Sermon for March 17 from Matthew 43-48

So…

Forty-Nine people were shot and killed in Christchurch New Zealand this week while at worship in two separate Mosques.

Nine people were shot and stabbed at a school in Brazil in a Columbine style massacre.

Militants in Gaza shot rockets at Israel and Israel bombed Gaza.

In the US, 29 people have died in mass violence since March 1st 2019

Here’s the good news.

The Kingdom of Heaven is not like the day-to-day world we live in!

But here’s the problem.

The Kingdom of Heaven is set in the day-to-day world we actually live in!

In our real world we love folks who love us and sometimes, and sometimes quite violently hate people who don’t.

Well, maybe not hate, may just dislike intensely, say bad things about them, talk smack as it were, and actually do things that potentially make their lives harder.

But it’s alright, because they are doing the same in return.

But Jesus…

Yeah, he’s a problem!

Because, in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is teaching his disciples, followers, the Pharisees and the Scribes, and by extension, us, about God’s Kingdom and what he says is the way of the Kingdom, isn’t really the lives we are living.

The Kingdom it seems is a great place for the fainthearted, weak, broken down, but not so much for those of us who think we’ve somehow got it all together.

Because Jesus in this teaching relentlessly pushes the relational nature of the Kingdom, as opposed to the rules of the Kingdom, and in doing so makes it abundantly clear that it is impossible to be a Kingdom person by simply following the rules.

And it is our human nature to follow the rules, kind of. The Actual reality is, it is our human nature to simplify the rules for us and complexify for others.

I haven’t murdered anyone so I am good.

I haven’t cheated on my wife, so I am good.

Great! However, Jesus seems to suggest that means, that you imagine that God’s kingdom is a place where we all haven’t murdered each other, but want to.

That God’s kingdom is a place where we all want to cheat on each other but don’t.

That it is a place where we are all going around hating our enemies and imagining that God hates them too.

But Jesus makes clear, that is not the nature of the kingdom.
The Kingdom of God is the place where we love our friends and family intensely (which can be quite a challenge) but where we are to also to love our enemies the way God does.

I don’t know about you, but I want to yell, Wait. Wait. Wait.

Nobody told me God was going to love my enemies! Because if God loved me, God would also hate my enemies, just saying.

And if God loved me, even if God felt he had to love my enemies, because say, that’s God’s job…

Or perhaps because they are not God’s enemies…

God would still treat them poorly because of my feelings, and would never, ever, want me to lose face by treating those slimy, no account, dirtbags with love and acceptance.

Because I would prefer a Kingdom made in my image, to my specifications, one that takes into account what I want and need, not what God wants.

Unless, this is all about God’s Kingdom.

This past week at the Wednesday morning Bible Study we were looking at a passage in Luke’s gospel, and the study asked us to identify the “insignificant nobodies” in our community.

So, who are some of the insignificant nobodies?

The study talked about Jesus’ reaction to children, a paralytic, the difference between a Pharisee and tax-collector praying before God, and the rich young ruler who came to Jesus to be “justified”.

In each case Jesus raises up the lowly and pulls down the self-righteous.

Because God doesn’t see us as holier than each other, but rather as all in need of God’s grace, God’s mercy, and most of all, God’s love.

And in that newly graced condition, it becomes us to act like God and love others as God loves them. Like Jesus, forgiving your executioners.

What has happened in New Zealand and Brazil and Gaza and Israel and in all kinds of places around the US makes me angry.

It makes me angry that a person could feel so aggrieved and at the same time so privileged that they believe they have the right to take another person’s life and destroy the lives of countless others who have had their hearts ripped out by the senseless violence, and by their loss of loved ones.

I want to hate that child of God for the evil they have done!

And I think, in my remarkably human condition, that God has no right to love the child of his that has done evil! Bad parenting 101!

Unless that child is me!

And, of course, unless that child is you!
Today we pray for those who have been slaughtered, that God their Heavenly parent, would be merciful.

Today we pray for those who have committed great evil, that God their heavenly parent would be merciful.

Because we are children of the great King, and it is God’s desire that we love each other, even when that is really, really hard, for that child who must face the justice as well as love of God, is our sister or brother. Amen.