Tag Kingdom

Whole Grain Goodness

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

You reap what you sow…

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23;  Isaiah 55:10-11

A sower went out to sow…  I have a special fondness for this parable which I’ll explain in a moment.

The parable of the sower, which appears in Matthew, Mark and Luke with slight but important differences, is an allegory, and when his disciples ask him to explain it to them Jesus tells them what the different elements represent.

In Luke, Jesus says that the seed is “the word of God.”  In Mark he simply calls it “the word.”  But Matthew is more specific.  The seed, says Jesus, is “the word of the kingdom.”

Then he talks about the different soils. 

The seed that falls on the path and is eaten by birds represents those who hear the word of the kingdom but don’t understand or take time to consider it “so the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart.”  

The seed that falls on rocky ground represents those who are initially enthusiastic but there is no depth in their response so the word of the kingdom doesn’t take root in their lives.

Some of the seed is choked by thorns.  Jesus tells his disciples that thorns and weeds represent the cares of the world, the lure of wealth, the busyness of maintaining a certain standard of living.  These things suck away all the energy that would sustain commitment to God’s kingdom.

And then there’s the good soil which produces a bountiful yield.  But what is that soil exactly?  A rich spiritual life?  A pious life? A life devoted to religion and evangelism?  What?

In all the years I’ve preached this parable, I’ve usually asked people to reflect on what kind of soil they are.  That’s a pretty common approach to this parable:  What kind of soil are you?  And what kinds of changes would you need to make so you could be more productive for the seed Jesus is sowing?

What kind of soil are you?  That is worth thinking about but it’s not the only way to place yourself in the parable.  When I really think about it, I know I have played other roles in this parable.

I think there have probably been times when I might have been a big, flat, underground rock in somebody else’s field.  I think of all the years I worked with young people and led youth events.  I remember the energy and enthusiasm of all those kids, and then I think about how few of them are still part of the church now, and I wonder—did we introduce them to a faith that was too shallow?  Did we give them too much flash and not enough substance?  Did we—did I— do something that somehow blocked their roots?

I know there were times when I was a weed.  I know there were times when my mere existence probably restricted someone else’s spiritual growth—if for no one else then at least for my parents.  I know that sometimes I was the “cares of this world” for them.   But maybe I was a burden and busy-ness weed that choked the growth of others, too.  It’s hard to live in any kind of interdependent relationship without bringing some of the cares of this world with you.  Relationships, especially family relationships almost always include pressures about time and money and other resources.  If you have kids or a spouse or a partner, then “the cares of this world” are just part of the package.  And once you get used to a certain standard of living and to making sure your loved ones enjoy certain advantages and opportunities, those things just automatically become part of your way of life and you don’t think too much about how all that might be affecting your relationship with the rest of the world or your relationship with God.  So maybe being the weeds or thorns in somebody’s field is just unavoidable if you have any kind of life at all with other people.

Let’s look at the Sower.  We usually think of the Sower as God or Jesus.  Maybe that’s humility on our part, but it’s also a pretty effective way to make sure that our own role in this parable remains passive.  And I don’t think Jesus is ever calling us to be passive where the kingdom of God is concerned.

As I reread and rethink this parable, it seems pretty clear to me that Jesus is inviting us to think of ourselves as the sower.  In fact, if we’re living in the imitation of Christ, it really is our job as followers of Jesus to be spreading the word about the commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness out there in the everyday world.  We’re supposed to be out there in the world scattering the seeds of Christ’s alternative reality everywhere we go.  It’s part of our discipleship.  In fact, you’ve probably already been the sower more times than you know.

Which brings us to the seed.  Just what is this seed that we’ve been sowing?

Assuming that in some way, shape or form you are indeed living out the gospel in your everyday life, just what Good News are you proclaiming with your life?  What is the seed that you are sowing?

As I said earlier, I have a special fondness for this parable.  It brings back some really great memories for me.  When I was growing up, almost every summer, as soon as school was out we piled into our 1960 Impala and drove from Long Beach straight to my mom’s family farm in Kansas so we could help with the wheat harvest.  

Harvest was a lot of hard work but it was also a lot of fun.  I remember how my dad and my mom’s cousin, Frank, who did the actual year-round farming, would talk for hours in the evening about what kind of seed should be planted in the Fall.  It was always a Hard Red Winter wheat but there were a lot of different strains so there was always discussion about which variety might give us the best yields and best quality and best price per bushel. 

I remember how several of the different varieties had Native American names like Pawnee, Wichita, Ponca, Comanche, Scout and Bison which seemed fitting since our farm was part of the great plains where buffalo had been hunted by Native peoples long before my Swedish great grandparents first broke the soil with their plows.  

There were all kinds of factors and decisions that determined how successful your next crop would be next year, but it all started with choosing the right seed.

