Sermon for Sunday, February 20, 2005  

PRAYING FOR GOD’S KINGDOM TO COME

7^th in a series on The Heart of Christianity; What is the Christian Life All About?

By

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: Micah 6: 8 & Amos 5:21-24

 From Micah

⁸ He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? 

From Amos

²¹ I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. ²² Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. ²³ Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. ²⁴ But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

About six months ago now we had a guest speaker in worship. Roxane White is one of our members and she is very important person in the city and county of Denver. She is currently the manager of the Denver Department of Human Services, responsible for Human Services for the City and County of Denver.  She is also chair of the Mayor’s Commission to End Homelessness and a member of the Mayor’s Cabinet, Denver Human Resources Commission, State of Colorado Works Allocation Committee and Colorado State Child Welfare Allocation Committee.

On the Sunday Roxane spoke, she focused on what has been the traditional focus of the world wide organization of United Methodist Women – social justice and how we live Jesus’ word’s about caring for the poor and the lonely and the left out.

The next day, I received an unusual and troubling e-mail message from one of our families who were in worship. This family was very upset that we had taken time in worship to talk about homeless people and poor people and they could not see why a church would do that; they could not see any connection between what the Bible is concerned about and what they heard in church that morning. And furthermore, I don’t think that family has been back in church!

While that is probably an unusual reaction, I can understand why the information gap is there because most of us do not know our Bible, we are still innocent of even the major themes of the Bible, so if someone comes to church uninformed about our book, they are likely to be surprised by a morning sermon on our responsibilities to provide opportunities for the least and the left out.

The fact is that this is one of the major themes of the Bible. Jesus tells a story in the 25^th chapter of Matthew’s gospel about the return of the son of man and how he will separate the faithful from the unfaithful. And the means he uses is not whether we said all the right words about Jesus or even how many times we have been in church. Jesus says the real test is whether we fed the hungry, clothed the ragged, visited the prisoner, and ministered to the ill.

Jesus is very, very concerned about those who are most vulnerable and have no voice. And it is not just Jesus who exhibits that passion for compassion. That theme underlies all of the Old Testament before Jesus. I have said often – the most frequent verse in the Old Testament is this verse: do not be afraid. The second most frequent verse in the Old Testament is: care for the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. Why? Because those persons had no power, no advocate, and the duty of the people of God – especially the prophets in the Bible tell us this – the duty of the people of God is to care about and be the advocates for the poor and powerless. Because no one else will do that if we don’t.

I think we still need that verse from Matthew’s gospel on one of our walls somewhere in our new building, it so important for us and so many of us are trying to live that way.

You know, the Bible is a dangerous book. If we read the Bible and listen carefully, we will be moved beyond ourselves and our own concerns. And we will be uncomfortable at times. The words of the Bible will cause us at times to squirm and reexamine our priorities. We will find Jesus talking about personal change and also about social change.

And we usually do not look first to our book for guidance – we form our opinions and biases and then hope we can find support for them in the Bible. That is what Christian writer C. S. Lewis says most of us do. His quote is in your bulletin insert for today. We let the culture around us form us into its mold and then we are troubled or even shocked when the Bible contradicts our beliefs or biases about how things should be.

One of my lifetime heroes is a southern Baptist minister and scholar named Clarence Jordan. He lived in Georgia and started an interracial farming community called the Koinonia Farm. It was on that place about forty years ago that Millard Fuller came for a retreat and formed the idea for Habitat for Humanity.

Before Dr Jordan’s community gave birth to Habitat, he was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s. He would often preach as a guest in some little Baptist churches – he usually did not get invited back because of his message about equality for all people of all colors. On one occasion he had given a sermon that called for our country to stop the practice of segregation and after the sermon, one lady came up to him and said, “My granddaddy was an officer in the confederate army and he would not believe a word that you just said about race relations.”

Clarence Jordan smiled sweetly and said, “Well, madam, your choice is very clear then. You can follow your granddaddy or you can follow Jesus Christ.”

Clarence Jordan was very much like Jesus. He was willing to let people hear the hard demands of his message and to let them walk away if they found his words so troubling or offensive.

We said a couple of weeks ago that there are some hard parts of Jesus message. The central message of Jesus is about the kingdom of God, what the world would be like if God were in charge, and it is different from what it is like now. Based on your reading of the Bible, what do you think the world would be like if God were in charge? This can be your Sunday lunch conversation today!

We say some words about the kingdom of God every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer.  Do you remember? May your kingdom come and your will be done on earth. What are we praying for?

According to our book, if we are doing God’s will and working for God’s kingdom, we will be working for justice and seeing that justice is not a commodity that if you have more money you can afford more justice. We will live the words from Jesus that of those to whom much is given much will also be expected.

