"Church Does Not Equal Kingdom of God"

Ephesians 4:1-6

 

     Do you ever look back over your life and think, was I really like that?  I can't believe I did those things.  I was a terrible winner.  When I beat my mother at Scrabble I would stand up and say, "You lose."  When Adam and Candace began dating Jean and I played cards with them.  Candace said I cannot believe you trash talk your wife.  When I finally beat Jean at golf on vacation, just for old times sake, I called Candace on the telephone and said, "I need to do some trash talking."  Now I look back and realize why I don't have any friends. 

 

      I should have paid more attention to the Bible.  Didn't Jesus say "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth?"  Paul followed that up by writing that a life worthy of your calling is one of lowliness and meekness, involves patience, and includes forbearing one another in love.  We speak highly of people who demonstrate those qualities.  Meek is defined in the dictionary as having a patient, gentle disposition.  The Greek word can be translated as gentleness, humility, courtesy, considerateness.  In other words, scoring a touchdown in a football game and doing a dance in the end zone and waving the ball in the face of your opponent is not an example of meekness.  Nor is winning a vote at a presbytery meeting and bragging about it afterwards.  Part of what being meek means is taking other peoples feelings into consideration.    

 

      We believe that Jesus spoke the truth.  There is only one problem.  The teaching about meekness makes no sense in our world.  Meekness gets us nowhere in the world.  Try getting ahead in the world by being meek.  It doesn't work.   The demands of Jesus are unreasonable.  It would be good if others followed his teachings but he cannot expect us to.  We want to get ahead.

 

      How many of us wipe out evil with good, turn the other cheek, forgive seventy times seven?  How many people in business have as their first concern serving humanity?  Isn't that something that is done after one makes a profit?    

 

       The same could be said of churches.  You should come to our church because this is where the true word of God is spoken.  You should vote for me because I believe in Christian values.  Churches are not full of the meek and mild.  They are full of people who are trying to get ahead in the world.  That is why I do not think we should equate church with kingdom of God.  When Jesus said, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand," I don't think he had the church in mind. I think he was talking about God's reign.   I think that sometimes the church may give us a better indication of what the kingdom is like than the world does.  But then there are other times I think maybe the world gives us a better indication than the church. 

 

       The best indication we have of the kingdom of God is Jesus.  And he is the one who says, "Blessed are the meek."  He is the one who calls us do a way of life that just doesn't work in the world.  Our hearts say yes to the teachings of Jesus but our minds say no, it will never work.  But finally it is God's word and way that matter. 

 

       That is why we come to the table.  Here we get a glimpse of the kingdom.  We who have God's seal put on us in baptism.  We come to the table, we put away all that divides us, and we for a brief moment become one.  It seems right to me that after we have talked about subjects that can be controversial in Sunday School, we gather around the Lord's Table.  We affirm that the things that we do not agree on are not as important as our unity in Christ.  With Paul we affirm, "One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all." 

 

     For a moment we remove ourselves from the competition of the world, we put aside our differences in church, and we sit at the feet of Jesus.  We take and we eat and we recognize that we need this spiritual food as much as anyone.

    

      I really don't know what to tell you about how to reconcile the teachings of Jesus with living our lives in the world.  It seems that the older I get, the more awesome God becomes.  The more I study, the greater God becomes.  One of the things I believe though  is that in the end, it will be the teachings of Jesus that matter.  It is when we follow the teachings of Jesus that we bear good fruit.  Where will that get us in the world, probably nowhere.  But in the end, what matters most, success in the world or a place in the kingdom of God.