Recent Sermons
Thursday, April 13, 2017 Maundy Thursday
Listen to the audio file at iTunes
Readings -
Sunday, June 19, 2016
I am tired of preaching after killings
Readings - 1 Kings 19:1-15a, Psalm 42 & 43, Galatians 3:23-29, Luke 8:26-39
Several weeks ago as I looked at the readings for this week I was thoroughly put out. These were the assigned readings for Father’s Day? For the St Matthew’s Day Camp commissioning? These readings in which a faithful and powerful prophet of God, Elijah, is depressed, in total ministry burnout following a great victory? He is so completely over being a prophet that he tells God “enough” and wants to die? And a Gospel about demon pigs? Really? What I saw then was an Old Testament that is endlessly preached on and the destruction of a lot of perfectly good bacon.
And then a week ago 49 children of God were killed in Orlando, and last week was the one-year anniversary of the death of 9 children of God killed in Charleston, SC. And two weeks ago a shooting and lock down at UCLA and the realization that for a person who rarely preaches on a Sunday morning, I find myself once again preaching following a mass shooting of beloved and vulnerable children of God. I am tired of preaching after shootings. As Elijah said “IT IS ENOUGH”. I don’t want to eat, and I don’t want strength for this journey. I want it DONE!
The world of Jesus and his disciples was one inhabited by spirit beings. Those benevolent, loving and God filled angels carrying out the work of God on earth. And those demons who worked their malignant evil on vulnerable people through natural disasters, corrupt political systems, infection, disease and nervous disorders. Those demons inhabited unclean places, skulked about in tombs or called out to the travelers in the desert. This Gospel would have been completely understandable to Jesus’ disciples and for generations after who also believed in those evil demons set out to destroy humans.
Now I can pat myself on my back and say, hey we are smarter in 2016, we have science! I know disease is caused by germs, and not washing my hands well enough, or simply working in on this campus with a host of petri dishes, some people call students. Demons don’t cause earthquakes or heat waves. And yet evil still lurks and our demons still live in the same places they always have. Our demons live in anger, in fear, in oppression and in my needing to believe that I am somehow better or other than someone else. This is the evil that lived in Orlando, in Westwood, in Charleston and Newtown. This evil is only conquered by one thing, love. Evil can only be conquered by love. Because as Lin Manuel Miranda reminded us on Sunday evening love, is love, is love, is love. Yes, guns killed those beloved children of God, guns that shoot too many bullets, but they were also killed by anger, fear, hatred and division, a lack of love.
I am tired, I am burnt out, like Elijah I don’t want to go on, and yet here I am today, because I don’t get to give up, because we don’t get to give up. Because like Elijah, and like the man from the Gospel who is no longer filled with evil, we have work to do. We are being sent forth. We have to fill ourselves with this unconditional love of God because otherwise the “journey will be too much”. And we also have to listen for that sound of sheer silence, for that still small voice of God, to not only proclaim God’s love, but to live it. To live it through changing this world that we live in, by having the incredibly hard conversation that we need to have about guns without demonizing each other, and to live it by loving unconditionally.
In a few minutes we will commission the staff of St. Matthew’s Day Camp. These magical individuals who bring light and life and love into the world. Who banish evil, and if you ever want to hear the sound of sheer silence, come to campus after campers and staff have left. These staff are those whom we trust to be God’s love. Day camp staff, every young person needs someone who is WILD CRAZY about them, to live out God’s wild crazy love for us, so that these campers young people have a model of how to live that wild crazy love in the world. Be that wild crazy love for our campers. Thank you for being God’s love lived. For it is only our wild crazy love proclaimed and lived that will drive out evil, hatred, fear and anger. Amen.
Listen to the audio file at iTunes
Readings -
Sunday, June 19, 2016
I am tired of preaching after killings
Readings - 1 Kings 19:1-15a, Psalm 42 & 43, Galatians 3:23-29, Luke 8:26-39
Several weeks ago as I looked at the readings for this week I was thoroughly put out. These were the assigned readings for Father’s Day? For the St Matthew’s Day Camp commissioning? These readings in which a faithful and powerful prophet of God, Elijah, is depressed, in total ministry burnout following a great victory? He is so completely over being a prophet that he tells God “enough” and wants to die? And a Gospel about demon pigs? Really? What I saw then was an Old Testament that is endlessly preached on and the destruction of a lot of perfectly good bacon.
