Isaiah 2.1-5
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Advent is the time of year when we start thinking that we can fall into the same comfortable pattern of lighting candles, anticipating Christmas — and hearing endless refrains of “Rudolph” and “White Christmas” as we shop for presents. But today I’d like to suggest something a little different.

The texts that we read during Advent include some familiar stories, like John the Baptizer telling us that he is not messiah…who will not baptize with water, but with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And during this season, we also get lots of prophecy from Isaiah, of the wolf and the lamb living harmoniously, the shoot growing forth from the tree of Jesse, and the young woman bearing a son. And on this first Sunday of Advent, we get a prophecy of peace…of an anything-but-familiar way of living in the world.

Today’s text comes from the first of three sections of the Book of Isaiah, and it sounds almost like a pilgrimage psalm, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.” This chapter reinforces the idea of Jerusalem (the mountain of the Lord) is the home of God. Even though we think of God as “everywhere” not just in Jerusalem, the writer is setting the reign of God above all the empires of the earth…Assyria and Babylon, then Rome, then London, then Washington. That implies that it won’t be business as usual in God’s world…that something new is going to happen.

I was struck this week by Pope Francis’s visit to Japan, especially to the atomic bomb sites of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While we were visiting my son Cameron in Japan last spring, Jane Anne and I visited Hiroshima and found it to be an incredibly moving experience. It is not easy to be an American and to visit the city that was leveled by a bomb dropped by our nation to end the Second World War. When we were there, we noticed a conspicuous scarcity of Americans, especially visiting the museum that details life in Hiroshima before, during, and after the bombing. One of the artifacts that touched me particularly was a child’s tricycle that had been twisted and burned by the blast. My dad served in the Pacific during World War II and was later a B-17 pilot, so it had some deep, personal resonances for me. Without judging whether the use of atomic weapons was an appropriate decision, all of us can acknowledge that it happened, and that there were extraordinary casualties.

And it was there in Japan, the only nation to endure an atomic bombing, that Pope Francis called for a world free from nuclear weapons, saying, “The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral…we will be judged on this.”[1] That is a new thing! That is kingdom talk, not empire talk. It is a radical departure from what we consider the normalcy of civilization. Our nation spends nearly $50 billion on the nuclear weapons industry…what else might we do with that $50 billion?[2]

Isaiah, Micah, and Joel all use the imagery of “beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.” And that is what Pope Francis is saying. Fifty billion dollars could build a lot of plowshares. Could we ever consider something so radical?

Jesus was a radical in ways that John never was. John came offering a baptism for the repentance of sins, and Jesus came healing the sick and proclaiming God’s liberating reign…in other words, regime change…through the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Walter Brueggemann, a UCC theologian writes, “being baptized with God’s holy spirit [means]…we may be visited by a spirit of openness, generosity, energy, that ‘the force’ may come over us, carry us to do obedient things we have not yet done, kingdom things we did not think we had in us, neighbor things from which we cringe. The whole tenor of Advent is that God may act in us, through us, beyond us, more than we imagined because newness is on its way among us. John is not the newness. He prepares us for the newness….Advent is preparing for the demands of newness that will break the tired patterns of fear in our lives.”[3]

What are the tired patterns of fear in our nation that hamstring us? Could be find a new way, a kingdom way, to share the abundance God has entrusted to us? Could we find a new way to focus our efforts the collective good, rather than simply our individual well-being and economic self-interest?

What are the tired patterns of fear in your own life? Could you find a new way, a kingdom way, of understanding and sharing the abundance God has entrusted to you? Could you let go of thinking that you are an inadequate parent, partner, student, daughter or son – and perhaps see in yourself what God already sees in you? Could you let go of some of the “what ifs” in your life and simply live in the moment? Could you let go of some of your attitude of scarcity – that there is never enough – and instead focus on the abundance that God has given you, not just in economic terms, but in terms of time, relationship, love, and faith?

Are you ready for some newness to break forth in Advent this year? If so, what might you ask God to help you with? The wonder of our faith is that you are not alone…you don’t have to muscle through tough changes on your own, because God is with you every step of the way.

Will you pray with me? God, we ask for you to accompany us on our Advent journey. May we take time to be present with you, with those we love, and with ourselves. May be gentle with the people around us and with ourselves. And may we be alert to the changes you may be calling forth within us and among us, and may we keep awake to the newness that Advent brings.

Amen.
 
© 2019 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 
[1] “Pope Francis called for a world free of nuclear weapons” by Christopher White, Washington Post, November 24, 2019.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Walter Brueggemann, Celebrating Abundance. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), p. 4

Luke 17.20–21
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregationall UCC
 
What do you think of when I say the word “kingdom"? Is the first thing that pops into your head the Magic Kingdom or the United Kingdom? Well, God’s kingdom is not about territorial borders. It’s not so much of a place as it is a process. That may sound a bit vague and undefined, so you’ll just have to hang in there with me and see if I can help clarify that term a bit.

The kingdom, of course, is something we pray about twice every time we say the Lord’s prayer: “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth” and “thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory.” And there are different ways to interpret that compact and somewhat loaded theological phrase.

