Kingdom economics

Sermon for Second Sunday before Advent.

1 Thessalonians 5:2 For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

Matthew 25:29 For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. 

We have a great scripture sandwich to digest this morning.

The bread, or outer layers, is the overarching fact that Christ is coming back, as we heard in our reading from Thessalonians.

The Anglican Church names the period of time between All Saints and Advent 'Kingdom Season', when we especially reflect on the reign of Christ in earth and in heaven.

Last week at Remembrance we looked at the parable of the ten bridesmaids, waiting for the return of the Bridegroom – five were ready and five weren’t.

And today, our reading reminds us again that the Lord is returning. His kingdom is at once present and ‘not yet’.

So that’s our overarching framework for today’s readings.

The filling of our sandwich, if you like, is the gospel.

Here a Landowner gives talents (coins) to three different slaves.

The first has five talents and he makes it grow – five more accrue.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

The second has two talents but he makes those grow too, to four.

Well done good and faithful servant.

The 3rd (there’s always 3, right? It makes for a great story; and we know it’s going to go badly for the 3^rd…)

The 3^rd slave had a different approach.

‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed, so I was afraid.

What did this servant do? He hid the talent in the ground. He still has it, he can give it back, but it hasn’t grown into anything.

Now this servant hasn’t done anything really wrong, at first sight; he’s not gone and murdered anyone; he’s not committed adultery or slandered his neighbour.

It’s more a sin of omission, than commission.

He was afraid, and he hid his talent.

It doesn’t go down well. He’s described as worthless and meets a sticky end.

And then there’s the haunting verse 29: ‘to all those who have, more will be given (…) but from those who have nothing, even what they do have will be taken away.

It’s not very Christian is it?

Aren’t we more used to saying ‘everyone should have a fair share?’

It may be of interest to ponder the following thought: in the Christian life we often talk in terms of ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’; we should give more, we should pray more; we ought to love more, serve more, read the bible more, etc.

How about if we look at things in a different way – how does the kingdom actually work?

Because the kingdom, that is, the rule of God in our lives – is operating under its own principles whether we like it, or notice it, or not.

Whatever we think we ought to do, or others think we ought to do, the kingdom is operating already.

When we read that difficult verse 29, ‘to all those who have, more will be given (…) but from those who have nothing, even what they do have will be taken away’, what we have here is a description of how the kingdom operates.

The kingdom operates under spiritual laws.

Just like temporal law, kingdom law operates whether people realise it or not.

It’s a bit like when people fill out their insurance claims forms and claim the accident was nothing to do with them when clearly they brought it on themselves by their own actions.

These are some of the things people have claimed on their insurance forms:

‘a pedestrian hit me and went under my car’

‘I had been driving for 40 years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident’

and my favourite:

‘I was taking my canary to the hospital. It got loose in the car and flew out the window. The next thing I saw was his rear end, and there was a crash.’ 

As in the earthly kingdom, so in God’s rule in our lives: what we sow, we reap.

Because the kingdom is operating right here, right now, in our individual lives and in our life together.

Whenever we give something to God for him to use, whether it’s time, talents, money or our hearts, He makes that thing grow so we have more of it.

But if we hold back from God, we eventually lose the ability to reach him at all.

If you pray, you develop a hunger for prayer.

If you don’t, you lose your appetite for it anyway.

Spiritual blessing has a habit of multiplying.

One blessing leads to another, which leads to gratitude, which leads to you being a blessing, which leads to more blessing, more gratitude, more generosity, and so forth.

Prayerful people are people who over time, have spent time praying. They’re not more holy than anyone else; they’ve simply invested themselves in it.

People who can rightly handle the Word of God and who draw on it for strength and wisdom in life, are not naturally gifted a reading the bible they’re just people who have given time to it.

People who are kind and compassionate are that way because they have set their minds in that direction and grown in kindness and compassion.

What you reap, you sow.

Conversely, if we miss the chance to give of our best to God, we don’t stay the same, we actually become diminished. What little we have is ‘taken away’.

It’s the law of the kingdom.

I don’t know if you’ve ever come across CS Lewis’s The Great Divorce…

It’s one of his classic spiritual writings.

In it he imagines a man going on a bus journey from a place which might be hell, to a place which is probably heaven (or they might be two hypothetical places which people are still able to chose or not chose). 'Hell' is a series of drab, grey streets in which an endless stream of people move in, quarrel with their neighbours, move as far away from them as possible, till the city grows and grows, around a vacuum, with no one having any proper relationships.