And then a week ago 49 children of God were killed in Orlando, and last week was the one-year anniversary of the death of 9 children of God killed in Charleston, SC. And two weeks ago a shooting and lock down at UCLA and the realization that for a person who rarely preaches on a Sunday morning, I find myself once again preaching following a mass shooting of beloved and vulnerable children of God. I am tired of preaching after shootings. As Elijah said “IT IS ENOUGH”. I don’t want to eat, and I don’t want strength for this journey. I want it DONE!
The world of Jesus and his disciples was one inhabited by spirit beings. Those benevolent, loving and God filled angels carrying out the work of God on earth. And those demons who worked their malignant evil on vulnerable people through natural disasters, corrupt political systems, infection, disease and nervous disorders. Those demons inhabited unclean places, skulked about in tombs or called out to the travelers in the desert. This Gospel would have been completely understandable to Jesus’ disciples and for generations after who also believed in those evil demons set out to destroy humans.
Now I can pat myself on my back and say, hey we are smarter in 2016, we have science! I know disease is caused by germs, and not washing my hands well enough, or simply working in on this campus with a host of petri dishes, some people call students. Demons don’t cause earthquakes or heat waves. And yet evil still lurks and our demons still live in the same places they always have. Our demons live in anger, in fear, in oppression and in my needing to believe that I am somehow better or other than someone else. This is the evil that lived in Orlando, in Westwood, in Charleston and Newtown. This evil is only conquered by one thing, love. Evil can only be conquered by love. Because as Lin Manuel Miranda reminded us on Sunday evening love, is love, is love, is love. Yes, guns killed those beloved children of God, guns that shoot too many bullets, but they were also killed by anger, fear, hatred and division, a lack of love.
I am tired, I am burnt out, like Elijah I don’t want to go on, and yet here I am today, because I don’t get to give up, because we don’t get to give up. Because like Elijah, and like the man from the Gospel who is no longer filled with evil, we have work to do. We are being sent forth. We have to fill ourselves with this unconditional love of God because otherwise the “journey will be too much”. And we also have to listen for that sound of sheer silence, for that still small voice of God, to not only proclaim God’s love, but to live it. To live it through changing this world that we live in, by having the incredibly hard conversation that we need to have about guns without demonizing each other, and to live it by loving unconditionally.
In a few minutes we will commission the staff of St. Matthew’s Day Camp. These magical individuals who bring light and life and love into the world. Who banish evil, and if you ever want to hear the sound of sheer silence, come to campus after campers and staff have left. These staff are those whom we trust to be God’s love. Day camp staff, every young person needs someone who is WILD CRAZY about them, to live out God’s wild crazy love for us, so that these campers young people have a model of how to live that wild crazy love in the world. Be that wild crazy love for our campers. Thank you for being God’s love lived. For it is only our wild crazy love proclaimed and lived that will drive out evil, hatred, fear and anger. Amen.
Sunday, May 3, 2015 - Evensong
Go Learn! - Listen to the audio file at iTunes
Readings - Psalm 8, 84, Wisdom 7:22-8:1, Matt. 7:7-14
Go Learn! - Listen to the audio file at iTunes
Readings - Psalm 8, 84, Wisdom 7:22-8:1, Matt. 7:7-14
Sunday, December 7, 2014
It Wasn't the Beginning - Listen to the audio file at iTunes
RCL Lectionary Readings for the Day
It Wasn't the Beginning - Listen to the audio file at iTunes
RCL Lectionary Readings for the Day
Sunday, October 5, 2014
The Gift of God's Self - Listen to the audio file at iTunes
RCL Lectionary Readings for the Day
The 10 Commandments…is there any other passage in the Bible that a preacher can stand in front of a congregation with the expectation that the congregation has more than a passing familiarity with the particular reading? It gives me a particular delight and terror all in one. When we think of what we generally refer to as the 10 Commandments, our minds eyes might show us Charlton Heston a top a mountain, Indiana Jones & melty faced Nazis, or Mel Brooks holding three tablets that quickly become two. My guess is that your mind’s eye conjures up the image of stone tables, curved on the top with squared off bottoms with 10 commandments written upon them. 10 commandments which we all know but if we were given a pop quiz on, we might not actually be able to immediately come up with. In Godly Play we call them the 10 Best Ways to Live. A more accurate translation than commandments is really the decalogue, meaning ten words or ten statements.
