Stories from the Kingdom

A reflection on Mark 4: 26-34 at Swiss UCC in New Glarus

“The Kingdom of God is as if…”

“With what can we compare the Kingdom of God or what parable can we use for it?”

When you hear the words “Kingdom of God,” do you think of heaven?

And when you think of heaven, what does it look like? A field where seeds are growing? A hearty shrub that grew from a tiny mustard seed?

When Lloyd and Marvin started talking about heaven in their ice fishing shanty, they gave it a distinctive Wisconsin feel. They are the characters in the play Guys on Ice, a delightful and insightful look into the lives of two vintage Wisconsinites. And that ice shanty is a refreshing image on a morning like this.

LLOYD - Marvin, do you think there’s ice fishing in heaven?

MARVIN - I don’t know, Lloyd. ..Well, why the heck not? I mean, heaven is the other side of the fence from hell. And if hell is all flames and that,  then heaven must be cold – like Wisconsin.  So there’s ice fishing.

LLOYD -- Yeah, I think you got your logic just right there.

MARVIN -- And there’s 50 pound perch. No limit.

LLOYD -- Yeah, and all the lakes are beer.

MARVIN -- Yeah, yeah and all the beer is Leinies. (Or maybe for today, Spotted Cow)

LLOYD -- And 40 pounds overweight is skinny.

MARVIN -- Yeah, yeah and there’s no accordions.

LLOYD -- Yeah, and the Illinois toll booths – they give you money.

MARVIN -- Yeah, yeah, and no one dies, they just go to Algoma for the weekend.

LLOYD – Yeah, and Jesus meets them there wearing a green and gold snowmobile suit.

MARVIN --Yeah, and he looks just like Aaron Rogers.

LLOYD -- Marvin, every day, every day is Packer Sunday.

MARVIN -- …. Dat would be heaven.

OK, I’m not sure that’s exactly what heaven is like. Or what the Kingdom of God is like. And when Jesus was telling his parables – those stories that are intended to give us more insights to ponder than definitive answers – I’m not sure he was talking about someplace in the great beyond that we don’t find until after we die – or until we go to Algoma. 

Remember that line in the prayer Jesus taught his followers – “your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” The Kingdom of God is not far away in the future. 

The Gospel according to Mark begins with John the Baptist telling the crowds, “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent, andbelieve in the good news.”  

In the Gospel according to Luke, the Pharisees – some of the Jewish leaders – ask Jesus when the Kingdom of God will come. He told them, “The Kingdom of God is in your midst.”

Not far away. Right here. Right now. The seeds are growing. The mustard bush holds the nests of the birds.  It’s not like a mighty cedar on top of a mountain, a majestic place far away. It’s a weedy shrub that spreads out and gives shelter to birds. 

It’s not a place inside a castle or nestled in the clouds. It’s the space where we are in relationship with God -- and where we live as if that makes a difference in our lives and the lives of those around us.

“The Kingdom of God is as if…”

It’s as if actress Diane Keaton showed up at your restaurant. Well, not your restaurant, exactly. It’s a restaurant in Los Angeles called Homegirl Café. It’s a project of Homeboy Industries, an effort started in the early 1990s by Jesuit priest Greg Boyle and others in the Los Angeles area trying to find ways to deal with the rise in gang violence. They thought jobs and education might provide more long-term hope than arrest and incarceration.

One of the industries was this café. And one day, Diane Keaton and a friend came in for lunch. Their waitress, Glenda, large and tattooed, had just finished a long stint in a California state prison. Glenda takes Keaton’s order, then suddenly something dawns on her.

“Wait a minute. I feel like I know you. Like…maybe we’ve met.”

Keaton surely has experienced this before and deflects the question with humility. “Oh…I suppose…I have one of those faces…that people think they’ve seen before.”

And then the light went on for Glenda.

“No…wait…I know.  We were locked up together!”

Greg Boyle called that “kinship” – an Oscar-winning actress and a waitress with attitude bonding over a lunch order.

“Exactly what God had in mind,” writes Boyle. “It would seem that Jesus wants this to be about us and our willingness, eventually, to connect with each other.”

Some contemporary religious thinkers like to use the word “kin-dom” instead of “kingdom.” I don’t think that flows off the tongue or into the mind easily, but I appreciate the point. The kingdom is where we see each other as kin, even when things do not always go smoothly.

