Sermon at Centenary UMC on August 15, 2010
Jisun Kwak

Jesus’ Invitation
Matthew 4: 12-17

Someone once wrote a letter to the advice columnist DEAR ABBY that is both amusing and downright gross.

Here is that letter:

DEAR ABBY: I am employed at a very large nursing home. One of the elderly residents here lost her dentures, so with a pillow case in hand, she crept into the rooms of the other occupants while they were sleeping and picked up every pair of false teeth from the water glasses. She then returned to her room and tried each set until she found one that fit her. Then she sneakily returned the sets of teeth [without any regard for which set of dentures belonged to which glass].
The next morning, everyone was walking around the place with overbites and underslung jaws, complaining bitterly that their dentures didn’t fit!
How do we straighten out this mess?
Or must we buy new dentures for one hundred residents?

The writer signed her name, Dilemma.

Here’s what Dear Abby wrote back:

DEAR DILEMMA: Call in a dentist and ask him to examine the mouths of the patients and the dentures, in order to return them to their rightful owners.
(P. S., she adds, Denture-marking kits are available. Get one and use it, before another teeth thief gums up the works.)

Can you imagine how much grumbling there was that day as people tried to adjust to a set of teeth that were not their own?

It could be a parable of the way many of us live today.

I see people all the time who are disgruntled, out of sorts, unhappy–not because of the fit of their teeth, but because of the fit of their theology.
They’ve never grown beyond the simple Sunday School faith of their childhood. They’ve never appropriated an understanding of God appropriate for living in the adult world.
A man, a life-long church member, stood up to explain his philosophy of life. “I feel closer to the Eastern religions than I do Christianity,” he said. “I’m not interested in what happens to me when I die. I want to experience heaven in the here and now. I see salvation as a process, not a final reward. I guess that puts me closer to being a Buddhist than a Christian.”

What would you say to such a witness? Here’s someone who has been brought up in the faith, but he’s having some very fundamental questions about the meaning of life. Is Christianity about buying a ticket for the sweet by-and-by–or is there something more? What does it all mean? Should the answers found in Eastern religions be more valid than the answers we find in Christ? What would you say to this seeker?

Here’s what I would say.
I would ask this man a question, “Have you ever really read the teachings of Jesus?” Actually that is a pretty safe question. Few people in the church have really read the teachings of Jesus. They’ve heard about those teachings from preachers and teachers. But, as far as sitting down with reading what Jesus actually said about life, few people in our time have actually made that effort.

It’s like the result that Tonight Show host Jay Leno got when he conducted “man-on-the-street” interviews, questioned some young people about the Bible.

“Can you name one of the Ten Commandments?” he asked two college-age women. One replied, “Freedom of speech?” Leno then turned to a young man and asked, “Who, according to the Bible, was eaten by a whale?” The young man’s confident answer was, “Pinocchio.” (1)

If you have ever read the synoptic Gospels–that is Matthew, Mark and Luke–you surely realize that the life Jesus taught actually had very little to do with the sweet by-and-by.

It had everything to do with life here and now.
The Kingdom of God is not some far off event which has yet to be realized.
The Kingdom of God is anywhere God reigns.

Jesus said on one occasion, “The Kingdom is within you.”
On another he said, “You are not far from the Kingdom.”

The Kingdom is alive.
The kingdom is here.
The kingdom is now.
As it is often said, he didn’t come just to get us into heaven,
but to get heaven into us.

Now what would it take to get heaven into us?

Jesus said in our lesson for today, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
What does repentance mean?
Have you been there done that?

Repentance is more than getting rid of your vices.
Repent means quite literally “turn around.”

Repeat after me: Turn around!

Think about that for a minute and it makes sense.
If you are going to live the kingdom life, you need to reorient your life.
You’ve been living for yourself. The kingdom is about living for God.

Turn around.

You’ve been concerned about satisfying your short-term physical and emotional needs. The kingdom is about your long-term spiritual needs.
Turn around.

You’ve let your life get out of control. What shall you do?
Turn around.

All of us have a little dirt inside. That dirt is robbing us of our joy.
Turn around.

Kingdom living is also about healthy relationships—

relationships with your neighbor and with God.
The Gospels are all about relationships.
The reason Christ came is to draw us to God and to one another.
One good test to discover whether we are living in the kingdom is to ask,
are you able to love not only God, but also are you able to love all people?

People are ornery creatures.
Some people have let their lives get out of control.
Some people cheat–they cheat on their taxes, the cheat on their spouses, they take advantage of their employer or the welfare system.
Some people do the most grotesque things to their bodies.
Some don’t have very tidy sanitary habits.

I didn’t ask whether you approve of everybody, but can you love them?

Because most church people are such responsible people, it is sometimes difficult for us to accept and to love the very people for whom Christ gave his life.

Don Bakely pastored a church in Camden, New Jersey. A great challenge in the Camden church was creating unity among the middle-class, proper members of the church and the hard-living families of the surrounding community. Bakely was just starting to earn the trust of some of the local teens, members of a gang. They hung out around the church because they felt accepted there. But they were a rough group of kids who didn’t always fit in with the other church members.
One day, a teen called Big Mart had a confrontation with the church’s matriarch, a very proper woman named Ella. He called her a name that she had probably never heard before. She was furious, and she wanted Pastor Bakely to kick Big Mart and his friends out of the church. Pastor Bakely asked if she would listen first to a true story. Then, after she had thought about the story, she could decide on an appropriate way to deal with Big Mart. When Big Mart was just a child, his father had come home angry one night. He gathered up all the children, herded them into the living room, and forced them to watch as he murdered, and then dismembered their mother.
Can you imagine in your wildest dream anything more traumatic than that–witnessing the murder and dismemberment of your mother?
Was it any wonder that Big Mart was rough around the edges?
Was it any wonder that he called nice old church ladies vulgar names?
The future ministry of the church hinged on this woman’s influence.
How would she respond?

She looked the pastor in the eye, and announced, “I guess I am going to have to learn how to get cussed out.” (2)
My friends, Ella was learning what it is to live in the kingdom of God.

Jesus gives you an invitation:

Turn around, said Jesus.
Love God;
love your neighbor.
Repent.
Relate.

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1. Christina Hoff Summers, “Are We Living in a Moral Stone Age?” Imprimi’s 27, no. 3, (March 1988), p. 1. Cited in Michael G. Moriarty, The Perfect 10: The Blessings of Following God’s Commandments in a Postmodern World (Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan: 1999).
2. Tex Sample, Hard Living People & Mainstream Christians (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), pp. 161-162.