Kingdom of Heaven | Michael Valliant

Are You the One Who Is to Come?

Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. December 10-11 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for December 11 was Matthew 11:2-11, where John the Baptist sends followers to ask Jesus if he is the one who is to come, or are they to wait for another? And Jesus’s answer.

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

That’s the question we’re going to kick around, the one John has his disciples ask Jesus.

John the Baptist didn’t care what other people thought. He wore strange clothes, ate strange food, blasted the religious people, and attended to business in the wilderness. And he was faithful—he did what he was called to do and he had crowds following him.

And as he was called to do, he pointed to Jesus as the one who was to come—the one he wasn’t fit to carry the sandals of.

John is in the New Testament Hall of Fame—each of the four Gospels has him playing a pivotal role in helping Jesus launch his ministry. And it was John the Baptist’s death that marked the beginning of Jesus’s time teaching and healing and moving toward his death and resurrection.

And this same John, while in prison, sends a question to Jesus: are you the guy or are we supposed to wait for someone else?

Brutal, right? Disheartening. Not exactly a vote of confidence from your friend and mentor.

Let’s think about it from John’s perspective: he’s in prison. He will end up beheaded. The Jewish people’s position hasn’t been improved.

The Jewish people had this idea that the Messiah—the anointed one—will arrive on the scene, hand out justice, military-style, free Israel, put them back on top in power, and they will all be vindicated with a great, big victory to show the world they were right.

That’s what they’re waiting for. Hey Jesus, are you this guy? Or are we waiting for someone else?

Notice how Jesus answers him: he doesn’t say, “Yes, I’m the guy.”

He tells John’s disciples to “Go and tell John what you hear and see:

The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
Those with a skin disease are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them.”

Jesus points to his actions as his answer.

Is Jesus the one who was and is to come? Yes. He was showing it then and we’ve seen the movement that has swept around the world in the 2,000-plus years since. But he wasn’t doing what John, or what the Jewish people, or what the world expected.

I wonder if that is still the case. If we are still largely missing what Jesus was doing and what he came to do.

How many people have heard some form of the expression, “Wait til your father gets home…” Or, “when your father gets home…” That’s not really meant as a good thing, right? It’s more along the lines of—here come the consequences of your actions.

Think about that over the course of Biblical history, especially for those who have been singled out, chosen as examples, held up by God as those to look to. We see a lot of, “Wait til the Messiah gets here. Then you’re gonna get it. Then you’ll be sorry.”

Today it isn’t hard to look around and see people doing a lot of the same posturing: look at how you’re acting; look at what a terrible place the world is becoming. Wait til God gets here. Wait til Jesus comes back. Then you’re going to get it.

Don’t make God angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.

God is not the Incredible Hulk. He didn’t give us free will and the capacity to love—he didn’t fill us with wonder and awe and compassion, just to smash us when we mess up or get things wrong.

God wants us to change. He wants to help us. He has bigger and better ideas in mind.

If God is Love, what does a big military victory and putting those who were oppressed on top of their oppressors—what does that do to further love in the world? What does that do to further the work that we know Jesus came to do? How does that put things back right?

We have this idea of righteousness, on our terms, not on God’s terms.

Jesus was working out righteousness and salvation in accordance with the will of his Father. Before he gets to his death and resurrection, he is giving us a model for how we can do the same.

ARE YOU THE ONE OR ARE WE TO WAIT FOR SOMEONE ELSE?

“Go and tell John what you hear and see:

The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
Those with a skin disease are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them”

We are not Jesus. We can’t perform the miracles that we read about him doing throughout the Gospels. But those are things that God is calling righteous, that God is saying are in synch with His will.

If we want to know who God is and how he wants us to act, we need to look at Jesus.

And Jesus doesn’t want us to throw up our hands and say we’re not you, we can’t do it. He makes it clear that he gives us the Holy Spirit so we can continue the work that he began.

How much of our energy, how much of our attention, how much of our creativity, how much of our resources are being put towards this kind of work?

Who are we waiting for? Who will we follow?

I wonder how we would feel if we reframed John’s question for Jesus and pointed the finger at ourselves:

Are WE the ones Jesus has asked to continue his work or is He to wait for someone else?

That question should make us look in the mirror.

