July 4, 2004 - Fifth
Sunday after Pentacost
2 Kings 5:1-14
NRSV KJV CEV
Luke 10:1-11, 16-29
NRSV KJV CEV
“Nearer Than You Think”
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost/Independence Day – July 4, 2004
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: 2 Kings 5:1-14/Luke 10:1-11, 16-29]
“ The Kingdom of God has come near to you.”
I enjoy the writings of Annie Dillard, the spiritual writer and nature essayist
who has described herself as “a lapsed Congregationalist.” No
comment, please.
She talks about how we get into the habit of “this is the way we go to church” without understanding what we’re doing, or who we’re encountering when we come here. Dillard has likened Christians at worship with these words, “The churches are children, playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.” [Teaching a Stone to Talk, p. 40] She’s of the opinion that we’d be far better off dressed in hard hats and life vests rather than in good clothes, because if we really ever open ourselves to God’s presence – watch out! Yet, what we hear on the lips of the Seventy is this message: “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” Could it be that God is really among us, right now, right here, and also in the most unexpected places, as well as the most unexpected people? Could it be that the kingdom of God is nearer than we think? I think so, let me tell you why.
First, we have to understand that the kingdom of God is not about a place, but about a relationship. The Greek word basileia really means ‘reign’ or ‘rule’ rather than signifying a territory or a people ruled. So, Jesus is teaching us about what God does rather than about a place where God is. The kingdom of God is about people doing God’s will and welcoming people into a loving relationship, into a community that shows forth deeds that are like God’s.
When Jesus sends out the Seventy, in some translations it’s 72, he’s showing that God’s rule encompasses all of creation. The calling of the twelve disciples had been symbolic of Israel’s special place and role in bringing God’s reign close. Now these Seventy go from being learners-disciples to being apostles- ones sent. What we then see about the kingdom, secondly, is that the reign of God is inclusive.
The Seventy are symbolic of the number of non-Israelite nations in ancient Jewish tradition. The tradition, scholars tell us, was incorporated into an account in the Letter of Aristeas, according to which the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek was carried out in the third century B.C. by seventy translators, hence the name Septuagint, seventy in Greek. This version of the Bible was produced to make it available to a wider Greek-speaking world.
The inclusiveness of God’s reign is also shown to us in the story of Naaman the Syrian. Naaman may have been the George Washington, Ulysses Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, or Douglas MacArthur -- fill in your favorite general -- of his day, but that didn’t keep him from becoming sick with leprosy. Sent to the king of Israel, he ends up outside the home of the prophet Elisha and is asked to do something quite mundane to be cured. “Go,” he is told, “and wash seven times in the river Jordan.” This may seem fairly innocuous to us, but what if you came to me in a similar situation and I told you to go out and was in the Menomonee River? I think you get the point. Only when he humbles himself to do this simple task does healing take place. Then he proclaims that “there is no God anywhere but in Israel!”
The reign of God is inclusive, but to be included we must place ourselves in God’s presence and do what God has called us to do. The story of Naaman shows not only that God is active and healing those outside the tribes that officially honor him –and I would include us in there – but that God’s grace is available and operative in the lives of all who trust God.
God’s reign, then, also has room for the transgressor, for the one who strays from the path. We are reminded all through the Bible and in Christian teaching that if God shows such love we, too, should receive such a one “in the spirit of gentleness.” This goes back to understanding that the kingdom of God is identifying with what God does. I’m reading a book on the history of Christian Spirituality by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, which points out the importance of identifying with what God does in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, one of the great teachers of the early Church. Williams writes: “Gregory determinedly revises the notion so as to direct attention to participation not in what God is, but in what he does. ‘The man who shares with the poor will have his share in the one who becomes poor for our sake.’ ‘Human beings must become what they copy.’ We, like God, are free (and freedom is one of the most important aspects of the image of God in man for Gregory), and free, therefore to forgive as he forgives.” [The Wound of Knowledge, 64-65]
I think it becomes clear here that the kingdom of God is near to us and it is anything but that favorite word of ours: nice. Why do I say that? Because the very word, which has become so much a part of our Christian vocabulary, has varied so much in its meaning that it simply doesn’t work. The notion of nice signifying something pleasant or agreeable only begins to happen in the 18th century. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that for six hundred years prior, the word meant everything from a simpleton or foolish person to one who was lewd, lascivious, or given to inappropriate clothing! It’s not Jesus’ words or the teaching of historic Christianity to “be nice.” We’re to be beyond nice, because the reign of God’s demand that we love as Christ did isn’t always going to be pleasant or agreeable. Remember Dillard and her hard hats? When the kingdom of God comes among us it will shake us up because it will make us truly free.