The kingdom isn’t an easy thing to get a hold of and understand, which is why Jesus continually described it with parable, aphorism, and metaphor. Some people interpret the kingdom as being the life hereafter or life after the second coming of Christ. But, when Jesus says, it “is among you,” he is using the present tense. That sentence can also be translated as “the kingdom of God is in your midst.” It’s not wishful thinking about a future life, but an aspiration for today.

That concise passage of scripture is perhaps the most important sentence to me in the New Testament: “the kingdom of God is among you.” It’s brief, but it’s absolutely critical. The odd thing is that these two critical verses, which tell us that the kingdom of God is in our midst, are nowhere to be found in the Revised Common Lectionary, which provides the three-year cycle of texts used in many churches. Why?! Perhaps it’s a concept that’s a bit too radical for some in the church to digest!

Imagine if those words were preached and internalized in the heart of American Christians. Would it shift our focus from there hereafter to making God’s world a better place here and now? What would be the implications for climate change? …for immigration reform? …for stemming gun violence? …for ending homelessness? …for access to healthcare? What would be the implications in your own life? How would you live your life differently if you knew that the kingdom of God is among you right now?

There is perhaps no theology that has shaped the United Church of Christ than the theology of the kingdom of God, here and now. I say that because of the predominance of “Kingdom Theology” in the Social Gospel movement in this country, which spanned from the days following the Civil War through the end of the First World War, roughly 1865 to 1918.

Some of you will recognize this old war horse, The Pilgrim Hymnal, which was used in most Congregational UCC churches from 1904 until The New Century Hymnal was published in 1995. The first editor of The Pilgrim Hymnal was Washington Gladden, senior minister at First Congregational Church in Columbus, Ohio. Gladden was called the father of the Social Gospel movement. Now, some of you think that the theology of The New Century Hymnal is a bit radical, but The Pilgrim Hymnal had an entire section called “The Kingdom of God on Earth.” Let me read you the words to a hymn by Frederick Hosmer, a Unitarian minister who taught at Harvard Divinity School:

“Thy kingdom come, O Lord, wide-circling as the sun; fulfill of old thy word, and make the nations one.

“One in the bond of peace, the service glad and free, of truth and righteousness, of love and equity.
“Till rise in ordered plan, on firm foundations broad, the commonwealth of man, the city of our God.”[1]

Saying those things in certain circles today will have you branded as a liberal! It’s radical stuff with serious political ramifications, and it’s been part of our tradition for a century.

The most influential theologian of the Social Gospel movement was Walter Rauschenbusch, a German-born American Baptist, who served in Hell’s Kitchen in New York and taught at Colgate-Rochester School of Divinity. “The kingdom of God,” he wrote in 1907, “is a collective conception involving the whole social life of man. It is not a matter of saving human atoms, but of saving the social organism. It is not a matter of getting individuals to heaven, but of transforming life on earth into the harmony of heaven.”[2]

Because of the dominance of this theology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, I think one can make a case that it helped shape the politics of the Progressive Era, when government came to grips with the Industrial Revolution. And I think one can make a case that it also informed the New Deal and increased governmental involvement in providing jobs and relief for those who were battered by the Great Depression. If you were to say the phrase, “the Kingdom of God” to Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt, they would have known that you were talking about God’s liberating reign of justice, here and now.

So, what is the good news? It is that the kingdom of God is here among us. That can fuel hope enough for a lifetime.

Vida Dutton Scudder, an Episcopal Social Gospeler and Wellesley professor, listed three ways Christians can respond to a growing awareness of human suffering: direct charity, social reform, and social transformation.[3] Charity involves giving to those who are suffering (when you give shelter to a family experiencing homelessness); social reform means creating and supporting organizations for their care (like Neighbor to Neighbor); social transformation is about justice and changing the structures that cause suffering, which often seem intractable. The aim of the kingdom is radical, and includes dramatic social transformation.

Virtually every church in Fort Collins will respond to crises with charity. But our congregation is one of the very few that has a calling and an ability to concentrate on advocacy: on changing systems that allow homelessness, hunger, and inadequate education to persist. That’s the reason that when Moms Demand Action shows up at our senator’s office to talk about sane gun laws, half of the 40 people there are Plymouth members.

And yet, if you are like me, sometimes you find it easy to lose hope that justice will prevail in our nation and even that the kingdom of is among us. And in times like these, we need to remember that the long arc of history bends toward justice. It is a very long arc, so people like you and me need to keep the faith in the meantime. Good things eventually happen when we work together and when we work with God: things like the Good Friday Accord that ended years of violence in Northern Ireland. Here are some lines from the Irish poet Seamus Heaney:

“Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt and get hard. …
History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge….
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.”[4]

The word of hope is this, my friends: that the kingdom of God is among us, and that we are a part of a force for goodness and wholeness in the world…that the kingdom of God is still unfolding. And that in your lifetime, hope and history will rhyme.

Amen.

[1] Frederick Hosmer in The Pilgrim Hymnal. (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1958), number 448.
[2] Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis. (NY: Macmillan, 1907), p. 65.
[3] I am indebted to Marcus Borg for this analysis. See The Heart of Christianity. (SF: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), p. 201
[4] Seamus Heaney, from “The Cure at Troy” in Opened Ground, (NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1996) p. 305