Luke 17: 20-36

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, "The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you."

Then he said to his disciples, "The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. They will say to you, 'Look there!' or 'Look here!' Do not go, do not set off in pursuit. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. But first he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation. Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking, and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all of them. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day that Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from heaven and destroyed all of them--it will be like that on the day that the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, anyone on the housetop who belongs in the house must not come down to take them away; and likewise anyone in the field must not turn back. Remember Lot's wife. Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it. I tell you, on that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken and the other left."

Luke 24: 13-35

Now on that same day [i.e., Easter] two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?" They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, "Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?" He asked them, "What things?" They replied, "The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him." Then he said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. The said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!" They told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Sermon Text

I have a friend with mental illness named Mark. Every Wednesday he goes with me to the Bible study group at Foulk Manor North. He suffers a lot, and says so. Almost without fail, on the trip out and back, he will sigh and say: "I'm tired. I'm so tired. When is God going to give me some help here?" He says things like that, which most people keep inside, because they've been taught not to complain or bring up controversial subjects. Mark just blurts them out. He shares what's on his mind; and often it's pain.

In the second story from Luke we hear about two travelers walking to Emmaus, a town near Jerusalem, where Jesus has just been killed. Like my friend Mark, those travelers were suffering too. Jesus saw their hangdog look and asked them what they'd been talking about. They just blurted it out, all their disappointment and pain: "Are you the only person round here who hasn't heard what happened to Jesus? You see, stranger, we had a lot riding on him. He sure looked like a winner to us. He said and did such powerful things! We hoped he would be the one to rouse our people and throw out the Romans. But when things got really hot he just gave himself up, and that was the end. No more Jesus. No more revolution."

The stranger knew his Bible. As he walked along with them he brought up certain passages to them, passages they all knew by heart; and he showed them that what had come to pass in the last few days wasn't a tragedy after all. As the sun was just setting, the stranger accepted their invitation to supper and a bed. I imagine they honored him by asking him to bless their meal. As he was breaking the loaf they recognized him. The very person who had let them down by giving himself up without a fight had surprised them once again. No sooner had they made this connection than the stranger-no-more disappeared. Afterwards they recalled their astonishment and delight: How our hearts burned within us on the road as he explained the scriptures to us! Our hearts burned, not with the indigestion of terrible events, not with anger or disappointment, but with hope and assurance. You could say we were in paradise, so powerful was our holy heartburn. How lovely, how glorious the enlightenment that had dawned upon us! We were already in paradise, though our Roman occupiers had not moved an inch.

Last Monday in New York I met with Rita Nakashima Brock, a Christian Japanese-American scholar who has co-authored a book about paradise. By paradise she doesn't mean an otherworldly place to which faithful people go after their bodies die and their souls go to a heavenly reward. That is indeed a very common understanding of paradise, but that's not what Rita means by it, and she believes it's not what many early Christians meant by it. Rather, she says, paradise is a state of consciousness, a way of being in this world.

While Rita was studying Christian theology, she was also studying early Christian art, and she noticed that there were almost no images of a dead or crucified Jesus painted or sculpted in the first thousand years after his death. For a whole millennium, Christian artists portrayed him not in his suffering and death, but in his glory. They showed a beatific Jesus, like the images of saints we see in Eastern Orthodox icons.

Rita holds that those early Christian artists were not representing something they were looking forward to after death. Rather, they were depicting something that they had already experienced. By their spiritual connection to Jesus, the risen one, the first fruit of God's kingdom, they had already begun to live in paradise, without leaving this earth. So for them, paradise wasn't coming. It was already here; and Jesus was the door through which anyone could enter into it; or perhaps it would be better to say, the means by which people can become aware of paradise, and receive it themselves.

If you think of paradise as a this-worldly holy heartburn rather than an otherworldly-gated community, then you're mighty close to some of Jesus' teachings about the kingdom of God. Christian scholars differ about what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God. They agree that it means living under God's rule, where love and justice prevail. But they disagree about when and how God's kingdom will come. Some think that God's kingdom will come gradually, as people open themselves to God's spirit, and become obedient to God's will. But others believe that humanity will never reach the kingdom of God that way, because people could never be that good. So they maintain that the kingdom of God must come by violence. God will do what humans in their weakness or perversity cannot do. God will kill off all the bad people, and save a righteous remnant. That's how the kingdom must come, they believe.