God, in Christ, invites us to true freedom. Not a freedom from, but a radical, an at the root, freedom to become one with God. It was that kind of quest for freedom that inspired our Pilgrim forebears to leave the comfort of their homes and cross a raging ocean in a tiny ship. They understood, as Gordon Wakefield points out in his work on Puritan spirituality, that union with God is the beginning of the Christian endeavor, not its conclusion. They believe that they had encountered God, been made one with God, and now they were supposed to go and make a nation, and possibly a world, that reflected that same sense of unity and freedom – a freedom to love, a freedom to forgive, a freedom to be different and to make a difference.
It was that freedom to that inspired Governor John Winthrop to preach his famous sermon on board the Arbella as the Massachusetts Bay colonists were crossing the Atlantic. He titled it a “Modell of Christian Charitie” and in it he took off from Jesus’ words in Matthew declaring that the colonists would be like a “citie built upon a hill. . . . the eyes of all nations will look to us.” And so they do to this day, reminding us that our freedom also carries with it a great responsibility to be the people that we say that we are. Sometimes we forget that, we forget what we profess and who we claim to be and in that moment we need to remind ourselves that the kingdom of God has come near to us and is nearer than we think.
I believe that if we move beyond thinking of our faith, or the kingdom of God, as simply nice we will begin to sow seeds of love and inclusiveness that will allow us to accept even those who aren’t nice. If we sow loving actions, actions that aren’t dependent on our conditions or our sensibilities, we will reap a harvest of love and acceptance – a harvest in which we will be included.
To sow loving actions means that we acknowledge the third aspect of the kingdom of God: it is persistent. The kingdom is, then not just a ‘will be’ it is a ‘was’ and an ‘is’ as well. God’s reign begins with creation itself, shows itself in many ways through God’s people Israel, is made personal in the flesh of Jesus Christ – the Incarnation – and continued through the Spirit’s working in you and me. Here is the eschatological tension again, the already, but not yet, that marks so much of God’s dealing with us.
Jesus sends out the Seventy as “lambs in the midst of wolves” to bring the news that the kingdom has come near – tell me what’s nice about that! God’s reign has begun and is already among us in the person of Christ and his persistent witness of love. Those sent are to be persistent in their mission, because God is constantly seeking to know and to love the people made in God’s image and likeness – and there is Gregory’s idea of our being free, as God is, to love and to forgive.
Those who are sent are to continue to proclaim the kingdom, even in the face of rejection. When people turn them away, scorn their message, reject their love, they are still to proclaim the kingdom has come near to them. The proclamation isn’t to show the superior righteousness or knowledge of those who offer it. Rather, it is to come from those who know humility and have experienced unconditional love – who live out deeds that are like God’s, in loving forgiveness.
Sometimes it is difficult for us to appreciate just how close the kingdom is to us. I think it is pretty obvious that the events bombarding us in the daily news reports can certainly serve as a hindrance to seeing just how near it is. As we’ve discovered, Naaman was in the presence and he couldn’t grasp it, until his servant pointed out that the ordinary can carry the holy in it. Jesus walked among his disciples and the people around him, but they didn’t perceive who he really was until they had experienced the Resurrection. The kingdom comes close to all of us in the ordinary people and events of our lives.
We celebrate the birthday of our nation, Independence Day, today. Over the years there have been some who have wanted to develop a “religion of the republic,” or see the American nation as synonymous with God’s kingdom. I think, I hope, we know better. Yet, this day gives us a reason to think about the kingdom coming near to us and the freedom that it brings to us, even in this free land of ours. God shares life with us, invites us into relationship to free us to live and to do as God does – living, loving, forgiving, and embracing as freely as God does. That’s what it means when we talk about the kingdom drawing near to us and it’s far nearer than we think. The kingdom of God is as close as when we live out that freedom God gives.
So, look around you. See those people – the kingdom is coming through them. Close your eyes. Look inside yourself – the kingdom is coming through you. The kingdom of God has come near to us; indeed, the kingdom of God is among us. It is nearer than we think.