Sermon- Pent 4B- June 17, 2018-
Growing the Kingdom
The
God Bench
As many of you know, Kanuga is a church
conference center near Hendersonville, NC.
Groups of us from this church have gone there on a number of occasions;
in fact, a group of us are going next week for
the renewal conference. For me, Kanuga has
always been one of those “Thin Places,” which is an expression that developed
in Celtic Christianity to describe those special places where the fabric
between heaven and earth seem to be drawn so thinly that one can almost reach
through and touch the face of God. Kanuga
has been part of my growing up in The Faith,
and it has been at Kanuga that I regularly, almost palpably, encounter God in
special ways. It is my Thin Place.
In previous sermons, I have spoken about one special trail
that goes around Kanuga Lake. On the far
side of the lake along the trail is a towering cross that is visible from the
conference center. The trail has a wonderful beauty about it at that point with
huge Mountain Laurels forming almost a tunnel through which the trail
passes. Right there is a bench. I have on numerous occasions met the Lord while
sitting on that bench, sometimes with great joy and thanksgiving, sometimes with
a heavy heart or with some deep need, sometimes seeking guidance or wisdom from
the Lord. For years that bench has been for
me a place of communing with the Lord and moving into Him.
Last summer we were at Kanuga for a week
with our youngest son and his family. It
was a delight being there for the first time with three of our grandchildren
and being able to share with them that place which has been so special to my
life over the years.
I am a person of patterns and habits,
and it is my habit to rise at first light each morning at Kanuga and walk
around the lake to that bench behind the cross on the far side of the
lake. My then 6-year-old grandson got up
when he heard me up; so I invited him to join me. My grandson was excited about the invitation,
and we quietly snuck out of our cabin and headed around the lake. We sat on that
bench and spent time talking to God and to each other. My grandson and I call it the God Bench.
For the rest of the week, he would listen
for my getting up, and be right there. On
those walks around the Lake to the God Bench, I could see the seeds of the
Kingdom of God taking root in the fresh soil of the soul this young man. I shared some of my experiences of God and
what it means to belong to God and not to the world. This August we will again be at Kanuga with
my son and his family. My grandson has
already asked about taking our early morning walks to the God Bench.
Growing
the Kingdom
The world teaches our children a great
deal about being in the world but nothing about appropriating the Kingdom of
God, that is, the rule of God, in their lives.
Faith, at least to some extent, use to be woven into the fabric of American
public life, but not anymore. Today, if
anything is taught in our culture about the Faith, it is that it is obsolete, irrelevant and even inappropriate to modern life. This is an
impoverished message for our children to be receiving, given the fact that they
have been created to be in communion with
the God who created them.
As Christians we have answers to first
order questions of life, ones my grandson is asking or will be asking, some of which
we discussed sitting on the God Bench.
These are questions our secular culture either ignores or is unable to
answer, such as: Where did we come from? Why are we here? What is our purpose? What is our eternal destiny? How can we
really know our Creator? How can we approach a perfect and holy God given our less-than-perfect
and holy lives? The list can go on.
We all know that growing the Kingdom of
God in our young people has always been the job of the Christian family and the
Church. Attending to that job seems to
be even more crucial these days. Knowledge,
love and obedience of God needs to be planted in our children and grandchildren,
where it can take root and grow into something magnificent and
life-transforming. The Kingdom of God
needs to be nurtured in them and grown into maturity as they grow. This is not only true for our young people,
but it is true for all whom we invite into the Church to
take this journey of Faith with us.
The Parable of the
Mustard Seed
In our Gospel reading
this morning, Jesus talks about this: “With
what can we compare the kingdom of God,” Jesus says,
“or what parable shall we use for it? 31 It is like a grain
of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the
seeds on earth, 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and
becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that
the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
“The Kingdom of God is
like” is Jesus’ favorite way of introducing his parables. In this parable, He says that the Kingdom of
God is like the tiniest of beginnings which grows into something glorious and
great. The Kingdom of God, when it takes
root, comes to dominate and define our lives.
It makes us different. We leave
behind this world that wants to define us, and we become a new creation in
Christ. As Paul writes in our Epistle
reading from 2 Corinthians this morning, “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new
creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
Paul is writing to the church in
Corinth. Corinth was a seaport with all
sorts of people with all sorts of moral understandings of life, much like our
world today. In many ways the Corinthian
Christians had not shed their old nature.
The church was compromised by the culture around them. But the Apostle
Paul reminds them that they are different. They have a different purpose and destination
in life. In Christ, they are a new
creation.
Like all of us, my grandson lives in a modern-day Corinth with all
sorts of moral and ethical understandings of life. Who is going to reveal the Kingdom of God to
him? Who is going to share the Kingdom
of God with your children and grandchildren?
Who is going to reveal to them the great truths that the Gospel of Jesus
Christ has for them? How are they going
to find their Thin Places and God Benches in life? If not through you and the other Christians
in their lives, then through whom?
