Holy here and now

Isaiah 66:10-14

Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her - that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious bosom. For thus says the LORD: I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm, and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; your bodies shall flourish like the grass; and it shall be known that the hand of the LORD is with his servants, and his indignation is against his enemies. 

Psalm 66:1-9

Be joyful in God, all you lands; be joyful, all the earth. Sing the glory of God’s name; sing the glory of God’s praise. Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds! Because of your great strength your enemies cringe before you. All the earth bows down before you, sings to you, singe out your name.” Come now and see the works of God, how awesome are God’s deeds toward all people. God turned the sea into dry land, so that they went through the water on foot, and there we rejoiced in God. Ruling forever in might, God keeps watch over the nations; let no rebels exalt themselves. Bless our God, you peoples; let the sound of praise be heard. Our God has kept us among the living and has not allowed our feet to slip.

Galatians 6:1-16

My friends, if anyone is detected in an transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor's work, will become a cause for pride. For all must carry their own loads. Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher. Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith. See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to compel you to be circumcised - only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh. May I never boast of anything except the cross o four Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! As for those who will follow this rule - peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. 

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go our into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wine off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’” Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

*******

While I was still in seminary, one January there was a class trip to the Holy Land for a little less than two weeks’ time. It was, to say the least, intense. We flew into TelAviv, stayed in a kibbutz, stayed in Bethlehem, stayed awhile in Jerusalem, and met all kinds of people: teachers and soldiers and settlers and musicians and priests and storytellers and doctors and other tourists from around the world. There was one group, I think from Nairobi, who was always one step ahead of us on the tours, and another, from somewhere in Ohio, of high schoolers who met us at the Jordan river and asked for help with some baptisms while we were all there together. It was incredible. And it was incredibly heartbreaking. On the bus, our tour guide reminded us of how geographically close the stories in Scripture took place, pointing out the windows in one direction to the general area where Jonah would have walked, and out the windows on the other side of the bus was Jerusalem where Jesus walked. How incredible to imagine living in a place where every day you could point to somewhere you had been as a place where God had done something incredible which is a story still told today, and now told all across the world.

It was heartbreaking, of course, because of all the blood shed over that land. You might think that a place known for holiness would be a place of refuge for all people, as well it should be, but we have been fighting for ownership of gifts freely given for generations. Food, water, soil, livestock, interpersonal relationships, it’s all been twisted into battlegrounds, despite having been created for mutual sustenance of all that lives. And maybe, some think, just maybe if God would show up and do something miraculous we could all get our heads out of the sand and focus more on rebuilding and less on destruction. Then again, I wonder how many want God to show up and wipe out the ‘enemy,’ which is probably a lot more the sort of thing we’ve seen play out through history when we claim to have God on our side during war. 

But the thing about the God we claim is that, even though the stories in the Bible were compiled primarily by those with the power to ignore the oppressed if they so chose, the stories we have in Scripture tell again and again of a God who is on the side of the oppressed, the small, the lost and the lonely, the sick and the scared, the least of these, even the dead. So when we get into this conversation about the kingdom of God, we aren’t talking about a place or a system where the ‘good guys’ beat the ‘bad guys’ according to any one set of narratives. Who the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ are depends entirely on who is telling the story. When my class in the Holy Land visited the Ibrahim Mosque, there were two tours going on with different tour guides telling different versions of the exact same story - one said there was a hero who stopped a bombing by coming into prayer and shooting a suspect, and the other said there was a tragedy when prayer was disrupted by a terrorist entering their sanctuary and shooting people in worship. Same event, different eyes. And although it might be for the sake of safety, there is very little that feels safe about needing to walk through a metal detector and be treated as a threat on the way into worship.

We know that history is written by the winners, which is why it is important to continue to tell the history of the God we know in Jesus, to remind ourselves of who really wins, of who's kingdom will ultimately have no end. During our class drip, it seemed everyone we met had a different solution to the conflict, and it was really hard not to take sides after meeting the people we met and seeing the way people were taught to hate and fear one another. But one priest in particular, Elias Chacour, was insistent: if you are on the side of the Palestinians, we don’t need  you. If you are on the side of Israel, we don’t need you. If you are on the side of peace, now we can get something done. The disciples Jesus sent out in pairs weren’t sent to bring fire and destruction, weren’t sent to put the fear of God into people, they were sent to find the peacemakers, to heal the sick, and to proclaim the Kingdom of God has come near.  And did you notice? Even if they weren’t welcomed, they were still proclaiming that the kingdom of God has come near.

Because it has. It is near. It is very near. Yes, we hear in the news stories of even more bombings and shootings and corruption and anger and xenophobia, we see images of violence because that’s what sells and that’s what the losing side does when it knows its going to lose. But we are part of the kingdom of God, and the kingdom is not something we find in some heaven lightyears away, it is living here among us, every time we rebuild, each time we offer welcome to the stranger, every sunrise. It is the power of resurrection over death, the power of love over fear, the ultimate victory of creativity over disintegration, of forgiveness over resentment. 

The letter Paul writes to the Galatians, and this is the end of the letter we read today after walking through it each week for the last month and a half, is an encouragement not to get tangled up in some preconceived notion of how we make the kingdom look a certain way. He tells the Galatians not to get overly concerned with how many converts they win, don’t worry about attendance at your gatherings or number of people you can point to as your particular disciples of the true faith, because we can’t boast ourselves about the work we are doing for God, we can only boast that God is working, and tell of the love with which God loves us and all of creation.

This, my friends, is the kingdom of God. It is not something we make happen. It is already all around us, it is already something God has accomplished. We only notice it in the holy places where we live and move and have our being. Which, by the way, is everyplace. We don’t need to go to Palestine or to Israel to find where Jesus walks, where God is active, where the work of peace is the work we are called to. When I came back from those twelve days, back to my apartment in Chicago, after crossing the borders back and forth and hearing about check points and watching soldiers check our passports but not allowing our bus driver to come everywhere with us because of his nationality, I saw those same borders and check points all over the neighborhoods where I lived and worshiped. But the same God who brought grieving families together across those boundaries in the Holy Land  was also there in Chicago. The same God who brought musicians and storytellers together across racial differences in the Holy Land was also living and active where I was in school. The kingdom of God is working towards making a more beautiful work of reconciliation possible, and we get to be part of it, or get to choose not to be, but it is happening all around us. Because that is the nature of the God whom we worship, the one who walks among us and dies with us and for us so we are not ever alone, the one who lives again that we may also cross that final boundary from death into life eternal, even as we are already living in eternity in the here and now.

Thanks be to God.