·Fellowship Class

Tarrytown United Methodist Church

Austin, TX

July 18, 1992

The Kingdom of God

Luke 13:18.  He went on to say, "What is the Kingdom of God like?  What shall I compare it with?  It is like a mustard seed which a man took and threw into his garden: it grew and became a tree and the birds of the air sheltered in its branches."

Luke 13: 20.  Another thing he said, "What shall I compare the Kingdom of God with?  It is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all through."

Luke 21:2.  As he looked up he saw rich people putting their offerings into the treasury; then he happened to notice a poverty-stricken widow putting in two small coins, and he said, "I tell you truly, this poor widow has put in more than any of them; for these have all contributed money they had over, but she from the little she had has put in all she had to live on."

Luke 18:15.  People even brought little children to him, for him to touch them;ˇ but when the disciples saw this they turned them away.  But Jesus called the chldren to him and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs.  I tell you solemnly, anyone who does not welcome the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."

LUKE 17:20 Asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God was to come, he gave them this answer. "The coming of the Kingdom of God does not admit of observation and there will be no one to say, 'Look here!  Look there!' For, you must know, the Kingdom of God is among you."

Have you ever had a word in your vocabulary that you didn't know how to spell?

That's the problem I've been facing this week.

The word is "Potor."

At least that's the way it sounds.

It's a Swedish word, and when I was little I used to hear it all the time.  I don't have any idea of how it's spelled, but I think I know what it means.

We  would hear it at the dinner table at the end of a long meal.  My Dad flwould come in with another pot of coffee.  He always seemed to be making another pot of coffee.  And he would tip the pot in my direction and say, "Potor?"

"Tak", I would say -- and that means "thanks," and he would pour some more -- more than I needed -- into my cup.

"Potor."

It means, I think, have a little more, just a bit more -- a little more coffee, a little more cake, another piece of pie.

We heard it lots at home and at church suppers.  Mrs. Richardson would come around and in her rich Swedish accent say "Potor," and if you knew what was good for you, you would say "Tak" or "taks a moeki."  That meant "thanks a lot."

If you turned her down, you would get a bad look -- as if you weren't really a Christian, because what she was offering, I was pretty sure, was not just another cup of coffee or piece of cake, it was the Kingdom of God.

A childish conceit, to be sure, a misunderstanding.  A potor could not be the Kingdom of God, could it?  The Kingdom is surely something grand -- the Kingdom of God is pearly gates and streets of gold and angels with harps and crystal waters flowing past the throne of God.

How could I have got so mixed up? 

I have been a member of the Headliners club down town for a couple of years -- they have a low rate for journalism teachers -- but I hadn't gone there all that often until this spring.  As a result, I was not well known to the staff.  I was just another short, rotund, gray-haired member -- and they've got a lot of them.

But this spring, I had to help entertain the seven young people -- five of them women -- we were trying to recruit to the journalism faculty.  We had them in one at a time -- for seven weeks.

On Thursday and Friday night, the search committee would take them out to dinner, but on Saturday night -- their last night -- as department chairman, I took them out to kind of put the clincher on the deal and try to get them to agree to come to Texas.

In the old days, I would have entertained them at home, but that's not possible now, so I took them -- at least all the women candidates -- to the Headliners Club.

The first Saturday night, I appeared with a beautiful young woman, and I was treated politely by the staff.  We had a glass of wine in the bar, and then were shown to our table in the middle of the crowded dining room.  The service was ok.

The next Saturday night, I appeared with a different beautiful young woman, and I got better treatment.  The waiter bowed as he took us into the bar.  And he brought us our menu there instead of at the table later on.  The service was better.

The third Saturday night, I appeared with still a different beautiful young woman, and by now, the staff was kind of interested.  Who was this old guy anyway?  We got the bow and the menu treatment and this time, we got a separate table for two over by the window, away from the crowd.  The service was excellent.

