Text: Matthew 13:44-52
Focus: Hope
Function: 1st Sunday in Advent, To help people realize that the hope of advent is already present and worth everything.
Form: Storytelling
Intro:
Christmas presents. What a blessing for kids and adults alike! What a blessing to receive, and much more, to give!
Remember the fun of shaking the package? The fun of pressing around the edges if the package wasn't in a box? My dad always had so much fun wrapping the presents. He would do things like tape boxes together with cardboard tubes and make a reindeer, and hide all kinds of presents in different compartments. One year, a beautiful piece of ruby jewelry was in a box on the nose of Rudolf!
Those presents represented a treasure. They represented hope and excitement.
And Jesus gives these three parables about the worth and the value of God's kingdom, represented as treasure. And He gives this treasure in three forms. 1St, a hidden treasure. 2Nd, a known treasure, and 3rd a reward for hard work, but also a treasure that can be faked.
The fish are already in the sea, the exquisite pearl is also already formed, and the treasure is already hidden in the field.
The gift, the prize, the desire that we hope for is already realized. The Kingdom of God is already here!
What is the Kingdom of God?
When you hear that term, what image does it inspire in you?
Do you imagine an image of an huge white-bearded man with a big golden crown on His head and these eyes that flash like lightning? Do you imagine this big booming voice that shakes the room? Do you see this great big huge throne, and all these angels around it?
When we get the picture of the throne room of God, there is this glassy sea, or sea made of crystal, billions of people are standing on it, angels with 6 wings are flying overheard, around the room, are 24 other thrones, with great people sitting on them, there is this emerald rainbow, I guess in various shades of green behind it and the building is shaking with the sound of thunder and the flashes of lightning.
The image is both beautiful, and terrifying. Every human ever born will stand on that crystal sea. It is an overwhelming image!
Or, when you hear the Kingdom of God, do you picture a person, sitting on a throne, with a miter hat, and men in robes around him, and incense burners putting out strange smoke and all the while, there are poor people at the door starving? Do you picture a version of religion that doesn't actually care for the poor?
Do you picture a worship service, the music is stunning, people are in the presence of God, warmed by His Holy Spirit, there is either the steady beat of a drum, of the beautiful overtones from a grand organ, either or.
When we think, “Kingdom of God” do we think of the day when the last trumpet will blast, and every eye will see Jesus return in the clouds to set the world to the right, for the first time since the fall of Satan himself?
Jim and Pat Shepard have this beautiful painting of what heaven could be like. There is this golden gate, the tree of life, and the celestial city. When you see it, it makes you long for that place of peace. I saw a famous picture of the feast of the Lamb. It was a table, set up for a love feast, and the way the author drew it, it goes on forever. At every seat is a pitcher of wine and a loaf of bread. It is the wedding feast of the lamb.
And Jesus, Jesus said, I won't break this bread or drink from this cup again, until I do it with you in heaven.
What thoughts goes through our minds when we think of the Kingdom of God?
Every one of those images I placed in your minds, is a place that we are not in at the present time. Well, the music was good this morning. But still, all of those things and places are not the place where we generally dwell. Some of them, we physically cannot get to while these bodies of our still have breath in them.
Note this: there is one common theme in these three parables. The Kingdom is already here.
Two of the parables, the one about the hidden treasure and the one about the pearl of great price have a secondary theme: It is worth everything we own.
And that brings us to hope. What is the thing about hope?
Hope is the decision to hang on to a belief that something good will happen.
1 Corinthians 13:13 tells us that there are three main pillars of our Christian life: Faith, Hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.
Christian living does not exist without hope.
Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the confidence that what we hope for will happen. I like the King James Version, it is the substance, the proof, the reality of what we hope for.
Hope is the decision to hang on to belief. I keep telling people that faith is a gift from God, but hope is the decision to accept and trust in those gifts from God.
So what is the connection between hope and this hidden treasure, the Kingdom of God?
When we hope, we hope for something that we do not yet see.
So here it is, advent. It is this time for hope. I think of the presents that will come underneath the tree, and even though they are right there, the hope of what they can be is still this glorious mystery.
It is like, we have it, and yet we don't.
But it is a gift, it cannot be taken away.
Although... one year... I was being a boy, and the back of the couch was moved for the tree, with some presents under it. There was this one spot that was the best location for viewing the TV. My brother was heading for that spot by walking around the back of the couch.
I beat him to it, but jumping over the back of the couch. Except, dad was there watching. Jumping on furniture was a no-no. Dad gave me a choice, take a spanking now, or lose one of the presents. I told him I would think about it (with the hope that he would forget).
Every day, and then once or twice a week, the question came to me. Finally Christmas came, I grabbed my presents and proceeded to open them all. He did forget, but for that year, Christmas was a rough one, always wondering if what I hoped for would be taken away.
What if our hope is taken away?
Can our hope in God be taken away?
In these parables, Jesus is saying that the hope we have is already here. Not just like the Christmas present under the tree, but the Kingdom of God is here and now.
Right now we have the choice to accept or reject it.
Jesus refers to it as a “pearl of great price.” It is something that is worth all that we have.
He refers to it as a treasure hidden in the field. It is the present, and we already know what its value is. And again, it is worth all that we have.
And it is like a great catch from a fishing net.
Wasn't it great the two times the apostles threw their nets into the water and got so many fish in return that they could quit for the day?
On both occasions, they had been working all night without any success, but when the master came, they found their purpose.
The funny thing was, on both occasions, they left the catch behind, gave up everything and followed Jesus.
Again, finding Jesus is more important than anything.
But then, think about the terms: “Kingdom of God” and “finding Jesus.”
To get us thinking about this subject, I started with the question as to what the Kingdom of God actually is.
