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November 4, 2007
Where is that Kingdom?
Luke 6: 20-31
Studs Turkle is a man in his 90's – one of the revered saints of the city of Chicago. You may have heard of him through his books, Working is one, Race another – both have been turned into plays as well. Studs began his professional life as a radio disk jockey and became famous for his interview style back in days of live radio, much of which originated in Chicago. He also had a pioneering T.V. Show in the 40's which was set in a bar, Stud's Place, and involved just dialogue between Studs and folks who came in for a chat over the counter.
I heard Studs interviewed briefly yesterday while in my car. He is still going strong – has this wonderful working class voice and a way of cutting to the chase when he is in conversation.
Studs began as an entertainer and is now recognized as a very important historian/sociologist whose miles and miles of recording tape – thousands of interviews are now housed in a special collection at the Chicago History Museum. His is a conviction that history is made by ordinary people and that the only way to truly write history is to talk – and to listen. Be in dialogue not only to the leaders and the notorious, but also to the ordinary folks who put in their days living the reality others write about – talk and then listen!
The social memory – the accumulated wisdom of generation after generation, is the strong foundation upon which all of our institutions are built, including of course the church. It all began with just plain folks and when their stories that had been told for generations around campfires and caravansaries for centuries, were finally written down they became our scripture.
Just like the dialogues that Studs Turkle and other oral historians record, these stories reflect experiences common to all of us. They tell us how our forbearers reacted when they were afraid – Abraham was fearful at one point about his own life on account of the fact that the Pharaoh of Egypt had a wandering eye. Abraham had a beautiful wife, apparently, and was convinced that the King was going to try to do away with him so as to take Sarah for himself. (Not unlike the unhappy reverse set of circumstances when our hero King David saw to the murder of one of his soldiers named Uriah in order that he might lay claim to Uriah's wife, Bathsheba.) Abraham came up with the perfect solution, he told Sarah to pretend that he was his sister so that when Pharaoh eventually did take her into his harem, Abraham was seen as a non-threatening potential in-law, not an aggrieved husband. (The story does not record Sarah's take on the whole thing, which in itself is a commentary on the social customs of the Bronze Age. You can bet if he had been around Studs Turkle would have tried to get it.) By the way, Pharaoh had a dream in which he learned the true relationship between Abraham and Sarah and with admonishment to Abraham he sent her back saying, “I think you folks better leave my kingdom – now!”
When the Epistle to the Hebrews, one of the newest of the books of the Bible, looks to understand something about where we came from, the author starts with these very people, however.
By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God's call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going. By an act of faith he lived in the country promised him, lived as a stranger camping in tents. Isaac and Jacob did the same, living under the same promise. Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real, eternal foundations—the City designed and built by God. Hebrews 11:8 - 10 ( The Message - A contemporary paraphrase of the Bible.)
This is who we are – warts and all. Parenthetically, these warts are rarely the subject of sermons which I think is a shame because I think they help reinforce the fact that our forbearers were full, flesh and blood folks living day to day just like we do – trying to get by as best we can. It is when we understand that, we also come to understand the power of the relationship between God and them and God and us. It is that kind of relationship which becomes the centuries' long history we know as scripture. It is that relationship which Jesus' presence among us confirms. God is among us not to make us religious – but to help us be better at being who we are.
“The Gospel,” writes Biblical scholar Walter Wink, “is in a highly personal way the intimate message that our lives are known by God better than we know them; that we are valued more than we value ourselves; that what we can become is much more wonderful than we ever imagined. The obstacle between us and God is not what is imperfect in us -- the fragility, the truculence, the dithering lusts and outbursts of rage (God can deal with all that) -- but our belief that we are unworthy of being loved, incapable of greatness, people of little value, power or gifts.” 1
So it was that Jesus stood up to preach and gave us this series of sayings we have come to call the Beatitudes. Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh."
(Luke 6:20-21)
Paul Tillich, an existentialist theologian of the 30's and 40's...a refugee from Nazi Germany, loved to tangle with these kinds of “translocations,” contradictory and parallel truths...the now and the not yet which are so much a part of the Gospel.
A Charles Adams cartoon in the New Yorker shows two women looking at an enormous blob sitting in a large, leather wing chair. The only sign of life is its beady eyes. One women is saying to the other, “We are still waiting for Stanley to jell.”
As people of faith...we are still waiting for the contradictions of God's promises to jell. The Epistle to the Hebrews lists the Saints of the Old Testament and says, all of them were looking toward a promise that was not to be in their life-time, but which kept them in dialogue with God and moving on the way.
That way is the Kingdom way – not a place, but a place where our interactions with one another and with God reflect God's hopes for us….that we are fed and happy and healthy and true to each other and to the Creation.
The Kingdom is a way in our lives where the not yet becomes the here and now. If it is to happen, we need to live as if it were so...that is what Jesus told the people gathered to hear him preach. Again Paul Tillich says, “This brings a tremendous tension into our lives. We live in two orders, one of which is a reversal of the other. The coming order is always coming, shaking this order, fighting with it, conquering it and conquered by it. The coming order is always at hand. But one can never say: It is here! It is there! One can never grasp it. But one can be grasped by it. And whenever one is grasped by it, he is rich, even if he be poor in this order.”
In their popular book, “Freakonomics”, authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, who in their way offer another kind of oral history tradition, suggest that morality is all about the ideal world, but people in the real world are motivated by incentives – that's what our history tells us, over and over again. In a fascinating exploration of stories from the respectable and disreputable sides of life they suggest that most of us do what we do because we have an incentive to do so.
From the beginning, we have incentives of two kinds -- those which offer us external rewards – safety, food, comfort, shelter and love, and those from within which allow us to be at peace with ourselves and find peace with one another. The promise of the “not-yet” which is God's Kingdom – is the reality coming into being in each generation and in each of us.
This day of remembering all the Saints offers us both kinds of incentive. We are encouraged to live our faith by the example of the great company of people in all times and places who have gone before us, as well as those we encounter in the here-and-now of our lives. But we are also invited to “do the right thing for the right reason”, which involves both selflessness and personal integrity. Today especially, as “we offer ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice”, and as we receive the bread and cup of the Communion, we are reminded of all the saints who have given us the gift of faith, each of their journeys and an incentive to stay on the “way” the promise of a full and joyful life. For all this, thanks be to God! Alleluia! Amen!
1 Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers , Fortress, Philadelphia, 1992, p. 320 Go Back
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First Presbyterian
Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org
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