The fourth Saturday night,  when I got off the elevator with still a different beautiful young woman, I was greeted by name by the receptionist.  We got the bow, the menu, the separate table by the window, a candle, the wine already in the ice bucket, and the most attentive service you can imagine.

I think the staff thought I was quite an operator.  I was kind of Austin's answer to the owner of that Boston Bar, Cheers.

I never bothered to tell them the truth.

And when I finally did go to the Headliners with a real date on the Fourth of July -- a beautiful young woman -- the staff gave us a separate room, a table for two with candles by a window overlooking the fireworks at Palmer Auditorium.  And potors.  We  had lots of potors.  Again, that evening, I had that Kingdom of God feeling.

But surely I was wrong.  I must have been mixed up somehow.  The Kingdom of God has to do with trumpets and cymbals, with flashing lightning and rolling thunder, with angelic choirs, and multitudes of souls gathered on streets of gold.  It couldn't be anything so simple as polite and gracious service at a club, could it?  No, it couldn't.  I've obviously got something seriously wrong.

This week a good friend of mine died.  He was 61.

He died at the wheel of his car in North Austin.  He managed not to hit anyone.  They did an autopsy and found that his aorta had been defective from birth and had simply burst.  He died in seconds.

His funeral was in Cameron.  He had been the newspaper publisher there for many years.

I didn't much want to go to the funeral, but I did.

My staff prepared a map for me with the route marked in yellow.  They know how much trouble I have finding my way anywhere.

After losing my way twice, I did get there, arriving at the little Presbyterian Church just as the service was getting under way.

The church was packed, and I sat on a metal chair at the rear of the sanctuary.

It was a good service, marked by warm, humorous stories told by the minister and by the man's friends, of whom he obviously had many.

Later, in the parish hall, we had green lime punch and Toll House cookies served by the ladies of the church, some of whom reminded me quite a bit of Mrs. Richardson.  I shook hands with my friend's children, whom I had not met, and told them I would miss their dad a lot.  We used to have lunch together at the faculty club, and we would argue about politics and the University and the world the way old friends do.  Then I made the long, hot drive home.

The next day I got a message to call his son, who works for an air ambulance service here in Austin.

After some false starts, we were connected.  "I just wanted to thank you for coming," he said. "The University meant a lot to my Dad.  I'm glad you came."

"I'm glad I was able to be there," I said. "It was a special service.  And your Dad meant a lot to me.  I'll miss him."

Again, I had that Kingdom of God feeling.  Why had the boy called the day after the funeral?  Obviously my being there had meant something to the family.  But what had I done after all?  A sixty mile trip on a hot afternoon to attend a funeral in a little country church.

It wasn't anything.  It wasn't important.  It was a potor. A little something extra.  That's all.

Surely the Kingdom of God means ivory palaces and jewels and heavenly trumpets.  It means angelic voices raised in eternal hymns of praise to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The Kingdom of God must be like half time at the Orange Bowl.  I surely have it wrong.  I'm way off base.  It couldn't have anything to do with showing up at a funeral and drinking green punch in a parish hall, could it?

We've been talking about the basics of Christianity the last two Sundays we've been together.

The first Sunday I talked about emotions, and how I'm convinced that Jesus liked emotions -- he thought people should express them.  He himself wept.  He was amused by human folly.  He enjoyed being with his friends.  He seemed to be opposed to the prevailing philosophy of his time, stoicism, that recommended that people not express their emotions, but simply accept the things that happen to them as determined by fate.  Jesus was a prophet of life, and he believed that people should live the life that God gave them with all its love, all its laughter, all its tears, all its anger and all its grief.  The blessing of religion, he seemed to say, is that we have a special appreciation of life, an enrichment of life, because we believe that life comes from God.

