"Exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the World"

Sixth in a six-part series on The Great Ends of the Church
First Presbyterian Church
Peter S. Buehler
November 18, 2007
Matthew 13:24-33

He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like…"

How many times do you suppose you have prayed the Lord's Prayer? No doubt thousands of times, countless times. Imagine also how often God has answered this prayer of ours: giving us daily bread, providing for our nourishment; granting us forgiveness, empowering us to forgive others; leading us past pitfalls of temptation, keeping us safe from harm and self-harm.

Many times we've prayed this prayer Jesus taught us and said it the same way each time. So also we have repeated the phrase Thy kingdom come countless times. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What do we mean when we say it? What is it we're asking when we pray it?

Not that we should always understand everything we're praying, that's just not possible. But to grow in our understanding, as in our praying -- that is a challenge and a blessing.

The petition of the Lord's Prayer, Thy kingdom come is an invitation to pray and to grow in faith. Because in praying this petition we are saying what Jesus said, believing what he believed, wanting what he wanted -- every time we say Thy kingdom come we are standing beside him praying for a different kind of world than the one we live in today.

But in using his words, Thy kingdom come, we are also making an affirmation that this future kingdom is somehow already visible, already present in him.

The kingdom of heaven. Usually we leave off the "kingdom" part and just speak about heaven. A place where good people go after they die. In 1997, U.S. News & World Report conducted a survey of 1,000 adults who were asked to rate the chances that various celebrities would one day get into heaven. Topping the list was Mother Teresa -- no surprise -- who had not yet died. But the survey's most startling finding was that the individuals most likely to get into heaven were those being polled. 87% felt they were heaven-bound, compared with 79% who thought the same of Mother Teresa.

Our thinking about heaven may say more about us than about God. How often the truth is larger than we imagine. Writer Kathleen Norris tells of a Benedictine sister whose mother lay dying in a hospital bed. She wanted very much to reassure her mother, so she said, "In heaven, everyone we love is there."
The older woman replied, "No, in heaven I will love everyone who's there."

So I wonder if when we pray Thy kingdom come, we're not just asking God to come down some time in the future and make the world right but asking God to help us be today, now, the kind of people we are entirely capable of being, the kind of people the world needs now. I wonder if this petition in the Lord's Prayer is not just about hoping for the future but also about believing in the present.

The sixth Great End of the Church is the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world. A bold statement when you think about it, that the church should model, even exhibit, what God's future will be like. Exhibiting means putting something on display so that everyone can not only look at it but examine it, and comment on it, and critique it. We think of art exhibits, paintings hung at eye level, people walking past with narrowed gaze, deciding which they like and don't like.

The sixth Great End of the Church says that we are the ones on exhibit, and that we accept this level of scrutiny. Of all the Great Ends, this one really pushes us out of our comfort zone -- way out -- and into the public eye.

That we are already there should be no surprise. Also that, according to the Barna Group, a Christian polling organization, "Christianity's image (these days is) taking a turn for the worse." According to a Los Angeles Times story (Oct. 13, 2007), "A decade ago, an overwhelming majority of non-Christians, including people between the ages of 16 and 29, were 'favorably' disposed toward Christianity's role in society. But today, just 16% of non-Christians in that age group had a 'good impression' of the religion."

We're not completely surprised about this either. We've found ourselves disagreeing strongly with the views of some Christian spokespeople quoted in the news. Others' voices with whom we strongly agree, also Christians, don't get quoted in the mainstream press. Perhaps we've been shy about identifying ourselves as believers, not knowing what associations people make when they hear the word.

The sixth Great End of the Church, the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world, challenges us. It challenges our reticence, our desire to keep faith private.
It urges us to go public. Not by shouting but by showing. Living our lives differently; showing by our lives what matters most, who matters most. The kingdom of Christ doesn't need to be forced on people, just exhibited. Displayed.
Not hidden, but lived, openly.

One of the first things students of the New Testament learn is what issues or themes for Jesus were most important based on the number of times he spoke about them. The assumption is that he speaks about most often about love, or faith. They are startled to learn that he is way more interested in prayer, and forgiveness, and, surprisingly, money -- stewardship. But Jesus #1 subject by far in the Gospels in the kingdom of heaven. In Matthew 13 alone Jesus tells seven parables, six of which are about the kingdom of heaven, how it is even now breaking into the present, how his followers are to exhibit it in their lives.

