Readings: Matthew 6:5-10 and Luke 17:20-21
Is there any phrase more dear to Jesus than “the kingdom of God,” and any promise more hopeful and empowering than the coming of the kingdom of God on Earth? In the Gospel of Mark, the whole of Jesus’ message is summarized as being, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” The coming of the kingdom is also something he tells us to pray for.
But what does the kingdom of God mean to Jesus? How does he see it coming near and into the world? What does it mean to pray for its coming?
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.”
This past Monday night, I surprised myself and I wonder if I surprised anyone else at the table, with the prayer that I offered at the end of our Church Council meeting.
At our meetings, we have the practice of beginning and ending with prayer. At the start, we pray to open ourselves to the presence and purpose of God for us and for the church. At the end, we thank God for the time we have had and what we each have been able to contribute; we give thanks for where we’ve acted in accord with God’s will; we ask forgiveness and time to rethink and amend where maybe we’ve missed the mark; and we pray for safe journeys home and the gift of rest.
It’s a good practice. And even though the prayers tend to follow a certain pattern, they are heartfelt each time we meet. I think they’re appreciated by all who are there.
At last week’s meeting, though – the first one for the Council after the Sept 30 vision-and-church-mission workshop with Rev. Kim Uyede-Kai, when we committed most of our meeting time to mulling over and working with what came out of that workshop about the life and spirit and God’s desire for our congregation, I found myself praying something different. I don’t remember the exact words, but what came out of my mouth and into the squared circle that we were around the Council table, was something like, “Thank you, God, for this time … for all we have shared … and glimpsed … and imagined … and I wonder, maybe we all wonder, is this … has this been … your kingdom come. Has this tonight been your will being done … been us being opened to be doing your will, in this little part of Earth, as it is in heaven?”
A lot of the time when I pray, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven,” I feel a bit like a Miss America pageant contestant, saying the three things I wish for are health, happiness and world peace. Or an end to world hunger. Or a good education and an equal start in life for every child on Earth. In other words, a perfect world without problems, without inequities to address, without challenges to continue to meet over and over again.
Or I think of one of my sisters at a point in her life years ago when she was first starting out on her own and she said that when she came home from work for supper, she would never put on the television news because it was just too depressing and scary to deal with after dealing all day with problems at work. Instead, she’d watch recordings of McIver who could solve any problem with the fewest of resources – just bubble gum and a paper clip, and as for the real world she’d just pray that Jesus would come back soon either to take us all away to a better place, or to make this world over in the flash of an instant to the way God wants it to be.
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.” And so many times, for so long I’ve thought of I that way, too – as an answer coming to us sometime yet to come from somewhere beyond ourselves.
But just what does Jesus mean when he says this? What does he try to lead us into, when he tells us to pray these words?
I think we have a few clues.
A big one is when Jesus prays these words himself in the Garden of Gethsemane. It’s the most agonizing prayer of his life. As he prays he falls to the ground three times, the sweat on his brow is like blood, and he prays over and over again, “Father, if only this cup could pass from me. Yet, not my will but thine, O God, be done.”
Thy will be done on Earth as in heaven, and thy kingdom come. Not in some grand and sudden remaking of all the world. Not in some great thing done by someone else outside and other than himself. But rather in the terrible and glorious giving of himself to do that part of God’s will which at that moment and that point in the life of the world can be done only by him. To be willing to do what he and only he is able to do, and called by God to do, at that point in his life and for the life of the world.
At one point the Pharisees ask Jesus about the coming of the kingdom. They’re not too much in favour of him getting the people all excited about the kingdom coming and thinking the world is ready to change. So, “Jesus,” they say, “you talk so much about the coming of the kingdom of God. Really! Can you tell us, when it’s coming? And where? Do you really see any sign of it in the world?”
