josephholubsermons
June 26, 2011 -
Pent 2
Matthew 7:21-29
(you can copy and paste this into a word document - remember to change the font to black)
A Whole New World
"Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of
heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father..." - Matthew
7:21
These difficult and
stern sounding words of Jesus may cause us to wonder or squirm a bit in
our seats. To whom might
Jesus be referring when he
admonishes,
"Not
everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my father..."
To gain insight
into this passage from Matthew
we must understand
what is meant by the phrase
“kingdom of heaven.”
“Kingdom of Heaven” is a
phrase only
used in Matthew’s gospel.
In Mark and Luke the same phrase is translated
“kingdom of God.”
It is just that Matthew’s faith community was almost
exclusively Jewish.
The Jews had such a
deep respect for the
name of God that many felt they could not even
speak the name of God
out loud. Mark and
Luke’s communities were far more diverse in their constituency and
included many more non-Jews and gentiles, so it was not as big an issue.
But for Matthew’s Jewish based community, it was a
big deal.
So, when Matthew composed his gospel he was careful to
substitute the word
“heaven” for those places that the other gospel writers used the word
“God.” In other words
“kingdom of heaven” and “kingdom of God” are the same thing.
So
what then is the
kingdom of God (or heaven) as the case may be?
For Jesus, the gospel writers and the Jewish understanding of
reality, the kingdom God (or heaven) was
not a reference to an
afterlife or a place that we go to after death; some place
up there or
out there removed and
separate from this world and this plane of existence.
As simply as I can put
it, the Kingdom of God (heaven) is the Divine intention for
this world;
God’s vision for
this world. The
Jews thought of it as an age
yet to come, but it would happen
in this world.
Jesus picked up on that when he taught his disciples to pray,
“Your kingdom come on earth...”
(right here-right now)
It’s a prayer for God’s vision
and intention for the world to
burst into reality right now
– among us – in us - on this miraculous spinning
blue ball of life racing through
the void of space.
In both Mathew and
Mark’s gospel Jesus began his public ministry with these significant
words, “The Kingdom of God
(heaven) is at hand.”
(“at hand”, not far away, not a
place somewhere else, not yet to come, but
“at
hand.”) The early
followers of Jesus experienced him in their
present reality as the
future coming kingdom of God. They
experienced Jesus as what God intends for human beings to be; they
experienced, in the way Jesus lived, the way God intends
for the world to be.
Jesus’ message was
not entirely new – not
at all. Jesus was deeply
grounded in Israel’s social prophets.
Much of his message was derived from his knowledge of Israel’s
social prophets. For both the
Old Testament prophets and
for Jesus, it was a message of
a whole new kind of world.
Jesus arrived on the scene
announcing the kingdom of God, this whole new world,
had arrived.
You could say, the future was moved into the present; then is
now; there is right here. Luke
reports in his gospel that Jesus was once asked when the Kingdom of God
was coming. Jesus responded by saying,
“The kingdom of God is among you”
(now).
While convalescing from
my recent surgery I listened to a lot of music.
Certain music, for me, is healing, therapeutic, inspiring - makes
my spirit soar. One source
I used was youtube.com
because every type of music genre is available there.
You know how it is when you surf the net, one thing leads to
another and one day I somehow got listening to, of all things,
Disney animated film theme
songs. I happened to click
on the theme song from Aladdin,
“A Whole New World.” (you may remember the song)
As I listened closely to the
words of that beautiful song, they captivated me.
It occurred to me that the many of the lyrics are applicable
to Jesus’ announcement, embodiment and description of the kingdom of God
– a whole new world.
Of course, the song is
sung by the street urchin Aladdin and princess Jasmine who are
falling in love.
The promise of the song is that their love would
paint the world new
for them – their love for each other would
provide a whole new
perspective on reality and a
new way to live out
their lives.
But isn’t that just the
point? Isn’t that what love
always does? If you have
ever been in love, you know.
Love, when we find ourselves swept up in it, always gives us a
whole new perspective on life and reality.
It is from inside of the experience of love that new hope and
new purpose come to us as a gift and create a whole new world.
Let’s explore a few of
the lyrics, and I will illustrate what I mean.
“I can show you the world…
(sang Aladdin to Jasmine, and we could metaphorically say
Jesus to us)
I can open your eyes…”
And of course, that’s exactly what Jesus did; not only giving
sight to the physically blind, but a new set of eyes to those who were
blinded by hatred, prejudice, greed, ego, fear – so they could finally
see the endless dimensions of the
divine profoundly close even the faces of the last the least and
those that religion and power and rejected and judged unacceptable.
