“My kingdom is not of this world”
Sermon Preached on 22nd November 2015
The Feast of Christ the King
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
Revelation 1: 4b-8
John 18: 33-37
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
9 As I watched, thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne, his clothing
was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and
its wheels were burning fire. 10 A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence. A
thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.
The court sat in judgment, and the books were opened.
13 As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of
heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. 14 To him was
given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve
him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is
one that shall never be destroyed.
Revelation 1:4b-8
4b Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the
seven spirits who are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the
firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed
us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and
Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.7 Look! He is coming with the
clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes
of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen.8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord
God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
John 18:33-37
33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you
the King of the Jews?" 34 Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell
you about me?" 35 Pilate replied, "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief
priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?" 36 Jesus answered, "My
kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be
fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from
here." 37 Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king.
For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who
belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
Learning outcome:
Have you ever been somewhere and felt totally out of
place? I remember when I first went to Oxford, I felt
very out of place: there were world-class academics, a
whole set of written rules, which were almost as
important as the unwritten rules. Each college seemed
to have its own culture, and then, just when you
thought you had worked it out, someone would walk
past in a gown, or say something and it would totally
throw me. But there was also something kind of
delightful about the experience; and once you had
managed to work out how it all worked out, it was
lovely to walk around the city as one ‘in the know’ and
to give disapproving looks to tourists who would try to
get into colleges and other places they weren’t allowed
to.
And so, one November evening, I invited a friend to join
us for a formal dinner at college. He turned up, and had
his smart jacket and a tasteful tie on, managed to sit
through evensong without embarrassing himself, or me,
and even managed polite conversation over a glass of
sherry in the common room. The bell rang, and we
walked through to dinner, I couldn’t believe how well it
had gone, my friend, was not ‘oxford material’ and he
was from a really informal and evangelical family. This
was going SO well! And then, time to say grace- “why is
everyone quiet” he asked, “we’re going to say grace” I
whispered with as much subtlety as I could muster, and
then it happened. I watched as though in slow motion as
he reached down on either side and clasped the hands
of the two people next to him. In his house, everyone
held hands around the table to say grace, and that was
his only experience of saying grace.
On this feast of Christ the king, we might rightly think
about God’s kingdom and what it is like. For many who
don’t yet know Christ, and even for those of us who do,
the kingdom can have the same feeling of unfamiliarity
that my friend experienced in a candle lit dinning hall in
Oxford. And our reading today have testified to that
fact: “His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall
not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never
be destroyed.”; "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says
the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come,
the Almighty.”; "My kingdom is not from this world”.
In our experience, kingdoms rise and fall all the time,
kingship is destroyed, and kingdoms are very much of
this world. In my sons lifetime, Egypt has had at least
three leadership regimes, the stability of Syria has given
way to gross war and violence, even North Korea has
seen a change of leader, whilst instability in the middle
east, the Ukraine and across north west Africa has
continued to rumble on. Events in Paris have highlighted
what an unstable and hostile place the world can be, it’s
kingdoms and nations ruled by despotic and self
interested men and women, it societies plagued by
those who would do harm and destroy.
And so we can understand how difficult it can be to get
to grips with the kingdom of God. How then do we
understand the kingdom of God, and how can we
communicate that to those who are yet to enter in. We
have three main sources to draw on; what is presented
in the bible, what the church experiences, and what we
individually know of the kingdom through our
experience.
The bible use many images to describe the kingdom,
Jesus himself uses different images in the parables, but I
want to suggest one overriding characteristic, which will
help us to understand all the different images in the
bible, as well as what the church has experienced, and
our own experience of being members of God’s
kingdom. Simply put, the kingdom of God is about one
thing; invitation; the invitation to know God, the
invitation to love God, the invitation to share that love
with others, to turn the nightmare that life can so often
seem, into the dream that God intended.
It is God’s nature to invite us into relationship, into
sharing, into communion. Remember Adam, invited to
walk with God in the cool of and Eden evening, invited
to share that with his companion. Imagine Moses,
invited to know the king of kings in the dazzling blaze of
a bush. What about Abraham and Sarah, invited to join
in the adventure of heaven, to be the blessing of many
nations? Do you remember Noah, called to help God
build a new reality out of the nightmare of the
selfishness and sin he lived in. Do you remember Jonah,
invited to join God’s mission of proclaiming his love to
those who would perish? God’s kingdom is a place in
which we are invited to know God, to love Him, and to
know ourselves loved. But it doesn’t end there. For what
does God say to each of those he has invited in?
