Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done

Introduction:

Last week Nancy and I began our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer with a skit. The skit had a person praying the Lord’s Prayer, and as they did God kept interrupting asking questions and explaining to the person what she was really praying for. We did some type casting for the skit, and of course I got the role of God. Before we did the skit Nancy highlighted a few thoughts from the opening phrase of the prayer. She shared that Jesus is actually teaching the disciples how to pray in their personal devotions. Yet the opening word of the prayer is “Our.” Our Father.” Not my Father, not your Father, but ours. The very first word shows that unifying message of Jesus that we are all children of God, loved by God. You and me, we and the world are of one family.

Nancy also lifted up the word “hallowed.” “Hallowed be your name.” Not a familiar word to many of us. In fact there are a number of cute children’s stories about how children misunderstand what this word is. Hollow is God’s name. Or Hal is God’s name. You get the picture. The word hallowed, as God explained last week, means holy, wonderful, wholeness. God is holy, and we are called to be holy. Holy means to be set apart from the world so you can bring healing, bring wholeness and wellbeing where there is now brokenness and disharmony. This thought is what leads us to the next phrase in the prayer that I want to reflect upon today.

Read Matthew 6:10

To bring holiness to our world we pray that God’s kingdom will come to fruition, that God’s will, meaning God’s hopes, God’s dreams will be lived in their fullness among us. The word kingdom is actually better translated from the Greek as God’s reign, God’s active, guiding presence or participation in our lives bringing about God’s goals and original intent for our life. Biblical scholar Marcus Borg suggests that we understand the phrase of kingdom of God, or kingdom of heaven, synonyms in scripture as, “the ideal of life.” How we would experience life together if God’s will was truly practiced and lived by all of us.

In this prayer Jesus teaches, we are praying for God to bring about a change in our lives so that we allow God, “Our Father”, to be the focus of our decisions, the cornerstone of understanding for how we are to live together. In fact, Jesus is saying, that unless we change and live God’s will, we will not see the kingdom, or fully experience the reign of God in our lives today.

This is the thrust of Jesus’ message in the next passage of scripture I will read from the Gospel of John. The passage begins with a Temple leader named Nicodemus sneaking around at night to meet with Jesus. Obviously, Jesus is not a popular figure among the Temple leaders, but Nicodemus knows in his heart that truly Jesus is from God. So he meets with Jesus out of the sight of others to learn from him. Let’s hear a part of the conversation.

Read John 3:1-4

Jesus tells Nicodemus you must be born again, born anew, born from above, all legitimate translations of the Greek, if you hope to see the kingdom of God. The phrase we look at today from the Lord’s Prayer is one where we pray to God to be born again as we turn to the one who is holy and who seeks to bring wholeness and wellbeing to us and the lives we share together.

The word of God for the people of God.

Sermon:

Several years ago, I was listening to a colleague preaching when he said something that I knew, but for whatever reason, when he said it, it truly touched me deeply. Maybe he expressed it just differently enough that it touched me differently, or maybe I was just in a place spiritually to hear it. He said, “We, as the church, often hear people say that they do not believe in God because they look at life, look at our world, and see how broken it is and how many people are hurting, even dying from natural and human-made disasters.” Their rational is, “If God were real, these things would not happen.” Then he asked, “Why do people not look at the world and say, look at what happens when we do not follow God in our lives and when we do not practice the will of God in our relationships with each other? God has given us direction. God has given us answers, and even modeled them in the life of Jesus, but do we listen and follow? Yet, even when we do not we blame God for what happens.” I believe my colleague makes an incredibly important point. It may be why Jesus asks us to pray to God, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Let me ask you a question that you just answer for yourself. No hand raising or personal confessions. “How many of you, as you come to worship, or a Bible study, prayer group or faith gathering of any kind, come fully expecting and even anticipating that you will be changed?” That you may catch a new glimpse about life, yourself, your relationships that may actually allow you to be born again as you are born from above?