It is tempting as a preacher to go through the commandments one by one, expounding on the wisdom contained in each, which would be quite a bit of fun, for me at least. Exploring how the first four deal with Israel’s relationship with God and how the remaining ones speak to Israel’s relationships with each other. How given the context God is addressing not inner feelings but law, or wondering why father comes before mother, when it comes to honor. How at this moment in time God created lawyers and they can be fun. But if we explore only the 10 statements themselves we miss the opportunity to explore the larger arc and I believe the more compelling story, for us as the community of God gathered, of the changing relationship between God and the Israelites and who we are compelled to be now because of that relationship.
The Books of Genesis and Exodus reveal the ever shifting and ever deepening relationship between God and us, God’s people. In the Book of Genesis we experience and explore the relationship between God and specific individuals, and experience the beginning of a covenant set with Abraham, which continues to this day. As we read on into the Book of Exodus we experience a relationship that transitions from being one about specific individuals in a specific family, to a relationship between God and a family that has grown into a tribe, the Israelites, and the revelation of God’s self to that tribe, which culminates in the giving of the gift of the decalogue.
This isn’t one of those gifts that one doesn’t really want to have (like the flu), or one of those gifts which you need but don’t really want, like new socks and underwear, or even one of those gifts that officially make you realize you are an adult, when you spend your “fun” birthday money on a new dishwasher, and you are excited about the new dishwasher but at the same time a bit depressed because of your excitement.
God believed these to statements to be a gift to God’s people a gift of God’s self. God appeared before God’s people to give this gift, something that God hadn’t done before. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay on gifts in which he said “Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself” (Gifts, 1844). At this specific moment on Mt Sinai God affirms that God wants desperately to be in relationship with God’s people, through revealing God’s self to God’s people, and giving the Israelites a gift, the gift of the decalogue. God gave God’s self to God’s people that day, and God gives God’s self continually to us. God gave Israel, and us, the gift of God, and the gift of the relationship with God, and at the same time Moses gives us another message, one of equal importance, do not be afraid.
God doesn’t give these statements, these ways of being and living together because God needs them, but because we need them. In the same way that we need the Church, that we need baptism, that we need stop signs and speed limits. These statements exist for the sake of the world, for the sake of us. Because we need reminders of how to be together in community. God doesn’t need this, God doesn’t demand this for God’s sake but for our sake, because it is a life with God that demands these things. That demands that we live together in ways that honor each other, and God. That demands that we pray not for God but for the ways that it transforms us. That demands that we worship together and that we study, not for God, but for who we become when we do. And that we do all this and live our life with God without being afraid.
Our biblical stories which carrying the reminder to, be not afraid, always come in the midst of terror. Imagine how we would be if all of a sudden this morning, the top of the Santa Monica mountains were covered in clouds, lightening and a large booming voice that could be heard to the ends of the earth. A voice which we knew existed but until this time had only been heard by one individual amongst us. Of course the Israelites were afraid! So the instruction is important. The instruction reminds us that the proper response isn’t to live in fear but to live in God.
These 10 statements, and the command to be not afraid, are a living framework for action, God gave it once and we have the choice to receive this gift again and again. As long as we have our God given free will we have the choice to receive it or not to receive it, and this choice exists for each person in each generation. Last week my colleague Lester invited you to whine. This week I invite you to receive and then to act on that reception. I wonder…how will you receive the gift of God this week, how will you live not in fear of God but as one who has been given a gift. The gift of yourself, the gift of this community, the gift of living a life without fear, the gift of God. What actions will show the world that you live in gratitude to God for these gifts. Amen.
The Gift of God's Self - Listen to the audio file at iTunes
RCL Lectionary Readings for the Day
The 10 Commandments…is there any other passage in the Bible that a preacher can stand in front of a congregation with the expectation that the congregation has more than a passing familiarity with the particular reading? It gives me a particular delight and terror all in one. When we think of what we generally refer to as the 10 Commandments, our minds eyes might show us Charlton Heston a top a mountain, Indiana Jones & melty faced Nazis, or Mel Brooks holding three tablets that quickly become two. My guess is that your mind’s eye conjures up the image of stone tables, curved on the top with squared off bottoms with 10 commandments written upon them. 10 commandments which we all know but if we were given a pop quiz on, we might not actually be able to immediately come up with. In Godly Play we call them the 10 Best Ways to Live. A more accurate translation than commandments is really the decalogue, meaning ten words or ten statements.
It is tempting as a preacher to go through the commandments one by one, expounding on the wisdom contained in each, which would be quite a bit of fun, for me at least. Exploring how the first four deal with Israel’s relationship with God and how the remaining ones speak to Israel’s relationships with each other. How given the context God is addressing not inner feelings but law, or wondering why father comes before mother, when it comes to honor. How at this moment in time God created lawyers and they can be fun. But if we explore only the 10 statements themselves we miss the opportunity to explore the larger arc and I believe the more compelling story, for us as the community of God gathered, of the changing relationship between God and the Israelites and who we are compelled to be now because of that relationship.