Oddly enough, we find both of these teachings in today's reading from the seventeenth chapter of Luke. Some Pharisees (biblical bookworms) came to Jesus and asked: How wills the kingdom come? According to the passage, Jesus gave two answers, and those answers aren't at all alike. One says that the kingdom is already here. It is "in you," or "among you," depending on how you translate the preposition. But, whether it be "in you" as individuals, or "among you" as a community, the point of Jesus' first answer is that the kingdom--could we also read "paradise"? --Is already here. You just have to have the eyes to see it and the heart to feel it and to receive it.

Jesus' second answer is that the kingdom of God is coming as a terrible cataclysmic event. Don't bother looking for the kingdom of God, Jesus says in this second response. It will befall you, as frightful lightening announces a storm. There is nothing you can do either to chase after it or avert it. The kingdom of God will come as a great day of reckoning and destruction.

So which is it: an ever present reality, right before our eyes, right under our noses, a gift to be received and lived into, or a terrible, apocalyptic event, to be either dreaded or wielded as a threat over one's enemies, depending upon whether you think God is on your side or not? It matters a whole lot how we understand the kingdom of God. It matters a whole lot what we think Jesus believed about the kingdom of God.

The dissonance that I have pointed out to you this morning is so striking because it falls within one continuous passage that is attributed to Jesus. But it is by no means the only instance of incongruity in what Jesus says in our Christian scriptures. Have you noticed that Jesus doesn't always speak with a loving and forgiving voice? In one place he teaches that his disciples should forgive and forgive and forgive their transgressors, "seventy times seven," because this is God's nature, to forgive us again and again. But Jesus also says in John's Gospel that blaspheming the Holy Spirit is a sin that can never be forgiven. In one place Jesus talks of God as a loving father, even to the wicked prodigal son. But, in other places he preaches that God will cast the disobedient into everlasting flames. In one place Jesus urges his disciples to love their enemies. In another place he calls his enemies children of the devil and attacks them with contempt. If we read our scriptures carefully and critically, we must come to recognize either that Jesus was an unstable person who talked out of both sides of his mouth, or else, that not every speech attributed to him in our scriptures can possibly fit who he really was. So, to use our scriptures responsibly we must form an opinion of who Jesus was, and then measure the reliability of the various voices of Jesus in accordance with it.

So, back to our dilemma about what Jesus taught about God's kingdom. Which is it, a present reality, or a looming cataclysm? This Christian does not see Jesus as a Terminator, as the book of Revelation portrays him. I just don't believe that Jesus in any way supported the idea that God will redeem the world by a violent purging. This has been the belief of many Christians, and some of them have written the scriptures we use, but I think they have grossly twisted who he was, and what he believed about God.

Stephen Mitchell, a Jewish author who loves Jesus but has not become a Christian, expresses my take on what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God. Mitchell writes about what I in this sermon have called "holy heartburn," the precious experience of paradise in this world. He writes:

"When Jesus talked about the kingdom of God . . .he was talking about a state of being, a way of living at ease among the joys and sorrows of our world . . .This state of being is not something alien or mystical. We don't need to earn it. It is already ours . . .The kingdom of God is not something that will happen, because it isn't something that can happen. It cannot appear in a world or a nation . . .Jesus spoke of people "entering" it, [and] said that children are already inside it . . .If only we stop looking forward and backward, he said, we will be able to devote ourselves to seeking the kingdom of God, which is right beneath our feet, right under our noses."

I confess that I get impatient with my friend, Mark. "I'm so tired," he complains, week after week. But I've come to tolerate his complaining because I realize that he's not as weird as he thinks. I've come to realize that Mark's complaint is ancient and perennial. He speaks for us all. Humanity wants to know: What's going on here? Why is there so much suffering? When will God's kingdom come? I really do believe that Jesus' answer is: It has already come. Open your eyes and your hearts and receive it.