Mark 4:26-34
So what do you think makes someone a Christian? Is a Christian someone who believes the right things about Jesus? Or someone who has been baptized, goes to church weekly, and puts money in the plate? Or is a Christian someone who gives away their money to the poor and lives a life of simple service to others? Is it someone who prays faithfully every day? Or maybe a person who is kind and loving to everyone? Or someone who advocates for social justice and peace in our world? Would a Christian even bother trying to figure out what makes someone a Christian? Maybe a real Christian wouldn’t foist such a question on an unsuspecting congregation first thing in the morning.
So let me re-frame the question: what lies at the center of Jesus’s teaching? In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the answer to that is actually pretty straightforward: the core message Jesus proclaims is the kingdom of God. He begins his ministry by saying that the kingdom is near. He continually shows people what life in the kingdom looks like. He constantly tells parables about the kingdom. Now for some reason we have tended to interpret it as a future reality, as something that happens after we die. But Jesus teaches that the kingdom is near. And as we hear in the parables today, that kingdom is not only near; it is vibrant and ever-expanding. Jesus says the seeds of the kingdom are being sown all the time and are growing all the time. And we don’t create the seeds, nor do we make them grow. Listen to the Gospel: The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. And dear God, does it grow, like a tiny mustard seed that becomes the greatest of shrubs. The kingdom of God is alive and unstoppable. Every second new seeds are being sown, every second old seeds are bearing fruit simply because God desires it.
And it is not just happening somewhere out there. The kingdom of God, Jesus teaches, is within us, within each one of us. It is a state of being where love is the key to everything, where beauty is everywhere, and where death is just a gateway to greater life. If we want to define what makes someone a Christian, we could simply say that a Christian is anyone who lives in the kingdom that Christ reveals.
And to live in that kingdom, we don’t need to go anywhere, we don’t need to achieve moral perfection. We just need to open our eyes. The kingdom of God is within us and all around us. It just is. Your heart is beating right now because God loves you; every breath you take is a sign of the kingdom. Each moment there is opportunity to experience love and share love: when we walk the dog, when we argue with our spouse, when we sit on the porch, when we lie in bed with the flu, when we watch a loved one die: each moment the kingdom is there. Like so many people in the Gospel stories, we are often just too blind or too stubborn to see it. We can be like those people in Plato’s famous allegory who live in a cave and see only dim shadows reflected on the walls. If we would just turn around and face the entrance to the cave, we would see blue skies and green trees, we would feel the warmth of the sun and the cool evening breeze. Our entire view of reality would change — if we would only turn around (i.e., repent) and open our eyes.
Blindness is the great scourge of the New Testament, but there is nothing that prevents us from opening our eyes. If we want to see signs of the kingdom, we will, because the signs are everywhere. Last week, when I gave people the Body of Christ for the first time in over a year, I thought, “This is the kingdom of God.” But that moment of communion with Christ and each other just highlighted what is true every moment. The other day we got a package delivered to us that was actually addressed to someone else on a different street. So I took the package to that house, and this couple opened the door, trying to thank me while holding back their very loud and very large dog, and I thought, “This is the kingdom of God.” I didn’t know those people at all, but I knew I was one with them. It wasn’t a great epiphany or a moment of euphoria, just a reminder that every second seeds are being sown, every second the harvest is plentiful. Right now, the person sitting next to you is filled with the Holy Spirit. Right now, this place is radiant with God’s love.
Life, of course, is challenging, and it can be easy to retreat into our caves. We might be tempted to tell ourselves that our situation is just too difficult or too painful to get even a glimpse of God’s kingdom. But I will gently remind you that the Apostle Paul saw that kingdom when he was shipwrecked, beaten and imprisoned. Francis of Assisi saw the kingdom amidst poverty and leprosy. Etty Hillesum saw the kingdom in Auschwitz. I could go on and on with similar examples. In our brokenness, we humans can certainly obscure our vision of the kingdom, but we can never erase it. As Jesus teaches, the kingdom of God is unstoppable. And it is our joy as Christians, the very thing that marks us as Christians, to live in that kingdom every day of our lives.
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