Have you ever received one of those phone calls at home where the caller cannot pronounce your name? “Hello, Mr. Banknight? Oh, maybe it’s Bownight.” And I say, “It’s Bauknight.”  

“Oh, yes, well, Mr. Bauknight…(pause) Mr. Bauknight, how are you today?” 

“Fine, thank you.” 

“Mr. Bauknight, may I have a few moments of your time, please?” 

Through the very brief introductory fanfare, your suspicion grows. Who is this calling? What is the real agenda here? 

Similar kinds of suspicious questions were put to Jesus on occasion. At one point they said, “Teacher, we know that you are a prophet sent from God. What we want to know is, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Or the one in our text for this morning: “Jesus, you keep talking about this kingdom of God.” (They had gotten the idea that Jesus talked about the kingdom more than any other subject.) When is this kingdom coming?” 

What is the real agenda here? I see several possibilities. First, they might want to know, “Jesus, when is the end of the world? When is God going to wrap things up? We’d like to know.” 

Many people would like to know the answer to that question. Some people think they do know. They may not know the date, but they know it’s coming soon. I’ve had people say to me on a number of occasions, “I really think the end of the world will be very soon.” 

Personally, I have never felt this information to be of central importance, nor have I wasted much energy on speculation about it. Jesus was about the direction of life, not about the end of the world. Jesus was about a relationship with God, not about a prediction of the end. 

Or the questioners might be asking, “Jesus, when is the world going to get better? Things are tough. When will things get better? When will there be an end to earthquakes and hurricanes and tsunamis? When will we no longer have murderous rampages by sick or angry people? When will gasoline prices stop going up? Must we live with this indefinitely, Jesus? You promised us a kingdom. When will it come for us?” 

Or they might be asking, “When will the world come to its senses? When will a time of peace and love finally reign?”  

I read about a Russian traveler who was looking for a place to travel with his travel agent. The agent said, “Would you like to go to Israel?” Replied the traveler, “No, I don’t think I want to go to Israel. They’re too close to another war over there.” 

“Well, would you like to go to the United States?” 

“No, I don’t want to go there. There’s too much unemployment and drug use in the United States.” 

“What about Italy?” 

“Oh, not Italy. Isn’t that where the Mafia originated?” 

“I’ll tell you what,” said the travel agent. “Here’s a globe. You take a look at the globe and get back to me when you know where you want to go.” 

The man looked at the globe for a while, spun it around a couple of times, then looked up at the travel agent and said, “Do you have a different globe?” 

When will the lion lie down with the lamb? When will people beat swords into plowshares? When will a little child lead us home? 

Ann Weems wrote a free verse poem that goes something like this:

I keep reaching for rainbows…

Thinking one… morning…

The hungry will be fed, the dying held,

The maimed will walk, the angry will be stroked,

The violent calmed, the oppressed freed,

The oppressors changed, and every tear wiped away.[i] 

When will the world come to its senses? 

Or the questioners may be asking, “When is my life going to get better? 

“Jesus, this kingdom is about a better time to come, right? Things are not very good for me right now. When will my ship come in? When will I retire in comfort? When will I be secure and happy?” 

Perhaps this thrust of the question is symbolized by the long lines at the lottery booth at the mall. South Hills Village Mall can be virtually empty at certain times. But there are always lines to buy lottery tickets. It’s as though people are saying, “Sometime soon my life has got to get a lot better.” 

When can I get a real job? When can I provide for my family? When can I quit scraping by with two jobs to make ends meet? 

I saw a picture of a man with a signboard one time in the Chicago Loop. His sign read, “Bad news: the world is not coming to an end. You will have to live and cope.” 

Are the Pharisees saying to Jesus, “If we have to live and cope in this world, Jesus, when will it get better? And will YOU be a part of that betterment?” 

Most of us still ask these questions in some form. When will the world attain some responsible self-understanding? When will life on this planet approach the quality of the Kingdom? When will there be an end to the poverty and the greed and war and the arms race? “Jesus, tell us when the Kingdom will come.” It’s still a valid question for many of us. 

Jesus responds with a strange and much debated answer. It’s a curious answer, really. He says in effect, “The Kingdom is not going to come over here or over there. It’s not going to come at any particular time. In fact, the Kingdom of God is in your midst.” Opinions vary widely as to what Jesus meant by that statement. 

Some say he meant the Kingdom of God is among you. In other words, “I am the Kingdom. When you see me, you see the Kingdom. I am a sign of the Kingdom.” 

When we see Jesus, we see what God wants and hopes for: love your neighbor, live justly, exercise a giving lifestyle. 

Other scholars say that what Jesus really meant to say was the Kingdom of God is within you. That is to say, it is in your heart. You have the power within you to make a difference. The Kingdom is a “soul” thing. It’s all inside. 

