a sermon on 1 Samuel 8:4-20; 11:14-15 and Mark 3:20-35
preached on June 10, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone
The Bible is full of stories that sometimes just don’t seem to fit with our way of life. I’m not necessarily talking about the way that some suggest the Bible recommends that we treat women, gay and lesbian persons, or anything like that – those stories and words we will deal with another time. But I’m thinking more about stories like we the two we heard today that call into question the structures and practices of our world. I’m thinking about biblical words that suggest that maybe our human institutions don’t have the last word and instead demand a different way of looking at things because God is involved.
This different way has a lot of names, but I think the best one for us is what we just sang about: the kingdom of God. While kingdoms may seem very different and distant from us, a relic from an earlier time and way of life, God’s kingdom is not. God’s kingdom is still a real and present idea for us. It shows us that God has a new and different way in mind for us and our world. The idea of God’s kingdom reminds us that even our best ways of ordering political life don’t get anywhere near God’s ways. You see, God’s kingdom is different, as our song insists: it is a way of justice and peace and joy, guided by the Holy Spirit, opened not by our own action but by God’s amazing and plentiful grace that welcomes us and all people to share in this great gift.
The kingdom of God is justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Come, Lord, and open in us the gates of your kingdom. – words and music from the Taizé Community
We didn’t hear the kingdom of God directly named in our readings this morning, but both of our texts today from the Lectionary direct us to think carefully about it and its reality in our world. In 1 Samuel, we hear about the process leading up to the appointment of Saul, the first king of Israel. The people went to Samuel, the trusted prophet who had been speaking to them, and demanded that he give them a king. Apparently the leadership of the priests and others in power was not enough for the people – they wanted to be like everyone else and have a king. Samuel, though, was a bit concerned about the idea. He prayerfully approached God with the people’s demand, and God shared Samuel’s concern.
To God, the issue was even bigger than them just trying to be like everyone else – God was certain that the people were rejecting God’s leadership of them, just as they had done so many times before, even after God had brought them out of Egypt and given them the joy of the promised land. Even so, God told Samuel to go ahead and give them the king that they so desperately wanted – with an appropriate warning of everything that that would bring.
Unlike the gracious and generous ways of God’s kingdom, the king of this kingdom would raise up an army and conscript young men from across the land to serve, often against their will. This king would make the whole economy of the nation and the land an engine to drive war, and everyone would be consumed with the drive for more and more power. This king would claim the best of everything – the best servants, the best land, the best vineyards, the best livestock – and make it his own.
But even after all these warnings, the people still wanted a king. Every other nation had one, so why shouldn’t they? This king would govern them – and fight their battles for them. They wouldn’t have to do anything anymore.
So, resigned to their demands, Samuel anointed Saul to be king over Israel. Saul was no gracious ruler, and his kingdom was never as wonderful as the people thought it would be, but God’s promise of a different kind of kingdom remained sure.
The kingdom of God is justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Come, Lord, and open in us the gates of your kingdom. – words and music from the Taizé Community
But then his family appeared on the scene, and Jesus turned the ways of the world on end all the more. When people told him that his mother and his brothers had come to see him, he acted like he didn’t want anything to do with them. He ignored their pleas to come out and see them, then he actively dismissed them, suggesting that his mother and his brothers were not all that important after all and that those who sat around him, listening to his words and acting on his instructions, were his real mother and brothers and sisters. Just as the human kingdom shouldn’t have mattered to the people of Israel, so his human family didn’t matter to Jesus. What did matter were the people who understood that there was something new and different going on and who were willing to take a chance, set everything aside, and follow him. The kingdom of God that he was seeking called not for enhanced understanding of human family but rather an extension of justice, peace, and joy to all creation, and God’s promise of a new way was sure.
The kingdom of God is justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Come, Lord, and open in us the gates of your kingdom. – words and music from the Taizé Community
So if the way of God in these stories is quite different from what we expect it might be, what is the way of God for us, now? We have been singing the truth – the kingdom of God is justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit – but translating those beautiful words into a way of life for us is not easy. All indications are that God’s way is very different from our own. God wanted the people of Israel to avoid the governance of the world and the trouble of a king and instead follow in God’s reigning ways and trust that God would lead them well. Jesus didn’t walk in the traditional path of care and concern for his family, but instead he insisted that his definition of family was broader than what everyone around him was assuming as he called his followers his brothers and his sisters.
Perhaps, then, it is important for us to stop making assumptions about what is God’s way and start listening for what really is before us. Maybe God’s way is very different from what we expect. Maybe God’s way is less about keeping certain people out or correcting certain behaviors than it is about making a new way for everyone. Maybe God’s way is not one political candidate or another but a different, more faithful way of everyone living together. Maybe God’s way is not about preserving a traditional cultural definition of family but about affirming all those places where God is making things new in the variety of human relationships. And maybe God’s way is not trying to replicate the way we see things in the Bible or the way we have lived them before but trying to live faithfully and hopefully in the midst of our changing world.
At the core, I think this is the kingdom of God, the way of God, the new creation of God, coming into being in our midst, when justice becomes real for everyone, when peace is not just a hope for the future but a present reality, when joy is not just for a few and not just for the future but is real and full and complete and now.
The utter and complete and full otherness of God may be on display today, but the good news of all this is that this way of life can and will be ours, for the time when all this will be real is coming. The kingdom of God is coming into our midst. We have its first marks in the life of none less than Jesus Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit it can and will be ours. So may we keep praying and hoping and singing, for the promise of a new way is sure.
The kingdom of God is justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Come, Lord, and open in us the gates of your kingdom. – words and music from the Taizé Community