2004 Annual Conference - Wednesday sermon

“Bingo.” “Bulls Eye.” “On the mark.” “On the nose.” “On the money.” “Hit the nail on the head.”

We live in a culture that values a direct hit. We do not place much consequence in simply being close. “A miss is as good as a mile.” “Close, but no cigar” (of course the Brethren don’t say that, but some people do). “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades” (or as the Brethren might say: “close only counts in horseshoes”). There are no points in our society for hitting the rim or getting within one inch of the goal line or almost beating the throw to first.

So culturally, we might be a little puzzled by Jesus’ response to the scribe in Mark 12:34. Remember, the scribe is the third in a series of interrogators who were trying to get details about the Kingdom. The first two, a Pharisee and a Sadducee, clearly intended to trap Jesus. The Pharisee asked a politically loaded question that could have put Jesus in conflict with Caesar. The Sadducee asked an arcane question about marriage containing a dogma trap that could have put Jesus in conflict with the high priest.

The scribe seems to have a different purpose. It appears from the text that he is not with the first two but simply overhears the dispute and has a genuine concern. His question prompted the words of Jesus that have served as our conference theme: the greatest commandment is to love God and neighbor with all of our being. The scribe responds:

No questions? “Close” to the Kingdom? Excuse us, we might have some questions. Does that count, being close? Can you tell us how to actually get there? Can you tell us exactly what it will look like when we do get there? Can you at least tell us exactly what we need to do now to get there and how we will know when we have made it? And, by the way, how come we are not there yet?

When we were kids, we used to play a game, the name of which I do not remember, but we will call it Hot or Cold. The person who was “it” would be blindfolded. Then someone in the group would silently point to an object. The group would then try to verbally guide the blindfolded person to the object. Getting warm means you’re heading in the right direction, Cool means headed in the wrong direction. Cold means that you’re hopelessly confused and hot means you’re just about ready to touch the object of your desire.

Sometimes it seems that, in the great and beautiful mystery of the Kingdom of God in the New Testament, Jesus is almost playing a game of Hot or Cold with his followers and hearers. He begins his ministry in Mark by proclaiming: “The Kingdom of God is at Hand”—you are hot. But a Kingdom divided against itself, ah, you’re getting cool. If you sow seeds and watch them grow, you’re warming up. Especially if you sow a mustard seed—then you’re hot! “Some of you,” Jesus said to his disciples in the ninth chapter of Mark, “will see the Kingdom before you taste Death.” You’re getting hot. Trying to get in to the Kingdom with an eye that causes you to sin—getting cold. Dedicating your life to loading up on riches?—you’re so cold that it would be easier to ride a camel through the eye of a needle than it would be to reach out and grasp the Kingdom.

The Kingdom is at once one of the most mysterious and one of the most vivid realities of the New Testament. It is both at hand and it is coming. It is a present reality and it is what pulls us with hope and vision into the future.

It is a political reality. It is of this world—“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.” It demands final allegiance and ultimate obedience—“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” The coin has Caesar’s image stamped on it. But we have God’s image stamped on us.

The Kingdom of God is not only a political reality, it is a social reality. It is a place where the poor and the weak and the disadvantaged and the unlucky find care and mercy and respite. When the scribe declared to Jesus that giving one’s heart and mind and strength to the love of God and neighbor is as important as whole burnt offerings and sacrifices, he was placing himself firmly in the great prophetic tradition. In those words, we hear the echo of Samuel telling the first king of Israel, “Behold! To obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15-22). Or Hosea reminding the northern tribes that God desires “…steadfast love and not sacrifice. The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6) Or Amos speaking to a comfortable, prosperous, expanding Israel with these words from God: “I hate, I despise your feasts and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and your cereal offerings, I will not accept them….but let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream” (Amos 5: 21-24) How these passages resonate in the Brethren heart! How familiar they are to us all, but none as familiar as the words of Micah “with what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high. Shall I come before him with burnt offerings? With calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams? With ten thousands of rivers of oil?...He has showed you 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.” (Micah 6:6-8)

Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of the Kingdom is that it is precisely at the moment when we believe we understand it, precisely at the moment we think we have arrived that we are the furthest away. Of all the rich parables of the Kingdom in the New Testament, my favorite is the one in Matthew about the pearl. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it.” (Matt. 13:34) On the surface the parable seems fairly straightforward. The Kingdom is a thing of great value for which we should be willing to give everything that we have.