The term Kingdom means that first and foremost, it is the reign of Christ Jesus, the Messiah, the anointed one, the one who came to set the prisoners free, to restore sight to the blind, to proclaim "the year of jubilee." Jesus quotes Isaiah 61:1-2. The year of Jubilee was to be a great year.
The Kingdom of God is no earthly Kingdom. Don Krabill, the author of “Amish Grace” calls it “an Upside Down Kingdom”
It was a year when all the property went back to the original families. All slaves were set free. All loans were canceled. It was a “start over,” “do over” year. It was a redistribution of wealth.
The unlucky and even the lazy got another chance.
And God wants to protect people, even the least of these.
When Jesus came, He started His ministry with proclaiming that God's Kingdom is here and now, and this is the kind of Kingdom that He was establishing.
Now here is the thing. Too often, I myself. And too often, too many of us are waiting ONLY for the Kingdom to come. (Point away)
Too often, we think that when we get to heaven, that is the time for Jesus to reign in our lives.
And right now, we have to strive and fight and do whatever it takes to succeed in this world.
Sometimes, that can mean exchanging eternity, the Kingdom of God that is already here, for the momentary pleasures of sin.
Or, it can mean we exchange our Christian values for the momentary pleasure of revenge, unforgiveness, and bitterness.
Or, it can mean we value our citizenship in this world over our citizenship in the Kingdom of God.
That would be like we are double dipping. All the pleasure of the here and now, and heaven at the end. After all, one may justify themselves in saying, we have stood faithful against all the sinners out there and proclaimed the evil of their deeds, therefore the reward of riches here on earth is ours to claim.
But that is not the kingdom that Jesus came to establish.
Jesus' words in this passage, the man gave up everything here on earth to obtain the Kingdom of God. Jesus' parables indicate sacrifice now for a better way of living.
And isn't that what sin is all about? Momentary pleasure in exchange for eternal life? Isn't that what Satan himself offered Adam and Eve in the garden? Isn't that the temptation of Moses, become the ruler of Egypt, the greatest kingdom on the face of the earth, or suffer in the wilderness with God's people, doing God's will?
Hope is what this sermon is about. And it isn't hope in something we cannot see, it is hope in something that is here and now. When we conclude, we are going to invite you to return to the altar and pick up a hope stone. The idea is that the hope is something that we already possess.
But I would be remiss if I didn't go into the only part of the parables that Jesus explains. He mentions the fishermen with all the fish, and the angels at the end of the age separating the good fish from the bad.
When I think of that, in relationship to hope, I think back to the Christmas where my hope was in question with the decision to forgo a present, or get a spanking. I lived that Christmas season without a lot of hope, ashamed.
I understand my father's discipline. Son, your actions have consequences. Sometimes, the smallest thing can bring the biggest trouble. It was a good lesson to learn and I don't fault him for that.
And Jesus is giving that same warning, some, just like the bad fish, are going to be caught up in the “search for the Kingdom” and still are not going to make it.
Jesus is saying that the citizens of the Kingdom of God already live that way. Those who say that Jesus' only purpose was to save us for heaven miss the fact that the kingdom is already here.
Those are the bad fish.
I wanted us to think about the image that is created in our minds by the title “Kingdom of God” in order to understand just what we have been taught about it.
Is it a kingdom of domination, or a Kingdom of compassion?
Rick Warren, the author of “The Purpose Driven Life” has spent almost all of the income from the millions of copies he sold in places like Darfur, Rwanda and the thousands of villages that have been lost an entire generation to the AIDS epidemic. He recognizes this basic principle, everything he owns belongs to Jesus, so he will not hoard it for himself.
He was working with an interfaith group on behalf of the poor, at a college in Colorado and during a question and answer time, someone completely changed the subject and asked him how they could work with him since he, as an evangelical Christian believed that she, a person of the Jewish faith, was going to hell.
I appreciated his response. She was attacking the concept of a Kingdom of God that dominates others and his response was from the upside-down kingdom.
He said, I have tenets of my faith that are important to me, I believe what I believe, but that doesn't prevent good people from different faiths from coming together and doing good on behalf of the poor.
Good answer. Two pastoral friends of mine are starting studies in a book with a weird title: “The Naked Anabaptist, what would Christianity be if Christendom had never occurred.”
The idea is that the Kingdom of God is not a bad place. It isn't about politics and power, it's about hope, faith, justice and love for one another.
To live that way takes sacrificial living. That is why Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is worth everything we possess.
When, instead of marketing a scheme to justify our wealth and our lack of concern for the least of these, our faith is about caring as Jesus did and the Kingdom that we preach is upside-down in comparison to human kingdoms, then instead of being a place that keeps others out, it becomes the place to invite others in. It is a place to invite sinners in. It is a place to invite sinners like me, and you, to find help, hope and healing and to give that same mercy toward others.
Instead of the museum for saints, we are the hospital for sinners, and as we get well, we get to share in the treatment of others.
I love the example of Rick Warren. Because he got saved, he took the millions of dollars in revenues from his books and he turned them upside-down. That didn't translate into mansion after mansion, and the latest jet, but instead he spends it on the least of these.
He shared the hope that the gospel gives.
That hope is here, now. The kingdom is here now. As we close, you are invited to come and take a “hope stone” with you. It is a symbol that you will not forget to trust God. It is a symbol that you are partners with sharing His hope with a lost, bleeding and hurting world. It is a symbol that the hope you have is not just for yourself, but for Jesus' kingdom of peace, love and justice be spread upon the face of the earth.
As our scripture says, there will be many collected in the great dragnet at the end, in the day of judgment, and He will separate the just from the evil. I invite you to embrace His kingdom. Stop waiting for it, and get in on the great project today.
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