To do God’s will and work for God’s kingdom means that we understand the biases in the Bible. There is a suspicion in the Bible about people like us in this room, a suspicion of people with resources and power, because the tendency is that once we have wealth and power, we can forget and insulate ourselves from people who are in need.

That is one of the many reasons that this church has a strong history of involving our members in so many outreach ministries like we heard about from Interfaith Community Service last week – not only to make a difference in people’s lives, but also to help us stay compassionate – to be able to feel with people and not be insulated and isolated from the hurts around us that can be so invisible. Most of us need that contact with other people who have not had advantages we have had.

This is one of the results of our summer mission trips and work projects that typically involve over 100 youth and adults in outreach ministries across the world. One of the next opportunities is in Guatemala.

I heard about two of our members who are involved in working with young ethnic families – usually single mothers many of whom are undocumented – and these St Andrew members, person by person, are making a difference in one life at a time.

Those two women are exhibiting the virtue that Dr. Borg says is the acid test for our faith – the virtue of compassion. For Jesus the primary quality of a life centered in God is compassion. It is an almost universal religious virtue and scholar Karen Armstrong in the latest AARP journal has a whole article on compassion.

Our theme for today—working for the kind of “kingdom” that would prevail if God were in charge—has to address not only our person-to-person involvement but our social and political involvement as well. This is where things become more complicated and more emotional for some people. What may need to be done may be more controversial. Catholic Bishop Dom Helder Camara of Brazil experienced that when he began to speak out for social reforms in his country. He said, “When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I began to ask why there were so many poor, they called me a communist.”

How do you and I carry out God’s vision of justice in a country where we say in our pledge of allegiance that we are committed to liberty and justice for all?

Our classes will be talking about that this week and if you are not in a class or group, I hope you will pursue that question from your study guide in your bulletin. There were, six months ago, some very public hot button issues in the political campaign. They were of course, whether abortion should be criminalized or still available and safe, legal and rare; what kinds of rights and protections committed gay couples should have; and whether there should be government support and funding of research on stem cells that will otherwise be destroyed.

I did something interesting last week in my own 7AM Tuesday morning Heart of Christianity class. I took a poll of the 50 members there and told people they did not have to respond if they did not want to. I asked them three questions and their responses were fairly dramatic. I asked them to respond from a point of view of their understanding of these words in the Bible about compassion and justice.

I asked them if they thought there should be some kind of legal protections—what we call that civil union or something else—for committed gay couples so that the partner of a woman who is in a hospital intensive care unit has a legal right to visit and make medical decisions. Their response was about 95% in favor of that. I asked if they thought that a pregnant thirteen-year-old girl who was the victim of incest by an uncle should have, with her parents, the right to consider terminating that pregnancy in a safe and legal manner. When they responded, again about 95% said yes.

And I asked if they thought that the federal government should be funding stem cell research on the hundreds of embryos that have been created and eventually will be destroyed if we do not use them for research on dealing with some diseases like diabetes or other diseases. Again, I don’t know how representative my class is but about 95% of them said yes. I do know that if you ask those questions in general surveys of the American public, about 65% of our general population says yes to the same questions.

There is another question that will be important in our group discussions of the weekly topic in the Borg book. On your study guide is a question about what you think, based on your reading of the Bible’s concerns about justice and compassion, what do you think, as a Christian, are the major issues facing our nation and our community right now?

I need to say that I do not think a defense of marriage act is a major concern. I believe that marriage in our country is at risk but it is not at risk because gay persons are asking for basic legal rights. I believe it is at risk because we have cheapened it with so called reality shows about who should marry whom and with celebrities like Britney Spears who engage in 24-hour marriages. There is a threat to marriage in our land but not from committed gay couples quietly trying to live their lives.

I also believe we are in a bad place regarding health care especially for children and for the working poor and I think this is much more of a crisis, along with our terrible budget deficit, than people are willing to look at

You will have your opinions also and they may be very different from mine, but what is important is that we start with our book and with the concerns in our book for justice and for compassion, and then we may differ about how we reach those together, but at least we will have a biblical starting point

In a few weeks, on Sunday afternoon March 13, we will have the formal dedication service for our building. Our bishop will be here, some community leaders will be here, and we will have a big celebration. That same afternoon we will be installing the cornerstone for our building and a time capsule. We are working on what the time capsule should contain still. But the decision for what the Bible verse on the cornerstone will be has been made.

It is a familiar verse to many of you and it is one that captures the soul and personality of this church. It is the verse that I used in the first session of the four-week Bible study I did with some Colorado legislators a year ago to give them direction for their work. It is from the prophet Micah and we have some wallet cards for you to take with you this morning.

“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to practice kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Justice and kindness and humility. I think those are some of the virtues of the kingdom of God. Dear God may we learn to do justice, to practice kindness, and to walk humbly each day with you. Amen.

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