This belief is a cornerstone of our Wesleyan heritage and theology. Wesley states that when we say yes to God, we have agreed to a lifelong journey of seeking “Perfection.” What he means by this is it is a lifelong walk with God to become the most loving and caring and compassionate people we are capable of becoming. And if we are faithful in our walk, learning and growing each day in our understandings and our practice of loving, that at the end of our lives we will have become the most loving people we were capable of being. What Wesley tells us here is that for us, as United Methodists, we understand that in our walk with God through Christ that we are born again, and again, and again, from above as we grow in our ability and understanding of love. It truly is about living our prayer of, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.”

This striving toward perfection, this quest to be more and more loving is what it means to live by the will of God. Jesus gave us one commandment, which he expressed in different ways in scripture. One way, we call The Great Commandment which is “To love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.” Another way is expressed by Jesus right after he has washed his disciple’s fee. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” I am the answer to what it means to love your neighbor. But we still hear the same questions as those who first heard Jesus. “Who is my neighbor?” Is it the person next door? Is it the person I sit next to in the pew? Is it the person I work with, or am a club member with? Is it the homeless person on the street? Are they the members of the 12 Step Groups that meet in our church? The answer is, “Yes.” God is “Our Father.” God is love for all people in the reign of God.

Jesus, himself, tells us that the main reason he came into our world, into our lives, is so we could understand and live in the kingdom of God right now. What is interesting about Jesus’ teachings though, is that he does not give us a systematic theology of what it means to see and live in the kingdom. We do not receive a set of rules, or laws to practice. We do not have a set steps to follow that allows us to enter into the kingdom. In fact Jesus often uses similes, metaphors and parables, everyday stories to help us catch glimpses of what the kingdom looks like in our lives. There are a number of parables that begin, “The kingdom of God is like a . . .” Jesus then gives an example. Like a mustard seed, or like a pearl of great price, or yeast in bread, just to name a few.

What I believe Jesus is showing us is living in love, living the will of God’s compassion and concern is something not always easily defined. Sometimes we may not even agree on what a loving response is. But you recognize it, you know it when you see it or live it. You also recognize when the kingdom is not lived and God’s reign, God’s will is not done.

Let me do a kingdom parable reflecting the significance of this day specially set aside to honor mothers. The kingdom of God is like a mother who hears her child cry out in distress and who immediately drops everything and runs as fast as she can in search of that child. Her heart is pounding in anxiousness, she is praying from the very core of her being that her child is not hurt, at least severely. And when she finely gets to her child, she picks him or her up and just holds them as close as she can to her chest, rocking and cooing and assuring them that it will be ok. She comforts the child out of that love that comes from the very heart of who she is, which brings a sense of safety and security to the child. That all of a sudden tells the child everything is going to be alright, I am here. That loving gentleness that kisses away the pain, and lets the child know that life, itself, was set on hold because you needed me. That’s how special you are. Once again the world is at peace. Surely we see the image of God in that scenario. And when we see it, when we live it, we know we have captured a glimpse of the kingdom.

When you stand at the bedside of someone who is dying or very ill, and they know that you have set aside whatever you had planned to be there and be fully present with them, simply because you care. When you can not only show them but tell them how loved they are and how important they are and how special they have been to you and your life, and you see a small smile come to their face, you have that sacred moment with them, you know you have caught a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

When you see a soldier in Iraq who meets a young boy who has been severely burned and disfigured from the ravages of war, and is moved to action. When he returns to the States, he finds a doctor who will do the surgeries needed to knit the boys body back to wholeness, and then gets through all the red tape so the boy can come to our country to have the operation and give him back a sense of normalcy in his life, you know you have caught a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

When you help take a child off the streets of a city where they are left to fend for themselves, and whose safety is at the whim of those around them who are bigger and stronger, also fending for themselves and their lives, and you give that child a home, and provide an education, and give them a dream and allow them to hope, when life appeared to be hopeless, you know you have caught a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

You have your stories, you have those moments when you caught a glimpse of and were allowed to experience your love of neighbor and caught a glimpse of the reign of God. So our prayer today is, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Sermon delived by Rev. George Cushman on May 9, 2010.