For the past 20+ years, religion in general but Mainline Christianity in particular has been in decline.  There has been a lot of analysis of why that’s happening, but one thing seems clear:  it’s not for a lack of Sowers sowing the seed.  There are still a lot of evangelists out there in the world using some of the most sophisticated tools in history.  There is no shortage of church outreach and church growth and church invitation programs.  So why aren’t we getting results?  Has the whole world turned into rocky or Hthorny soil?  Is it all one hard-packed foot-path of cares and worries and pursuit of wealth where the Good News simply cannot take root?

Maybe.  Certainly there seems to be a lot more of all that.  But maybe we have a different problem altogether.  

Maybe there’s a problem with the seed we’ve been sowing.

Let’s go back for a minute to all that seed that falls along the path.  People hear the word of the kingdom and they don’t understand it.  It doesn’t connect with them.  It doesn’t get their attention.  So it doesn’t take root.

Now let’s stretch that metaphor.  What if it’s the seed that’s the problem?  What if somewhere along the way we substituted a sack of hybrid seed for the original seed that Jesus was sowing.  

And let’s say, for the sake of argument, that this hybrid seed worked pretty well for a very long time but now it doesn’t.  What if, even when that seed is falling on fertile ground, people understand the message but it just doesn’t make sense to them anymore so they reject it.

For a long time, we’ve been sowing a seed of what Brian McLaren calls “carrot on a stick” theology—talking about our faith in Christ as if it’s primarily about going to heaven when we die.  Sometimes that’s called fire insurance theology.

Here’s Fire Insurance theology in a nutshell:  

  • First, we’re all doomed to Hell; Hell is the default afterlife because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  God is deeply offended by sin.  But sin is inescapable.  It’s part of the human condition.  So we’re all doomed.
  • Next, God demands compensation for the offense of our sin and the way we have become a blight on the perfection of God’s original creation.  “The wages of sin is death.”  Right?  So, Jesus is sacrificed on the cross to appease God and save us.  Jesus takes the punishment we deserve and pays the debt we owe for our sin.
  • Finally, if we accept what Jesus has done for us and invite Jesus into our hearts, then God forgives our sin and we get to go to heaven

You’ve all heard this theological story, right?

Fire insurance theology doesn’t work anymore.   It’s not that people don’t understand it, it’s that they do understand it and it doesn’t make sense to them anymore.   And truthfully, it never really did make sense, even in a world where every culture and every religion practiced sacrifice in some way, shape or form because the gods needed to be pacified. 

Fire insurance theology doesn’t work anymore because the flaws in its internal logic have been laid bare:  

  • It’s a theology that talks about a God of infinite love one moment but then sanctifies bloodshed and violence the next. 
  • It describes a God who is satisfied if we agree to an intellectual transaction rather than a God who is passionately interested in living with us, working through us, and loving us as we work to realize God’s vision of the world as God intended it to be. 
  • Fire Insurance Theology portrays Jesus primarily as a cosmic dealmaker who goes through hell to buy our way out of eternal misery rather than as Emmanuel, the very presence of God with us, who teaches, inspires and leads us as we undergo a complete transformation of the heart, soul, and mind so that God’s vision of shalom for the world can become a reality “on earth as it is in heaven.” 
  • Fire Insurance Theology leads to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”—a way of thinking that says “since I’ve accepted Jesus as my personal savior and he’s paid the price for my sins, then not only is nothing more expected of me, but anything I do from here on out is okay.  It’s all forgiven in advance.”  
  • Fire Insurance Theology focuses on personal salvation so it numbs us to our systemic cultural sins like racism, greed, oppressive politics and economies skewed to favor the wealthy—all these things the prophets railed against for centuries.

Fire insurance theology has been the church’s primary theological story for a long time now.  But that’s not the Good News that Jesus preached.  That’s not the seed he was sowing.

In Matthew’s version of this parable, Jesus calls the seed “the word of the kingdom.” That’s what the sower is sowing.  In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard said, “The Gospel is less about how to get into heaven after you die and more about how to live in the kingdom of heaven before you die.”

Have you noticed that in the gospels Jesus does four basic things:  

  • He announces that the kingdom of heaven is arriving.  It is within reach;
  • He describes what that reign of God looks like and how it operates.  That’s what the beatitudes and all the parables are all about.  When Jesus preaches and teaches, he is casting a vision of a new reality, a reality that, with his help, is achievable if we will live as he lives;
  • He liberates the spiritually oppressed so they are free to participate fully in this new reality; 
  • And he heals people.  He makes them whole.  

When Jesus sends his disciples out on their mission he tells them to do those very same things—announce the kingdom, put a stop to whatever is bedeviling people, and heal the sick.

THAT’s the seed the Sower went out to sow.

That’s the seed we should still be sowing.

