Sermon for December 11, 2006 - St James's, Cambridge
Malachi 3:1-4; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6 

By David Cameron

The Great Reversal

Over the Thanksgiving Day vacation, I had the opportunity to do a Lord of the Rings marathon viewing. It's one of the few things that my son and I can both equally enjoy without either one of us feeling like we have to humor the other.

The film concludes with a scene in which a king is coronated. This moment in the movie is very cathartic. Characters have been through unimaginable circumstances together. All that is good appears on the verge of collapse as evil appears invincible, but finally, at the end, the king--the good king--is coronated.

When I first saw that film years ago in the theater, at that moment in the story, I wept, and I wasn't exactly sure why. And I'm not one to weep in films! Usually, if I'm watching a movie and I sense that a tear-jerker moment is approaching, I pull out all my defenses and white-knuckle my way through. But in this instance, I was caught off guard. I couldn't help myself. I sat there in the dark theater and wept.

A few days later I was talking with a coworker, and I mentioned that I had just seen the movie. Without any prompting, she told me that she had wept during that same exact scene. And like me, she's also not a very "sentimental" person.

And then she said something extraordinary to me. She said, "You know, I think I wept for the loss of kings in my life."

I wept for the loss of kings in my life.

What did she mean?

Could it be that all of us, in our most honest, most vulnerable moments, mourn what feels like the loss of some ideal king, or kingdom?

 

I. The Reign of God

This morning's Gospel reading, taken from the Gospel according to Luke, we meet John the Baptist, one of the more colorful characters in the Bible. We know that he wears outrageous clothes, that he can't resist a plate of locusts marinated in honey, but why, exactly, is he there?

John the Baptist, it turns out, is quite literally preparing for the arrival of a king.

In ancient days, when a king was scheduled to show up, emissaries would be sent out first to bring down the mountains, to fill in the valleys. In other words, they made sure the roads were in working order, that the potholes were filled in. The writers of the gospels are very self conscious about John playing that role.

Now, typically, when we think about John "preparing the way," we think strictly in terms of Jesus. John is preparing the way for Jesus--a wonderful theme for advent as we too, symbolically, prepare ourselves for the arrival of Jesus. But I'd like us to broaden that a bit more.

John isn't simply preparing us for the debut of Jesus' ministry, John is preparing the way for something much larger and inclusive.

John is preparing the way not just for the king, but for the Kingdom. John is preparing the way for an entirely new era: the reign of God.

But what is the kingdom of God? It's a term that we hear a lot, and in this day of extreme religious fanaticism, the phrase "kingdom of God" might freak a lot of people out, and for good reason.

So, that raises the question all the more: What is this kingdom?

Now, I can't think of any time where Jesus comes right out and says, "The kingdom of God is ______" He never articulates a clear exposition that defines in precise terms the kingdom of God. Instead, he uses metaphor:

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed

The kingdom of God is like yeast working through dough

The kingdom of God is like a pearl of great price buried in a field

These metaphors are certainly provocative, but they can also be frustrating to those of us looking for something that we can hang our hat on.

But while Jesus may not give us a clear exposition in legal language about the what exactly this kingdom is, his life and ministry show quite a bit about what this kingdom looks like.

A single word that encapsulates the reign of God is "reversal." In fact, the reign of God is "The Great Reversal."

Imagine everything that makes earthly institutions and kingdoms and political structures run well, efficiently, give the best "return on investment," anything that any reasonable person or group would do to gain maximum efficiency. Now, take these principles and shift them into reverse; that's God's kingdom!

Consider the following:

• Earthly kings areborn in palaces, in the cradle of power and luxury, tofamilies with great influence and power and prestige

• Our king was born in the back of a barn because his parents couldn't even get a room in a motel.  

• Who sits at the table of earthly rulers? Well, other earthly rulers! Statesmen, politicians, celebrities. In other words, people who matter, people whose opinions count.

• Who sits at the table of our king? Hookers, crooks, people with infectious skin diseases so horrid and disgusting that they're banished to the fringes of town.

• Earthly rulers are very clear about who their enemies are. You do everything you can to keep the upper hand, and when necessary, simply wipe your enemies out.

• In the kingdom of God, you figure out who your enemies are so you can love them and shower them with prayer.

• Here's an ironic twist: In earthly kingdoms, devotion and conformity to the civic religious institutions is held in high regard, and piety and high moral standing is respected. Throughout history, a dutiful religious observance is the bedrock of society. In fact, nothing in more self-comforting than a high sense of personal morality.