To which he says, “The kingdom of God does not come from out there, and not by things that others do apart from you. So don’t be looking here or there for something outside yourself and your own life and way of living. For the kingdom of God is actually among you. It’s within you. It’s within your reach. It comes in your openness at any point in your life to be doing whatever God desires you – and you alone, to be doing at that point in your life.”
It reminds me of what the 12-step movement – which many say is the deepest single contribution of North American faith to the Christian tradition, of what the 12-step movement says about prayer – that the only thing we pray, really, when we really pray, is for knowledge of the will and way of God for our life, and the courage – the willingness, to do it. To pray for no more than that. And also no less than that.
This week I heard a story told by another minister of how he has seen this at work in his church and the effect it has had on the life of the congregation. It’s not a story of our church, even though coincidentally it’s about the formation of a Quilting Circle which is also one of the more delightful parts of our church life.
It began, he says, when one woman in the church began to feel an itch in her life. She was not in crisis. Nothing unusually good or bad was happening to her or her family. But she was feeling uneasy and unsettled. She had seen some show or read a book or heard someone talk about quilting – something she’d never done, that she didn’t know what to make of, but that somehow caught a little corner of her heart. And she didn’t know what to do about it.
So at her minister’s suggestion instead of just ignoring it, which is how we often treat things like this – just try to ignore it, get over it, get on with life as we’ve come to know it – instead of that, at her minister’s suggestion she started sharing what she was feeling with a few others. No plan, at least not at first. Just feelings, questions, wonderings and – this is the important thing, an intentional wondering together and a patient, step-by-step exploring together what movement and desire and good will of God there might be in what they were feeling – what nudging and stirring of Spirit there might be in what was being felt.
And what came to be was an idea, then a plan and then the reality of a Quilting Circle that now is one of the strongest and brightest ministries of that congregation, offering community and support to those who are part of it, and reaching out to make a difference for good – the difference of God’s love, in the lives of all kinds of people around them.
I wonder, is that why I found myself praying what I did with the Council at the end of the meeting last Monday? Giving thanks for maybe God’s kingdom come, and God’s will being done among us that night as it is in heaven?
Not just because we had a good time together – which we did. Not just because we enjoyed working together and everyone had a voice at that meeting – which was true. Not just because we did good work, and came away feeling hopeful about the future – which also was true.
Those things were all true.
But was the real reason for the prayer and the real reason for those things being true, that at that meeting we somehow took the time and found a way to open ourselves up to beginning to know and to be able to do the will of God for our church at this time in our life?
We looked honestly at where and how we are as a congregation. And then instead of the normal response of figuring out who or what is to blame for our failings, and deciding either to try harder to make the things work they used to, or just give up – limiting ourselves to the horizon of what we have been, we chose to stop, to talk together about what we feel, and then consider together the big question of what God might be saying to us at this moment in our life, and what God might be desiring of us and for us that we and only we are able to be doing at this point in our life, at this place in the world.
As we held in our opened hands the easy and the itchy, the weak and the strong, the living and coming-to-life and the dying and no-longer-working parts of our life, were we saying with Jesus, “Is this the cup, O God, that is ours to drink? In some ways, so familiar; in other ways, not at all. Help us to see it and accept it, and not my will – not our will, but thine be done.”
Were we managing to hear what Jesus says to the Pharisees – to the rule-bound traditionalist in all of us, that at critical moments the kingdom of God comes in our openness to what God is saying to us, and to what God is trying to nudge us towards in that moment?
Had we actually found a way in to the prayer of the 12-step movement to be able to know the will and way of God, and day by day have the courage – have the willingness to do it?
Because when we do that, as a church, as a congregation and as individual children of God, doesn’t all the rest – the holy joy, the spiritual community, the purpose and meaningfulness we all long for in life – isn’t that when those things really come?
When we pray “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on Earth, as it is in heaven” and we pray it just like Jesus did?
What is God wanting, what is God asking, what is God hoping for you and me and for us together to be doing, that only you and I and all of us together can do? At this point in our life? At this place in the world?
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