If you are working with gang members, like Fr. Greg does, you are working with people who are often sworn enemies of each other. 

One October night, Fr. Greg was walking toward the Homeboy Bakery – another one of the enterprises – when he saw three teenage girls holding on to a chain-link fence near the bakery and giggling uncontrollably. He could hear the sound of some folk music from Columbia. And then he saw the focus of the girls’ attention. 

As he writes, “Big old Danny, one of our bakers, is dancing a raucous cumbia with tiny Carlitos, another baker, both from rival gangs, arm in arm, in their white bakery uniforms, covered in flour, swirling each other to these girls’ endless delight.”

Later in his book, Barking to the Choir, Fr. Greg writes: “The ground beneath of our feet is the Kingdom of God, the Pure Land. It’s not around the corner. It isthe corner. Kinship is not a reward at the end. It’s here, it’s now, it’s at hand and within our reach. And this moment is the only one available to us.”

Two more quick Homeboy stories involving bakers.

Beto was talking with Fr. Greg in the parking lot, his white uniform covered with stains and dough at the end of a long workday. Out of the blue, Beto says, “Finally, I have brought honor to my father.”

Yes, this is a good story for Father’s Day.

Beto tells Fr. Greg how when his father would gather with his friends and they’d ask where Beto was, he’d often have to say that his son was in jail. “But now,’ Beto said, his face beaming, “he looks forward to the gathering with friends. He waits for the question, just so he can say, ‘Beto is a baker.’ ”

Lorenzo also worked at the Homeboy Bakery and was telling Fr. Greg about his car breaking down over the weekend in the middle of nowhere. He called some of his homies – former friends from the gang – and after five calls, he had been turned down by every one of them. You know – “I’m in the middle of something, I can’t go,” or “I’m really busy. Sorry.”

Finally, Lorenzo called Manny, who worked in the bakery with him. As Lorenzo explained to Fr. Greg, there was no one in the bakery who was a bigger enemy than Manny and his friends. But Lorenzo was getting desperate, so he called Manny. And then he had this to say:

“You know what my worst enemy said to me when I called him? He said, ‘On my way.’ ”

Is this what the Kingdom of God looks like?

One more story, this one from Luther Smith, Jr., a theology professor at Emory University in Atlanta. He was in Madison recently and talked about a phrase made popular by Martin Luther King, Jr. – “the Beloved Community.” It’s a phrase that evokes the idea of the Kingdom of God that we’ve been considering this morning.

The Beloved Community is not some romanticized place, Smith said. He compared it to a visit he made to a homeless shelter in North Carolina.

“It’s the homeless,” he observed, “with all the aromas you get from people who have been living on the street. And some obvious signs of mental illness that of course occur with many people living on the street.”

But there were also clothing racks neatly organized, an area where folks could navigate their disability benefits, artwork and poetry by homeless people on the walls, places to get acupuncture or massage therapy, tables in the dining room covered with linen tablecloths and china plates where bankers and retired people were serving multiple helpings of food. 

“I felt that I had entered the realm of God,” Smith said. “This was for me an experience of beloved community. Were there people still there addicted to drugs? Yes…Do some of the homeless speak rough to one another? Yes. Are some of them probably not as thankful  as they should be for this expression of care? Probably yes.”

Then he explained: “I would say that if we found ourselves requiring an understanding of the beloved community stripped of these dimensions of life, we’re always going to be disappointed in the picture of beloved community.”

“The Kingdom of God is as if…”

It’s as if when you are at the bedside of a loved one who is dying, you can feel the love and support of friends with you in that moment.

It’s as if when you are facing surgery, you go in knowing that not only is God going in with you, but that folks will be there when you come out to help with your recovery.

It’s as if when children are separated from their parents after a harrowing journey, there are people tending to their needs and advocating for their future.

It’s as if when someone is fleeing from violence in their home, there is safe place to go and protection and support as they rebuild their lives.

It’s as if in all the mess of life, we discover that we are not alone. God’s vision of what that kingdom should be transforms us and those we encounter along the way.

“With what can we compare the Kingdom of God?”

To scattered seeds and to a feisty waitress, to a hearty bush and to bakers who embrace their enemies, to a beloved community in the midst of a homeless shelter, to any place where we experience God’s love through the love of those around us.

The Kingdom of God, the Beloved Community is here for us today. Let us rejoice and be glad.

Amen.