Here’s the thing about John: this isn’t a knock on him at all. He did his job well. He lived his life the right way and he spread the message he was given.

When Jesus starts to speak to the crowds he says John is a prophet and more than a prophet.

“To those born of women, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist… He is the one about whom it is written:

‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
Who will prepare the way before you.’

What was John’s message? REPENT. TURN AROUND.

Don’t get caught up in all the things the world is throwing at us and telling us are important. Playing it forward: don’t make violence the answer. Don’t make hate the way we live.

To a people who have lost their way, to a people who are in a spiritual wilderness, John is saying to stop. Don’t keep doing the same things. Turn around. Be different. The kingdom of heaven is near.

It’s not too late to change.

Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, in chapter 4, after Jesus is baptized by John and then tested/formed in his own wilderness experience, Jesus hears that John was arrested. And as he begins his ministry, the message that Jesus proclaims is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

They were both telling the people, and us, the same thing. The difference is that Jesus was bringing the kingdom with him. He knew the work he needed to do to help bring it about. And he showed us the work we need to do to keep it going.

John was TELLING us to live differently, Jesus was SHOWING us how to live.

Think about the list of things that Jesus wanted John to know about. What do they all have in common?

Jesus cared for others. He healed, he fed, he taught, he brought good news. That was how he was working to bring the kingdom of heaven near.

When we care for others, we are continuing Jesus’s work.

Marsha Allen, whose been a part of our Tuesday Bible study for years always asks one of the best questions: What am I supposed to do with all this? How am I supposed to live?

So let’s ask ourselves that question: what would that look like to continue Jesus’s work here in our community?

In 2009, what we now know as the Talbot Interfaith Shelter began as a temporary shelter in our Parish Hall. It would be at Christ Church for a period of time and then it would move to another location and this continued until 2014 when they opened their first and current location at Easton’s Promise. Today they have two facilities, and their program for helping their residents’ get back on their feet is called the S4 Program—shelter, stability, support, success. They don’t just give people shelter, they help them get back their lives back—they give them hope.

A number of years ago, volunteering at the shelter one evening at just this time of year, I met a father and son there—the son was in elementary school. Their wife/mother died from cancer, but not before medical expenses they couldn’t keep up with left them homeless.

I can remember everyone had gone upstairs to bed and a few minutes later the boy came back down the stairs and was standing in the living room staring at the Christmas Tree. When we asked if we was okay, if he needed anything, he said, “No, I just like looking at the tree.”

His dad gave an incredible testimonial about how the shelter helped them, how much being there meant to them. Executive Director Julie Lowe and her team BRING GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR.

CarePacks of Talbot County began when Emily Moody, who was a social worker at Easton Elementary, noticed how many kids were going home on the weekends without healthy food to eat. She and Megan Cook began an effort that is now at place in every school in Talbot County, where packages of food are sent home every weekend to make sure the kids who depend on free breakfast and lunch at school can eat on the weekends. And once a month on the fourth Friday, people can go to CarePacks to pick up food for whole families. This kind of program is also in place in Caroline County and it being put in place throughout the Eastern Shore. THE HUNGRY ARE BEING FED.

Global Vision 2020 is an international non-profit organization, founded here in Easton by Kevin White. They go around the world, diagnose sight problems, and are able give glasses, on the spot, to people in the poorest countries. There are people who literally can’t see and that’s how they experience life. And with inexpensive glasses given to them then and there, their lives are changed.

When our Mission Trip goes to Peru next summer, helping give people sight through Global Vision will be among the work that Kelsey Spiker and the team will be doing. THE BLIND ARE RECEIVING SIGHT.

None of these things are miracles in the sense that we see in Scripture. But each of these organizations are very clearly continuing the work that Jesus started and gave us as a model of working toward the kingdom of heaven.

The reason I mention these particular groups is: not only are they all local, they were all begun by people who were parishioners here at Christ Church. And they have all received either outreach funding and/or volunteer support from the church over the years.

There are so many more examples in our community, all around us, which many of you support and volunteer for, and that need your help.

This is a time of year when people get stressed. Heating and electric bills go up, it’s colder outside for those without a place to stay; in many cases, parents just want to give their kids a good Christmas, but they are stretched too far. The Advent Angel gifts around the altar are another example of ways to help people in the community who are in need.