In contrast, as the bus journeys to heaven, everything gets real-er and real-er – when they get there, the grass is too hard to walk on a first, and the flowers cannot be picked – they’re as hard a diamonds.

The people on the bus find this real place a bit much, but some stay and decide to make the effort to acclimatise to this harder, but real-er life.

Some are disgusted with it all and return on the bus to the grey place.

In heaven the flimsy grey people who have decided to stay get more and more substantial, if they work at being real and shedding their crutches of self righteous importance.

It’s a fascinating book about the consequences over a long period of time, of our choices regarding God.

Because ultimately that is what our reading is about.

What we sow, that’s what we reap.

The only things that last into the next life are the things that have grown out of the Christ life, with Him as foundation.

As we grow together in the body of Christ, serving and loving one another as best we can, I leave you with this from Stephen Covey:

Sow a thought, reap an action.

Sow an action, reap a habit.

Sow a habit, reap a character.

Sow a character, reap a destiny.

Amen.

Advent: a never-ending story

1 Thessalonians 3:9-end

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? 

Luke 21: 25-36 There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory. 

A good story always begins with ‘Once upon a time’ and today the church’s story begins all over again with the first Sunday in Advent.

It is good to tell stories. Humans have done so down millennia to remind themselves of who they are, where they come from and where they’re going.

And the story of the church is the same.

Or perhaps we should say ‘the story of the kingdom’, because the origin, power and end point of the story is God and God’s everlasting kingdom, in which we have a part to play.

So let’s tell the story again.

Once there was a garden, planted east of Eden.

In it the Lord God placed a man and a woman as co-workers to till the soil and walk in fellowship with him and with one another. They were to enjoy all the fruits of the garden, except the fruit of the tree of good and evil. To enjoy the fruits of this tree was to choose to be god.

The heavenly host looked on in anticipation. Their purpose and meaning was to glorify and praise the King of Heaven for ever.

But they were sentient beings with the choice to praise, or not to praise.

Among them was one who wished for autonomy. In other words he wished to be his own god. He fell from heaven, bringing down a third of the host with him, like stars falling to earth.

He took the form of a serpent, the craftiest of beasts and came to the woman in the garden.

‘Did God really say…?’

And so the woman and the man chose to disobey. They said ‘we know better than the God who made us’.

As for the pattern of evil brought in by the serpent, God said ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head and you will bruise his heel.’

The sons and daughters of the first man and the first woman populated the earth.

They all had the same choice: the way of fellowship with God or the way of autonomy.

There was an increase of evil; a flood; a new beginning; the choosing of the nations and the special call of God’s people, through the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Leah and Rachel built up the House of Israel with twelve sons who became a nation.

But famine brought Jacob's sons to Egypt where they lived and multiplied; God’s people in an alien culture, until they were oppressed by Pharaoh.

God called Moses to lead them out to the Promised Land and to give them his holy laws under which to live, caring for the widow and the alien in their midst.

Judges gave way to Kings. King David was promised a faithful descendent who would rule over his people for ever.

But God’s people did not allow God to be King amongst them. Unfaithfulness led to oppression by foreign powers as they brought God’s judgment upon themselves time and time again.

But there was always the hope of something better to come; The hint of an everlasting kingdom.

There would be a leader who would call God’s people back to faithfulness; the Son of Man who leads his children like a shepherd leads the sheep.

But there would be judgment too: ‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory.’

The Prophets were the ones to call the people back to faithfulness; Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel; their words sometimes falling on deaf ears, sometimes on willing. Kings came and went, good and evil growing together until the harvest.

When evil predominated, God’s people went into Exile. ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.’ ‘How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations!’

Daniel prayed. Nehemiah acted. Ezra taught the law. God was on the move once more. The walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt; the exiles returned. Prophets foretold the birth of a baby, born in the city of Bethlehem, where Ruth had brought her longed for son into the world.

‘Everything works together for good, for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose’.

‘Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name ‘Immanuel’’.

And yet that pattern of good and evil…. ‘Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child. And she gave birth to a son….who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.’

Jesus ‘went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden…Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place…(he) brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came with lanterns and torches and weapons…’

Why didn't you arrest me in the Temple? I was there every day. But this is your moment, the time when the power of darkness reigns."

Zechariah told us this: ‘They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a first born son.’

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’

‘And I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.’

Finally the way was opened for us to be reconciled directly with our Maker. The kingdom was breaking in and continues to this day. The kingdom of God is inside you. The kingdom of God is here and yet still to come.

We have heard the story a thousand times. It is a story in progress. We each have a place in the story. How did you find your place?

