So today we’re finishing up our series based on our church-wide study I Am a Church Member by talking about the Church and church membership as a gift. Our church-wide study groups just got started this last week, so you can still join a group this week and not miss much. You’ll find a list of our groups and meeting times in the catalog in your pews and also information about signing up.
I distinctly remember that I had to learn the word utopia. No doubt at some point in high school it was one of those vocabulary words that we had to learn to make it through English class. Utopia is a fancy word for a perfect world. As I was trying to think of what utopia might look like to me I was reminded of the movie, The Truman Show, did you see it? This movie director has essentially created a utopia for this guy named Truman Burbank, and everyone knows it but him.Everything is clean, the neighbors are friendly and well dressed, everyone’s polite and the sun always seems to be shining. Now that might not be what utopia might look like to you, but you get the point right? For some people that might look like a perfect world. So think for a second with me what a perfect world would look like for you, use your imagination. No war, no disease, no conflict, no calories. Lots of love and cooperation, lots of joy and peace. Well I bet we were all imagining things a little differently, that’s how utopias go, they’re usually only utopias for one person. In The Truman Show the whole utopia was based around him, what would keep him content and oblivious.
Did you realize that Jesus talked a lot about utopia? Except we don’t call it utopia because utopias are made up, we call it the kingdom of God. And the great thing about the kingdom of God is that it is utopia for all of us. When we imagine utopia we all have bits and pieces of what the kingdom of God would look like. No war? Yeah, I’ll be that’s part of the kingdom of God. No calories? Well, that’s probably more in my utopia. Jesus used all kinds of metaphors and parables to try to show us what the kingdom of God might be like. A mustard seed, a pearl, a farm field, yeast, a gracious king. All pretty cryptic and most of them need a lot of explanation and study to make sense, but one thing Jesus said about the kingdom of God that isn’t quite as hard to understand is that the kingdom of God is already here. It’s already here, but it’s not fully here yet. He says in Luke chapter 17:
“God’s kingdom isn’t coming with signs that are easily noticed. 21 Nor will people say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ Don’t you see? God’s kingdom is already among you.”
I know that I used to make the mistake of thinking that we needed to wait for God to come back in some fiery chariot and destroy a bunch of stuff before things would be the way God wants them. But that’s not what Jesus said. Jesus said the kingdom is already among us. One of the biggest problems with waiting for God in a fiery chariot to bring the kingdom of God is that it lets us off the hook. If we can say nothing’s really going to get that much better until God intervenes, so whybother? then maybe what we do doesn’t matter so much, maybe we just have to ride it out and be on our best behavior so we’re on God’s good side. That’s too small of an idea of God for me. Because God did already intervene in this world, we call him Jesus. And Jesus doesn’t tell us to just hang on and be good people,Jesus insists that we participate in changing the world.
And that brings us to the scripture for today. In this story Jesus knows that he’s going to be killed and he’s trying to prep them a bit. And one of the things that he does is sets the stage for the church. Jesus doesn’t put it this way, but I would say that Jesus gives to us, his disciples, the gift of the church and he gives the gift of the church to the world. An organization, a place, a group of people that among other things work together to bring more and more of the kingdom of God to this world. The church is the primary and the best way to bring more of the kingdom of God to the here and now.
I think we forget this all too often when we think about church, but the church is one place where we can actively practice living like we’re living in the kingdom of God. The church is a place where we can actually create a utopia, God’s utopia, the kingdom of God. The church, this church can be place where everyone can be loved and cared for, where people don’t go hungry, where people are safe, where people can experience God, where people feel whole. The church is a gift to us, followers of Jesus, because it’s a chance to participate in andexperience the kingdom of God, a perfect world, the best place we can imagine. The church is a gift to us because it is a place where we learn what it’s like to live like God wants us to live, it’s a place to practice living like God has already come back, fiery chariot or not.
A lot of times churchy people talk about the inbreaking of the kingdom, those places where the kingdom of God breaks in. And I imagine it kind of like an egg, where there’s this pecking and finally it cracks and the crack starts to spread and the kingdom just oooozes out and covers more and more of the things around it. And I imagine this kingdom ooze gets all over us while we’re here and we take it out into the world with us and we leave it new places and then we come back and get more ooze all over ourselves and then we go back out into the world to leave it some other places and eventually the world around us starts to look different and eventually other cracks break through and the kingdom oozes out there too. I honestly get pumped up thinking about being a part of that.
And that’s the other way that the church is a gift, the church is absolutely NOT about creating a utopia within its walls for its members. It is a gift for its members if it can do that, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s not a country club or a secret society. The church is a gift to the world because the church when it operates as the body of Christ is the main agent for change in this world. We are God’s main agents for change in this world. The church is the body that takes its understanding of the kingdom of God and works to make the world around it look more and more like that. What we do matters. It’s each one of us taking that kingdom ooze to our work places, our schools, our friends, our neighbors and making those places look more like the kingdom too. It’s us coming together and intentionally finding ways to make the world look more like the kingdom of God. The church is a gift to the world, it’s a gift that Jesus gave to a messed up world and said, “Here, take this, this should make things better.” If we’re not making things better we are doing church wrong. If we’re not loving and caring for each and every person who walks through our doors we are doing church wrong. If they way that we treat people in here is no better than the way the world treats them then we are doing church wrong. If it doesn’t feel different in here then we are doing church wrong. If we’re not making the world around us look more like God’s kingdom then we are doing church wrong.
But sometimes we get it right. I think that the kingdom broke through lastyear during our first Fall Festival. I think that’s why we all loved it so much; it wasn’t actually because it was fun or “successful”. It’s because there was this big crack in our parking lot that oozed out the kingdom all over this neighborhood and for that night our parking lot looked a little more like the kingdom of God. And kids who might have had a bad day at school got to jump their hearts out in a bounce house. And people who were hungry ate hot dogs and candy. And kids whodidn’t have costumes were transformed by the facepainter. And for two hours that night we came together and we participated in the inbreaking of the kingdom. And our kids and our neighbors felted loved and cared for. And it felt magical didn’t it? But we know that it wasn’t magic, it was the Holy Spirit working in and through and among us, empowering us to bring a little more of the kingdom here. And it was a gift to us, and it was a gift to the world. And that’s what the kingdom is like. The kingdom is God is like a Fall Festival at West Des Moines United Methodist Church. Amen.
Pastor Jen Hibben
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