But a superficial reading may not be adequate. Note, for example, that Jesus does not say the Kingdom is like a pearl. He says, literally, that the Kingdom is like the merchant. What does the merchant do? Well, the merchant is preoccupied with something, perhaps the beauty of the pearls, perhaps the value of pearls—preoccupied nonetheless. Finally, he finds one for which he has to give everything he owns. For modesty’s sake we will say that he still has his undergarments, but everything else has been given so that he can possess this pearl. We have to admire his commitment and steadfastness but we also have to ask some practical (might we even say “Brethren”) questions. Now what? How will he get his next meal? Pay the rent? Make his chariot payments? Oh, it doesn’t matter; the chariot’s been sold to buy the pearl.

The merchant is now faced with a dilemma. The thing he most values is worthless to him unless he is willing to give it up. One can not possess the Kingdom. One cannot hold the Kingdom to one’s self. Once we think we’ve got it, that is the very moment we become self deluded. That is the moment our self righteousness becomes like that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The moment we think we have arrived may be the moment we are most profoundly lost.

In 1955, Dwight Eisenhower was president of the United States. Bill Haley and the Comets’ song “Rock Around the Clock” became the first rock and roll song to reach number one on the hit parade. Blackboard Jungle and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” were playing at the movies. Our country was in something of a sweet if artificial lull between the horrors of WWII and the Korea War and the gathering storm over civil rights and the war in Vietnam.

In the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, there was a devastating freeze that killed most of the peach and apple crop in Botetourt County. For Murray Orchards, it would be a lean year. The good news was that there was not that much work to do in the summer. The normal routines of thinning, propping, and spraying that went with maintaining an orchard would be vastly curtailed.

We had a five year old fluid drive DeSoto. It was notoriously underpowered even without something hitched behind it. To it, we attached an overweight third handed, 11 foot travel trailer. This well used caravan, which was probably designed as a weekend camping retreat for a retired couple, would be home for five of us during the next three months. In early June, we set out on a journey that would eventually inscribe a large infinity sign on the map of the United States. Heading first for Annual Conference in Grand Rapids, MI, our journey would eventually carry us through the Southwest, up the west coast, through the Northwest and eventually back across the country to our native Virginia - a journey of some seven or eight thousand miles.

The first day of our trip took us West on Rt. 460 and then up through Blacksburg toward the new West Virginia turnpike. The turnpike had opened only days before. It was a marvel of engineering even though it was not what you normally think of as a turnpike. It was a two lane road with three lanes in critical passing areas. We had just gone through the tollgate and started our trip north through West Virginia, when from the back seat, I raised the plaintive and familiar cry “are we there, yet?” At my twelve tender years, I had probably traveled more than the average Virginia schoolboy. Still I found it difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a journey that stretched out over three months and eight thousand miles.

My father, with his characteristic teasing humor, and probably more wisdom than we gave him credit for, simply said “yes.” I think what he meant was, for three months we had been working hard, preparing for and saving our money, poring over maps, servicing the five year old slug of a car, filling every vacant space of our travel trailer with the living necessities for a family of five, and taking care of the infinite details involved in leaving a home for three months. Now we were on the road and in his mind, we were “there.”

My mother, with her compulsion to never miss a teaching moment, said “no.” I think that she went on to explain that there was no “there” to be to yet. Every moment of our journey, we would be both “there” and “not yet there.” Maybe when we pulled into our driveway three months later we could say, we’re finally “there.” Of course, the irony of that was just too much to comprehend.

It was clear to me where “there” was. Likable Ike and Bill Haley and the West Virginia Turnpike were, for me, bit players on the stage of 1955. It seemed as if America itself was opening up for us and the greatest of all openings – Disneyland. By the time we actually made it to California, Disney would have swung open the gates to the Magic Kingdom. Get it? That was “there.” That was the destination. That was the trip. That was the Kingdom.

It was a huge disappointment, of course – an illusion – an expensive and somewhat unsatisfying diversion. The lines were endless, the concessions were generally far beyond the pocketbooks of Virginia farmers, and because it had just opened, some of the best stuff didn’t work, and Mickey Mouse was a fake—an absolute, downright, three-dimensional fake.