The second Sunday I talked about the importance in Christianity of living in the present -- not the past, not the future, not the imagined world to come, but the present.  Be here now, Jesus seems to say.  Look around you.  See what's happening. Pay attention to the world.  Enjoy the flowers.  Pay attention to the people in your life.  The only time you can love your neighbor is right now.  The only time you can be a good father is right now.  Christianity, it seems to me, is very much a religion of today, of this instant, of this moment.

Today, I want to deal with the question of what we should do with the present, what we should do if we are living life fully and richly as we should.  This brings us face to face with the concept of the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom is a major Christian concept.  And it obviously has many meanings.  It is used over and over in the gospels -- particularly in Matthew, who calls it the Kingdom of Heaven, and in Luke, who calls it the Kingdom of God.  It is an important part of the Lord's prayer, that centerpiece of Christian theology in which we pray, day after day, "Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

But what do we mean by the Kingdom?  What are we praying for?  Whose responsibility is it to bring the Kingdom into being on earth as it is in heaven?  Will God take care of this?  Or is it somehow something that we have to do ourselves?

As I read through the gospels again this week with the Kingdom of God in mind,  I was struck by two things. 

First, to Jesus, the Kingdom of God was infinitely precious, infinitely desirable.  He compares it at one point to "a pearl of great price" -- at another to "a treasure hid in the field."  He compares it to precious things that have been lost  and found again -- a sheep, a coin, a son.  The Kingdom of God is the end result of following Christ's way.  It is the eternal goal.  It is the ultimate good.  It is the greatest blessing we can receive.  Small wonder then that later writers, when discussing the Kingdom, have tended to populate it with saints, with angels, with heavenly choirs, with streets of gold and palaces of ivory.  But you will not find these images in the lessons taught by Jesus.  These come later.

To Jesus, strangely enough -- and this is my second observation -- the Kingdom of God is presented in very homely images.  Jesus talks about it as if it were a small thing -- easy to achieve, if only people would realize it.

Listen to some of his sayings:

Luke 13:18.  "What is the Kingdom of God like?  What shall I compare it with?  It is like a mustard seed which a man took and threw into his garden: it grew and became a tree and the birds of the air sheltered in its branches."

What is a mustard seed?  A nothing.  It's tiny.  It's insignificant.  But planted in a garden -- even the planting is not difficult -- Jesus used the word "throw" to describe it -- the seed sprouts and grows into something great, a tree that can shelter the birds of the air.

That hardly sounds like streets of gold does it?

At another point, trying once again to explain the concept, he says:

Luke 13: 20.  "What shall I compare the Kingdom of God with?  It is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all through."

This is the Kingdom of God?  Something as common as yeast?  It's small.  It's nothing.  A woman mixes it with flour and salt and water and something happens.  It grows.  It turns paste into wonderful, light, chewy bread.  But bread is a far cry from crystal fountains and angel choirs.  It's just yeast and flour and water.  Achieving the Kingdom of God seems almost to be the work of a moment.

Another time he noticed a woman in the temple, and he paused to make a special observation about the importance of what she was doing.  The disciples remembered it and talked about it, and the story was latter written down, I suspect, because it was so ordinary no one could  believe it.  Here's what was written by Luke:

Luke 21:2.  As he looked up he saw rich people putting their offerings into the treasury; then he happened to notice a poverty-stricken widow putting in two small coins, and he said, "I tell you truly, this poor widow has put in more than any of them; for these have all contributed money they had over, but she from the little she had has put in all she had to live on."

A simple woman -- poor, alone -- puts two coins in the collection plate.  And Jesus says that is important.  It's hard to understand isn't it?   Those two coins mean more than the heavy money the rich put in.  Why?  It's the meaning of the gift, isn't it?  It's the sacrifice, the simple charity, the loving heart, and the compassionate soul.  It's the Kingdom of God coming, Jesus seems to be saying.  Can  you see it?

But the clink of those two small coins is not exactly a clashing cymbal, is it?  Subsequent writers wanted more thunder and lightning, more trumpets, more noise, more drama.  It's completely understandable, of course.  But Jesus seemed to think that the Kingdom of God comes when ordinary people do simple, ordinary things for the right reason.

