State of the Kingdom

This was first preached on November 20, 2005. There has been some updating.

Back when the History Channel presented history, I watched a 4 hour documentary on the crusades. Some historians think Pope Urban II dreamed up the first crusade at least in part as a way to stop so-called “Christian” princes from fighting one another. He hoped to redirect their energies towards liberating Jerusalem from the Muslims and making it safe for pilgrims to visit. If so, this pope never heard that saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. As it was, the road to Jerusalem was awash in the blood of countless Muslims, Jews, and even Eastern Orthodox Christians, slaughtered by zealots assured that God sanctioned the enterprise. The resulting crusader kingdom lasted for less than 100 years. None of the subsequent crusades were able to retake the Holy Land.

I thought of this shameful episode in the history of the church when reading today's gospel passage from Matthew 25. I was struck by a phrase I hadn't paid much attention to before. The Son of Man says to those on his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you...” (v. 34) The reason it intrigues me is that, contrary to what the crusaders set up, the kingdom of God is not a place. It's not heaven either. “The kingdom of God,” Jesus tells us, “is within you.” (Luke 17:21) It can also be translated “The kingdom of God is among you.” It is not a temporary, external location; it is a state of being, an internal and eternal way of living. It is God reigning in the heart of the Christian.

And that means the preparation of the kingdom is not done to some place but to someone, namely, you and me. And what does the preparation consist of? After reading this passage from Matthew, you might conclude that it consists in following the rules Jesus articulates in judging people: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the immigrant, visit the sick, etc. But it's not quite that obvious. Because rules, however good, can't make people good.

First of all, nobody can follow all of the rules all of the time. We can try but our desires, our fears and our flagging intentions work against us. In a documentary on users of crystal meth, a doctor told a teenage girl in the E.R. that unless she stopped using the drug, she would never live to see the age of 30. So she stopped. But she admitted that if her mom was away and her friend offered her some meth, she'd probably use it again. She didn't really want to change, even with death on the line. I've personally seen this attitude. When I was a home health nurse, I had a patient who could barely breathe because of emphysema. She was on continuous oxygen. And somehow she got enough tubing for her nasal cannula, about 25 feet of it, that she could reach the door of her room. So she would stand outside the door and smoke! She knew that having a flame near the source of the oxygen could cause a deadly explosion. She also knew her smoking had caused her emphysema. But she wasn't going to change.

The finest doctors and nurses in the world can't save someone who doesn't want to make the necessary changes. Neither can God. He won't force people to accept him and so he can't save those who won't let him in and let him work. As C.S. Lewis once said, the doors of hell are locked from the inside.

But even if people are motivated to obey the rules and obey them scrupulously, it doesn't actually make them good. How many terrorist bombings took place in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's reign? Next to none. Do you think that was because the people were more virtuous under him? Of course not. The things we saw after he was deposed—the ethnic and religious divisions, the impulse to strike out rather than reach out to those who were different, the greed and arrogance and rage—were there all along. Hussein's oppressive rule just kept a lid on all that. Once he was removed, the festering hatred and rage exploded. It wasn't love of morality that made them follow his rules; it was fear of mortality by him. Rule-following can only go so far, especially if it is done out of fear. It can't make you a good person.

This may surprise you. After all, Christianity has rules. And many of the rules are similar to those of other religions. This has given rise to the superficial idea that all religions are alike. One difference is that the rules serve a different function in God's kingdom. We don't follow the rules in order to be good; we follow them out of the goodness within.

To understand this paradox, we must approach the problem from another direction. We've established that the rules can't make anyone good. So what can? Only God. God alone can redirect our desires, calm our fears, and transform our minds and hearts. And it is transformation that we need, not more rules.

So how does he transform us? First, we have to want to change. And that's hard. We don't want God to start tinkering with us. We're afraid of what we'll become. That's because we've bought into the lie that goodness isn't a positive trait but a lack of either courage or experience or the capacity for fun. Our popular culture tells us that good people are dull and pleasure-deprived. Reality tells us differently, if only we listen.

Countless studies tell us that in general marriage is a good thing. Married people tend to be happier, healthier, live longer and have sex more frequently. But someone from another planet, monitoring transmissions from our TV broadcasts, would think that marriage is some sort of sado-masochistic relationship. Sadly, this is because writers find bad marriages easier to mine for comedy or drama. Depicting a good marriage realistically requires more skill. But we are inundated with the idea that marriage for most people is either a joke or a tragedy.

Again studies show compassionate people are happier. Sophisticated entertainment depicts them as dupes. What passes for heroes in movies these days are so ruthless and cynical that they make Dirty Harry look like Mr. Rogers in comparison.

Innumerable studies show that religious people tend to be happier, healthier and more successful in life. Books, TV and movies depict us as either delusional, judgmental, dangerous or all 3.

If we want to be transformed and prepared for the kingdom our next step is to trust God and really open up to him. It's difficult and it doesn't happen all at once. In the process of trying to follow Jesus and become more Christlike, you will stumble and fall and have to start over from time to time. But the transformation, whether sudden or gradual, is real. A non-Christian man said of his ex-addict sister that she was such a different person now that it must be her faith in Jesus. He had no other explanation.