Even before we finished our day at the Magic Kingdom, I knew that Disneyland was not being there. Being there was making new friends in campsites and national parks across the country. Being there was singing “Great is thy Faithfulness” with the Brethren and under the winsome and quixotic leadership of Al Brightbill. Being there was getting help from strangers when we were broken down along the road. Being there was holding hands and saying a prayer of thanks for a simple meal in 110° heat in a travel trailer in the middle of the southwestern desert. Being there was staying together and loving each other as a family through the fights, disappointments, tribulations, arguments that naturally come with the journey. Being there was getting home.

There are many who will try to convince you that they have a map for the Kingdom, that they know exactly what it looks like and when and if you get to go there. In the seventeenth chapter of Luke, the Pharisees against asked Jesus, “when is the Kingdom of God coming?” He answered them, “the Kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed. Nor will they say, ‘Lo, here it is’ or ‘There’, for behold, the Kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” And he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the son of man and you will not see it. And they will say to you, ‘Lo, there’ or ‘Lo, here’. Do not go, do not follow them.” (Luke 17:20-23)

The Kingdom is not destination, it is a journey. There is no way to the Kingdom, the Kingdom is the way.* We should shun those who would show us a map with X marks the spot. We should ignore as quaint at best, and dangerous at worst, those who would show us a blueprint for constructing the Kingdom. We should turn a deaf ear to those who tell us that they know who will be in the Kingdom and a blind eye to those who claim that they know what the Kingdom will look like. “Do not go, do not follow them.” Even the greatest commandment in all the law and the prophets, the complete love of God and neighbor, does not put us there, it just gets us close.

Generally I do not get excited about catchphrases, especially those developed with the help of consultants. I do believe, however, that among the jewels left to us by Howard Royer, the words that he helped assemble to articulate our life together is most precious. It starts so beautifully with that word “continuing”. We are in a great stream of witnesses. We are not the first, nor will we be the last. We picked up the load where someone else put it down and someone will take it after we have made our part of the journey. There is no way to the Kingdom, the Kingdom is the way.

“Continuing the work . . .” Brethren like to work, we come out of rural stock and we don’t mind getting dirty. Whether it’s a hurricane or a war, you can be assured that the Brethren will be among the first to be there in the reconstruction crew. We will leave it to others to continue the correct theology and the right dogma. We will do our best to make our symbols and rituals meaningful and consistent with tradition but what we really want to do is make something, heal something, clean something, teach something.

“Continuing the work of Jesus.”
That name at the center of it all—the one who we believe revealed the mind and heart of God; the one who brought to us in a life of love and sacrifice, the meaning of the energy that sits at the center of the creative power of the universe. The name above all names; the name that creates, heals, cleans and teaches.

There are those who believe that the nuclear arsenal of the United States is a part of God’s plan to bring about the reign of God’s Kingdom on Earth. That such instruments of death and destruction and torture could be the means by which God’s mercy and grace is established is simple blasphemy. We must not only be peaceful people, we must stand firm to the core of our message that God’s purposes are established not with the instruments of death but with works of healing and creativity.

“Continuing the work of Jesus. Peacefully. Simply.
There are those who believe that wealth, comfort, and luxury are visible signs of God’s approval and evidence that our understanding of global economic systems is really consistent with the Kingdom of God. We Brethren can not go there but must affirm again that justice and righteousness must wash through the Kingdom like great rivers of life; no one left to starve, no one left to freeze, no one left to die of preventable diseases.

“Continuing the work of Jesus. Peacefully. Simply. Together.
There are those who will tell us that the community of faith is really not that important; that we do not need brothers and sisters to support us, correct us, comfort us and challenge us; that the Kingdom is a personal, private matter and that if we think we need a congregation, we can watch one on TV. To that we affirm that “being there” is a matter of relationship and not of time or space; that the Kingdom is a journey which we must make together. Loving the neighbor is not something one can do in isolation. There are no remote controls, no virtual reality for relationship.

We have finished our big meeting for one more year. Let’s go now and continue. Let’s go now with the faith and the affirmation that the work of Jesus cannot and will not be accomplished through the secular power of precision guided munitions, nor through the things we accumulate for our wealth and comfort nor by working alone.

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