Our Kingdom or God's

Sheri and I are very happy to be back to visit and pray with you all again. This facility has been rightly claimed as a central hub and a meeting place for numerous diocesan programs, classes, and meetings. The church’s structure is classic, the grounds are sanctified and made holy by the countless gifts of the body of Christ, and the community is a reflection of what one wishes to see in a church that treats others as Christ asked us to. So when I’m offered the opportunity to return and participate in your celebrations, I make every effort to share in this experience. We had been looking for a wonderful retreat for the morning, the weather is precisely as we’d love for early October, and time was not an issue. But that was our plan and our little kingdom.
As it were, this is not quite as happy a reunion as we may have wished. God had other plans, ones that involved the loss of some dear friends and family. Other personal events precluded me from paying attention to what I’m supposed to be doing in managing my email, and just a tad forgetful about how some medications interrupt your previously planned agenda. Then, you see, here’s my hiking staff - not relevant to the OT reading dealing with Moses – who proudly carried his about reverently. What this staff represents is the closest thing I have to a cane after a bout with sciatica that put me in the Emergency Room last weekend. What matters most about it though, is that these events, incidents and happenings are all things as viewed by me in my life, in my kingdom. They are not one bit about what God has planned for you and me in His kingdom – in the here and now in what we call “real time.”
Here it’s pointed out in splendor in the Gospel reading of Matthew about the land owner who is preparing for a wedding feast. Everything he needs and wants is planned. All the meals are prepared. The wine is ready. The tables are set. The band is playing. And so he sends out his slaves to pass on the good news that a celebration is in order and all that is needed are people to come along and join in the celebration. Sounds like a plan to me! But not all agree with his plan. Everyone invited is too busy doing their own thing in their own world to be bothered with the good tidings of another. Some go back to their fields and finish farming. Some go back home to their families and businesses. Still others take on horrific acts of torture and murder against the king’s slaves. Who, then, in their right mind would expect the land owner to be anything other than enraged? But even to the point of being filled with enough hatred to send his armies out to kill the invited guests? Here again, this is happening not in God’s kingdom, but in our own created kingdom of self-absorbed and human-made priorities. None of it is about God and what He has created for us in this parallel reality. We see it as a playbill at the local theatre called “Our kingdom now versus the Kingdom of God here and now”. The play continues from ages past, scene after scene, act after act, play after play. The script – the loving mercy and grace of God - stays the same; only we hear the actor’s ad lib their lines to fit things conveniently into their lifestyle and away from the script which appears to be a burden of socializing and patronizing with others.
Now being the well-known man he appears to be, after killing off the original intended guests, he sends more servants out to invite everyone else to his celebration that he may somehow show some kindness. This is where novices such as myself come to a sharp “do I really have to go here?” when a man shows up without a wedding robe and has no answer for why he’s not properly dressed? Perhaps it’s the man’s inability to respond that gets him in the most trouble and hurled back out into the streets to be one with the wailing and gnashing of teeth! Today he might say, “Oh, getting a last minute invitation with my tux in the cleaners left me with only a sport coat and a tie that didn’t match, I’m so sorry, I’ll leave if you want me to! Please pass on my congratulations to the lovely couple!” But the fact of the matter is that the man just showed up and expected to be a participant without preparation of any sort to maybe see if he could get by. That’s all speculation, but trying to pinpoint God’s plan for salvation in extraordinary situations is something theologians have been working on exegesis of for over 2 thousand years. And it may be another thousand or so years that we remain rehashing these parables over and over again until we are able to get past the final notion that perhaps God’s plan and kingdom IS the here and now. And every single one of us IS called. Maybe it’s how we attempt to see His kingdom at work while ours goes on in our own little brain, hashing away why we need to go home instead of attending that one other gathering that is the place we should really be heading instead of into the little world of ours, that is a little cause, that is more important to us in our own kingdom.
Many are called. And few are chosen. Perhaps it is the ones who realize that God’s kingdom contains the good and the bad, the fast and the slow, those who have good intentions and those who are lazy, the giver and the thief, and all things in between. For it’s what we choose to do when we are called, that – according to the Gospel of Matthew – makes the difference whether we continue in our kingdom wailing and gnashing our teeth, or see God’s kingdom and reach out to lend a hand where one is needed.
Recently I’ve been following a few blogs on current events and only my back has prevented me from being present at the rallys and meetings. But my voice is being heard in phone calls to politicians and CEOs and others who need to know what it is the people are going through these days. I’m not urging you to join me in my efforts at that scale, but to continue to do what you see that needs to be done in God’s Kingdom here in this church and community. In the words of the late Bobby Kennedy, ”Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.” I agree with Bobby. Our generation and time is to bring the Kingdom of God into our daily lives and continue doing what we can and must do best: Be the hands, eyes, ears, and voice of accepting to be chosen and allow Christ to act through us to create His Kingdom.
Amen