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I am not a morning person. I just can’t
seem to get out of bed. In fact, I often set the alarm an
hour earlier than I actually need to get up. I just lay
there and hit the snooze button. Truth be told, if an alarm
didn’t go off every morning, I could probably sleep until at
least 10:30 every day. If there is anyone who needs a wake
up call, that person is me.
Here is how bad my situation is. Three
years ago I had to be at an all-day interview. At the end of
the day, thirty clergy would decide whether I was fit to be
a pastor in the United Methodist Church. As that day came
closer, I became keenly aware that after six years of
seminary, one year of commuting, thousands of dollars in
tuition and books, and thousands of pages written and read,
this group could say, “Thanks, but no thanks!” So let’s
just say it was a day to make a good first impression, and
it was certainly a day to be on time.
The interviews were held north of Port
Huron, approximately an hour and a half from here. They
began at 8:30 a.m. sharp, which meant I needed to be in the
car and headed that way by 7:00 a.m. to get there on time. I
treated the night before like the first day of school. I
laid out my nice suit. I polished my shoes. I made sure I
had all of my paperwork in a nice folder. I went to bed at a
decent hour, making sure to set my alarm for 6:00 a.m.,
which would give me plenty of time to shave, shower, get
dressed, eat breakfast, and kiss my wife before hitting the
road.
Have you ever awoken in complete and
utter panic? Well, let’s just say that when I finally heard
the radio, I rolled over to these three numbers on the
clock: 6–5–3. “6:53! You mean the alarm has been going off
for almost an hour and neither Bridget nor I heard it?” I
can’t repeat what I said next! But let’s just say that the
one day I needed to convince a group of people that I had
the spiritual maturity to pastor Christ’s church started out
in less than a prayerful manner.
I had woken up seven minutes before I
needed to be on the road! Bridget and I sprung into action.
I buttoned my shirt while she helped me put on my pants. She
sprayed and combed my hair while I brushed my teeth. She
shoved a Diet Coke, a granola bar and my electric razor into
my hands and pushed me out the door. With my eyes just
barely open, my last words to my wife that day were: “I
can’t see. I don’t think this is safe.” But somehow, by the
grace of God, I coasted into that parking lot (the tank was
way past “E”) at 8:28. That was one day when I really needed
to hear my wake up call.
Wake up
calls. Life often offers us wake up calls:
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High blood pressure,
elevated cholesterol, chest pains and chronic headaches
can all be the wake up call to get our physical houses
in order.
-
Creditors, threatened
foreclosure and escalating credit card debt can all be
the wake up call to get our financial houses in order.
-
Loneliness,
depression, intense anger, feelings of anxiety, and
addictive or compulsive behavior can all be the wake up
call to get our emotional houses in order.
-
Constant arguing and
fighting, feeling unappreciated or taken for granted,
and contemplating separation or divorce can all be the
wake up call that our key relationships are in need of
some attention.
We need to pay attention to life’s wake
up calls. They often come when the emergency can still be
avoided. If listened to, life’s wake up calls can give us
the chance to save our jobs, save our marriages, or save our
reputations. They can even save our lives. But underneath
every wake up call—be it physical, financial, emotional or
relational—there is always a deeper call: the call to get
our spiritual houses in order. Life’s most difficult moments
force us to answer life’s questions: “Who I am? Whose
am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?”
Just a cursory look at our scriptures
shows us that God will go to great lengths to get our
attention. God uses floods, burning bushes, speaking in
tongues, flames of fire, talking donkeys and hundreds of
other ways to get humanity to wake up. But just as the
scriptures show God trying over and over again to get our
attention, they also show over and over again how humanity
avoids responding to God’s wake up call.
We often respond to God’s wake up call
like we respond to the morning alarm. When it comes to God’s
wake up call, sometimes we are constant snooze button
pushers. We hear God calling, asking us to change our lives
and change our world, but we just want to put it off for a
moment…nine more minutes…nine more days…nine more weeks,
months, nine more years. Just give me a little more time,
then I will wake up.
At other times, God’s call just annoys
us. We hear it but we try to ignore it. We roll over and
cover our ears, anything to muffle the voice of God asking
us to make things right. And too often, when it comes to
God’s wake up call, we just sleep right through it.
In Mark, the very first words out of
Jesus’ mouth serve as God’s wake up call. Listen to them.
They might surprise you.
After John was put in prison, Jesus went
into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time
has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and
believe the good news!” (Mark 1:14-15)
I need to make a bit of a confession. In
studying this bit of scripture, I really had to wrestle with
what Jesus was saying, because much of what he says in these
two little verses is so different than what I was taught in
Sunday school. And one of two things can happen when we
learn that there might be a very different way of looking at
something. Sometimes it can be very freeing to see things in
a new light. But often, especially when it comes to our core
religious beliefs, a new way of understanding things can be
downright scary. So if looking more closely at what Jesus
says here is challenging, know that you are in good company.