The Books of Genesis and Exodus reveal the ever shifting and ever deepening relationship between God and us, God’s people. In the Book of Genesis we experience and explore the relationship between God and specific individuals, and experience the beginning of a covenant set with Abraham, which continues to this day. As we read on into the Book of Exodus we experience a relationship that transitions from being one about specific individuals in a specific family, to a relationship between God and a family that has grown into a tribe, the Israelites, and the revelation of God’s self to that tribe, which culminates in the giving of the gift of the decalogue.
This isn’t one of those gifts that one doesn’t really want to have (like the flu), or one of those gifts which you need but don’t really want, like new socks and underwear, or even one of those gifts that officially make you realize you are an adult, when you spend your “fun” birthday money on a new dishwasher, and you are excited about the new dishwasher but at the same time a bit depressed because of your excitement.
God believed these to statements to be a gift to God’s people a gift of God’s self. God appeared before God’s people to give this gift, something that God hadn’t done before. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay on gifts in which he said “Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself” (Gifts, 1844). At this specific moment on Mt Sinai God affirms that God wants desperately to be in relationship with God’s people, through revealing God’s self to God’s people, and giving the Israelites a gift, the gift of the decalogue. God gave God’s self to God’s people that day, and God gives God’s self continually to us. God gave Israel, and us, the gift of God, and the gift of the relationship with God, and at the same time Moses gives us another message, one of equal importance, do not be afraid.
God doesn’t give these statements, these ways of being and living together because God needs them, but because we need them. In the same way that we need the Church, that we need baptism, that we need stop signs and speed limits. These statements exist for the sake of the world, for the sake of us. Because we need reminders of how to be together in community. God doesn’t need this, God doesn’t demand this for God’s sake but for our sake, because it is a life with God that demands these things. That demands that we live together in ways that honor each other, and God. That demands that we pray not for God but for the ways that it transforms us. That demands that we worship together and that we study, not for God, but for who we become when we do. And that we do all this and live our life with God without being afraid.
Our biblical stories which carrying the reminder to, be not afraid, always come in the midst of terror. Imagine how we would be if all of a sudden this morning, the top of the Santa Monica mountains were covered in clouds, lightening and a large booming voice that could be heard to the ends of the earth. A voice which we knew existed but until this time had only been heard by one individual amongst us. Of course the Israelites were afraid! So the instruction is important. The instruction reminds us that the proper response isn’t to live in fear but to live in God.
These 10 statements, and the command to be not afraid, are a living framework for action, God gave it once and we have the choice to receive this gift again and again. As long as we have our God given free will we have the choice to receive it or not to receive it, and this choice exists for each person in each generation. Last week my colleague Lester invited you to whine. This week I invite you to receive and then to act on that reception. I wonder…how will you receive the gift of God this week, how will you live not in fear of God but as one who has been given a gift. The gift of yourself, the gift of this community, the gift of living a life without fear, the gift of God. What actions will show the world that you live in gratitude to God for these gifts. Amen.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
What Are We Doing Here Anyway? - Listen to the audio file at iTunes
RCL Lectionary Readings for the Day
This is one of those days when I question the wisdom of the Revised Common Lectionary, something Michael does at least once a day, which gives us this collection of readings today. We have Jacob, the trickster, getting a taste of his own medicine from his Uncle Laban, and the beginnings of the Jacob, Leah and Rachel love triangle. Paul offering further insight about life in God’s Kingdom regarding prayer, and the Gospel which could alternately be called the lead in to Simile Sunday. This week I have had a difficult time determining what the thread through all of these readings is, and questioning whether those who compiled the RCL are actually the ultimate tricksters.
I had started my sermon preparation in my favorite place, the Old Testament, but realized that I just didn’t have the proper level of schadenfreud necessary to engage with Jacob, Laban, Leah and Rachel this week. This truly messed up family, full of vastly imperfect people,who nevertheless were chosen by God, is the basis for the 12 tribes of Israel and the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham to give him as many descendants as the stars in the sky. No one looks good after this piece of the book of Genesis and the take away might be, karma will get you, sibling rivalry is tough and careful how you parent because if you treat your daughters as chattel it will mess up humanity. Thanks Laban.
