Sermon Sun 29 Jan wk22: The kingdom of God is like...WMRBW

1st READING: Jeremiah 31:31-34  
2nd READING: Mark 4:1-30

SERMON 'The kingdom of God is like...'
Let’s pray:
may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts
be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

There was a kindness to her, and a strength;
a goodness that even I, at four or five years of age, could sense.
She worked at the salon with my mother,
both cutting, styling, perming the hair of their ‘regulars’.
My babysitter, Lynne, would drop me off just before mum was to finish,
and I’d play out in the back amongst the large styrofoam heads used to display wigs,
or cheerfully sort out the colour and shapes of the many types of hair rollers.
Beppie, who was Dutch, would pop through from the shop front,
always with a smile and friendly words.
One day, she’d nipped into the back to get something for her client.
That was the day I saw the numbers;
blue-black numbers written on her arm.
I was just little, and I was a very curious and outgoing child.
So I asked.
Her eyes were sad and she grew solemn,
‘Sometimes there are people who do bad things.
This was a long time ago. Those people are gone now. It’s better to be kind, isn’t it?’
I nodded.
She tousled her fingers through my hair, and then went back out to her customer.

Over the years, I learnt more of Beppie’s story.
She’d lived in Holland with her husband at the time of the NAZI occupation.
All the freedoms that the Dutch had known were being taken away.
Some people escaped.
Some colluded.
Some resisted.
All, however, just tried to get on with the business of trying to live.
Beppie and her husband, like many others, kept their heads down,
and tried to go about their daily lives,
but they were being watched.
You see, Beppie’s husband was Jewish.
At some point, along with a number of other Jewish people, he was rounded up:
destined for a concentration camp.
The authorities weren’t interested in Beppie – she wasn’t Jewish.
In that sense, she was safe.
But she refused to leave her husband and so, she, too went to the camp: Auschwitz.
Her husband never came back.
Somehow, she survived, and ended up in Australia, cutting other people’s hair,
and being kind to small children who asked hard questions.

As many of you know, last year, I visited Auschwitz with a friend.
I thought of Beppie and her husband – of their story.
And there, in that place which had seen brutality, and dehumanising horror,
that place where those who were deemed ‘unsuitable’;
there, where those who ‘didn’t fit in’ to the ideology of the ruling regime,
had been rounded up and killed,
I thought of kindness,
of words heard as a little child:
‘It’s better to be kind, isn’t it?’

Throughout human history, there have always been regimes who,
to help stay in power, would scapegoat groups of people –
in that sense, the NAZIS weren’t unique.
There have always been empires or kingdoms built on the backs
of those deemed of little importance, expendable,
and those deemed enemies of the state.
In every kingdom, the powerful, and those whose faces ‘fit’,
enjoyed the privileges that being a kingdom afforded.
And, in every kingdom, those privileges have always been bought
at the expense of human suffering of others:
those taking the lion’s share of the riches of the kingdom, have done so
at great cost to others, causing them:
loss of property, loss of liberty, loss of dignity, and at times, loss of life.

The cost of building and maintaining earthly kingdoms is high indeed.
A great tool in the building and maintaining of an earthly kingdom, is fear:
use that – make people feel unsafe,
find those who may, in some way be different,
and point to them as potential threats,
and you keep the citizens of a kingdom – or nation –
so focused upon the possibility of threat, of hurt,
that you can begin to take away their rights, their freedoms.
It’s a tactic that’s been used over millennia.
A tactic that’s justified all kinds of ugliness and discrimination.
A tactic that so easily builds into an ongoing spiral of violence.
Kindness is kicked to the sidelines.

You know, I don’t know about all of you, but it seems to me
that it feels like we’re living in a time of deep fearfulness, and of ‘othering’:
where racial and religious profiling is being rolled out by governments –
our current earthly kingdoms –
and where, as a result, innocent people become the targets of hate crime.
We watch the news, read the papers, and see headlines that are quite frankly, alarming:
the world seems to be spinning out of control.
What’s the point of being kind?
Why try to do good?
Why look out for those around us –
surely it’s better just to keep our head down and look to our own needs?
Where is God,
and when will God’s kingdom come?
Because Sunday by Sunday, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer,
we’re praying for the coming of God’s kingdom...
How long do we have to wait –
or, is God’s kingdom just pie in the sky when you die?
What about your church, Lord?
The church worldwide feels like it’s dwindling,
and we wonder why more folk don’t come to church.
It’s very easy to get into a culture of fear, of introspection,
and of blaming others.

