The kingdom in our midst

Luke 17: 20 – 25

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 25 Nov, 2007

TODAY, AUSTRALIA’S direction for the next four years has been determined. What it will mean for Australian politics, I don’t know. But I do know who rules the world.

Governments come and go, but God’s kingdom is forever. Never forget that.

I often found cause to criticise Keating, particularly on globalisation. But I didn’t despair, because God’s kingdom is forever.

There was an enormous amount to criticise in the Howard Government: the injustices, the loss of rights, the racism, the brushing aside of scandal after scandal. But I didn’t despair — because God’s kingdom is forever. Even when they attacked the Churches so often for speaking out, I kept up my hope, because God’s kingdom is forever.

Any Government gets lots of chances to do wrong when it has 11 years to do it in. All power corrupts, and the power of corruption spreads more widely through the political body, the longer it remains unchecked. Yet is all lost? Never — because God’s kingdom is forever!

And whatever the future brings us, good and bad together, even that will not defeat us, nor silence us, because God’s kingdom is forever.

Look at the world today, See all the injustice, all the misery, all the cruelty. You don’t have to look far. There is evil and injustice in Burma, but, in our own small way, we do evil in our own country. We look at mistreatment of minorities in Iraq and say how horrible it is; but what is happening in our own land, among the aborigines? Do we think about Cornelia Rau or that Tony Tran case which is still playing out?

The Eve of Destruction was a popular song in the late 1960s by Barry Maguire. It warned,

Think of all the hate
There is in Red China
Then take a look around you
At Selma, Alabama
You can leave here for three days in space
But when you return it’s the same old place
The pounding of the drum
And the frightened disgrace
Hate your next door neighbour
But don’t forget to say grace
And you tell me
Over and over again my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction

There is evil around the globe. It is like the days of Noah. Things can’t continue this way forever. No place is immune to wrongdoing.

Be angry! Weep over injustice! Cry out for righteousness. But don’t give up the struggle, because God’s kingdom is forever.

Why did these Pharisees want to know when God‘s kingdom would come?

Were they mocking? Did they think that Jesus would say something silly, or give them cause to accuse him?

Or did they think that he might say something seditious, that he might set his vision of God’s kingdom against the Romans?

Or perhaps they were just very like most of us, people longing for God to put everything right, people hungry to see God’s rule re–established in Israel, people thirsting to live as free people in a free, peaceful, happy land.

We all long for God’s kingdom.

You know John Lennon's song, Imagine. Imagine a world of peace, Imagine a world of brotherhood, Imagine a world where people care for each other and do justice.

Think how much he longed for what we Christians — and the Jews before us — expect of the Kingdom of God. But — sadly — he saw religion as a barrier to finding what he dreamt about.

He wanted what we want. He wanted what our world wants. Why has that song been popular ever since it was written? Isn’t it because people long for hope in this world?

But we are different. We have hope. We know that God’s kingdom is forever.

So the Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come.

He replied,

 “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, ²¹ nor will people say, `Here it is,’ or `There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”

The kingdom is within you. Did Jesus really mean to tell people who didn’t yet believe that the kingdom was in their hearts? A better translation of the Greek is, ”The kingdom of God is among you, or in your midst.“

Despite the translation, in one sense, the kingdom of God was in those Pharisees.

They felt alienated, like wanderers far from home, like the Irish singer of Galway Bay,

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland,
Even if it’s at the closing of your days...

People say, “I am away from my homeland, but my homeland is never away from me.”

These Pharisees, as much as you and I, longed for the kingdom of God, longed to dwell in the city of God. The kingdom of God was in them, because they longed for the kingdom.

In that sense, the kingdom of God was in them, and Jesus affirmed that truth.

Blessed are they who who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

In a very similar sense, the kingdom of God is in us, too.

Those Pharisees had the kingdom in their hearts as something yet to come. That is the point of their question. “When will it come?”

We have the kingdom in our hearts as something we already belong to, something we have an experience of, but not fully, not completely. Like the Pharisees, we long for that realm of justice, righteousness and unending covenant love. Unlike them, we know that the kingdom has already arrived and that that kingdom is forever. The King has come; the kingdom is re–established on earth. Whenever justice is done, the kingdom is revealed, and it will endure forever. Whenever righteousness is established, the kingdom is revealed, and it will endure forever. Whenever unending covenant love is manifested, the kingdom is revealed, and it will endure forever.

We sing that old country hymn,

This world is not my home
I’m just a–passing through:
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me
From heaven’s open door,
And I can’t feel at home in this world
 any more.

Isn’t it true? Our treasures are laid up in heaven already, because the longed–for kingdom is already at hand; the kingdom is at hand because Jesus brought it with him; and it is forever because Jesus guarantees it.

I was telling the story of Sally Trench the other Sunday. I heard her interviewed on the radio by Wilfrid Thomas many years ago, and bought her book, Bury me in my boots. Sally Trench was a Catholic schoolgirl when she began working among the homeless men around Waterloo Station near London. She packed sandwiches and cigarettes each night, and sneaked out of her bedroom by climbing out the window and down a tree in the front yard. She’s about 60 now, still caring for the needy.

It’s people like that who are living evidence of the kingdom of God. Out of a sincere belief in Jesus, she began doing what she could to change the world, to make the rule of God through Jesus real to those needy men. She believed and still believes that the kingdom of God is forever. She had the kingdom of God within her, in her heart, and it provided the pattern she has lived by throughout her life.