Much of this is pretty new to me, as well.
Look again at these two verses. The King
James Version uses language that might sound pretty
familiar. Instead of saying that Jesus came preaching the
good news, it reads: “…Jesus came into Galilee, preaching
the gospel of the kingdom of God.” The “gospel.” There
is one of those familiar religious words that gets thrown
around, assuming that everyone knows what it means.
Gospel: the goods news. The Greek word
here is euangelion. It translates as eu,
meaning good, and angelion, meaning message. From the
word euangelion we get other religious words like
evangelism (spreading the good message) and evangelist (the
one who spreads the good message). This good news, the
gospel, is Jesus’ wake up call to all of creation.
And what is that good news? What is the
gospel? Well, my Sunday school teachers made it pretty
plain: Jesus died for my sin. Why? So I could get into
heaven. When? After I die. Pretty straightforward, right?
That is why I am a bit thrown by Jesus’ words. Jesus defines
the gospel differently from my Sunday school teachers.
Listen to Jesus’ wake up call one more time.
After
John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming
the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The
kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”
(Mark 1:14-15)
This is the good news. This is the
gospel. The Kingdom of God, the fullness of God, is right
here, right now! It is not something we need to wait for.
All of God’s goodness, all of the mercy and peace and
forgiveness and healing and justice, all of it can be
experienced right here, right now. “The time has come. The
kingdom of God is near.” Jesus is saying to all of creation:
“Wake up! If you are waiting until you die to experience the
goodness of God, you’re missing it. God is near. The
Kingdom is here.” Luke pushes this notion even a bit
further. In chapter 17, Jesus is having a conversation with
some good church folks about God’s Kingdom. Listen to this
exchange:
Once, having been asked by the Pharisees
when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The
kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation,
nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because
the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke
17:20-21)
Here is the good news according to Jesus.
Here is something to wake up to. The reality of God is
around us and within us. This is really good news. It is
something worth waking up to. If you hear nothing else I say
today, hear this: The Kingdom of God is around us and within
us. The fullness of God is not reserved for a heaven that
awaits us only after we die. It is to be experienced right
here, right now, in this very moment.
The implications of this spiritual wake
up call are immense. For if the Kingdom of God is truly
around us, then everything God ever intended for creation
can, and should, be experienced in this very present moment.
If the Kingdom of God is really around us, then it is
possible to live in a world without racism, hatred, violence
and war. “Wake up!” Jesus says, “You don’t have to keep
living like this. The Kingdom of God is all around you.”
Likewise, if the Kingdom is within us,
then everything God ever intended for us individually also
can, and should be, experienced in this very present moment.
If God’s Kingdom is within us, then we are not defined and
confined by yesterday’s mistakes. We are invited to live
into God’s healing and transforming presence right now.
“Wake up! You don’t have to keep feeling like you feel. The
Kingdom of God is within you.”
But most of us don’t believe Jesus’ good
news. We simply can’t hear his wake up call. We’ve been so
conditioned to believe that heaven is somewhere else, that
the fullness of God will only be experienced after we die.
It is perhaps even harder to believe that God resides within
us, within you and within me. So much of our religious
training has focused on the guilt of sin that we fall into
the trap of acting like we are not worthy to receive God’s
healing and transforming presence.
You know, there once was a man who wanted
to travel from the U.S. to Europe. He saved every extra
penny until he had just enough to purchase a ticket aboard a
cruise ship. He then went out and bought a suitcase and
filled it full of cheese and crackers.
When all the other passengers went to the
banquet hall to eat gourmet meals, this man would go over in
the corner and eat his cheese and crackers. This went on day
after day. He could smell the delicious food being served in
the banquet hall. He heard the other passengers speak of the
food in glowing terms as they rubbed their bellies, joking
about how full they were. The man wanted so desperately to
join the other guests in the dining room. Sometimes he’d lie
awake at night, dreaming of the meals the other guests were
experiencing.
Toward the end of the trip, another man
came up to him and said, “Sir, I can’t help but notice that
you are always over there eating those cheese and crackers.
Why don’t you come into the banquet hall and eat with us?”
Embarrassed, the traveler responded, “I had only enough
money to buy the ticket.”
The other passenger shook his head and
said, “Sir, the meals are included in the price of the
ticket. You could have been enjoying them the whole time.”
