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"KINGDOM VISION" My mother-in-law was hosting a gathering of church women at her house one day back in the early sixties. She had spruced the place up, as you do when you're having a bunch of women from church over. And she'd made some goodies to serve along with coffee. The women had all arrived, and were gathered around the dining room table getting ready to start their meeting. That's when My Beloved apparently saw his opportunity! His mother and all the guests were otherwise occupied, and surely they wouldn't notice a cookie or two missing. Paul moved close to the desserts and was just about to nab the prize when his mother, without even looking around, said, "Paul, I have eyes in the back of my head. Don't try it." He was busted. But the next thing my mother-in-law knew, there was my six-or-so-year-old beloved, messing the back of his mother's hair up, trying to find her extra set of eyes! Moms and dads, we're busted. Children, it's true. None of us has eyes in the back of our heads. Good radars maybe, but only one set of eyes. If we want to see something, we have to look at it. And if we want to look at something else, we have to turn to do so. All in all that's probably a good thing. God has so designed our bodies that, when our eyes are working properly, we can face forward and still call on our peripheral vision to see about a hundred and eighty degrees around us. No matter how good we get, though, none of us will ever get three hundred and sixty degrees. When we meet up with Jesus in our reading from Matthew today, Jesus is making somewhat of a loaded statement. "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand." That was a loaded statement because those were the very same words that John the Baptist said just a chapter before this in Matthew. But now, Matthew tells us that John has been arrested. And Matthew uses words about Jesus that were first proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah. These words were like a little code message. Someone who knew their scripture would recognize Isaiah's words right off the bat. And someone who had first heard John say what Jesus was now saying would be quick to get the idea that Jesus must be the one that John had been talking about. But it was also a loaded statement for another reason. Jesus was asking those within hearing range to do something radical. Turn. Look another way. There's more than one way to look at things What Jesus meant by "repent" is nothing like what we have come to think of it. Our notions of repentance have been colored by televangelists and revival preachers who expect us to hit our knees and bemoan our checkered pasts. That's actually more like confession. To repent, in both testaments, actually had to do with a physical turning. What Jesus was saying was probably something more like this: "The kingdom of God is here - this is the time to change the way we look at things and to head in a different direction." And so the disciples followed. We read that four fishermen, two sets of brothers, were the first to accept the invitation of Jesus to follow him. But in order to do so, they had to do something different. They would have to face another way in order to see where Jesus was headed. They had to turn their backs on their livelihood, their families, even the sea itself. How could they have known what lay ahead for them? They had no idea. But that wasn't the point. The point was that, in order to answer the call to follow Jesus, they had to reorient themselves. They had to change direction and turn to look another way. Okay. Fast forward. Since the time when Jesus called these first disciples, life happened. History intervened. Jesus was resurrected and a movement began. Anyone who confessed Jesus Christ was putting their life on the line. People were killed for saying the Apostles' Creed at their baptism! Persecution and torture were routine for followers of Christ. About three hundred years after that, the emperor Constantine stepped in. Constantine declared Christianity to be the religion of the whole empire. From his time on, if you were born within the bounds of the empire, you were a Christian. And because everyone was a Christian, at least on paper, you were safe. Some seventeen hundred years now after Constantine, Christianity is no longer the only religion in the empire. We are more aware of religious diversity in the world, and even to a small degree in Fannin County. That's a good thing. But because of the close ties that grew over time between Christianity and the establishment, we have lost the sense of risk-taking that is inherent in professing the faith. Instead of putting our lives on the line every time we say the Apostles' Creed, it's come to seem like going to church is what nice and respectable people do. And that's not very risky! I doubt that many of us felt like we were "turning" by deciding to come to worship today. We are, though, a little further along the line than some people just because we showed up. Maybe you're here today because you're searching, you're wondering what it is that a life of faith has to offer you. Maybe you're hurting, and you're turning to the church for comfort and relief. Maybe you're here because you wouldn't know what else to do on Sunday mornings; this is what you always do. Maybe you're here to make your spouse happy or to get your parents off your back. None of those are bad or wrong reasons to be here. And surely there are lots more. But somehow, for some reason, we're here in worship today. Something in our lives is giving us the feeling that we might need to look a different way. No matter what seventeen hundred years of conditioning has taught us, being a follower of Jesus has nothing to do with being an American or even a Texan, and it sure doesn't mean that you're necessarily guaranteed to be nice!! Being a follower of Jesus Christ means that you and I have signed on to change direction. Choosing to follow means that we have chosen one direction to face, which means that by necessity other directions are not available to us. To change direction doesn't mean that you have to automatically deprive yourself of things like dancing or dominoes, unless they're the center of your life! Changing direction means that other directions no longer have any power. It means that we have reoriented ourselves to follow the light: to follow One who spent his life spreading the gospel and teaching and bringing an end to anything that falls short of God's good will for us. It means this: we do not have eyes in the back of our heads. Repentance is not about confessing our sins. We always need to do that. Repentance is about setting our sights. It's about choosing which way we will look. So are there things that are obscuring our vision? Are we too far away from the cellular antenna to get a strong signal? Have we gotten out of God's range? Are there other things upon which you and I are focused that are less than helpful? It could be that we have focused ourselves inward on our shortcomings, or our illnesses, or our security, or on our insecurities - on slights that are real or imagined from other people. If we have turned our focus inward, well, there's a reason that they call it "navel gazing." It's all that we can see. Or, are you and I focused too much on others? Have we decided to follow someone else who is probably just as fallible and in need of grace as we are? Is another person either the center of our adoration or the entire reason for our unhappiness? The more we focus on others, the less able we are to turn a new direction. Or are we turned backwards? Do we find all of our joy in the past, and relish the good old days? Do we spend our time wondering about what might have been? Are we not able to drive forward because we are glued to the rear-view mirror? Friends, the Kingdom of God has come near. In the words of John of Patmos, picked up by George Frederick Handel, the kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. It's time to change our orientation. Today. This is our opportunity to change the way we do things and our motivations for doing them. And we can change - not because "nice people" would do that, but because we have chosen to follow the One who makes all things new. We do not have eyes in the back of our heads. It's not possible for us to multitask this one. We can't send our heart one way and our mind another. Let's get it going in the life-giving direction. Let's set the only two eyes we have on the way, the truth and the life. Amen. No part of the sermons should be reproduced without permission from Rev. Sallie Watson. Audio tapes of the sermons can be requested through the church office. For more information, contact First Presbyterian Church, 818 North Main, Bonham, TX 75418, 903-583-2014, email: pastor@fpc-bonham.org or visit our website at www.fpc-bonham.org. |