Because it's irresistible! The kingdom of heaven is not just a place, it's a power -- the wonderful and winsome power of grace. When Jesus called his disciples he said Follow me and they did just that. We imagine it was because they were ready for a change in their lives, or that Jesus was such a charismatic person, people just couldn't say No to him. Personally I don't believe either was the case.
I think the disciples were just like us, liking things the way they were, not interested in a lot of changes. I certainly don't believe that Jesus charmed people into following him; on the contrary, Jesus gives people complete freedom to say No to him.

I believe the disciples said Yes to Jesus because in him the kingdom of heaven was so visible and somehow it was irresistible. I say "somehow" because I don't know why some people say yes to Jesus and others don't, why some resist and others don't. I don't know why sometimes in my life I have resisted Jesus, why I have ignored him, why during those times I haven't thought at all about him. For that matter, when I've come to my senses, I don't know why he has shown me grace and forgiveness and not put me off altogether! I've given him plenty of chances.

There is a mystery here that must not be kept secret. How do we make sense of it, this life-transforming kingdom of heaven breaking into our world of sin in the person of Jesus Christ?

He gives us stories and images to make sense of a reality that is high and deep.
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, Jesus tells us, the smallest of seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

We think of Jesus himself, one single person. Then with twelve disciples. Then with a multitude, crowds, a movement. But then at the end a mere few. Then Jesus on the cross, alone. His ministry, Jesus himself, he is the mustard seed.

Then what happened. The seed dies, disappears; silence. How often in life silence is deafening.

Then, suddenly, life -- glorious, joyous, unimagined life! His kingdom is not of this world, Hallelujah! The Jesus movement grows and grows in this world, of all places -- unstoppable -- not because it is forced but because it is so wonderful and so true. And so utterly inclusive of every human being, every race, every social, ethnic, and economic group. The children have it right: Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, underline all and world.

Presbyterian teacher and writer Darrell Guder, in his book on this sixth Great End of the Church, reminds us just how much the world has changed, that today 70% of the world's Christian population is outside the borders of western Christendom -- North America and Europe. We are learning some wonderful things from our neighbors about believing in Jesus! What it means to have so very little and at the same time all you need.

Look at how this mustard seed has grown! Early Christian writers knew well that the word of Jesus -- his gospel, his teaching -- was itself a mustard seed growing in our lives, in our church and our world. St. Jerome, the great 4th century Bible commentator, put the smallness and bigness of this gospel in a picture: it is shallow enough for babies to wade in and never drown, he said, yet deep enough for scholars to swim in and never touch bottom.

Yet the good news of the Savior does not stop with our ears; it is given to us to be exhibited in our lives. It is public information; we communicate what we believe when we do not keep our faith to ourselves but pray to God that somehow we may be shown to live our faith every single day of our lives.

If in heaven we are able to love everyone who is there, then we pray Thy kingdom come and trust that today is the day to show what that looks like. The parable Jesus tells of the wheat and the weeds shows us one way to practice that love.

I love this parable. It pushes my button because I am a gardener and an obsessive-compulsive weed-puller, and Jesus tells those of us who see only weeds -- even when it's just one tiny inconsequential weed among dozens of glorious healthy plants -- to leave them, to leave it, alone! We can hardly stand it!

He's referring, of course, to the weeds that grow right next to and among the good plants. Those who lived in Galilee and heard Jesus speak knew that in fact the roots of wheat were weaker than the roots of weeds, so weeds were left alone.

It's a sobering message Jesus gives, because he teaches that evil grows in the midst of good. Evil exists, and sometimes weeds are indistinguishable from wheat.

So Jesus tells those who follow him, Don't be wheat-pullers. Don't be so zealous to get rid of the bad that you get rid of the good. Be patient. Let God do it. Let God do the separating, the weeds from the wheat. Be patient, focus on the good news, let God do the judging. God's people are those who live in peace.

This is a word to the church, if ever there was one. To exhibit the kingdom of heaven to the world begins with the way we are together, the way we love each other and do not judge each other. The kingdom of heaven is shown in our humility, the fact that we in the church know we make mistakes, our lives are not weed-free, so we make decisions with great care.

We have much to learn. We're always learning how to garden: which plants do best, what they need for growth, when to leave weeds alone.

In the church, we're always learning. Our real learning happens when we take the good news of Christ's kingdom and show it with our lives, in the way we live, in the ways we love our neighbors as ourselves.

For God's power is God's love, and God's love is God's power. Look what happens when even the smallest seeds are planted!