Sermon

The Third Sunday in Advent
December 16, 2007

The Reverend William Flanders

Listen again to these words of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel: “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has risen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

This is an extraordinary thing to say. In fact, it is nothing less than revolutionary, and in two distinct ways. The first way concerns the imprisoned, and soon to be killed, John the Baptist. Do you remember Antony’s words at Caesar’s funeral: “I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him”? In effect Jesus is saying to John the Baptist’s own disciples: “I have come to praise John the Baptist - and to diminish him.” Remember, it was Jesus who chose to be baptized by John in the Jordan river. Jesus who believed that he had to repent - turn his life around. Jesus who hoped to be spared the impending terrible judgment that John said God would soon wreak upon the population. And Jesus who chose to become one of John’s disciples and may have followed him up until John’s arrest by Herod. Who better than Jesus to judge John the Baptist’s greatness? But now Jesus undercuts John by saying that “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” Why? What’s going on?

The second way in which Jesus’s words are revolutionary is his extraordinary claim for inclusion in what he calls God’s kingdom. The least in God’s kingdom, he insists, is greater than the great John the Baptist. Are these just words? What we often call hyperbole? Or is Jesus on to something of crucial importance, not only to his followers then, but to us now - and to all people? I am convinced so. But bear with me as I step back for a minute.

Recently I heard the revered Preacher to Harvard University, Peter Gomes, give a rousing full hour talk, introducing to us his new book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus. He said over and over that Jesus’ purpose was “to preach the gospel, the good news,” and that this should ultimately be the purpose of every preacher’s sermon. Maybe it was deliberate, I don’t know: but in that whole hour Mr. Gomes never said what that gospel, that good news, was about! That might not have bothered the overflow crowd that certainly did hear an engaging, witty talk. But it did bother me, for I have puzzled, for most of my life, over what is really meant when preachers speak of the “good news.” And even if think I know what this term “the gospel” refers to, I still ask why is it good?

Back now to Jesus’s revolutionary claim for what Matthew, in his pious way, calls the kingdom of heaven, but which I will call - in the standard New Testament mode - the kingdom of God. Here I will make a simple claim: It is the reality of the kingdom of God that is Jesus’s gospel, his good news.

A second digression - and I ask you again to bear with me. When I was in college, back in the mid fifties, Billy Graham brought one of his week-long crusades to our campus. He didn’t just arrive. In fact, his arrival came only after a good deal of discussion at all levels of the university. As I remember it, he was finally welcomed strictly with the arrangement of his being monitored throughout his stay by faculty and counseling service psychologists. One of these monitors I had worked with and met him again here in Washington twenty years later. Our talk went back to the fifties and to the campus crusade. He told me this story.

“You remember that Graham was there giving his long sermons each night to a couple of thousand persons.. And during each day there were small meetings and all sorts of persons wanting to meet with him. By the time Sunday came, and his final sermon in the chapel, Graham was exhausted. I was appointed to be there with him on Sunday, and we were waiting down in the crypt to go up when the service would begin. I’ve seldom seen someone so drained, and I wasn’t sure he could go on. Just before we started up the stairs Graham touched my arm and asked if he could have just a minute to himself. Then he got down on his knees.

What I will never forget is the change in him when he got up. You could see it in his face and throughout his whole body. He was strong and young and renewed. “Ok,” he said, “I’m ready.”

My psychologist friend drew no conclusions from what he had witnessed, just that something had happened there that he would never forget. And, for the past thirty years, I, too, have been grasped by this story and have pondered its implications. I do not think I am wrong in seeing and understanding it as an example of one’s being in the kingdom of God.

And, it seems to me beside the point to wonder if Billy Graham is among the least or among the most notable in that kingdom. And now back to the vital question of whether being in the kingdom of God is gospel - good news - or just news. I have a good friend who is a member of, at the least, five exclusive kingdoms. We’d call them clubs, but they’re royal enough to be called kingdoms. Being in those is perhaps news, but being in the kingdom of God is nothing like that.. Nor is it similar to being a member of a church - say, St. Mark’s - or of a cathedral. And rank doesn’t get you in, not even if you get to be elected bishop. - Nor does rank keep you out.

Being a member of God’s kingdom might mean for us being awakened to a consciousness that the power we call God is, and has always been, a mystery within us, and within all life, including the natural world. If we have that sense of God’s presence, or if, from our hearts, we are reaching for it, we are, Jesus affirms, already members of God’s kingdom.

John the Baptist didn’t have that sense of God’s presence. He looked to a far-off God to come into our life in a near future, and to come in as a devastating force. John’s was the greatness of a long line of prophets, but not the greatness of the kingdom that Jesus both preached and embodied. Which raises the question: How did Jesus come to diverge so sharply from John? What happened? I have yet to discover any convincing explanation. Some will cite a new and overwhelming consciousness that came to Jesus as the result of his baptism. Others will point to Jesus’s fabled time in the wilderness as providing the turning point. Who ever can be sure?

But back one last time to this mystery of the kingdom of God, and to the possibility of your and my place within it. Jesus refers to the least of those in the kingdom as having greatness. Does the kingdom itself confer greatness? Not at all. There is no conferred attribute or honor. The new worth, the result of knowing that we and God are forever joined in a deep and ineffable partnership, lies in our response. You can’t come to feel and believe that God’s love is within you, is a part of you, and not love in return. The potential of our partnership with God is that we find ourselves living - as Jesus did - beyond ourselves. Living beyond ourselves is the promise of the kingdom. If there be greatness, it is certainly there.

A Post Script: Like many of you, I recently received an email of the vestry’s “Specific priorities of 2008” as part of their determination, quote: “To move forward on our parish commitment to engage with others outside St. Mark’s and strengthen our engagement with each other,” unquote. This seems to me clear evidence of a will that St. Mark’s, for so long self-consciously proud of its identity, must and shall now consciously live beyond that identity. This could be - yes, a great adventure! Amen.