The Marks of the Kingdom

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Matthew 9:35-10:14

As best as we can tell from the Gospels, it appears that Jesus began his ministry wandering from town-to-town teaching and preaching in the region of Galilee. It seems he liked to start his visit to a town by teaching in the synagogue. We know that he did have some rather large outdoor moments like when he preached the Sermon on the Mount and when he fed the 5,000-15,000. He also wound up getting invited to dinner quite often. And, it goes without saying that he spent a lot of time just teaching his disciples as they made their way from place to place. Nevertheless, the local synagogue on the Sabbath seemed to be where he made his initial stop when he came to town.

Now surprisingly, we don’t know much at all about what went on in the local synagogue back then. Synagogues arose during the Babylonian Exile as places for the displaced Jews to go and be Jews together and the practice followed them back from exile. We know that after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and leveled the Temple in 70AD and then for sure by the 300’s AD, the synagogue became very important as a place of worship. But as far as in Jesus’ day, we know there was a place called a synagogue in most small towns in Israel and throughout the Roman empire where there were large communities of Jews. The word itself means “the gathering” and that seems to have been the synagogue’s most important function. It was a place for people to gather.

In the first century, the synagogue building seemed to have been a large, walled courtyard that may or may not have had a roof. There were benches for sitting around the walls with one important spot called the “Seat of Moses” where the head teaching rabbi sat when they gathered on the Sabbath. Outside of the Sabbath, it seems the courtyard served as a marketplace or park. Similar to how the rural/small town church used to be the social hub a few decades ago in North America, the synagogue was more so a place for fellowship in first century Judaism. The crowds that Jesus had compassion for were likely townspeople fellowshipping at the synagogue.

As far as what synagogue worship was like, well, your guess is as good as mine. As important as these places were, none of the rabbis or the Temple authorities ever wrote down the rubrics of what synagogue worship would look like. We know there was prayer. They probably read the story of the Exodus, a few excerpts from the Law, and a bit of a prophet read by whoever was invited to read. At some point, a local rabbi would give a short commentary on one of the readings. There might be some discussion. That’s about all we know.

As I mentioned earlier, Jesus liked to start his local ministry in the synagogue, but things didn’t always if ever go without confrontation. He and his Kingdom of God message stirred things up. In the Gospel of Mark as a matter of first course, we see Jesus visit the Capernaum synagogue. Capernaum and a house there seem to function as a home base for Jesus. The people, the crowd, at the synagogue were amazed at his teaching. Just then a demoniac challenged Jesus calling him the Holy One of God. Jesus told him to shut up and cast the demon out of the man, an act of the Kingdom or reign of God being at hand. The crowd was gobsmacked.

But tides change. When Jesus went to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, he was given the Scroll of Isaiah to read. News of Jesus and his ministry preceded him. They wanted to hear what their hometown boy, whom everybody knew, would have to say. He read a passage about things the Messiah would do, things only God could do, the miraculous things which he had been doing. For his brief commentary on the passage, he simply said “Today, this passage has been fulfilled within your hearing.” That prompted some heated discussion for which they ran him out of town.

From then on, most of his teaching moments in synagogues which were always accompanied by healings and exorcisms were met with opposition from the synagogue authorities, the scribes and Pharisees. No wonder Jesus said that the crowds for which he had such compassion were like sheep without a shepherd. When it came to the crowds fellowshipping in the synagogues, distressed and dejected due to Roman oppression, the shepherds did not feel compassion for them but rather an apparent love of authority over them.

So, Jesus would come to a town and go to the synagogue and teach/preach that the Kingdom of God has come near and he demonstrated it by healing people, casting out demons, holding the authorities accountable, touching the unclean, eating with tax collectors and sinners, and sometimes he even raised the dead. To these crowds of troubled people of God and to the outcast among them he came and brought real hope. He didn’t come with a moral code to be obeyed or else. He didn’t come saying, “believe what I believe or else.” He certainly did not come preaching, “Believe in me or go to Hell when you die.” He came bringing the Kingdom of God.

