers? What if it happened a third and a fourth time? The Samaritan surely would have treated those men the same way. But how long do you think it would take before the Good Samaritan's love of neighbor would have compelled him to say, "You know, someone really ought to be patrolling this road!"

The Kingdom of God requires action by each of us, but it also requires action by all of us. It requires that Christians not only succor the least, last, and lost in our society but also that we truly claim our inheritance as God's chosen people by boldly confronting the bonds of injustice that keep so many of God's children imprisoned in the darkness of hopelessness and fear.

Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth; the old things will pass away and will no longer be remembered ... Never again will there be an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years... No longer will people build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people be... They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD...the wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox...for they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

Some may say that Isaiah's vision of the Kingdom of God is a pipedream completely out of our grasp this side of the grave, but I ask you if a world where children and the elderly do not die before their time because they lack access to basic medicine and health care; a world where workers fully share in the fruits of their labor so that they can live with dignity and without worry that their families will go homeless and their children hungry; a world where a child's future is not determined by what side of the tracks or equator she is born on; a world where peace and hope reign...is such a world truly beyond our grasp, an ideal that can be brought about only through miraculous, divine intervention?

The question is not if this Kingdom, this Holy Mountain of God, is possible. The question is whether we as the Church, community, and individuals will answer God's call in our lives, confront injustice, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, welcome the stranger, visit the outcast...and, proclaiming the Day of the Lord, begin living as if the Kingdom of God is now.

Proclaiming the Day of the Lord

July 8, 2007 Isaiah Chapter 56

July 8, 2007
Isaiah Chapter 56