THEY GROW UP SO QUICKLY
February 22, 2015
Brookston Presbyterian Church, Henderson, NC
Rick Brand, Supply
Boy, they sure grow up so quickly, don’t they? No sooner do you celebrate the first step they take, than they are asking for the keys to the car. The young grow up so quickly. It seems like only yesterday they were taking him down to the temple to be baptized. Life just goes by so quickly. We all get caught up in our own little worlds and the next thing you know you’re getting wedding invitations from the little girls who used to baby sit for you. Young people just seem to grow up so fast. Why, it doesn’t seem like more than just a couple of months ago that we were celebrating the birth of Jesus, and now look at him. Standing up there, making public speeches, just look at how he has grown, look at how poised he is. Listen to him speak, “ The Kingdom of God is at hand, Repent and believe.”
They grow up so quickly and they sure can come up with some really crazy ideas. Where in the world do they come up with all that radical stuff. Young people going off to war thinking they are going to fight to end all wars. Going to go fight to make the world safe for democracy. They are going to build a great new society. Young people claiming the They Shall Overcome. Going to build the peaceable kingdom right out there in Woodstock. They grow up so quickly and they come out with some really crazy ideas. Why look at Jesus, seems like just a few weeks ago we were celebrating his birth and now he is telling us that The Kingdom of God has arrived.
Mark is the earliest of the gospel writers and Mark says what all the Gospel writers say, “Jesus came teaching and preaching that the Kingdom of God has arrived and the time is fulfilled.” In other words, all those promises about what will happen in the Day of the Lord, all those prophecies about what will take place when the Kingdom of God comes are now being fulfilled in his presence. Where did Jesus get those strange ideas?
August Wilson is a Pulitzer Prize winning play writer. He has a play called Seven Guitars and in that play, one of the main characters is named Hedley. Hedley starts talking about what he thinks will happen when the Kingdom of God comes. When the promised Kingdom comes, Hedley says, “I gonna be a big man.” Louise, his mother, snaps back, “”You ain’t gonna be nothing.” Hedley says, “The Bible say it all will come to straighten out in the end. Every abomination shall be brought low. Everything will fall to a new place. When I get my plantation I’m gonna walk around it. I am going to walk all the way round to see how big it is. I’m gonna be a big man on that day. That is the day I dress up and go walking through the town. That is the day my father forgive me. I tell you this as God is my witness on that great day when all the people are singing as I go by... and my plantation is full and ripe ... and my father is a strong memory... on that day... the white man not going to tell me what to do no more.” That is what Hedley thinks is supposed to happen when the Kingdom of God comes near.
The Bible says that when the Kingdom of God comes -- the lion will lie down with the lamb --- the desert will blossom like a rose-- righteousness will flow down like a might stream -- peace will flow like a river -- the knowledge of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas” If you want to reduce those visions to one word, the word is Gospel - the kingdom is good news. And Jesus is up there telling the crowd that the Good News is being fulfilled in his presence. Jesus is saying that all the promises about what will happen when the Kingdom of God comes are now being made good in his presence. They grow up so quickly and come up with such strange ideas.
Jesus began his public ministry by preaching in his home synagogues from the text of Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of the sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Then he closed the book and gave it back to the Priest and said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. “ Jesus says that he is doing all those good things. He is the anointed of the Lord.
That first sermon did not go very well. It did not end up with all of them standing around and congratulating him on his first sermon. Something in that sermon offended the congregation. The hometown folks were insulted mightily and rose up and ran him out of town. They tried to take him to a cliff and throw him over to kill him. Something very ugly, deep and bitter is going on here. Something there is that does not love the good news. Cause the same thing kept happening to Paul when he preached the Gospel. Whenever and wherever he went to declare that the Kingdom of God was fulfilled in the person, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, Paul got beaten, arrested, and abused.
Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is being fulfilled now. Believe the good news, Repent. The time is now.” Paul says Jesus is the good news. In Jesus all the goodness and grace of God has been made visible, the fulfillment of all the promises of the Kingdom of God have been achieved in Him. And the results of their preaching is that they are bitterly resented and brutally attacked. What in the world is going on here? Jesus has some youthful ideas about the time being fulfilled, claims the Kingdom of God is at hand in his life! What is so dangerous about that? Why is that message so radical?
Because if it is true then most of the things we have been doing with our lives has been wrong. If Jesus is the one who makes the Kingdom of God real and present, then most of the goals and objectives we have invested our lives in, have been wasteful. If Jesus is the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God, then the Messiah is a suffering lover and not a royal monarch. If Jesus is the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God, then the Kingdom of God is open to “whosoever” will, and not just to the Jews. If Jesus is the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God, if He is the Kingdom made manifest, then we are called to repent, and we do not like being told we are wrong.
