The Impossible Kingdom

Last week and this week we have amazing images from the Book of Isaiah. The people of Jerusalem, including Isaiah, knew the Assyrians were about to take control of the country, they knew that the City was about to be destroyed. And much of the Book of Isaiah is about the coming destruction. Yet, every so often amongst the despair, Isaiah includes a promise from God about the future, a hopeful, peaceful future. Last week we heard about a kingdom of peace, a kingdom of hope; a place where bombs are turned into ploughs, and there is no war. This week we hear of the coming kingdom where the calf and the lion, the leopard and the kid, the wolf and the lamb, live together in peace and harmony. 

This kingdom is one where aggression, power and greed do not rule. This is a kingdom where the vulnerable are not oppressed, where the small do not fear, where the weak are not overpowered.

Sounds like a dream, as last week’s Isaiah passage. A dream, especially when you have Assyria breathing down your neck.

A kingdom where the strong do not devour the weak; a kingdom where the rich do not enslave the poor, and everyone can live.

Does this sound like the world we live in?

We have lived with fear, anxiety, violence and greed for so long they seem normal. It can be difficult to imagine an idyllic world as Isaiah describes.  We have lived so long in abnormal, harmful, life denying ways, that we no longer recognise them as abnormal. The abnormal has become normal for us. As it has been for  many years.  We become so accustomed to people who are rich have all they want, while people who are poor make do with dirty water and lack of medical treatment and educational opportunities. Even in Australia, the amount of money you have makes a difference to the available choices in health, education, living and working conditions.

And Jesus came into a similar scene of inequality, where status was based on gender, age, and family background. He didn’t say, women are equal with men, but he included women in his friends and allowed them to minister to him. Jesus didn’t say children are important, he put his arms around them and reminded people that you need to be child like [note not childish!] to be in the kingdom of God. Jesus didn’t say gentiles are of equal value with Jews, but he healed both Jews and gentiles. Jesus broke lots of barriers, eating with sinners, tax collectors, being touched by those who were ritually unclean, telling the disciples not to respond to violence with violence in the garden of Gethsemane.

Jesus didn’t kill anyone, didn’t strike anyone down with lightning. Jesus did not take on the Roman army or the religious and political leaders in any kind of takeover.  Jesus did not impose his way of living on others; what he did was to show how to live in God’s kingdom here and now. Jesus showed that the Kingdom may seem like an impossible dream, but it is possible to live in peace, harmony, bringing life and health, healing and hope, peace and joy to a broken world, we see that in the life and death of Jesus.

Should he have been more careful? Would it have been better to come with fire and an army than the towel and the basin, better than the bread and the cup? With his life and death, Jesus gave us a window on the peaceable kingdom. For a while it seemed like the forces of evil, of domination and death, had won. Jesus was dead. They had not figured on a life stronger than death.

We live in a broken world. We are broken people in a broken world. It is a struggle to live peace and hope and justice in a  world that values greed, in a world that decides who wins by the amount of money or the size of the army. It is a struggle.

I came across a poem this week about being in church:

Why are we here?

We are not here to “do a bunk” from the world.
We are not here to “get in touch with our ‘inner selves’”.
We are not here to “recharge our batteries”.

Why are we here?

We are here because the world is not right,
because we are not right,
and because we are angry about injustice,
sad about suffering,
and ashamed of ourselves.

Why are we here?

We are here because God so loves the world
that he is making it right,
turning it into a new creation;
and because God so loves us
that he is making us right.
turning us into a new people,
making us like Jesus:
faithful, truthful, peaceful, hopeful.

We are here because God, in his grace, has called us here.*

John the Baptist came teaching, preaching and baptising. John called people to prepare, to repent, to bear fruit worthy of repentance. And John it clear that he was preparing the way for another, a greater person than he was, one who brings the Holy Spirit and also brings judgement.

We wait , still, for the coming kingdom, for the kingdom Isaiah wrote about, the kingdom that Jesus lived, we wait.

 We wait for God's reign and God's ways to be normal. we wait for peace, community, compassion to be normal. we wait for an end to greed and fear and oppression.   As Jesus lived and travelled he didn't take on armies of Rome, he didn't try and overthrow the Jewish authorities or the political authorities, what Jesus did was to heal the sick, to bind up the broken hearted, to open the eyes of the blind, he fed the hungry, he included the outcast, and these are the things that will bring to fruition the vision of Isaiah. when these things become normal, when being compassionate and generous are normal then oppression and fear will end and we too can live in God’s shalom.

* http://virtualmethodist.blogspot.com/2010/11/call-to-worship.html adapted slightly