Readings – Romans 15: 4–13; Matthew 3: 1–12
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
This morning’s Gospel doesn’t mention Jesus directly; it instead tells the story of the public ministry of John the Baptist. Yet, it is important for understanding Jesus’ ministry and mission, especially as related in Matthew’s Gospel, which will supply nearly all of our all of our Sunday Gospel readings between now and next November. For it directly connects the preaching of John and of Jesus. John in his preaching calls on people to: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”. Matthew later reports Jesus using this phrase habitually, word for word, in his own preaching.
The Kingdom of Heaven Suffereth Violence (1910) by Evelyn de Morgan.
“The kingdom of heaven” is a phrase specific to Matthew’s Gospel and it is repeated twenty-four times in it, so it is important to think about what it might mean, for we are going to be hearing it a lot in church over the next year.
The “kingdom of heaven” is a phrase that is never rigidly defined; Jesus explains it mainly in parables. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed; it’s like treasure hidden in a field; like a merchant in search of fine pearls; like a net that was thrown into the sea; like a landowner who goes out in the early morning to hire workers.
Parables catch us in different ways in different points of our lives. The same story can present us with different truths and different lessons depending on how and where we hear it. So the kingdom of heaven seems to be hard to pin down, to be something that changes depending on the person encountering it and the context in which it’s encountered. It isn’t something that’s rigid or fixed, but instead lives and breathes and adapts and evolves.
This can seem frustrating when all we’re looking for is a few simple rules for life – if you’re looking for that, I recommend the Ten Commandments painted on the wall behind me – but remember, if the kingdom of heaven really is something that is truly from God rather than just being invented by people, then it must lie partly beyond human understanding.
More than that, and this really is good news, if the kingdom of heaven is truly from God, it isn’t something that can be grasped or controlled by human beings as a way of setting themselves up in power over other human beings. It can’t become an oppressive power structure, in the way even the most enlightened earthly kingdoms do from time to time. Indeed Jesus will say early in his public ministry, in the Sermon on the Mount, that this kingdom belongs to the poor in spirit and those persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Those who seek power often seek to take the kingdom of heaven by force and prevent those they disapprove of from entering it – but they do not own it, for it is the possession of the humble and those who are the victims of unjust power. When we seek to control the kingdom of heaven, it seems to crumble in our grasp; yet it is so precious that people will sell all that they have to possess it.
The kingdom of heaven is about what you do, not just what you say, but what you say matters too. Words can bless or curse, can liberate or condemn, so they matter: but fancy phrases unmatched by action seem to be particularly toxic to it. Not everyone who says “Lord, Lord”, will enter it, but only those who do the will of the heavenly father. So, the Pharisees and Sadducees, the two big religious parties of the time, are castigated by John as a “brood of vipers”, and Jesus will later say that people will never enter the kingdom of heaven unless they’re much more righteous than those smooth-tongued religious obsessives.
Whatever the kingdom of heaven is, John and Jesus agree that the key to accessing it is repentance. Repentance can be a very loaded word. Having grown up in Belfast, I always associate the word “repent” with angry looking men shouting too loudly in the city centre on Saturday afternoons. Yet it’s a simple and wholesome concept – it means to turn around. It means to stop doing the bad things one is doing, and to do good things instead. Whether or not you’re a Christian or believe in God at all, everyone should want to repent. It means humbling ourselves, and admitting we aren’t so wise that we have all the answers, and therefore accepting we always need to change. Jesus says that unless we become like children, trusting that there is much that we don’t know and seeking to be obedient to our heavenly father, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Repentance is never just a one-off event, but the work of a lifetime, and a work that one can only make a very rough start to even in a lifetime. But don’t be depressed about that. The kingdom of heaven is something that many people will be part of. Jesus says that many will come from the east and the west and eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in it. They will come to it many different ways.
Take Jesus and John. John is an aesthetic who rejects the pleasures of the world, living off locusts and wild honey; Jesus, in contrast, goes about eating and drinking, and more than that, eating and drinking with sinners and corrupt government officials.
They also approach the wilderness in different ways. For Jesus, the wilderness is where he must go to be tempted before the start of his ministry. It is only after he has encountered Satan in the desert and overcome temptation, that he returns to his native territory, the little market towns and fishing villages of Galilee, to take up John’s message that the kingdom of heaven is near. For John, in contrast, the wilderness is the place where he can retreat from the world to be close to God and the place where his ministry bears fruit. People come out from Jerusalem and beyond to seek this holy man in the wild spaces in which he is most at home. His appearance is as wild as the terrain he inhabits, a sign that for John holiness come from cutting himself off from the conventional world.
There are different ways to be holy; there is no right answer that works for everyone. But there are wrong reasons for trying to be holy; if you seek holiness to obtain the approval of the world, you’ll never win: they said John was a madman because he rejected the world to live in the desert, but because Jesus embraced the pleasures of the world, they said he was an alcoholic glutton. Don’t seek the kingdom of heaven to please others, but only to please God.
So, be alert for where the kingdom of heaven is breaking into your own life. Keep your eyes open for buried treasure for the soul, so wondrous that you’d sell all that you own to possess it. Always be prepared to repent; to stop doing the worst things that you do and seek a better way of living. Be humble, and accept that God still has much to teach you, no matter how much life-experience you have under your belt. Part of that is remembering that the kingdom of heaven is beyond our human attempts to define it; it grows and adapts and changes and others will approach it differently to you. Those who seek to take it by force will never possess it, but many will come to it from different directions, and in the end come to share in that great heavenly banquet where a multitude from every tribe and nation will rejoice together.
So repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!!!
And now glory be to God for whom we wait, the Father, and the Son whom He sent to judge and to rule us, and the Spirit whom He sent to comfort and to guide us, now and unto eternity. Amen.