So I moved toward the Epistle and then quickly away, for while prayer is entirely at the core of what is necessary to create the Kingdom of God it makes for dull preaching, and playing with Paul seems a terrible way to celebrate the 40 yrs of women’s ordination in The Episcopal Church this week.
Ah Ha! There it is, I could join many other preachers today and preach honoring the 40th anniversary of women’s ordination. I am part of the first generation of Episcopalians who don’t know of an Episcopal Church where women weren’t celebrating the Eucharist at the altar. Who only know a church that says yes to women in all orders of ministry. While pondering this though I realized that I only had one thing to say on this “DUH”. Which is crass and tacky and perhaps signifies that I am not the person to preach on this momentous piece of history.
So then I got to the Gospel, which my mother has been salivating over all week, because as an English teacher in the summer, this many similes in one place constitutes her own Kingdom of Heaven, focuses on Jesus’ parables on the Kingdom of Heaven. The first two, which tell of amazing results from rather insignificant and annoying beginnings, Jesus tells how our small and seemingly insignificant efforts shape the Kingdom of God. In the second two, which are unique to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples that the priorities of man are not the same as the priorities of the Kingdom of God, but they are greater than what we can imagine. That our real treasure is the realm of God. The fifth parable is also unique to Matthew and is two rather apocalyptic tales, which tell us of the mixture of bad and good to be separated at the last judgement.
Jesus finishes this series of parables by asking his disciples if all of this makes sense, to which they responded “Yes” and Jesus continues on. This I think needs a little time out moment, because Matthew suggest that Jesus just went right on teaching after this? Really? Or did Jesus steal a page from Bill Cosby and say “Right”.
I am standing here, a disciple, in a room full of disciples, and I have whiplash from all of the information contained in just these seven lines of text. Let me get this straight…the Kingdom of God is the opposite of what society tells me I should want, more valuable than anything, that I should be willing to sacrifice everything to get it, that it is not my job to judge who is in, it is already here and my job is to help bring it about, which I can actually do through small and seemingly insignificant actions? “RIGHT”
This simply doesn’t make sense, but perhaps that is my missing lectionary thread, that as Thomas Merton said, when it comes to the Kingdom of God, “we are like a man riding on an ox, looking for an ox”. Or in SoCal terms the Kingdom of God is like looking for my sunglasses when I am wearing them on top of my head. While it may be easy to see what to do to create the Kingdom of God, it is not necessarily easy to do it.
God is calling me and you, God is calling us to do it, through small acts, through our everyday lives, to bring about the Kingdom of God, because God doesn’t wait for the existence of perfect people to bring about God’s plan. We see this in the story of Jacob, Laban, Leah and Rachel, those who the whole of Israel came from, those who we come from. God only created us, those who are perfectly human, with warts, smelly feet and a total inability to be perfect in anything no matter how uselessly we try, as God’s playmates and co-creators.
Jesus wouldn’t tell his stories about heaven referencing farmers and their fields, women who bake bread, merchants who buy and sell, and fisherman who sort fish “unless he meant somehow to be telling us that the kingdom of heaven has to do with these things, that our treasure is buried not in some exotic far off place that requires a special map but that “X” marks the spot right here, right now, in all the ordinary people and places and activities in our lives.” (Barbara Brown Taylor) Jesus wouldn’t tell us these stories in our language if he didn’t believe that we were entirely capable of creating the Kingdom of God, because God created us just for this purpose! And nothing is going to separate us from the love of God, nothing!
So I wonder, what is keeping you from building the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth “as it is in heaven”? I wonder how are you going to make a single step towards that Kingdom when you walk out the doors of this church this morning? What are the small, insignificant actions that are your mustard seed and your leaven this week? For the only way that the Kingdom of God will ever exist is if we help God to create it. The Kingdom of God is not out there, it is here and we have all the skills and tools to create it and that is what we were created for, to help God finish God’s creation. Amen!
What Are We Doing Here Anyway? - Listen to the audio file at iTunes
RCL Lectionary Readings for the Day
This is one of those days when I question the wisdom of the Revised Common Lectionary, something Michael does at least once a day, which gives us this collection of readings today. We have Jacob, the trickster, getting a taste of his own medicine from his Uncle Laban, and the beginnings of the Jacob, Leah and Rachel love triangle. Paul offering further insight about life in God’s Kingdom regarding prayer, and the Gospel which could alternately be called the lead in to Simile Sunday. This week I have had a difficult time determining what the thread through all of these readings is, and questioning whether those who compiled the RCL are actually the ultimate tricksters.
