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Posted on Mon Jun 08 2009
Mel Williams
Good News
Matthew 6:25-33
A sermon by Mel Williams
June 7, 2009 (First in series on the Sermon on the Mount)
“But seek first God’s Kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” -- Matthew 6:33
Peter Gomes preached from this pulpit last year. He has written a recent book called The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus. In the introduction to the book, Peter tells the story of going to
What is this good news? It’s the
The Bible says that Jesus came preaching the good news of the
In coming months I will be offering a series of sermons based on Matthew 5 to 7, the Sermon on the Mount, which is the heart of Jesus’ message. We’ll be exploring more of what Jesus meant by the Kingdom; but today I want to underscore four of the core values of the Kingdom—the good news Jesus preached and taught.
1. The central value of the good news of the Kingdom is love. The Beloved Community that Jesus came to announce is based not on rules and regulations, not on law, but on relationship—love. Jesus told the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son (Prodigal Son) to show that God is always pursuing us with love.
It is clear to me that most all of us are hard on ourselves; we too easily get down on ourselves, blaming ourselves, being self-critical. Today’s high school seniors have been given a gift from this church—Henri Nouwen’s book, Life of the Beloved. In that book Nouwen says that the greatest enemy to the spiritual life is self-rejection—putting ourselves down. When any negative situation happens, we can so easily blame ourselves—kick ourselves, even saying, “I’m no good. I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected.” Or you may try to put yourself on a pedestal through arrogance. But Nouwen says that even arrogance is another way of compensating for a low opinion of ourselves.
The good news is that God loves each of us fiercely, and our goal is to accept God’s love and to internalize it until we genuinely feel and know that we are beloved, no matter what happens. This is the story of the Prodigal Son who begged for his father’s inheritance and went to the far country and wasted the money on all kinds of negative behavior; but when he came to his True Self, he returned home to his father who was waiting to receive him with open arms. “My son was dead. And now he’s alive again. He was lost, but now he’s found.”
This is the good news. Love is the great force of the Kingdom; it’s all grace. Let’s sing it: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see.” The Kingdom of God, the kin-dom of God, is love.
2. The Kin-dom of God is also forgiveness. Over and over Jesus is forgiving people. To the paralyzed man lowered through the roof, Jesus says, “My son, your sins are forgiven. Take up your bed and walk.” We don’t know the nature of the man’s paralysis; but we can assume that if any person is burdened by sin, that person is paralyzed and stuck, unable to move forward.
Forgiveness is Jesus’ offer of freedom. Jesus wants to liberate us from the crippling weight of our wrongdoing, our mistakes, our sin.
By forgiving people, Jesus got into trouble. He was criticized by the Pharisees because he spent time with tax collectors and prostitutes, gluttons and winebibbers. Over and over Jesus moved to the “least of these” — the least, the lost, and the left out. The Kingdom of God starts not with people in power, but with the powerless, those at the bottom of society.
3. And that leads us to a third core value of the Kingdom. Jesus is always seeking to restore people to life. When John the Baptist questioned Jesus: “Are you the one to come, or shall we expect another?” Jesus answered him this way: Look at what has already happened. “The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the poor are hearing the good news.” (Matthew 11:5; Luke 7:21)
To enter the
4. Finally the Kingdom, the Beloved Community, is an inclusive community where everyone is welcome. One of Jesus’ missions is restoring people to community. He tells the story of leaving the 99 to go find the one lost sheep to bring that one back into the fold. When Jesus healed someone, the person healed is often a leper or a paralyzed person who has been isolated, even ostracized. Jesus is reaching out to bring them into the circle of love and care. He’s reaching to find loaves and fishes to feed people; He’s setting the welcome table for all God’s children.
Richard Rohr tells the story of going to Africa to preach in the Catholic cathedral in
The priest said, “You know
The Kingdom—kin-dom, the Beloved Community—is all God’s children coming together to celebrate. It’s never exclusive, but always inclusive. When we pray “Our Father/Mother who art in heaven,” that means that all of us are God’s children—brothers and sisters, across every dividing line. That’s why the Kingdom is such a radical notion. It’s a whole new world, a vision of the Beloved Community where love is the supreme law—where we’re all sisters and brothers, where our doors are open and every person has enough—food, medical care, and basic
necessities.
We may tend to think that the Kingdom of God is off in the future, a distant vision. But Jesus is clear that the Kingdom is here and now. “The
Our job is to receive the Kingdom—the love, forgiveness, restored life, and the gift of community. And then our job is to carry that Kingdom out the door to the least privileged. Why? So we can learn more of the good news that our sisters and brothers have to teach us.
So may it be. Amen.
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