Well, that was a long time ago in a land 9,353 kilometers (5,812 miles) as the crow flies from my recliner. What does Jesus bringing his Kingdom look like today in our communities? A primary marker for the presence of Jesus and his kingdom is compassion for the crowds, a real burden to do something to uplift the multitudes of people in our communities who are troubled, cast out, and vulnerable like shepherdless sheep. Israel in Jesus day was a land occupied and overtaxed by a foreign nation and there was widespread hopelessness. In the small towns the people gathered at the synagogue. That’s not our context today, but there are still a lot of people troubled by economic hardship, medical issues, family problems. It’s a huge list. There are plenty of people ostracized in our communities, lots of young people being ostracized in online communities. There are still all those phobias and -ism’s that people use to build walls to throw people off of. There are vulnerable people all around. People getting scammed in ways we can’t even imagine. Are we moved with compassion?

About crowds, it’s a reasonably sure bet to say that the primary place Jesus saw the crowd was at the synagogue. For us today, local churches are not the place people are gathering to. The gathering places are online. They are at sporting events and concerts. We have to go to big cities to see people crowding through the routines of daily life on public transportation or going to shopping and education centres. Nevertheless, people gathering for fellowship is a rare gift if you can find it. Today is not the day to expect people to come to a church and discover the secret gem of compassionate fellowship that we house in our small congregations. Rather, the harvest is out there at the county fair, the fitness center, the beach, the Tim’s, and so on. But – and this is scary - the predominant place that people are gathering now is online in social media outlets were taking advantage of or outright attacking the vulnerable is the name of the game. Human beings need face-to-face, in-person community.

Jesus said pray the Lord of the harvest to send workers out into the harvest. That’s us. Notice in the passage that those workers were immediately all listed by name. The small church is like the theme song to that TV show Cheers from years ago. “Sometimes you wanna go where everyone knows your name. And they’re always glad you came. You wanna be where you can see our troubles are all the same. You wanna be where everybody knows your name.” People long to be known. So, we need to be the people who go out there among the harvest and putting our fears and shyness aside we learn people’s names and something about them. We take nothing with us like agendas and we expect nothing in return. We just go and listen giving love and support. We just want them to get a sense of the peace of Christ that abides with us. Who knows? Maybe they will want to know where we got this peace from and come and fellowship with us. Amen.

The Kingdom Is Still Here

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Matthew 9:35-10:14

Y’all remember the good ole days?  How we used to just travel light going from house to house proclaiming the Good News that, “The Kingdom of God is right here with us now.  Come get on board.”  We’d go and actually bring peace to people in their homes, the peacefulness of God’s presence.  Remember how Jesus gave us authority, a real power, not power to get people to toe the line but power to heal; to heal the sick, the troubled, the broken.  We’d heal people…wow, remember that?  Jesus even gave us authority to set people free from those dark, sinister, sub-personal powers that had taken them over …remember that?  People used to come out in droves because it was obvious that wherever we followers of Jesus went things that only God could do happened.  The Kingdom of God was at hand.  Jesus was present with us by the Holy Spirit…remember that?  Those were the good ole days.  Remember?  Things were booming, moving forward, growing.  Sure, sometimes we’d get run out of town, but hey, that’s their loss.  The good ole days.  How I long for the good ole days.  Remember?

Now, let me guess.  You’re saying to yourselves, “Randy, those aren’t the good ole days we remember.”  In fact, that sounds a little weird, even scary.  We didn’t go to people homes.  They came to church and if you didn’t go to church, you knew you should.  We remember when we had 150, 200, 300 or more in church, whole families, lots of children.  We had Sunday School classes for every grade and a children’s choir and Bible School, a junior and a senior youth group.  There were more than thirty-to-fifty people in the choir with lots of men singing.  Even though the best nap you got all week was during the sermon, this place was full.  We had money for this and money for that.  Generously supported an overseas missionary.  We were thinking about building a bigger church building.  Everybody used to be Christians back in those days, even politicians.  Randy, those were the good ole days we remember and long for.  Remember?

Well, I do remember those days too and to be honest, every couple of generations of the church over the centuries and millennium has had their good ole days to look back on and long for as the Church has changed, adapted, morphed, evolved over the centuries.  Societies change and so has the church.  In the beginning, Jesus’ first disciples went forth proclaiming the Kingdom of God is here, at hand.  They proclaimed peace and brought forth healing.  They formed small communities that met in homes and were known for the way they loved one another.  They virtually eliminated poverty in their midst.  It was obvious that God was present and reigning in their midst as opposed to the world around them that was ruled by corrupt leaders who had the Roman military enlisted to be their thugs.  