“A whole new world…
A new fantastic point of view…”
And of course, the kingdom of heaven provides us with just that – a
“new fantastic point of view.”
The kingdom of heaven calls upon us to live with the
world view of Jesus –
a new fantastic point of view. It’s a point of view that say says “no”
to injustice of any kind; “no” to oppressors who prey on the vulnerable;
“no” to the powerful who prey on the weak; and “no” to the those wealthy
who ignore the needs of the poor; and says yes to inclusive love,
compassion and economic justice, and grace.
“A whole new world…
A dazzling place I never knew…”
Jesus lived as if all the boundaries and barriers that existed between
people, to keep people apart and fearful of one another and many people
excluded, didn’t exist.
When religious law became oppressive and suffocating, he trumped
it with compassion and grace.
He challenged and invited people to move from a strict religion
that had become obsessed and top-heavy with law into a spirituality of
compassion and grace.
“A whole new world…
Don’t you dare close your eyes
(around) every turn a surprise…”
He shocked and
surprised many when he took the swords out their hands
even in the face of enemies and oppressors.
He said that peacemakers were the blessed and taught them that
the way of the kingdom of God was love for the enemy and prayer for
those who were persecuting them.
As I said earlier,
Matthew’s faith community was overwhelmingly made up of Jewish
constituents. That meant their lives were based upon the Torah – the
sacred religious law that had been passed down to them from generations
before. In the lesson from
Deuteronomy we see how seriously
they took the law.
The lesson alludes to sincere ways they tried to keep the law
central in their daily living.
They sometimes placed a scroll in a small cylinder and attached
it to the doorpost of their houses.
Men sometimes used to wear small leather pouches containing
verses from the Torah tied to their foreheads or arms.
These were all attempts to
embody the Torah in their
hearts.
Matthew
presented his faith community with a whole new challenge –
a whole new world.
He was declaring that the life of faith was no longer about
embodying a set of laws; laws that sometimes had become narrow,
confining, suffocating, static and even dehumanizing.
The life of faith was no longer about embodying an impossible set
of laws numbering in the hundreds – some 613 in actuality. It was no
longer about embodying laws
but about embodying a life –
the life of Jesus!
The earliest followers
of Jesus shaped their individual lives and community life around their
experience of his life. They
experienced Jesus as a living
presence in their very beings. Jesus’ life was so
profound and so
impacting that his
life and his being had become indelibly imprinted on their lives and
their beings. What some had experienced in Jesus while he was alive, had
now taken up residence
in them after he was gone. But for them
he was not gone. For
them, he was alive and they continued to experience him in the depths of
their beings. The very presence of the Divine,
experienced in the human life of
Jesus, now resided in them, so much so, that Jesus was now a
dynamic inner reality.
As they were swept up in his life and his love the kingdom
of heaven became a present reality – and it was
a whole new world.
"Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of
heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father..." - Matthew
7:21
This is not a passage
about God excluding anybody.
The only way we are excluded from the experience of the kingdom
of heaven right now, is if we
exclude ourselves.
As long as we hold on to things like fear, or prejudice, or greed, or
self-indulgence, or indifference to suffering, or hatred of others, or
exclusion of others, or harsh judgment of others, the kingdom of God
(heaven) will be intolerable
for us; we will resist it; perhaps despise it and just opt out.
The words of the song continue towards conclusion:
“A whole new world -
new horizons to purse - I’ve come so far.
I can’t go back to where I
used to be.”
The kingdom of heaven
always challenges us to grow
beyond where we are into new dimensions and expression of love and
compassion. That’s the way
it is with Jesus and the kingdom of heaven.
If you dare but take a few steps in following him – and embody
his life even faintly and feebly in yours – you risk experiencing the
kingdom of heaven right now.
When that happens you too may even join in the song and with
conviction declare,
“I’ve come so far.
I can’t go back to where I used to be.”
I offer a prayer:
Spirit of God, we know that Jesus taught much about the kingdom of
heaven, not as a reality of another place somewhere else; but a reality
right here and now. Like
oxygen for us or water for a
fish, he insisted it was here, among us and upon us.
He lived and spoke as if the whole world was a thin place, with
endless dimensions of the divine profoundly close, with every moment,
every location, every life, containing another experience of the divine
reality all around us, under us, above us and in us.
May we have the courage and resolve to embrace his life as he has
embraced us so that we might be shaped by and share the kingdom of
heaven, a whole new world, with others.
Amen.