Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 25, 2009

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So we start at the beginning. We start going through the Gospel of Mark in this first year of the lectionary cycle with the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in Galilee. That’s what the verses we just heard are. Jesus has just been baptized by John in the river Jordan, and Mark says that John has been arrested. It seems likely that Jesus was originally a disciple of John the Baptist. Now that his mentor and teacher has been arrested, Jesus strikes out on his own and begins his own public ministry. He begins it with a particular proclamation. According to Mark, Jesus’ very first public proclamation was: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” That’s basically the same proclamation John the Baptist had been making. It’s a very short proclamation, but I suspect it’s also a pretty puzzling one to most of us. It certainly is to me. So let’s take a closer look at it to see what it might have to say to us.

It begins with a declaration of fact. “The time is fulfilled.” “What time?”, we ask. The time for the coming near of the kingdom of God, apparently, for that’s what Jesus’ statement says next. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” OK, but we immediately have two new questions, don’t we. What is the kingdom of God? And what does it mean that it has come near? The tricky thing about how Mark tells his story is that you have to read the rest of the Gospel to answer those questions. Yet even before we know the full answer to the question of what the kingdom of God is, it seems pretty clear that this statement that the kingdom of God has come near is pretty important. A few verses earlier Mark began his Gospel with the line “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” And Jesus says that in response to the kingdom of God coming near, we are to “repent, and believe in the good news.” Apparently the fact that the kingdom of God has come near is the good news of Jesus Christ that Mark wants to tell us about. Mark is telling us that with the coming of Jesus Christ something radical has changed in the world. The kingdom of God, whatever that is, once was far away. Now it has come near. Something fundamental has shifted. The world is not the same.

That conviction that with the coming of Jesus something radical had happened, that somehow the world was different than it had been before, was a core belief of the early Christians. We see it in this passage from Mark. We see it perhaps even more clearly in the passage we heard from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, written perhaps twenty years or so before the Gospel of Mark. There Paul says “the present form of the world is passing away.” Paul was convinced that the coming of Jesus Christ meant that the world as humans had always known it was coming to an end. That end had already begun in the person of Jesus. Paul believed that it would be consummated in the Second Coming of Christ. So in both the proclamation that Jesus makes in Mark and in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians we are told that with Jesus something fundamental about the world had shifted, that the kingdom of God was coming, and that we’d better get ready for it.

Now, I said just now that you have to read the rest of the Gospel to figure out what that kingdom of God that has come near is. You do, but let me give it to you shorthand. The kingdom of God is the way God wants the world to be. It is the way the world would be if God were truly our king and the kings of the world, elected or hereditary, were not. It is a way of being marked by radical justice, equality, inclusivity, compassion for all, and peace everywhere. That is what Mark’s Jesus says has come near. That is the world order that is coming as the old form of the world passes away, as Paul says. Jesus says the new way of being, God’s way of being, has come near. Paul says the transition has begun.

And we ask: Really? Has the kingdom of God really come near? Has the transition already begun? It sure doesn’t look like it. Life in this world is not a whole lot more marked by radical justice, equality, inclusivity, compassion for all, and peace everywhere than it was in the first century Roman Empire in which Jesus, Paul, and Mark all lived. Maybe we’ve made some progress since then. We like to think so. But then we remember the horrors of the twentieth century, the wars and the genocide that were so much more massive than anything the Romans were capable of inflicting on the world with their ancient technology, and we’re not so sure. Yes, we’ve put an end to slavery in this country, but not everywhere in the world. Yes, there have been liberation movements in our country for racial minorities, sexual minorities, and women—but not everywhere in the world. If we’re honest about the world be live in, I think it’s pretty hard for us to say that the kingdom of God is very much nearer than it was two thousand years ago or that the present form of the world has done much passing away.

So what are we to say? Was Jesus wrong? Was Paul a naïve fool? I could easily understand anyone who answered those questions yes, but I answer them no. Jesus was not wrong. Paul was not a naïve fool. Here’s what I think we are to say: Yes, in the person of Jesus Christ the kingdom of God has indeed come near, and the old form of the world has at least begun to pass away. In Jesus Christ the kingdom of God has come near and the old form of the world has begun to pass away because in him we see, in him God reveals to us, what the kingdom of God really is. The kingdom of God is near to us because Jesus is near to us. He is the kingdom coming near. And because he is the kingdom coming near, he is the form of this world passing away, as Paul said. In him God’s kingdom breaks into the world. The kingdom of God breaks into the world and begins the work of transforming the world. Even in its most preliminary in-breaking it has radically changed the world.

But here’s the thing. That transformation is hard to see. It’s subtle. It’s subtle because the kingdom of God is not a place where things are done through violence. The kingdom of God is a place where things are done through love, and love, if it “works” at all, works very slowly. It works not by overpowering opponents in dramatic and speedy show of force but by transforming human hearts. It doesn’t send huge armies to wipe out its foes, it sends the Holy Spirit to transform human beings one person at a time.

And because the kingdom of God doesn’t use violence, precisely because it uses love to do the work of transformation one person at a time, it is easy for the forces, what Paul called the powers, of this world to resist it. And resist it they do. The powers of privilege, force, and injustice always fight back every time they are threatened. They have killed many if not most of the prophets of the kingdom, beginning with Jesus himself. Well-known examples of the powers destroying those who threaten them in our time include Gandhi and King, but there are many, many other, lesser known martyrs to the cause of the kingdom. I suspect that there are new ones every day, such is the desperation of the powers of the old way of being when they are challenged by God’s way of being.

So what are we to do? Mark’s Jesus says “Repent, and believe in the good news.” That is indeed what we are to do. Repent, Jesus says. What does “repent” actually mean? It doesn’t mean feel really sorry and beat yourself up for your sins. It means have a change of heart. It means change your way of being. Here it means change from the world’s way of being to the kingdom’s way of being, to God’s way of being. Be transformed from your attachment to the ways of the world. Give up your reliance on wealth and power. Renounce the use of violence. Embrace God’s way of compassion and forgiveness. Love your enemies. Welcome the poor and the outcast. Know that hatred and violence are not overcome by hatred and violence. Hatred and violence can only perpetuate hatred and violence. Compassion, and only compassion, overcomes hatred and violence. So be transformed. That’s what we do now that the kingdom has come near in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is working to bring you into the kingdom, so open your hearts and your minds. Let the Spirit in. It’s not easy. Anyone who ever said it was easy was wrong. It’s not safe. We aren’t called to be safe, we are called to be faithful. It’s not easy, and it’s not safe; but with God’s help I know we can do it. Amen.