Sermons

A Journey Toward the Heart of God's Kingdom

The Rev. Eric K. Hinds
Rector, St. Matthew's Episcopal Church

Sermon preached by The Reverend Eric Kimball Hinds at the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, San Mateo, California, on 18 November 2007 the twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost. Lessons: Isaiah 65:17-25; Canticle 9 (Isaiah 12:2-6); 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19.

At a time of Disorientation & Despair for the people of Israel, the prophet Isaiah was able to preach words of hope, a vision of the future, rooted in the peoples own experience of God as one of divine transformation of human experience. Isaiah uses the imagery of a holy mountain--a place where: the wolf and the lamb will live in harmony and feed together; a place without suffering; where God abides; and all creatures are cared for. It is an image of the end of times that sees time and history folded into the eternal purpose of God.

By contrast, the imagery of this morning’s Gospel is less comforting. Jesus uses apocalyptic imagery to point towards judgment and the end of times. The conversation seems to start innocently enough. Some were speaking about the temple—and how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God; and Jesus proclaims that not only will the temple be destroyed—but he points to a coming time of conflict where nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom--an age characterized by earthquakes, famines and plagues, and other dreadful portents. Because of the immediacy and the implied judgment, this passage either makes us uneasy and nervous, or it seems so far removed from our experience, that we kind of politely acknowledge the strange warning, without ever really engaging in the great end of times themes of Sin, Judgment and Redemption.

We have an understandably difficult time pairing the notion of the eternity of God, with the fulfillment of our finite human life; and it is difficult not to literalize apocalyptic imagry. Perhaps some of you have been curious enough to read one or more volumes of the Left Behind series. It has been runaway bestseller in some Christian circles and it is at its heart a literalization--an attempt to render the apocalyptic imagery of end times from the book of revelation, into a series of events that take place in the midst of the modern world. You can judge for yourself--but my experience was to encounter a narrative that only obscures what I think that Jesus is getting at in his talk about the destruction of the temple and of the conflict among nations and principalities. What I think Jesus wants understood is that neither religious institutions nor earthly governments should be ever by confused with the Kingdom of God. At best governments may partially embrace some of the ideals of God’s ultimate truth and the Christian church points us in the direction of God’s kingdom, but the Ultimate triumph and expression of the Kingdom of God occurs when Christ has succeeded in turning humankinds rebellion against God--towards self giving and an embrace of God.

At the heart of our Christian Tradition lies the notion that we are created to be in relationship with God and with our neighbor—that our truest nature can only be fulfilled by our self-giving in relationship with others in a community rooted in God’s love. To live apart form God and community is to drift towards the isolation or exaltation of self and the temptation to see one’s security bought and secured at the expense of others. Humans throughout history have demonstrated an incredible tendency towards self-love and aggrandizement, with an accompanying wake of brokenness and destruction—something we call sin. Christian belief affirms that only a power greater than ourselves can complete--our incomplete life—and only a divine mercy can heal us of our tendency towards self centered sin and evil.

If you have read, Les Miserables, or seen the play or movie, then you could not miss the scene where the local bishop takes in a stranger who appears at his doorstep. The man of wretched appearance had already been turned away by most of the town, viewed by all as a dangerous beggar with an uncertain past, and nothing to commend himself to the trust of others. The bishop, despite having already heard some of the rumors, opens his door when the stranger knocks at night. Jean Valjean stands in the door way and before the bishop can speak, he admits to being a convict, just released after 19 years in the galleys, before asking for lodging. To his great surprise the bishop invites him in, sets another place at the table, and has a guest bed prepared. After a hearty meal the stranger named Valjean is turned to bed for a good nights rest by his host.

Of course most of you know the story, in the middle of the night Jean Valjean wakes up, and in contemplating his future, he falls in to despair, and decides to sneak to the cupboard and Steal the silver, including the plates on which the bishop had served him dinner. Valjean then fled into the night. The next morning, the police knock on the bishop’s door, having stopped the stranger they discovered his haul of silver and assuming it stolen, they set out to confirm Val Jean’s crime with the bishop.

What follows is the moment upon which the entire rest of the narrative hinges. Before the police can even make their case, the Bishop welcomes Jean Valjean and gently admonishes him for having forgotten to take the pair of silver candlesticks from the mantel--which were to be taken along with the rest of bishop’s gift of silver. Both the police and Valjean are dumbfounded by the bishop’s claims, and before Valjean leaves the bishop confides privately to him “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is you soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!”

And it is that blessing—that undeserved generosity offered by the bishop, and the pronouncement of God’s grace, that haunts Jean Valjean for the rest of the novel. After the bishop’s blessing, the character Jean Valjean can no longer can see his life as one living apart from God, separate from God’s blessing. Rather, he is drawn ever more deeply into the heart of God’s redemptive love.

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (pronounced: Knee boor) once observed that it is always easier for us to envision the time of God’s ultimate fulfillment as sometime off in the future without reference to our present social context. And so there will always be a strong appeal to focus upon the promise of the fulfillment of God’s kingdom at sometime in the distant future. And yet if one is to think about the most religious person that you know, whether someone famous--like Bishop Desdmond Tutu, or a wonderful example of faith known only to a few--it is almost certainly someone who has demonstrated their faith in the very midst of their daily life, and their interaction with the world around them.

The Christian faith is an invitation to a deeper, more fulfilling life. A life lived in relationship with God, family, friends and neighbor. The story of Jean Valjean and the story of our life is that each moment has higher possibilities--that even in the midst of brokenness and estrangement--we are fully and completely known by Christ. We called by God to become more fully human, and it is that journey—a journey towards the very heart of God--that deserves our attention and our passion. It is a journey that leads us to a place which if we had to describe it, would be something like the holy mountain mentioned by Isaiah; the supreme expression of a beloved community: where the wolf and lamb lie together, a place where God abides, and where each and every person is loved and cared for.

Sermons

A Journey Toward the Heart of God's Kingdom

The Rev. Eric K. Hinds Rector, St. Matthew's Episcopal Church

The Rev. Eric K. Hinds
Rector, St. Matthew's Episcopal Church