Here’s the thing though. In just the last 20 years at Christ Church, many new ministries have been started and borne fruit, and they have made a difference in people’s lives.

We don’t know what the next ministries are going to be looking out five, 10, 20 years. But recent history says that they will come from YOU—the vision, the work, the love, the hope will be raised up from people sitting right here who are open to the work of the Holy Spirit and who seek to follow and continue the work that Jesus began.

Advent is a season where we wait with hope. Where we listen for how we can help. Where we see and tell people about the work Jesus was doing, the work he gave as an answer to John.

The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
The sick are healed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them

Think about those things. Think about caring for others. And at the end of the service when we say together “and now send us out to do the work you have given us to do,” let these words sink in and mean something.

This is the season where we say,

with our hearts
and our minds
and our actions

that Jesus was and is the one to come, and the one we give our lives to follow.

AMEN.

There are no good Hallmark cards for aging

When I picture my grandparents, they are later in years. The picture I have of them in my head is younger than how I guess they would picture themselves.

When I think of my parents, the images I have in my head are younger than they are now. Probably because I still see them in some ways like I did growing up. Though there is a continuity, they are still the same people.

I don’t know what age the girls will ultimately picture me as when they think about me. Since we see each other so often, likely at my current age for now.

I can still picture them at a variety of ages.

This week’s section in the “Anam Cara” study we have going at Christ Church Easton is “Aging: the Beauty of the Inner Harvest.” One of the things we decided in our discussions is that author John O’Donohue wouldn’t have been great at writing greeting cards for aging–his sentiments are either too sappy or too bleak. And there is a lot in this section that he glosses over–the pain both of aging and failing health and of watching those we love go through these things. But there is a lot to glean from O’Donohue as well.

As a society we don’t want to talk about aging. If anything, we want to deny it, put it off, sweep it under the rug. We buy products to prevent the effects of aging, we have procedures done, we aren’t comfortable with the journey of aging. But in some cultures, old age was/is revered and respected and elders were looked to for wisdom and insight.

O’Donohue points out that since we come from the earth and are made up of earth/clay, that like the earth, the rhythm of the seasons that are outside in nature, are also present within us. Our hearts and our lives move through seasons–winter, spring, summer, autumn–and each of these seasons have characteristics and benefits and drawbacks. It is helpful to be mindful of the seasons we go through in our lives.

This is what he says about autumn:

“When it is autumn in your life, the things that happened in the past, or the experiences that were sown in the clay of your heart, almost unknown to you, now yield their fruit. Autumntime in a person’s life can be a time of great gathering. It is a time for harvesting the fruits of your experience.”

We go through seasons throughout our life, not just one of each. I can think of several autumns in my life already, where I have been able to discern meaning after an experience that didn’t make sense at the time I was living it. But there is also a real way that as we get older, we are presented with opportunities for stillness, for reflection, for memory, and for meaning. These can be some of the upsides of aging.

O’Donohue tells us that old age is a time for integration–we have had the experiences, but may have missed the meaning. It is time to put it all together.

He talks about how our mistakes are precious and invaluable: “Frequently, in a journey of a soul, the most precious moments are the mistakes. They have brought you to a place that you would otherwise always have avoided.” And one part of the integration he talks about is being able to forgive ourselves for those mistakes.

And he suggests a wonderful quote from Blaise Pascal, who advised:

“In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.”

A few beautiful images I carry in my heart–always hoping to add more.

A concept that O’Donohue talks about, thankfully lived out by a number of people I am fortunate to know, that can come with old age is what he calls “second innocence:”

“Old age is a time of second innocence… The second innocence comes later in your life, when you have lived deeply. You know the bleakness of life, you know its incredible capacity to disappoint and sometimes destroy. Yet notwithstanding that realistic recognition of life’s negative potential, you still maintain an outlook that is wholesome and hopeful and bright.”

I am grateful daily for those I know who are living and sharing their second innocence.

O’Donohue points to old age and integration as a time for gathering wisdom. And he has a wonderful way of looking at wisdom:

“Wisdom is the art of balancing the known with the unknown, the suffering with the joy; it is a way of linking the whole of life together in a new and deeper unity.”

As we age, may we find ways of linking the whole of life together in a new and deeper unity.