In response to roughly similar questions put to him by his disciples,
Jesus told them parables –
parables of sowing seed,
of growing seed,
and of the mustard seed:
parables about God’s kingdom.
‘A farmer went out to sow’ says Jesus.
The seed ends up everywhere: on the path where the birds eat it;
on rocky places where the soil is shallow – the plants grow,
but quickly fail because their roots aren’t deep enough;
some seed falls into thorns, and get entangled and choked up;
and other seed falls on fertile soil, producing an amazing and abundant harvest.
God scatters the seed generously – far and wide
and in that great scattering, the kingdom somehow manages to grow.

A man scatters seed on the ground.
Regardless of whether he sleeps or not,
the seed gets on with the business of growing,
producing a harvest...
and like the seed, so the kingdom will appear.

A mustard seed – small, seemingly insignificant – is planted.
From tiny beginnings, a happy outcome:
a place where birds find sanctuary in the branches of this now great plant,
just as the kingdom of God is a place of flourishing and sanctuary.

In his own time, living under the power of the Roman Empire,
Jesus tells stories of the kingdom of heaven:
‘The kingdom will come’, he says.
God’s mercy, grace, and love will bring it in.
Things may seem to be falling away, dwindling – but take heart:
although you look around you and it feels so very far away, the kingdom is near.
These parables are Jesus’ assurance to his followers that the kingdom will come.

But when?
The kingdom will come in God’s good timing:
God brings it –
we are God’s workers in the kingdom,
but it is God who produces the harvest.
Our job is to get on with the business of sowing the seed:
sharing the good news of the kingdom with those who have ears to hear.
We share the good news in word, and in deed:
‘It’s better to be kind, isn’t it?’
So, as God’s Spirit dwells within us, the fruit of God’s Spirit blossoms:
kindness, goodness, patience, gentleness, self-control, faithfulness, joy, peace, love.
As we love, as we are kind,
as we live in the way of God’s kingdom whilst living in the midst of earthly kingdoms,
so we resist that culture of fear that tries to normalise those acts
that would lead us even to the gates of places like Auschwitz.

Pastor Martin Niemoller was a German minister and theologian
who spoke out against the NAZI regime, and, for doing so,
spent time in both Dachau and Sachsenhausen.
He saw, first hand, the power of fear, and of ‘othering’ –
of dehumanising and scapegoating people.
His understanding of God’s kingdom
and of our part as sowers of the seed of the kingdom,
found its expression in the following call to action:
First they came for the Socialists, 
and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, 
and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, 
and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak for me.

We are not, as John Donne observed ‘an island unto ourselves’,
we are all of us connected –
for we are all created in God’s image.
We, as citizens of this kingdom, are called to to be like that lamp on a stand –
revealing God’s goodness and loving-kindness:
for the kingdom of God is counter-cultural and speaks up in the face of evil.
In a week that saw both Holocaust Memorial Day
and the Presidential signing of orders
for building walls,
and of banning certain kinds of people from entering the United States,
and faced with our own responses to the aftermath of Brexit...
it is more urgent than ever to stand up –
and to live into our calling of sharing the good news of God’s kingdom:
a kingdom completely unlike the worldly kingdoms and empires
that have come and gone throughout history.
For the kingdom of God is eternal, it lasts forever;
it is a place of flourishing, of abundance,
of justice and mercy and righteousness;
a kingdom in which all share in the rich harvest of God’s love –
for there’s more than enough to go around;
a kingdom not built on the backs of the least and the most vulnerable –
for all are honoured and valuable.
It is a kingdom of life –
for the One who draws us together
has both spoken life into being and defeated death itself.
We are citizens of that kingdom:
a kingdom of kindness,
a kingdom where we challenge those who would cause harm in any way to others
by wounding words or harmful acts:
for God’s kingdom is a kingdom of reconciliation and of welcome;
of hands extended, not fingers pointing.

The Dutch writer, Henri Nouwen, when thinking of what the kingdom of God was like, wrote:
‘for Jesus there are no countries to be conquered, no ideologies to be imposed, 
no people to be dominated. 
There are only children, women, 
and men to be loved.’

Beloved people of God:
in your very lives, show the signs that the kingdom of God is near:
let your lives be love-letters to the world,
showing another,
a different way:
a different kind of kingdom.
And, as you do, so you scatter the seeds of God’s kingdom, and so, the kingdom will come.

‘It’s better to be kind, isn’t it?’
For loving-kindness is a most powerful act of resistance against the rhetoric of power and hate
so often seen in the kingdoms of the earth.

Let’s pray:
We don’t see it, but its effect is clear;
We don’t hear it, but its message is never silent;
We don’t feel it, but its influence constantly moves us.
Reaching through every system,
Flowing through every interaction,
Silently moving the world
toward its God-designed purpose,
More powerful than the strongest army,
yet infinitely gentle;
More significant than the most influential government,
yet without coercion or manipulation.
The kingdom of God is subversively at work,
and it is here. Amen.