A few centuries later after many outbreaks of persecution, the church had grown and became a more predominant social force, Emperor Constantine realized he needed a common religion to bring unity to the Roman Empire and started the wheels rolling to make Christianity into that unifying religion.  Over the next couple of centuries, the church grew politically powerful and the Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire and instead of bringing the peace of Christ kings and bishops got people to kill in the name of Jesus.  Thus, the Age of Christendom where Church and State walked hand in hand in an unholy alliance.  The Church served the purpose of God-stamping the work of the State as well as being that organization that defined acceptable, moral, societal conduct.  So often we got it wrong like when we called slavery and racism good.

Outside of occasional renewal movements that changed the course of history, the Kingdom of God as the first disciples knew it stayed eclipsed behind the illusion of Christendom, but still present.  Oddly, those renewal movements began in homes and usually involved meals.  First-hand accounts often reflect that Jesus was felt in their midst, present in their midst through the Holy Spirit.  The peace that Jesus breathed on his disciples on Easter evening when he appeared to them as they hid behind locked doors afraid for their lives was felt among these renewal movements.  Healings and other “miracles” are attested as well.  The Kingdom of God has always remained “at hand”.  Another marker of those renewal movements was a noticeable lack of political affiliation.  In fact, they were too often at odds with the powers that be, particularly when those powers were situated in the Church.

The good ole days that we remember are likely situated in the 1980’s and over the last twenty years we have witnessed the greatest decline in religious affiliation in Western History if not World History.  The good ole days that we remember are likely, hopefully (if you will pardon my hope), the last hoorah of Christendom.  Though an inordinate number of individual “church members” are associated with mega-church Christianity which is also in decline now, 80% of congregations are less than 60 in membership, meet in a big building like we do, and average attendance is 20-25 on a Sunday.  5 years ago in Canada, there was at least one church closure a week.  I haven’t seen recent numbers on that.  It may have peaked.  The people who attend these small churches are getting on in years, faithful, kind, prayerful, hospitable, generous, back-bone of the community kind-of-people.  They also have formed the backbone of volunteer organizations in the community that like the local church are disappearing as people just don’t have the time to be community oriented anymore. 

This is a harsh reality for us to face, we whom I’ll call the remnant,.  The emotions we predominantly feel are not good: sadness, shame, guilt, disillusion, regret, fear, overwhelmed, confusion.  These emotions are not what God’s faithful remnant should feel.  Joy and gratitude ought to be toping our list.  In a world that thinks faith in Jesus Christ is either irrelevant or a scandal, you folks are still inclined to pray, to hope.  For some odd reason you still have faith; not just beliefs, but faith.  You know the Solid Rock upon which you stand.  If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.  Just getting out week after week and letting God know whose side you’re on is what I would call “rocking it” these days.  If God wanted more from us, then God would make it possible.  

This is probably a bad analogy. Forgive me if it is.  We recently had to say good bye to one of our cats.  He wasn’t that old, but he got kidney disease like old cats do.  The last year and a half of his life I spent a lot of time scooping a lot of litter, making sure he ate the special food I put out for him (and not his fat buddy).  He had the world’s worst breath.  If he started to clean himself, the smell would gag you.  He started to look really scruffy.  But that last year of his life, pretty much every morning when I sat on the couch praying and reading Scripture, he was there in my lap.  He, and I, needed that time of familiarity in his last months.  Jealous Nellie, the dog, would gather there too with her head on my thigh and where two or three are gathered, Jesus is there in their midst.  God’s faithful remnant still gathering to pray and just be with one another…well, that’s us in the familiarity of our congregations. Jesus is still in our midst.  He’s still here.

That said, the Kingdom God is still at hand.  There are new ways of being church that are developing out there where people are gathering in homes around tables.  The peaceful presence of Christ is in their midst.  Healings are happening.  People are being set free from dark, sinister, sub-personal powers that have taken them over.  New, wonderful, and powerful things are happening even in the Presbyterian Church in Canada.  The harvest is plentiful and the labourers though few are out there.  That said, that doesn’t mean we can’t try new things.  Home gatherings, gathering for fellowship and meals and prayer and study at times other than Sunday morning are a good and welcome thing to do.  Anything we can do to share the familiarity of the sense of loving community that we enjoy with each other is a good and welcome thing to do.  Opening the doors to the community for community events is a good and welcome thing to do.  But, in the end, the most powerful thing we can do is to keep coming out to worship and to pray.  Amen.