The gospel is not just about your personal salvation—or anyone’s personal salvation—but it does include our personal salvation if we really understand what salvation means.  

For too long we’ve understood “being saved” simply to mean “being rescued” –-having our fat pulled out of the fire.  But that’s only one of its meanings.  Its older, deeper meaning is “to be healed, to be made whole.”  So when St. Paul says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” another way to hear that is “work out your healing” or “work out your wholeness” with fear and trembling. (Phil. 2:12)  

So here’s the Good News.  Here’s the seed we can sow, the seed Jesus was sowing:  

God loves us and wants to heal us and make us whole.  You, me, all of us. Collectively and individually.

God wants to heal your body.  God wants to heal your soul.  God wants to heal your anger and your fear and your doubt and your brokenness.   God wants to find that place in you that’s turned hard and stony and soften it with love.  God wants to touch that place in your heart that feels like it will always be wounded and bathe it with compassion and joy.  God wants to clear the weeds from the garden of You.  God wants to heal your relationships.  And that includes your relationship with yourself.

God wants to heal you, body, mind and spirit.

But it’s even better than that.  God doesn’t want to heal just you.  God wants to heal everything.  You.  Your family.  The community.  The culture.  The environment.  Our politics.  The nation.  The world.  

It’s true, the soil has changed.  Fields we thought were fertile might not be and the good soil might not be where we expect it—but then the Sower in the parable doesn’t go looking for fertile soil.  He just casts the good seed all around and trusts that some of it will land in fertile ground and grow.  

What Kind of Kingdom?

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 23:33-43

Today is the last Sunday of the church year, Christ the King Sunday or Reign of Christ Sunday.  This is a fairly new addition to the church calendar—it was added only 100 years ago—and frankly, not everyone is happy about it.  

In 1925, the world was trying desperately to put itself back together in the aftermath of World War I and it wasn’t going well.  Pope Pius XI was gravely concerned by the growing tide of secularism and ultra-nationalism in Germany, Italy and elsewhere, and, of course, the rise of Communism in Russia.  In response he issued an encyclical called Quas Primas—“That Which is First.” Interestingly, it can also be read as a question, “What is First?”.  In this encyclical, he established The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe or, as it came to be commonly known, the Feast of Christ the King.  

Pope Pius was trying to restate and reinforce the idea of the sovereignty of Christ over, well, everything.  He wanted to make it clear that our deepest and most profound allegiance should be to Jesus Christ above and beyond every other allegiance.  But in doing it in this way, was he, maybe, missing the point of what Jesus was actually saying when he talked about the kingdom of God?

The image of Christ as King is problematic for us in a number of ways.  First of all, it’s hard for us to relate to even the idea of a king.  There aren’t very many real monarchs left in the world, and most of the ones who are still here wield a power that is primarily symbolic or ceremonial.  As a case in point, King Charles III ascended to the throne of Great Britain three years ago after the long reign of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, but neither the world nor Great Britain have seen any significant changes in the governance of the United Kingdom as a result.  That’s because whatever power the throne still has is very strictly circumscribed by a democratic parliament. 

Another problem with the imagery of Christ the King is that, unfortunately, Christianity doesn’t have a very good track record with kings.  Too often in history Christianity has found itself either colluding with or coopted by the oppressive forces of empire instead of the liberating and restorative teaching of Jesus and the movement of the Holy Spirit.

In her book A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom and Perseverance,  Diana Butler Bass said, “The word king is so problematic.  It is wedded to social privilege and pyramids of wealth and power and invested with centuries of inequities and fairy-tale fantasies.”[1]  Our experience of kings stands in stark contrast to the egalitarian vision Jesus was describing when he announced that the basilea of God was within reach.

Basilea.  That’s the Greek word in the gospels that we translate as kingdom.  It’s a word that the empire used to describe the domain of Caesar and also the territory governed by Herod and other client kings.  And even as Jesus was proclaiming the arrival of the basileaof God, it was a word that was both too small and too loaded to really capture the new reality that Jesus was describing.

The word Kingdom implies boundaries. Boundaries imply limitations and location.  You are either inside or outside.  Even the synonyms for kingdom make it sound territorial. 

The word Kingdom also implies power, usually and especially coercive power. Constantine and later Christian emperors and kings readily embraced the concept of the Kingdom of Christ because it was an image they could use in exercising their own power.  They could claim that they were appointed by Christ and were ruling under his authority, which meant that they could spin just about anything they did as justifiable because they were acting on Christ’s behalf.  Convert people at the point of the sword or by torture?  No problem.  We’re doing it for Jesus.  

Today, Christian Nationalism and other authoritarian movements appropriate the language of Christ the King to imagine Jesus as a muscular monarch, kicking tail and taking names.  Under the auspices of Christ the King, they want to establish a restrictive theocracy, but in embracing that idea they completely miss the new reality that Jesus was calling us to embrace.