I had started my sermon preparation in my favorite place, the Old Testament, but realized that I just didn’t have the proper level of schadenfreud necessary to engage with Jacob, Laban, Leah and Rachel this week. This truly messed up family, full of vastly imperfect people,who nevertheless were chosen by God, is the basis for the 12 tribes of Israel and the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham to give him as many descendants as the stars in the sky. No one looks good after this piece of the book of Genesis and the take away might be, karma will get you, sibling rivalry is tough and careful how you parent because if you treat your daughters as chattel it will mess up humanity. Thanks Laban.
So I moved toward the Epistle and then quickly away, for while prayer is entirely at the core of what is necessary to create the Kingdom of God it makes for dull preaching, and playing with Paul seems a terrible way to celebrate the 40 yrs of women’s ordination in The Episcopal Church this week.
Ah Ha! There it is, I could join many other preachers today and preach honoring the 40th anniversary of women’s ordination. I am part of the first generation of Episcopalians who don’t know of an Episcopal Church where women weren’t celebrating the Eucharist at the altar. Who only know a church that says yes to women in all orders of ministry. While pondering this though I realized that I only had one thing to say on this “DUH”. Which is crass and tacky and perhaps signifies that I am not the person to preach on this momentous piece of history.
So then I got to the Gospel, which my mother has been salivating over all week, because as an English teacher in the summer, this many similes in one place constitutes her own Kingdom of Heaven, focuses on Jesus’ parables on the Kingdom of Heaven. The first two, which tell of amazing results from rather insignificant and annoying beginnings, Jesus tells how our small and seemingly insignificant efforts shape the Kingdom of God. In the second two, which are unique to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples that the priorities of man are not the same as the priorities of the Kingdom of God, but they are greater than what we can imagine. That our real treasure is the realm of God. The fifth parable is also unique to Matthew and is two rather apocalyptic tales, which tell us of the mixture of bad and good to be separated at the last judgement.
Jesus finishes this series of parables by asking his disciples if all of this makes sense, to which they responded “Yes” and Jesus continues on. This I think needs a little time out moment, because Matthew suggest that Jesus just went right on teaching after this? Really? Or did Jesus steal a page from Bill Cosby and say “Right”.
I am standing here, a disciple, in a room full of disciples, and I have whiplash from all of the information contained in just these seven lines of text. Let me get this straight…the Kingdom of God is the opposite of what society tells me I should want, more valuable than anything, that I should be willing to sacrifice everything to get it, that it is not my job to judge who is in, it is already here and my job is to help bring it about, which I can actually do through small and seemingly insignificant actions? “RIGHT”
This simply doesn’t make sense, but perhaps that is my missing lectionary thread, that as Thomas Merton said, when it comes to the Kingdom of God, “we are like a man riding on an ox, looking for an ox”. Or in SoCal terms the Kingdom of God is like looking for my sunglasses when I am wearing them on top of my head. While it may be easy to see what to do to create the Kingdom of God, it is not necessarily easy to do it.
God is calling me and you, God is calling us to do it, through small acts, through our everyday lives, to bring about the Kingdom of God, because God doesn’t wait for the existence of perfect people to bring about God’s plan. We see this in the story of Jacob, Laban, Leah and Rachel, those who the whole of Israel came from, those who we come from. God only created us, those who are perfectly human, with warts, smelly feet and a total inability to be perfect in anything no matter how uselessly we try, as God’s playmates and co-creators.
Jesus wouldn’t tell his stories about heaven referencing farmers and their fields, women who bake bread, merchants who buy and sell, and fisherman who sort fish “unless he meant somehow to be telling us that the kingdom of heaven has to do with these things, that our treasure is buried not in some exotic far off place that requires a special map but that “X” marks the spot right here, right now, in all the ordinary people and places and activities in our lives.” (Barbara Brown Taylor) Jesus wouldn’t tell us these stories in our language if he didn’t believe that we were entirely capable of creating the Kingdom of God, because God created us just for this purpose! And nothing is going to separate us from the love of God, nothing!
So I wonder, what is keeping you from building the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth “as it is in heaven”? I wonder how are you going to make a single step towards that Kingdom when you walk out the doors of this church this morning? What are the small, insignificant actions that are your mustard seed and your leaven this week? For the only way that the Kingdom of God will ever exist is if we help God to create it. The Kingdom of God is not out there, it is here and we have all the skills and tools to create it and that is what we were created for, to help God finish God’s creation. Amen!