Who first told you the story?

Are you living the story?

How will the story play out in this place where we live?

Who else will become part of the story through the witness of us as church?

This Advent Sunday we anticipate the end of the story – the foretelling of a kingdom brought in by judgement and mercy; ‘the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ’.

The story of our lives now, connects with the story of the kingdom.

This world is not our home: we look to a home that is to come.

Meanwhile we live with joy as children of the kingdom, proclaiming his death and resurrection every time we eat the bread and drink the cup, until he comes again.

Amen.

Mustard seed sermon

Ezekiel 17:22-24

Mark 4:26-34

So, we are finally in Ordinary Time.

I say ‘finally’, because there has been a lot of celebration recently: we’ve had Easter and the seven Sundays of Easter; Pentecost, Trinity (and The Queen's Diamond Jubilee).

Big one off celebrations and get togethers are great; celebration should never be too far from the life of the church, but we wouldn’t want to be having one off specials all the time.

It’s a bit tiring for a start!

So I for one, rather enjoy the long slow weeks of Ordinary Time, that period of the liturgical year when we’re neither celebrating Advent, nor Christmas, nor Epiphany, nor Lent, nor Easter, Pentecost or Trinity.

So what is Ordinary Time?

It sounds rather boring doesn’t it; rather banal?

Does nothing much happen in God’s kingdom during the long weeks of June to November, before the church year begins again at Advent?

I’ve been reading a very good book about Ordinary Time, that I heartily recommend, called Everyday God, by Paul Gooder.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=by+amazon&tag=mh0a9-21&index=aps&hvadid=41422761&ref=pd_sl_4kv8rzaeal_e#/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Everyday+God&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3AEveryday+God

In it she reflects on various bible passages that show God as deeply involved in our ordinary, everyday lives.

God became a human being, after all, and went through a normal human birth and life (in one sense) and you can’t get more ordinary than that.

You could say the whole of the Incarnation is a celebration of the ordinary.

And so God, through the Incarnation, ‘hallows’ all of life.

There’s no such thing as a divide between our religious life and the rest of life, and it doesn’t make sense to live as if there were.

So in ‘Ordinary Time’ it’s not that nothing happens, it’s that we remember every aspect of our lives is blessed by the God of the every day.

So today, at the start of Ordinary Time, we have two parables about ordinary things – seeds - which Jesus puts before his disciples to help them think about the kingdom.

Jesus told so many parables about the kingdom, we need to stop for a moment and ask: ‘What is the kingdom?’

This is such a vital question that perhaps we can turn to each other for a moment and share what we understand by the phrase, the kingdom, as used by Jesus in the parables.

                                               *

So the kingdom a BIG New Testament theme and we cannot hope to understand how God wants us to be church until we have mulled over ‘kingdom’.

The kingdom of heaven…

Is it a place to go to when you die?

Is it something still to come?

Is it here already?

It is the same thing as the church?

Is it separate from the church?

Theologians are generally agreed that the phrase ‘the kingdom of heaven’ or ‘the kingdom of God’ refers to the rule of God in our lives.

It is not a place; it’s more a state of existence where God is King.

The arrival of this kingdom was announced by Jesus as He began his own ministry of teaching, healing and deliverance.

So at the start of Mark’s gospel, we read: ‘Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying ‘the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent, and believe in the Good News.’ (Mark 1:14-15).

We hope and pray that the kingdom, the rule of God, is growing inside the church family, but we must not rule out its growing outside the church too, and often in the most unlikely of places.

I saw the kingdom alive and well when I visited Huntercombe Prison in Nuffield earlier in the week, where some of the local Clergy were privileged to take part in an act of worship alongside Christian prisoners.

These were men who, despite having done wrong things in the past, now wanted to put themselves under the rule of God as they continued to say yes to Christ’s forgiveness.

We need to pray that we may see the kingdom at work beyond the four walls of the church, and for the grace to join in.

So what we can reap from the reading; especially all you keen gardeners who will know a thing or two about seeds.

First of all, the kingdom of heaven is like someone planting a seed.

I love the brevity of this little parable – it fits perfectly with the subject matter – planting seed that will grow is a simple thing to do; kingdom growth is simple. It just happens.

‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, ²⁷and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. ²⁸The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.’

So the kingdom is like a seed which is (literally) ‘thrown down’ into the ground.

A clever use of the verb – ‘thrown down’ as it’s the same root as the word which gives us ‘parable,’ which is a thought ‘thrown down’ alongside another thought, so that one illuminates the other. That is the meaning of ‘parabalos’ (thrown down.)

