Spotting the Kingdom of God After the Tragedy of Death

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

–Excerpts from Matthew 13

It’s been a rough weekend. Watching the devastation that the combination of mental illness and fundamentalism* brought to the people of Norway. Watching what the combination of drug addiction and fame brought to a talented singer, who, like so many who went before her, is now dead at the age of 27. Something they don’t tell you when you get clean and sober is that if, by the grace of God, you manage to stay that way — you get a much better life — but year after year you also watch people you love die of the same disease. So yesterday when I heard that Amy Winehouse had been found dead in her home, it brought me back to nine years ago when my dear friend PJ was also found dead in his home. He was a brilliant stand up comic and an alcoholic, and a series of medications had tugged and pulled at his mental illness, but never seemed to really help it. He sadly died by his own hand and in his own home. It too was senseless and tragic. Yet, strangely, whenever I hear these “the-kingdom-of-heaven-is-like” parables, I always think of the week of PJ’s death. Because these parables about the kingdom are so counter-intuitive.

We mistakenly may think that the kingdom of God should follow our values system and also be powerful or impressive and shiny. But that’s not what Jesus brings. He brings a kingdom ruled by the crucified one — populated by the unclean, and suffused with mercy rather than power. And it’s always found in the unexpected. So when I hear kingdom of heaven parables and how it’s found in the small and surprising and even the profane, I think back to two days after PJ was found dead. See, PJ grew up in a nice Catholic family from a small farming town in Iowa. I’m not really sure how they got a darkly sardonic, filthy-minded, comic genius for a son, but that’s another story for another time. See, two days after PJ’s death a group of my friends — comics and depressives and recovering alcoholics — undertook a mission of compassion. They entered the home of our dead friend, and they cleared out all the pornography. Every Playboy and VHS tape. All of it. They wanted to spare these good folks any more pain then they were already dealing with. That to me is the in-breaking of the kingdom of God on earth, that we might clear out the pornography from our dead friends’ homes before their nice small town parents come to settle their son’s affairs. It’s small, it’s surprising, and it’s a little profane, but it’s the real thing.

And I just think that if Jesus talked again and again about the kingdom of heaven and found any image available to tell us how to spot it, that us spotting it might be kind of important. And the reason it’s important is that, like in Handel’s Messiah, I believe there are two kingdoms. Remember the Alleluia chorus? “For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Hallelujah!” The kingdom of this world  is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever.

There is the kingdom of heaven and there is the kingdom of this world — not as in the world God created and called good, but the kingdom of this world we created for ourselves. The world according to us is the other kingdom.

And the kingdom of heaven is not to be found alone in a monastery; it’s found in the ordinary, the daily, the right-in-front-of-your-face-and-never-realized-it. And when you see it, something is made new. Perhaps a part of the world, and perhaps a part of yourself. But something is made new when the empty promises of the world according to us gives way to the whimsy, and the true and the eternal in the world according to God. And it’s always a surprise. Tilt your head and look sideways at your life and you might see it in the small or the unexpected or the impure – for the Prince of Peace has begun his reign. The signs are all around. They are signs of a battle already won. Signs of a world loved so deeply by God that God refuses to leave it alone. So take another look. See if you can spot it. Amen.

[This post is adapted from a post at Sarcastic Lutheran.]

*This word was used based on an early news report and is now known to be inaccurate. Were I to
write this sermon today, I would use the word “extremism.”