The Kingdom Come: God’s Beloved Community
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33; 44-52
“But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.”—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Facing the Challenge of a New Age,” 1956
A story very familiar to long-time St. Stephen members but which may be new to the rest of you is the story of The Hole. You see, the idea of this gothic cathedral has been around since the forties, when the session of old Broadway Presbyterian Church first dreamed of moving here. Plans were drawn up, some of which we have framed on the wall in the church office. The original sanctuary, what’s now the Parish Hall, was built immediately after the church moved to this site in the 1950s.
But the great dream remained that we would one day build a great gothic cathedral, what the Rev. R. W. Jablonowski would call a “Southwestern Basilica.” To that end, there were several capital campaigns until this sanctuary was finally completed in 1969. Building began in the early sixties. The gigantic space that would be the undercroft of the church and its foundation was built.
And then the money ran out. So for several years, what sat on the site that would one day be St. Stephen’s sanctuary was a great big hole.
I often wonder about that interim period. Was it discouraging? Frustrating? So much money had been spent simply to put a hole in the ground. I’d love to hear your stories sometime.
But you didn’t let go of the vision. Another capital campaign. A new and imaginative architect, Albert Komatsu. Dogged determination on the part of your pastor, Rev. Jablonowski, and your session’s leadership.
And in 1969, the dream was achieved.
It’s the interim period that interests me. Because that’s what many theologians call this period of history that we live in today: the interim, the time between the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and His return in glory to rule the world. This is a period of frustration and disappointment for people of faith. We know what Jesus wants for the world, but we know what we have, too: a big hole. The God-shaped hole in our souls that Pascal once talked about, but a God-shaped hole in the world, too. A hole that allows for injustice, cruelty, tyranny, and stupidity. There’s that hole sitting there where we imagine the world that will be, that place of eternal peace, joy, and oneness with God and one another, where war and hatred and death itself will be no more, where everyone will have all they need, and God’s presence will be everywhere, and the Lamb of God, the Lord of Love, will rule over all, and love will be the rule, not the exception.
We believe in the mustard bush. Remember what jesus says of the mustard bush? It becomes the greatest of all bushes, welcoming birds into its branches. This is an image of the Kingdom of God as a community of shelter and welcome—what Dr. King called the Beloved Community, where all are loved and welcomed by one another and by God. That is our dream. It is the Kingdom we strive and hope for.
Until then, the hole.
But also, the extraordinary faithfulness of people who want to turn the hole into the foundation of the Kingdom to come. People who practice the impractical values of God’s kingdom now. People who view love and forgiveness as the financial capital of the Kingdom of God. From a godly perspective, that’s what we’re doing when we live according to the values of God’s kingdom: we’re contributing our love and kindness and forgiveness to the world as a contribution to the capital campaign to build the Kingdom of God.
For those people, the hole is a symbol of hope. Certainly we’re not as far along as we’d like to be, as we need to be, as we must be. But we refuse to give up on the foundation that has been laid by Jesus Christ. Jesus taught us about a world where reconciliation and forgiveness rule, and taught us about a loving God who will redeem us and the world. Despite the fact that we live in a world that feels separated from God we know that neither death, nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have a vision of that wonderful Kingdom of love and peace that God has promised and we do not give up.
Theologians talk about an “interim ethic.” An interim ethic is how we live in between the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the day when He returns. An interim ethic, in short, is how we are to live as Christians NOW. Here, in the real world. There are three key points to an interim ethic. The first is, we know what God wants. The second is, it seems impossible to get there. And the third is, we want to get there no matter what.
It’s the third one that is always the challenge. It’s hard to believe in the power of love in a world that believes in the power of missiles and money. And it’s hard to practice the key ethics of the Kingdom of God–forgiveness and reconciliation—when they seem to do so little good.
I imagine that when St. Stephen’s parishioners looked at that hole in the ground, and then thought about the incredible amount of money they’d need to raise to build a cathedral, they wondered if it would ever get done. The obstacles were so great.
I also imagine that many people started out with the dream of the Southwestern Cathedral in the forties, and contributed a pretty fair amount of money to the cause, but didn’t live to see the finished product.
We plant seeds, brothers and sisters. We plant mustard seeds of the Kingdom of God. And they will grow into the Kingdom God has promised.
At the end of this week, the annual PCUSA Multi-Cultural conference will take place in Fort Worth. At Presbytery recently, Joe Clifford, pastor of First Dallas, challenged us to see the future of the church as a multi-cultural vision, to build congregations that are mixed ethnically, racially, and sociologically. This is not, he said, something we’re supposed to do to be “politically correct.” It’s because that’s how the Kingdom of God is described in Revelation. That’s how the early church was composed according to Scripture.
Will it be hard? Yes.
Is it going against the grain of the world as it is? Certainly.
Is it what God intends? Without a doubt.
Can we do it?
We built a cathedral from a hole in the ground. Of course we can do it!
We plant seeds, brothers and sisters. Jesus promises us those seeds will grow into something great and beautiful, but His is the only guarantee we have. Sometimes what we start out with doesn’t look like much. We forgive, and we get walked on again. We ask people to love their neighbor, and they say, “That person’s not my neighbor!” We try to live lives of love and mercy and fall so short ourselves that we become discouraged. We give money to the church, but wonder if the church will ever do as much good as we hoped and dreamed it would. We may go our whole lives trying to make the world a better place, and have little to show for it in the end.
But we don’t live lives of faithfulness because we want to win awards. We do it because we believe the truth: the truth that God loves us. The truth that God loves the world. And Jesus promises that the seeds we plant today will bear the fruit of the Kingdom tomorrow. And we believe Him, and so we keep living as if love really is the answer despite all evidence to the contrary.
The foundation Jesus has built, and that we continue to build on, may look empty and stark and lonely, but it is the foundation upon which surely the Kingdom of God will be built. In the meantime, in the interim, by our faithfulness, by our stubbornness, by our absolute belief that God’s love will conquer all and bring about an eternal day of reconciliation and redemption—we keep making ethical contributions to the heavenly capital campaign that is building the Kingdom of God.