I want to finish this reflection thinking about time. There are different ways of looking at and experiencing time. There is the time that passes–the chronology of things–minutes, days, years, workdays, appointments–and there are those experiences where time passes differently.

Fr. Bill Ortt uses the terms ‘chronos’ and ‘kairos’ to talk about different kinds of time. In looking for the best quick definitions of these two terms, Unsettled popped up with this:

“Chronos is the forward propelling time that we measure with clocks, on watches, and by the evolutionary phases of the moon. But time does not end there. The Greeks’ second word for time is “kairos” — lesser known but no less important. “Kairos” is what many philosophers and mystics would refer to as “deep time.” This is the time we’re talking about where the world seems to stop entirely. It can be measured in deep exhales, a shared laugh, or by a colorful sunset.”

That says it so well. I hope in our lives, each of us have experienced kairos, deep time, those times when regular time wasn’t the same, it wasn’t there. And I hope we continue to have those experiences.

O’Donohue talks about eternal time, and says that our soul lives in eternal time. I think you could make the case that kairos moments are when eternal time mixes with chronological time–our souls inform our lives and we have these profound, deep, and beautiful moments. I hope as we age, we become more aware of these moments.

Let’s talk more about eternal time. We hear a lot of a kind of stereotypical Christian thinking that says we live our lives in time, now, as they happen, and then when we die we become part of eternity. Right now we are in time, but then when we die we are not subject to time.

But if it’s eternity, it isn’t just then, it is also NOW. We are also living in eternity now. It’s all around us, it doesn’t just start later. It’s not simply a place for later, it’s how we relate to it.

Jesus was known to have used the terms “kingdom of Heaven” or “kingdom of God.” The Gospel reading for this past weekend was from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 13:10-18) and was about a woman who had a spirit that had crippled her for 18 years. Jesus healed her on the Sabbath and caught grief from those at the temple who said he wasn’t supposed to do things like that on the Sabbath. And after schooling the temple folks in why it was right to heal this woman on the sabbath, Jesus asks, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?”

On Saturday evening at Christ Church Easton, Rev. Susie Leight preached and led our worship service. It was her daughter’s last time singing in the contemporary choir before leaving for college for the fall, and the first service at the church since learning that Rev. Carol Callaghan, a dear friend and mentor of Susie’s had died the night before.

In Susie’s sermon, she pointed out how Jesus fused the world we are living in, the world the woman in the reading was living in and experiencing, with the kingdom of God, in the here and now.

These are some of Susie’s words, excerpts from her sermon:

Jesus sees this unnamed woman and he recognizes her…
There is no coming back tomorrow.
There is no delay.
His actions say: Mercy now, Compassion now, Grace now.
You are free, now.

What is the kingdom of God like?
The kingdom of God…
is like this right here.
It was 2000 years ago and it is right here, right now.
Look around you.
We don’t have to imagine it.

The unnamed woman is each of us sitting in this room.
Jesus calls us too and waits to give us a drink.

Maybe you know this and you’ve heard him calling your name, or maybe like the woman experienced,
it’s taking you a long time to find him
and healing seems to be far off.

Maybe your view is all dust and dirt right now,
and you are twisting and straining to find a way forward.

Or maybe, by the mercy, compassion and grace of God,
you are standing up straight and in the light.
Rejoicing at all the wonderful things
that Jesus is doing,
And you are fully hydrated.

Or perhaps you are somewhere in the middle.

God’s time is strange.
And I know it can feel like sometimes God is saying,
come back tomorrow (I’ve been there),
or often healing comes in ways
that we might never choose for ourselves (been there too).

But this startling work of God is often out of place,
out of time and often directed towards people
we might otherwise cast aside or condemn,
people we may not even see.

This startling work of God is meant for all,
even those synagogue leaders,
and right now I am imagining their red faces
as Jesus set them straight.
And I can hear Jesus declaring,
Mercy now, Compassion now, Grace now.

What is the kingdom of God like?
And to what should I compare it?
The Kingdom of God is like each of us sharing our water
with someone who is thirsty and dying for a drink.

Can you see it? Do you believe it? Will you receive it?
Will you share it?
Look around you.

Can you feel the fire?

Right here. Right now. Amen.