I think the best translation of this answer that Jesus gave is this one: the Kingdom of God is in your midst. The Kingdom of God is in the midst of you. In other words, look around. Resources of the Kingdom are right here. The tools of the Kingdom are right here and right now. I want to suggest to you this morning two possible thrusts of this understanding. 

THE KINGDOM IS A LIVED RELATIONSHIP 

First, the Kingdom of God is a lived relationship. It is not a geographical place. It is not a time. And it is not a situation. Rather, it is a relationship with the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. 

That relationship had to be what sustained Ashley Smith in Atlanta last weekend. You probably read her story. She is a young woman, age 26. She had been widowed at the age of 22. She had just rented a new apartment two days before, and was coming home at 2:00 in the morning from her second job. Life was not so good for Ashley Smith. 

She was met at the door by a man who had just killed four people twelve hours earlier. But with a relationship with God that sustained her and guided her, with a lived relationship that made a remarkable difference, she handled the situation with faith and poise. Later she said of the intruder, “He thought I was an angel sent from God, that I was his sister and he was my brother in Christ.”

The Kingdom of God is in your midst. The Kingdom of God is in a lived relationship with the Divine. 

Or the story of a soldier in Iraq who has been placed there because of his position in the Louisiana National Guard. He carries the weapons of war as he patrols the streets. But his pockets also bulge with toys and stuffed animals for the children.  

This soldier is a member of the First United Methodist Church of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He’s a member of his Sunday school class there. His Sunday school class embraced the idea called “Operation Stuffed Animal.” To date they have sent more than 3000 small toys and stuffed animals for him to distribute to the children in war-torn Iraq.[ii] 

The Kingdom of God is living out a relationship with God. 

A few years ago our United Methodist Council of Bishops wrote these words:

We are very busy people. We are active in many causes. To an outsider, we look like beehives of committee work and programs. But in our hearts we suffer emptiness and doubts. Busy with much serving, we know ourselves to be paralyzed by loss of contact with our Master, in whose company alone we find direction and purpose. 

Kingdom living is a relationship. 

KINGDOM IS A NEW WAY OF SEEING 

Secondly, the Kingdom of God is a new way of seeing. You see the world through a new set of eyes. Jesus said one time, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” That’s a new way of seeing things. As he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday morning in a kind of strange procession, he was offering people a new way of seeing. 

Remember the Biblical dream that says the lion will lie down with the lamb? That does not mean that a lion will become lamblike. That would be victory for the lamb. Rather it means that creatures of great difference can accept each other. The lamb is freed from fear, and the lion is freed from the need to affirm its ferocity. 

The Kingdom is a new way of seeing. One of the great joys of the church is that we see each other through new eyes. We may not always agree. But we can acknowledge our differences and still live in the Kingdom zone. Some churches lose this possibility at times, and it becomes a fracturing kind of division. I am grateful that in this church, differences are okay. 

I almost used a movie film clip with you this morning. It was a film from a few years ago entitled, “Places in the Heart.” The problem is you need to see the whole film in order to understand the part that I’m going to describe to you. It’s the story of a woman who is widowed very early in the story. She spends the rest of her portrayed life struggling against the principalities and powers in 1930s Texas. People try to grab her land from her. The bank tries to foreclose on her mortgage. All kinds of negative things come her way. 

The film ends with a communion service in the local church. The camera follows as the elements are passed in that communion service. First the good folks in town receive the bread and the cup as they are passed through the pews. Then the not-so-good folks receive the communion. (We’ve met all these folks in the course of the movie.) Next the elements are passed to the banker who conspired to take away her farm. Next it’s passed to the faithful farmhand who helped her bring in the crop so she could raise enough money to save the farm. 

The communion is then passed to her three children, and then to the mother herself. Then, in a very strange turn of events, the elements are passed to her late husband, sitting there in the pew beside her. Next they are passed to the young man who shot her husband. 

As the people commune, each says to the next, “The peace of God be with you.” All of them are at the table. It’s a very strange ending for a movie. But it’s so much more than a Sunday morning communion service. This is a vision of the Kingdom—the Kingdom that is in your midst. 

Tim Bagwell writes:

Jesus helped people picture the Kingdom of God, and he invited them to see themselves in the picture.[iii] 

I like that. This Kingdom is a relationship and a way of seeing. 

A friend of mine did an interesting thing with a sermon and a communion service a few months ago. He contrasted Donald Trump’s role on television’s reality show “The Apprentice” with God’s Kingdom. On the TV show, it always brutally comes down to one person: “You’re fired!” At the communion table, however, always, everyone is graciously urged to come. 

As the elements were distributed in his church that day, each person heard these words: “You’re hired—to work in God’s Kingdom.”[iv] 

Jesus is saying, “The Kingdom of God is in your midst. Look at me. Look at life through new eyes. You are hired to be a Kingdom disciple!” 

Friends, I think that is a remarkable and exciting way to live out all of our days.