GO!
Go Adam: be fruitful and bless the earth
Go Moses: share my freedom
Go Abraham and Sarah: go and establish a chosen
people, for all are chosen
Go Noah: bring new creation out of the awfulness of
your reality
Go Jonah: proclaim my love to a people that need to
hear.
The reality is, that as much as God called those people
and sent them out to share his love and the reality of his
invitation, we can all be hard hearted and turn away.
And so God, in the love which is the Holy trinity, said to
the Son “GO!” and he humbled himself, taking the form
of a servant, laying aside his majesty, that his dwelling
place might be made among us, Emmanuel, God with
us.
In the face of Jesus, we see the ultimate invitation. If
you invite someone to a party, and you want to see if
they are coming, you might send a follow up message.
But how many of you, if your friend doesn’t show up,
drive to their house, leave the car running, knock on the
door, come in and say- you are so precious to me, that I
want you at my party, and I’ve come to get you, and the
car is running, and everything is made ready; a great
banquet awaits, come.
Jesus has done that and more, not only has he come to
us, not only has he left the car running, he stretches one
hand to us in the death of our humanity, and stretches
one hand into the eternal life of heaven, and pulls the
two things together, in love, upon the cross. His death
brings unity, reconciliation, healing. His brokenness on
the cross is the ultimate expression of God’s invitation
to all of us to know him, love him and know ourselves
loved.
This is part of the experience of the church, as I
mentioned earlier. The church understands itself in the
context of this final invitation made once for all as it
gathers around Christ’s broken body on the altar: “draw
near with faith, receive the body of Christ, which was
broken for you…” His invitation is not only to know him,
but also to receive him, to share somehow in his work of
invitation as his body. How do we see that in the church,
and in our own experience?
We experience it in our own sending out- “Go in peace
to love and serve the Lord”, “we go into the world, to
walk in God’s love, to rejoice in God’s love, to reflect
God’s glory”. “let us go about the church, and offer one
another a sign of Christ’s peace”. Part of the role of a
deacon, is to call the people of God to their role as
inviters, inviting to peace, inviting to love, inviting to
service.
But most of all the call is to go. To go out from this
place, transformed by Jesus’ invitation to us, into people
of invitation. This is the challenge to all of us. We don’t
create the invitation, God has begun that work already,
but we must be open to hear how he wants us to live
out that invitation.
For some, we simply have to make sure that we live lives
which reflect the love which God has showered upon us.
For some, God will be calling us to offer initiations to
those around us to enter into the kingdom of invitation,
which might involve speaking of how He has been
healing us, how he has loved us, we might even invite
someone to church on a Sunday, or to an event where
they might find out more, and I know that Simon has
issued a challenge to different groups in the church, to
put on one event in the next year, to which people can
be invited, and at which, they can hear Christ’s
invitation for themselves.
But it might be that your invitation is different, and I
speak carefully now, knowing the scariness of what I
say, as one who has heard this challenge and been left
no option but to act on it. But it might be that God is
inviting you, in response to his love for you, to give
yourself totally to him in service, perhaps in a position of
lay leadership, perhaps in service as a reader, or perhaps
in the life transforming scariness of serving as a deacon
or priest.
Chances are, if that resonates with you, its because God
has already begun to speak deep in your heart about
this. And so I encourage you to prayerfully consider
what God might be inviting you to. We have readers and
retired readers, we have clergy and retired clergy, we
have people in all kinds of leadership roles, so talk with
them, ask for their prayers and support, because God
might be calling you to literally “Go”.
Christ is our king, and he is the king of a kingdom whose
very nature is invitational. Invitation breaks down
barriers, encourages collaboration, and banishes fear.
So might we all be brave, as equipped by the king, we all
go out into the world to walk in God’s love, rejoicing in
his love and reflecting His glory. Because whatever he
might be inviting us to share in, we can be sure that His
love will sustain and uphold us, as we better live to love
and serve him, to see our world transformed from the
nightmare it often is, into the dream that God imagined.
So, Go!
AMEN