Eternal time. The kingdom of God. The same 2,000 years ago as now. Right now. Things like mercy, forgiveness, compassion. We experience them in our souls and in our lives. They change time. The healing of our souls, of our bodies; love for God and for one another moves us from chronos to kairos, to the eternal.

These acts of healing, kindness, compassion, right here, right now, bring us into the kingdom of God; help us glimpse eternity, from our souls into our lives.

John O’Donohue tells us that “wisdom is the art of balancing the known with the unknown, the suffering with the joy; it is a way of linking the whole of life together in a new and deeper unity.”

As we age, may we be wise. May we experience a new and deeper unity. May eternal time become more evident during our chronological lives. May the kingdom of God be ever more present and a part of our lives.

Right here. Right now.

Nostalgia and Home

It’s the green house that I think about the most. It was off the back of my grandparents’ house in Towson. It was full of flowers and plants and my grandmother would go around watering and studying things out there.

Nostalgia grabs us in strange ways. It can be a smell, a song, or a feeling. When I walk into the sun room in my house and see plants inside for the winter, my mind goes immediately to my grandmother’s green house. It makes me smile. To get to the green house, you would have to walk by my grandfather sitting at the dining room table, drinking coffee, and reading The Baltimore Sun sports section.

Lately I’ve been thinking that nostalgia isn’t longing for the past, it’s touching something missing. In his book, “Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth,” Hugh Halter goes with nostalgia meaning “to return or go back home:”

We all have nostalgia and memories of going back home. Some of us remember our fathers through old cars; some of us keep Christmas ornaments our mothers passed down. Maybe it’s old guns; maybe just a photo. But whatever the point of reference, we all know emotions of looking back to times that brought us great joy. Nostalgia is the answer to the why.

A question I love to ask people is, “Where/what do you picture when you hear or say the word ‘home?'” I think it’s something that gets to the core of us. For one person it could be a childhood home, or the house where they raised their kids, or where they’ve spent the most years. I don’t picture a house. For me, when I think of home, I think of the Eastern Shore, Oxford, the Tred Avon River, anywhere outside in nature. Christ Church Easton and the people there feel like home. Log cabins in the woods feel like home, though I’ve never lived in one.

Christmas is a heavy nostalgic time. In part because many of us have deep memories tied to Christmas growing up. As a holiday, it can stoke both joy and emptiness, missing time past. But there may be more to it than that. Personally, it can sometimes take hearing Linus explain to Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about before I get it right in my head. Funny how maybe it takes Charles Schulz to get kids to connect to Luke’s Gospel.

Let’s appreciate the forum here for a second: this is a blog, where I work out half-baked thoughts that should probably stay in the oven a while longer, or at least until after another cup of coffee. I don’t generally edit and things tumble out free form. That’s my disclaimer.

My memories don’t go back to the beginning of creation. There is a time before I was born. I think nostalgia reaches back further than our lifetimes. Maybe it’s a longing for a return to something in us that came before us. A Garden of Eden time that we can feel in our bones and hearts. We know there is something there, something to this longing, but we can’t put our minds around it quite right.

Halter points out that with the Incarnation, God wasn’t/isn’t trying to give us a ticket to get back to that perfect time–He’s bringing it to us. Christ brings the kingdom here and now. But it’s a process we have to open ourselves to. Christ gives us clue after clue; He shows us how to live, how to love, how to be in the world to help bring the kingdom/home both to ourselves and others. Halter goes into ways we can do a better job with this in our lives.

David Bailey’s book “Journeywork” found me via Outside Magazine. And it’s been a slow, wondrous walk since. Bailey describes home and coming home in a different way:

There’s a part of us already home
from the journey, resting by
the eternal fireside, and with us now
through the dark age and renaissance, through
every resurrection and
the great breaking-opens that feel like
endings. Storm lantern holding course
through every misadventure. Evergreen growing
through all seasons. It shines a halo of worth around
even our most irredeemable trials.

Feel that place now.

Returning home. But not as a journey to somewhere out there, but bringing home to us. Followers of Christ call it the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s a gift we can’t buy, it’s given to us by grace. It’s been brought forward to us, but we have to open the door. And we help bring it about through love.

Maybe that’s the connection: nostalgia is a longing for home, to be reconnected to it and to each other by love.