One of my holiday reading books has been the diaries of Alistair Campbell, called The Blair Years, which were written during the period he was the communications director and advisor to Tony Blair. I enjoy reading books about British politics, in part because this distracts me from thinking about American politics, which often leaves me feeling depressed. Whatever one’s political commitments might be, Campbell’s diaries are a fascinating look into what goes on behind the scenes in modern political life. Many of the entries deal with managing the stagecraft that is modern politics: the carefully-crafted public statements, the TV interviews, the party speeches, the press conferences. But the especially gripping entries give behind-the-scenes accounts of some of the big political moments. One that especially stood out was Campbell’s account of the Good Friday Accord in Northern Ireland, and the exhausting, back and forth, at times superhuman efforts that went into trying to bring the parties into agreement behind the scenes, hundreds of hours of discussions, overcome years of deep mistrust, and eventually, the elation and tears of relief when the agreement was finally struck on Good Friday.
In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus is taking to a group of disciples who were themselves were in the midst of a political struggle. The kinds of political tensions we associate with the Middle East today were no less present in Jesus’ time. The Jews in Israel were under the thumb of Roman rule, and they wanted nothing more than to regain their political autonomy. Thus, potential revolutions were always brewing, violent skirmishes often broke out, and would-be Messiah’s promising to lead Israel to victory over Rome were often present. The Jewish people wanted to overthrow Rome so that Yahweh’s kingdom would come—and this was not an ethereal, otherworldly kingdom, but a political kingdom, something they expected to happen in history.
So we can understand that when we read in the Gospels that Jesus came announcing “the kingdom of God is close at hand”, the people assumed Jesus was calling them to eventual military revolt. And this morning’s Gospel reading would seem to confirm the imminence of that revolt: here in Matthew 16, Jesus tells his disciples “I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming into his kingdom.”
And yet in the weeks and months ahead, the political revolution that his disciples expected did not occur. In fact, just the opposite happened. The one who was supposed to lead them into this glory was killed, and whatever hopes they had for a revolution appeared to be dashed.
So we might find ourselves asking a question the disciples were likely asking: just what did Jesus mean when he said, “there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming into his kingdom”?
There are some scholars who would suggest that Jesus was just mistaken. The famous New Testament scholar and missionary doctor, Albert Schweitzer, believed that Jesus was simply wrong in his expectations. The kingdom of God which Jesus believed to be imminent did not come after all. In fact, Schweitzer believed, Jesus went to the cross as a last-chance, desperate attempt to force God’s hand, to get God to do something. But nothing happened. In Schweitzer’s famous assessment, Jesus threw himself upon the wheel of history, and it ran over him. The glory of the kingdom that Jesus foretold to his disciples did not occur.
But is it possible that, in looking at Jesus’ prediction, there is something more complex going on here? Is it possible that we would need to ask ourselves, what does it mean to see God’s kingdom? If it hasn’t come in the way we might have expected, what would we look for? What would be the signs of this?
Many New Testament scholars would suggest that one of the signs of the kingdom for Jesus’ disciples might be seen in the set of events that follow this morning’s reading. The passage that follows the one we heard this morning narrates the Mount of Transfiguration, where Jesus takes three of his closest disciples, Peter, James and John, onto a mountain, and there before their eyes Jesus is transfigured with a dazzling brightness, and Moses and Elijah suddenly appear next to him. Jesus was actually seen in his glory.
Of course, this is clearly not a moment in which Jesus comes completely into his glory—Rome is still in power, the Jewish people are still living under oppression—but the transfiguration of Jesus might be seen as a kind of anticipatory moment of glory, a glimpse of something which suggests there is more to come. A moment such as this is by no means the completion of what is hoped for, but it is a foretaste of something, an experience that causes one to look at the world differently.
And surely this is, in part, what it means to look for the kingdom of God—paying attention to those public, light-filled moments in the world which point beyond themselves, where the seemingly cyclical nature of history gets interrupted, where we are reminded of what we yearn for the world to be.
This past Thursday night I stayed up until 3 in the morning to watch Barack Obama’s nomination speech for President of the United States, which he gave before a stadium packed with 85,000 people. Given America’s painful history with race, I wanted to watch this historic moment when an African American would be nominated for President.
What I found especially moving while watching the speech was seeing the thousands of African Americans in that stadium. Some were elderly, and I later learned that some of them had marched with Martin Luther King, Jr in the civil rights movement, and some of them had been present when King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. They had grown up riding in the back of buses, unable to vote, unable even to eat in the same restaurants as white people. And here, 45 years to the day of Martin Luther King’s speech, one of their own was about to be nominated President. And they were not going to miss it. So they got in their cars, drove across the country, and were sitting there in the stadium as Obama accepted the nomination.
And I have to say, for me it was one of those moments—a moment in history that points beyond itself, a glimpse of what one hopes for the world. When an African American is nominated President; or when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shake hands on the White House lawn; or when Nelson Mandela walks out of his jail cell; or when Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley sit down together to share in the governing of Northern Ireland—like the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, we look to those public, light-filled moments in history which point, however dimly, however fleetingly, to our hopes for the kingdom of God.
But it is not only those public moments that we look for the kingdom of God. In fact, most of the time, where we spot the kingdom of God is in the hidden places. Embedded in the everyday rhythms of life, where we potentially miss signs of God’s kingdom because it appears unremarkable. No lights shine on it; no cameras are present; there are no write-ups about it the next day.
In fact, we don’t always even know what to call those moments, so we have passages like what we heard this morning from Romans 12 to give us some of the language, the vocabulary, for signs of God’s kingdom that are all the more remarkable for their unremarkability:
“Be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of others; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.”
I am often struck how often these things are taking place in everyday parish churches, but are not always recognized for the kingdom things that they are. Perhaps part of being a disciple is simply to notice these hidden signs of the kingdom where they are happening, to be attentive to them, and to quietly celebrate them.
My guess is that you can think of numerous examples from Romans 12 happening right here in this parish in everyday, non-spectacular ways, just like I can in mine.
A friend in my parish had a friend who recently died of cancer. During the months that he was dying, every day after work, she would go to his house and sit with him. After awhile he couldn’t talk, and eventually he fell into a coma. Yet still she went, every single day, simply to be present with him. And she was with him when he died.
A friend in the parish recently retired from what had been a fast-paced, fulfilling career. Since then, for nearly a year now, she takes one morning each week to help a young mother in the parish without much money, no family nearby, and three small children at home. Week after week, she simply helps with whatever needs doing: washing up, making cups of tea, and taking the children out so this young mum has a couple of hours each week for herself.
A friend in the parish is an attorney in the military. Every single Sunday on his way to church he walks over to the nearby nursing home, picks up one of the long-time parishioners now in a wheelchair, and wheels her to church. After the service he brings her a cup of coffee, and then he wheels her home.
“I tell you,” Jesus said, “there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the coming of the kingdom.”
Amen.