If we say, “The kingdom of God is within me,” and do nothing to manifest that kingdom in our world, it doesn’t add up, does it?

There’s a saying, “It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

If anyone should believe that and go around lighting candles, it’s we Christians. Jesus was one light in a world of darkness, and he sought the kingdom of God above all else. Now the message of Jesus is heard around the world.

Where will a spark will set off a fire? Martin Luther’s spark of anger about exploitation of the parishioners in Wittenberg became a candle which lit a firestorm to transform Western society. God’s kingdom is forever!

John Wesley was a failed missionary who fled from Georgia at night to avoid being beaten up by angry parishioners. He returned to England despondent and defeated. Then God lit a fire in his heart on that May evening when, as someone was reading from Luther’s preface to his commentary on Romans, Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed and felt he did trust in Christ alone for salvation. God took that candle and changed England through him. God’s kingdom is forever.

Yes — we can have the kingdom of God in our hearts, and it will achieve wonderful things. It provides us with a pattern, a model, and we will desire to make the world fit to that pattern.

Years ago, we were friendly with a German couple in Fairfield. He was from Schwäben, she was from, I think, Hamburg or Köln. Their house was a standard, Western Suburbs fibro cottage. But, as soon as you stepped inside, you entered another world, of German farmhouses, with wood panelling, cuckoo clocks, pious sayings on wall plaques.

They had Germany within them, and they brought everything they could into line with the Germany in their hearts.

In the same way, we, who believe in an enduring kingdom, bring what we can into line with the kingdom in our hearts.

Yet that was only part of what Jesus meant.

God’s kindgom is forever in the hearts of people of goodwill, and that presence is revealed in our actions.

But, as I said before, a better translation is,

The kingdom of God is among you.

That doesn’t remove the aspect of

The kingdom of God is within you

Those Pharisees would have realised that Jesus meant that the kingdom of God was hidden in their midst, like some conspiracy yet to be revealed, like some secret service yet to be deployed.

Later, they might have thought to themselves, “I wonder if he meant that the kingdom is already inside me in some way?” That’s how an ambiguous statement works. The kingdom is forever, but our understanding of it grows and changes.

The kingdom is among you. In the first place, Jesus certainly meant that the kingdom was among them because he was among them. He was saying to them, “If you want to see God’s kingdom, it has begun, because I am here. Look at me, and you will see God’s rule beginning.”

These people weren’t confused. They didn’t think of God’s kingdom as a territory, a piece of land.

They knew that it was about God’s rule, about God interacting positively with the world to bring about justice, to bring about righteousness, to establish peace and love.

God’s kingly rule had arrived, because Jesus had arrived. God’s kingdom was among them, in their midst, because Jesus was in their midst as the coming King.

And God’s kingly rule was in their midst, because an increasing number of people was already coming under his rule, aligning themselves with the reign of God, working together with God in Jesus to re–establish God’s control of a rebellious earth.

God’s rule over human hearts is forever, and his kingdom is forever.

Jesus healed the sick, and re–established God’s control of sickness and health. Jesus restored the lame and the blind and the maimed, and re–established God’s control over injury and loss. Jesus drove out demons, and re–established God’s control over the spirit world. And Jesus died to pay the price of sin, and re–established God’s control over life and death themselves.

God’s kingdom is forever because it’s King died and lives forever more!

Consider conversion. But don’t be satisfied with mere ritual. We Protestants might have rebelled against the extremes of the mediaeval Catholic Church, but why replace the easy–to–see rituals with subtle, hard–to–see ones? We go through the routines. We walk to the front. We shake the preacher’s hand. We kneel at the penitents’ bench. We get baptised. We do all the right things, but are our hearts right?

Paul said we are dead  in Christ and alive to God:

^{ROM 6:3}...don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? ⁴ We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Are we dead together with Christ — or just a bit sick? Are we truly and radically disconnected from this world, or scarcely disconnected from a few bad habits? To represent God’s kingdom in the midst, we have to decide. We have to learn to be distinct from the world and quite clearly associated with the kingdom!

Jesus died to make that separation possible. When Paul said,

Come out from among them, and be separate,

he meant that we are to live as the people we are in Christ — separate from the world because we have died to the world and all its claims.

God’s kingdom is forever; in our midst. By repentance, we reject the world and its claims on us; by faith, we claim the kingdom which is already in reach, because Jesus is in reach.

That was the way in the beginning, it is still the way, and it will always be the way, because God’s kingdom is forever.

The world can be changed, because the kingdom is in its midst — not completely changed, because the rebellious spirit, the spirit of Antichrist, rages and struggles, the closer Judgment comes. But the kingdom is here, and, wherever the light shines out, the darkness will not ultimately overcome it. Wherever justice is done, a candle is lit. Wherever righteousness prevails, a candle is lit. Wherever people truly love, a candle is lit. Wherever community is formed and God’s will prevails, a candle is lit.

We are the light of the world. Are we hidden lights?

God’s kingdom is forever, and God, through Jesus Christ, is calling for men and women to renew their commitment to the kingdom, to live out its life, to trust and never give up hope.He is not seeking people who make resolutions to be better people, but have no room for him and his rule. He is not seeking people who will fight for a cause, but apart from him. But he is definitely seeking men and women, young and old, who will repent, who will believe in Jesus as the King of the entire universe, and who will live under the control of his guiding hand, working to bring all of life under Jesus’ powerful, just rule.

Will we choose today to serve him, and let his Kingdom rule in our hearts?

Let’s pray...

© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)