You remember the story about the children, don't you?  That was always a tough one:

Luke 18:15.  People even brought little children to him, for him to touch them; but when the disciples saw this they turned them away.  But Jesus called the chldren to him and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs.  I tell you solemnly, anyone who does not welcome the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."

The disciples didn't want the children to bother Jesus.  They seemed to be thinking, "You kids get out of here.  Can't you see something important is going on?  Jesus is telling us about the Kingdom of God.   You wouldn't understand.  This doesn't concern you.  Run along and play."

But Jesus, to every one's amazement, then and ever since, lets the children come to him.  And indeed, he insists that the Kingdom of God belongs to "such as these."

Surely not, Jesus.  The Kingdom is something fine, something magnificent.  It's grand.  What has it to do with these sweaty, runny nosed children?

Just everything, Jesus seems fit to say.  Because the Kingdom of God comes with simplicity, with open hearts, with natural feelings, with the quick compassion of children.  Become like one of these children, if you want to enter the Kingdom, Jesus says.

Finally, we come to perhaps the most difficult saying of all -- the one that absolutely confounds everyone.

LUKE 17:20.  Asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God was to come, he gave them this answer. "The coming of the Kingdom of God does not admit of observation and there will be no one to say, 'Look here!  Look there!' For, you must know, the Kingdom of God is among you."

The pharisees, religous leaders of the time, were baffled by his response, just as we are today.  The Kingdom of God, this magnificent concept, this greatest of all of man's desires, this fulfillment of every human wish is among us?   "You've got to be kidding, Jesus," they must have said.  And most of us still say the same thing.  We look at those around us in church and think, "Is the Kingdom of God with us -- with Harry and me?  With Sue Ellen and Nancy?  Surely not!"

Yet, to Jesus -- at least this is the way it seems to me today -- the Kingdom of God -- the magnificent Kingdom of God -- was not an unbelievably beautiful, unbelievably magnificent resort somewhere in the sky that would miraculously come into being.  It was instead an unbelievably beautiful, unbelievably magnificent possibility here on earth, created when people live and act  according to God's will.

That's why the Kingdom is among us.

It is here. 

It finds its expression in every kind and thoughtful act we do in the here and now.  In the present.  With all our emotions intact -- and all our feelings alive and well within us.

When my father or Mrs. Richardson offered me, a little boy, a potor -- another cup of coffee -- perhaps I was right.  They were indeed offering me the Kingdom of God.  They were bringing it right  down into the basement of the West Hill Methodist Church at the Wednesday night supper.

When the staff of the Headliner's Club, good people that they are, began to think of me as a person -- a foxy old gentleman, indeed -- our relationship changed.  They became friends. They were indeed offering me the Kingdom of God.  They were bringing it right down here in Austin, Texas.

And when I made a little extra effort to drive to a little country town for a friend's funeral, perhaps I, too, brought a little bit of the Kingdom of God with me to give to my friend's children.  I may have done so.  I hope I did.

All I know this summer is that I want to be a Christian in my heart. And to me this means that I need to live my life with feeling and emotion.  I need to live it here with you today.  And in living it, I need to do my part to bring in the Kingdom of GoTd.  It is my job as a human being, a child of God. It's something I think I can do, with God's help.

I invite you to reread the gospels and form your own conclusions about the meaning of Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom of God.

But on this Sunday in July, it seems to me that for each of us the Kingdom of God may be no further away than the next act of kindness we perform.  It needn't be much.  A potor -- another cup of coffee for a friend.  A couple of coins in the collection plate, or in the hand of a homeless man.  A  pat on the head for a child. A handshake for a grieving son or daughter.  But like the mustard seed, such acts can grow.  Like the yeast in the flour, such acts can expand, and ultimately they can transform the world.

"For you must know," as Jesus said, "the Kingdom of God is among you."