Why has the Oklahoma legislators talked about ending AP History courses in their high schools? Because the curriculum includes those events in American history that speak to the dark side of our history as well as to the glory. Because the course does not present the United States as the greatest and best nation in the world. The course not only talks about the tremendous fight for liberty in the American revolution, but it talks about the horrendous treatment of the Native American Indians and our lies and treaty violations. It talks about the economy if the south being built on slavery and the nasty Jim Crow laws. We don’t want to be called to repentance.
Of sure we want a Savior, and like Hedley, we want the Kingdom of God to come and make us wonderful. We want a theology of glory. We want a kingdom of triumph and victory. We are not very interested in a theology of suffering and the cross. Who wants to go to a Heaven where everybody who wants to be there will be there? Who wants to go to a Heaven where repentant child abusers, racists, embezzlers, and who knows who else might be there? Have you ever talked to anyone who thought the grace of God in Jesus Christ might be large enough to allow Hitler to be forgiven? We want a Kingdom of God where we get what we think we deserve and have earned, and we think we deserve a lot.
The theologian Douglas John Hall suggests that one of the greatest problems with Christian communities in North American is precisely that people expect the church to be a place for good people, to be a place of harmony and peace. “Therefore people can only accept these church and retain their membership with them by suppressing the unwelcome reality that is nevertheless there in them, underneath the surface. They may confess, in a rote manner, their sins, but they do not expect sin actually to manifest itself openly, unguardedly, in their midst. Through an enormous effort of will, tens of thousands of middle-class people come together every Sunday, sit quietly listening to words that they either do not hear or comprehend only superficially, sing only familiar hymns so that the tunes block out any of the troubling lyrics, all while suppressing whatever honest questions, doubts, fears, or worries they may have carried with them into the worship. Dr. Hall says that if one tries to confess real sins in Church or welcome those who are acknowledges as real sinners, one can get attacked and abused like Jesus and Paul. We want a conquering triumphal Lord over all, and a kingdom of white washed saints.
From the beginning Mark and the Gospel writers want us to know is that the Kingdom of God as Jesus brings it is going to be a lot different than the Kingdom of God that we would like to see. We just do not want to see or live the truth that the kingdom of God comes through suffering love. We all have this amazing ability to refuse to see what we do not want to see. Jesus says the kingdom of God is at hand, repent, and refuse to see the need to repent. The blindness, that willful and intentional blindness is in fact what we must confess and repent of to see and welcome the Gospel as God gives it in Jesus. Jesus says that the kingdom of God is fulfilled and come in his person, and there is that persistent and determined opposition to see that, of recognizing that, or accepting that because if we accepted that it would open us up to a confession that we have been headed in the wrong direction and we would need to change and repent.
But what does He know? He just a young man? How dare he come in here and tell us that he is the one who is empowered by the Spirit of God to bring the kingdom. He grew up around here? Where did he get so uppity? We have been taught a long time that when the Messiah comes, when the Kingdom of God comes, it will bring the restoration of the Glory of Solomon back. It will drive out the Romans, it will create a mighty people of God who will rule the world. And he thinks that the kingdom will care about the blind, the prisoners, the hungry and the lame?
They grow up so quickly and have such strange ideas. There is this Jesus, whom I swear, we just had the baby shower for a month or so ago, and now here he comes claiming that he is the fulfillment of the promises of the Kingdom of God. He is the God who comes into the world to redeem the world. If he is the Messiah, then it means that the Good News is that where there is pain, suffering, guilt, and regret, God is present and redeeming, that sacrifice and love are the weapons of God Kingdom, and not power and might and wealth. That the kingdom of God is made up mostly of all the people we have been trying most of all to avoid. If we refuse to welcome that word, we continue to deny the grace given in Jesus, continue to want to seek the Kingdom of God where the Messiah comes in power and might, wealth and prestige, where only “nice” people like us are a part of the Kingdom of God, where we can continue to believe that all is right with what we have done, then we will continue to see a world where kindness is crucified, where one group of self-righteous people behead other self-righteous people, where we keep dividing into warring sects, where the world is divided into the haves and the have nots, and the have nots are just collateral damage in the struggle for survival. Jesus says the Kingdom of God has come. The time is now. Repent,
Ah, these young kids. They grow up so quickly, and they have such strange ideas, but of course, they usually outgrow them when they get older. There is no need to take them seriously.