• If the ministry of Jesus is any indication, then nothing--and I mean NOTHING--in the kingdom of God is held in higher contempt than religious posturing. In fact, according to the kingdom that Jesus is establishing, your degree of moralistic religious piety is inversely related to your place in the kingdom. The better you are, the farther you are.

• And this leads to another aspect. Arithmetic in the kingdom of God. You see, if you're reversing all other principles and laws, why not reverse the laws of mathematics! In earthly kingdoms, first is first, and the greatest are great. (I was an English major, but even I can understand that sort of logical deduction).
• In the kingdom of God, first is last, last is first; the greatest is the least, the least is the greatest; and through some sort of cosmic glitch, it is the meek who end up inheriting the earth, while the proud and powerful walk away empty handed. And in the seats reserved for the elders with their decades of experience and knowledge sit the children.   

• But all these great reversals simply whet our appetite for the GREATEST of the great reversals. In earthly kingdoms, if you die, you're dead. In earthly kingdoms, if you lose your life, you've lost your life.Fear of death is the weapon that all earthly powers yield over us, from the most oppressive Stalinist regime to the more innocuous commercial advertisers who try to sell us the illusion that we're all forever 29 years old. Either way, it is fear of mortality that keeps us in line.
• In the kingdom of God, death has been demoted by resurrection. If you want to find yourself, you need to lose yourself. And not onlydo Christians believe that when we shed this earth suit wewill enter into a new and deeper life, but this whole notion of "dying to ourselves" becomes the means by which we're called to live here and NOW. The end becomes the beginning. Death has become birth

Brothers and sisters, it's really, really hard to live in this world but to be OF this kingdom.

For the church it's particularly hard, because the church is an institution that has been commissioned to spread a kingdom whose basic principles are antithetical to earthly institutions.

And it's really hard for us, as individuals, to live in this kingdom, because we spend seven days a week navigating our way through earthy kingdoms and learning the survival rules of earthly kingdoms and when we take a look around we see over and over and over again how POWER alone is rewarded and that the "kingdom of God" seems to work great in poetry and metaphor but fails the test of reality.

 

II. He who began a good work . . . .

Roughly 30 years after the resurrection of Jesus, a man sits in a dank, rat-infested prison cell somewhere in the Roman empire. Turns out he's going to be sitting in this cell for roughly two years. I can only imagine what that was like. Prisons are horrible today, and they were horrible back then.

But while this man is sitting in that prison, he's living in the kingdom of God. He is fully participating in the great reversal inaugurated by Jesus. In fact for him, prison is just another place on this earth where he can share the love of Jesus.

And from this dank cell, St. Paul composes one of the most beautiful, tender-hearted, inspirational books of the new testament, the letter to the church at Philippi, or the book of Philippians.

When I read that letter I'm struck by the fact that he didn't write this at a retreat at some monastery somewhere in western Massachusetts overlooking the Berkshires, but he wrote it from jail. He's in jail and HE'S inspiring THEM. Now THAT'S a great reversal!

You see, Paul understood the Kingdom of God, and he lived in that kingdom. But Paul also understood that it's HARD to live in the kingdom.

And so, in the passage that we read this morning, he says this to the members of the church at Philippi: "I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ."

Traditionally, that's a verse we love to personalize, to read it as though Paul is talking to each one of us individually about our "personal" salvation. But he's writing this to a body of believers. And it is a good work that is being done "among" you, that is, the plural "you."

The "good work" that Paul is talking about is the establishment of the reign of God on earth.

You see, the kingdom that in our deepest and most honest moments we find ourselves longing for, that kingdom whose absence can cause us to unexpectedly weep in some random suburban movie theater--that kingdom is real.

But it's hard to see a mustard seed. It's hard to see yeast, especially when it's still working its way through the dough. And in this world where we are constantly inundated by cheap, disposable pearls, it's hard to suddenly see the one whose value is infinite.

I believe that our problem is not that we're looking in the wrong places or at the wrong things; rather, we need fundamentally new ways to see what's right in front of our faces. We need our very way of seeing to be transformed. And when it's working well, that is precisely the kind of thing that the church community can help us do, provided that the church is founded upon a love so flagrant and all embracing that it's downright scandalous.

And it all begins by simply understanding that the one who is building this kingdom is faithful, and with us, or without us, he will complete it.

Amen