Kingdom, realm, reign, sovereignty—none of these terms are really a good fit for what Jesus was describing when he announced that the basilea tou theou –which we translate as The Kingdom of God—is arriving, is at hand, is within reach. 

George Orwell was a guy who knew a thing or two about language and how we use, abuse, twist and misuse it.  Orwell said, “There is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.”[2]

Christ the King is one of those worn-out metaphors.  We keep using it because we haven’t come up with a better phrase to describe the vision of God’s all-pervading influence that Jesus was proclaiming or a way to describe our belief that God in Christ is the ultimate power that moves the universe through love, compassion, creativity, grace and cooperation.  

On the plus side, Christ the King does make us ask ourselves some important questions. What do we mean when we say that Christ is sovereign?  How do we understand the kingdom of God, the reign of God?  How do we understand the power of God?  How do we understand power in general?  How do we use power?  Do our values reflect the values of empire or the values of Jesus?  What kind of kingdom do we belong to?  And what do we do when our allegiance to Christ and the values of Jesus are in conflict with the values and practices of the other powers that hold sway in our lives?

The kingdom of God, as Jesus described it, was and is a resistance movement.  To say that Christ is king is a resistance claim.  It is a challenge to the way power is coercively used most of the time in our world.  Jesus is a different kind of king.  The crucifixion is his coronation.  He surrenders to the coercive power of empire to show us its naked violence, but also to show us the greater power of love and nonviolence.

Pontius Pilate understood that Jesus was all about resisting the empire’s coercive power but also the empire’s imagery.  When Pilate asked Jesus straight out, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus simply replied, “You say so.  Those are your words.”[3]  The soldiers crucifying Jesus mocked him saying, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself!” Pilate mocked both Jesus and the Jewish people by having a board nailed above his head with the inscription, “This is the King of the Jews.”  These were people who understood power in only one way.  Control.  Coercion.  Power over.

But the reign of God that Jesus was describing is a cooperative world.  The reign of God doesn’t force itself on anyone or try to control anyone.  Christ, as king, pervades, persuades, encourages, nudges and asks us to live up to a vision of our better selves. 

 The commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness is a world where generosity, grace, compassion and mercy prevail.  It is a world driven by and governed by love.  It is a world where everyone’s needs are met and no one goes hungry.  It is a kingdom that opens pathways through every kind of border, boundary and barrier.  It is a world where the only control is self-control.  Its central values are to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. Its only law is love: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.  

The kingdom that Jesus was describing is a world moving toward the vision of Isaiah when we will beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks, when nation shall not lift up sword against nation nor shall they study war anymore.[4]  The kingdom that Jesus proclaimed is the world where God walks with us as Ezekiel envisioned, a world where God shepherds us, where Christ seeks out the lost and brings back the strays, where through us, Jesus binds up the injured and strengthens the weak and feeds us all with justice.[5]

The reign of God is a realm in which the poor are blessed and the hungry are filled and those who mourn are comforted.  It is the world Mary envisioned in the Magnificat when she sang, “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”[6]

Yes, God exercises power.  But not the way we usually think of power. God’s power is all about empowering you.  God is about giving power rather than holding onto it.  God gives power to us so that we can love and care for the world more fully and effectively. Together.  “The greatest manifestation of the power of God,” said Bishop Yvette Flunder, “comes when we work together to find ways to be together and do justice together and love together and stand together.”  

The kingdom of God is all of us together.

 “Jesus did not establish an institution,” wrote Bishop Michael Curry, “though institutions can serve his cause. He did not organize a political party, though his teachings have a profound impact on politics. Jesus did not even found a religion. No, Jesus began a movement, fueled by his Spirit, a movement whose purpose was and is to change the face of the earth from the nightmare it often is into the dream that God intends.”

Today is Christ the King Sunday.  It is a day when we use the “worn out metaphor” of kingly power to try to open the doors and windows of our hearts, minds and souls to the empowering love of God through Jesus Christ.  It is a day when we acknowledge both that God in Christ is the ultimate power and that we need to redefine how we understand and use power.  It is a day when we are asked to declare that our deepest and most profound allegiance is to Jesus Christ above and beyond every other allegiance.  It is a day that challenges us to walk in the Way of Jesus so that we can help to bring God’s vision of a whole, healthy, loving and cooperative world into reality on earth as it is in heaven.

Today is the day we volunteer to change the face of the earth from the nightmare it so often is into the dream that God intends.  In the name of Christ the King.

[1] Diana Butler Bass; “Christ the King”; A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance

[2] Politics and the English Language, 1946. 

[3] Luke 23:3

[4] Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3

[5] Ezekiel 34:15-16

[6] Luke 1:46-55