But how do we wake up to the reality that
God’s Kingdom is around us and within us? Again the words of
Jesus surprise us. They are different than what we might
expect, different than what we might have learned in Sunday
school. I grew up understanding that to enter into God’s
Kingdom, all I needed to do was believe in Jesus. To receive
the good news meant believing the right things. It meant
having the right answers. And that makes sense if what we’re
preparing for is some future moment when we will stand in
front of the Pearly Gates and be asked questions that demand
the right answers.
But any of us who have tried to live our
religious lives like this know that there is often a bit of
a disconnect here. We know that just because we have it all
right in our heads—we have all the right answers, we’ve read
all the right scriptures, we’ve prayed all the right
prayers—doesn’t guarantee that we will ever feel it in our
hearts. We can go through our entire lives believing all the
right things about God and all the right things about Jesus,
and yet never experience the deep peace of God within us or
ever live our lives in ways that will transform the world
around us.
That is why we would do well to listen
again to Jesus’ wake up call. “The time has come. The
kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Repent and believe. Our Sunday school teachers had it
half right. But there is more to receiving the good news,
more to the gospel, than just believing. Jesus links the
believing with repentance.
Repentance is another one of those
religious terms that comes with a lot of baggage. It
conjures up visions of fire and brimstone preaching,
guilt-ridden altar calls, and the wagging of the finger of
shame. But the word “repent” means something much deeper.
The Greek word here is metanoia, which translates as
meta, meaning to change or transform, and noia,
meaning mind or way of thinking. It is as if Jesus is
saying: “Wake up to the fullness of God. It is all around
you. It is within you. Change your thoughts and you will
change your life. Transform your thinking and you can
transform the world.” To experience the fullness of God,
Jesus says we need more than just belief. We must live
transformed lives. Paul summed it up well in the opening
lines of the twelfth chapter of his letter to the Romans:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and
sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as
living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your
spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any
longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by
the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12:1-2)
I have discovered three little words that
have allowed me to embrace this truth. Those three little
words: “Live as if…” Transformation happens when we “live as
if.” If we live as if peace is possible, we will find
ourselves doing the things that make for peace. If we live
as if forgiveness is possible, we will find ourselves being
more forgiving. If we live as if there is enough for
everyone, then we will find ourselves more willing to give
to those who don’t yet have enough. Remember these three
little words: “Live as if…” They just may be the key to the
kind of transformed lives Jesus is calling us into.
Now I know what some of you are saying.
“That is good preaching up there, preacher. They sure taught
you some fancy stuff in that seminary of yours, didn’t they?
But you don’t really believe all this, do you?” Believe it?
Friends, I have seen it.
As I prepared to stand up here and tell
you that to experience the Kingdom of God, all you need to
do is “live as if,” I was convicted by an area of my life
that was in need of some serious transformation. It was the
area of forgiveness. You see, sometime last year I had a
falling out with someone who was really important to me. A
series of misunderstandings led to a full-blown shouting
match. That was the last time either of us had spoken to
each other. Nine months and not a word. Was healing and
forgiveness possible for this relationship? Could this
relationship actually experience the fullness of God again?
Could it be restored? As I prepared to stand up here and
tell you to “live as if,” I heard the Holy Spirit ask me:
“Why don’t you practice what you preach here, Nelson? Why
don’t you ‘live as if’?”
So last Sunday I called him. He answered
the phone. He was a bit taken aback to hear my voice on the
other end. But I decided to live as if healing was possible.
This meant there was no need to rehash the past. God’s
Kingdom was right here, right now, right? So I proceeded as
if that were true…we lived in the moment instead of the
past. We talked about the Packers game and the how the
Brewers were doing. We talked about church, both his and
mine. Then, of course, we talked about Casey, my son and his
grandson. That was it. No fireworks. No tears. No soft
music. No Hallmark moment. But as I hung up the phone, I
swear to you I heard Jesus say: “The kingdom of God is near.
Repent and believe the good news!”
You see, there is no need to settle for
cheese and crackers when there is a seat waiting for all of
us at the banquet table.
Notes: One of the best books I have
picked up lately is Brian McLaren’s The Secret Message of
Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything.
This book is an excellent study of how Jesus proclaimed
the truth of God’s Kingdom in both word and deed. I found it
a good springboard for this sermon’s musings on the
imminence of God’s Kingdom. McLaren poses this tough
question at the book’s beginning: “What if the religion
generally associated with Jesus neither expects nor trains
its adherents to actually live in the way of Jesus?” This is
a question that I will continue to devote my ministry to
unpacking and answering.
I am also thankful for our own Dick
Cheatham’s book, Can you Make the Buttons Even? Lessons
Learned Along Life’s Spiritual Path. His chapter “Joyful
Repentance” was extremely insightful in reframing the usage
of the word “repent.” About it he writes: “Repentance was
discovered to be a joyful word once its meaning was
understood. It calls for a radical rethinking of the Good
News.” |