Just how much effort is needed to throw down seed?

Hardly any.

How much effort does it take to get the seed to grow?

Absolutely none on our part.

The seed is hidden from sight for a while; we don’t know exactly what’s happening, and we cannot effect the growth ourselves.

All we can do is wait and hope.

We've tried to get some things to grow in the garden here.

I would say that my husband is an ever hopeful, and much more patient gardener than I am.

He’s put some wild flower seeds down in the front garden.

I think he’s forgotten they’re there.

But I look each day and wonder why they haven’t come up.

(I think the packet might have been rather old).

There are green bits in the flowerbed but I think they might be weeds.

The point is, no one can make them come any quicker; they will come of their own accord (or we’ll have to plant some better ones).

How does this relate to the kingdom?

I guess a lot depends on personality here.

I’m a doer and I like to see results; the quicker the better!

This is not always a good attitude inside the kingdom.

God’s timing is not ours; he is never in a hurry.

We can make sure the soil is fed and watered but God makes the fruit grow.

We had a fascinating reading from Ezekiel.

A rare Old Testament parable about the fruitfulness of God’s chosen people.

In it the prophet reminds us that the growth of the kingdom belongs to God alone.

‘I bring low the high tree,
   I make high the low tree;
I dry up the green tree
   and make the dry tree flourish.’

And then the mustard seed.

Going back to Everyday God, Paula Gooder offers a very interesting reflection on this parable.

She suggests the mustard plant was a bit like a weed.

It is a tiny seed but soon catches on and spreads like wildfire.

A bit like ground elder perhaps.

My Dad, who’s an experienced gardener, claims that people will actually move house in order to escape the ground elder that is spreading over their garden and colonizing every inch of space.

I’ve seen it growing through the cracks in our patio here.

I’ve no idea how it got there.

I think the seeds followed us all the way from our previous home inside one of the patio tubs.

Now it’s growing all along the side where we put our bins.

Anyway, it’s started its takeover bid, and I expect there’s not much we can do to get rid of it completely.

The kingdom is tenacious like this.

Mustard starts small but grows to be a bush in which birds can build their nests.

I always thought of the reference to birds was a positive reference; it’s nice to have birds nesting in your bush, isn’t it?

According to Paula Gooder, they could be seen as a bit of a nuisance.

The birds are people who we don’t normally associate with the kingdom, being attracted to it, and wanting a piece of it.

Do we really want to share our lives with these other people who want a bit of Jesus too?

It’s easy for us to think we ‘own’ God because we are the believers.

But God is not owned. He is Spirit and He is free.

He blows where he wills.

If we are living kingdom lives, others will be attracted, but they may not be PLU (people like us).

They may be different from the person we normally associate with church attendance.

They may be of a different class.

They may be a different age.

They may have complicated problems; they may be more righteous than us.

They may have some different ideas about how to worship God in the 21^st Century.

But they are attracted to the bush nonetheless.

Jesus attracted all sorted of undesirables and generally the religious elite didn’t want them included in the family of faith.

Not prostitutes, tax collectors and lepers, please.

The crowds that followed Jesus and took up his energy in their desire for healing and forgiveness; they are perhaps the birds of this parable.

If we are living lives centered on the king, others will be attracted and we will need to respond to them and maybe to say ‘help us be God’s people here in this day in this place’.

As we ponder these parables of growth, what is the good news and what do we need to wake up to afresh?

It is good news that the growth of the kingdom is God’s work.

It is good news that we can be involved too.

It is good news that the fields are ‘white unto harvest’.

But we need more workers.

So we need to pray.

The other workers may be people who are not yet part of the church.

Let’s pray for grace to spot them and nurture them.

And let’s give to God afresh the places where we desire growth.

Our community coffee morning; this is a place where church people can meet and mingle with those who don’t necessarily go to church, but for whom Christ died and for whom God has a plan.

Come and join in!

You could be a listening ear.

You might know someone who would enjoy the company – invite them!

You could be the only Christian you neighbour knows.

Pray for our services at St John’s and St Mary’s; for a spirit of invitation so that others feel included.

Pray for our work amongst families who come and bring their children for baptism at the All Age Worship service.

Pray for me as I go into the Primary school, and for Christian parents who are being salt and light there.

Perhaps we need a nurture group or a prayer group…perhaps you have ideas for starting one…?

Perhaps you sense new growth in your own life – God bringing to fruitfulness the plans he has for you…

Be encouraged that in all these things, the kingdom is growing.

It may look small at first, but just you wait!