Are there those who fall from grace and lose their faith? Of course, just as there are rehab patients who drop out of treatment. That doesn't negate the reality that the patients who stick it out get healed.

Are there phony, untransformed “Christians”? Of course, just as there are counterfeit $100 bills. Nobody counterfeits $1 bills because they are not worth it. People only counterfeit what's valuable. It's the same with Christians; the existence of phonies just underlines how powerful and attractive the genuine article is.

The next step in the process of being prepared for the kingdom is to get acquainted with God. You do this in 3 ways—by prayer, by reading the Bible and by meeting with other Christians.

Prayer is as simple as a conversation. You tell God what's on your mind—your hopes, your worries, your failures and the things you're grateful for. Just look at the Psalms. Then listen for him. Don't expect to hear the voice of Charlton Heston in your ears. Expect something along the lines of the “still, quiet voice” Elijah encountered in the wilderness. (1 Kings 19:12-13) God speaks through our hearts and minds.

And how do you know that you aren't just talking to yourself? Some awfully odd people have said that God told them awfully odd things which sound either silly or scary. That's why you need to check things against the Bible. It contains 66 books by more than 40 authors detailing people's encounters with God for more than 2000 years. In it we get a complex but consistent portrait of a God who is both holy and loving, demanding but forgiving, trustworthy but still surprising, whose moral character never changes, though his responses to various circumstances do. Sure, there are passages that are difficult to fit in with others, but it is amazing how often apparent contradictions are resolved by noting different contexts. For instance, when growing up, and especially during adolescence, my children have told me both that they love me and that they hate me. Were they severely conflicted in their feelings for me? Or was it just that sometimes they liked what I did or said and other times they were either angry or sarcastic with me because I forbade something or punished them for doing something foolhardy or wrong?

Also ask if something in the Bible is intended as an example of what to do or what to avoid. And ask if something is meant to be taken literally or figuratively. I find it interesting that people who like to point out what they see as contradictions in the Bible often resort to being as unreasonably literal as the people they criticize.

The key to understanding the Bible is in 1 John 4:8: “God is love.” If you love someone and they are in danger, you will cajole, warn, plead, reason and do all kinds of things to save them—even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice. The overwhelming majority of what God says and does is explained when you realize how much he loves us and how much he is willing to do to save us from ourselves.

I saw an example of this way of reading a text when I played a detective in a play which quite frankly had even the director baffled by its apparent contradictions. The first act read like Agatha Christie, with a dead body and several characters to be interviewed. But the second act, which contained the mystery's solution, read like Monty Python. In addition, neither I nor my leading lady could make heads or tails of our relationship. She was the prime suspect and throughout 90% of the play I was badgering her about her alibi. But by the final curtain, we were suddenly in love. Very close to opening night, the actress asked me if I knew why we ended up together; she didn't. I pondered it and the next day, while running through my lines, it hit me. It didn't make sense if we fell in love at the end of the play, but it did if we fell in love at the very beginning. When we played the scenes that way, everything else fell in place. Instead of me trying to trap her into confession, I was trying to urge her to give me the information I needed to exonerate her. Instead of trying to evade my questions because of her guilt, she was trying not to divulge facts that sounded so crazy I would think she was making them up. Our confrontations became more like lovers' quarrels. The change in tone softened the contrast between the classic mystery of the first act and the increasingly bizarre solution in the second act. Mind you, no words were changed, just the way they were said by us and the intent behind them. It was no longer a murder mystery with a bit about love tacked on at the end; it was a love story all along. We found the true spirit of the play.

Ultimately the most important part of being transformed into a person being prepared to be a part of the kingdom of God is embodying the Spirit of God. We have all heard the words of God spoken in the wrong spirit, one of hatred or self-righteousness or hypocrisy, and we have seen the damage done by that. Many have turned away from Christ repelled by counterfeit Christians, who say and do things Jesus explicitly told us not to. But we have also seen the great good that can be accomplished when the word of God was proclaimed and acted upon in the right Spirit. And the fruit or results produced in those living in the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Remember what we said about how rules were powerless to make people good? If, however, people are already good, and if they understand the Spirit behind the rules, then the rules become expressions of that Spirit. God prepares the kingdom for us by preparing us to be the kind of people who don't need to be told that hungry people should be fed, thirsty people should be given a drink, naked people should be given clothes, immigrants should be welcomed, and the sick and those in prison should be visited. And the way we learn that is by living among Jesus' brothers and sisters, all the while looking for and serving Jesus in each other. God is love and we cannot learn to love if we keep to ourselves. We have to interact with people as flawed and as frustrating as we are. And as we get the knack of loving others, the kingdom grows within us and among us, revealing God to us and through us. And we realize that the kingdom is not some other place in some future time but it is here and now and always has been, wherever 2 or 3 gather together in the Spirit of the love that creates and redeems us.