The Good News of the Kingdom
Sermon preached by the Reverend Patricia Farris
June 12, 2005

On the recommendation of a good friend, a writer, I have been reading Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Gilead. It’s a beautiful and moving book, to be read slowly leaving lots of space for pondering. Meditative and reflective, the story is narrated by the Rev. John Ames, a third generation Congregationalist pastor. Rev. Ames is 77 and nearing death, due to a serious heart condition. He writes this memoir for his young seven year old son, child of a late and very happy second marriage. He writes to share with his son a whole variety of things about life and faith, about families and ministry, about grace and forgiveness.

Set in Gilead, Iowa in 1956, the story introduces us to Rev. Ames’ father and grandfather. They are very different, that father and son. While both these pastors were motivated by the same Gospel, each makes a choice that sets them irreconcilably at odds and indelibly molds the faith journey of the third Rev. Ames.

You see, the Grandfather Ames was a kind of fire and brimstone preacher from back east who abhorred slavery. Grandfather Ames left his home and went to Kansas to fight for abolition, becoming a partisan of John Brown, the slave who led a revolt, and then fighting in the Union Army. Grandfather Ames was a wild and scraggly guy, reminiscent of an Old Testament prophet. He lost an eye in the war, preached in a bloody shirt with a pistol stuck in his belt, and signaled the opening of church services by firing it into the air.

The ghosts of war never left him and later in life Grandfather Ames wandered from where the family was living in Iowa back to Kansas to revisit the old battle fields and was never heard from again.

Now our narrator’s father, the second Rev. Ames, was raised hearing in great detail about the horrors of war and seeing its devastating consequences. Veterans who’d lost a limb, families whose father never came home, his own crazy father, eccentric and extreme in his faith and his preachments to the end. Rev. Ames, the son followed the Gospel in a different way and became a pacifist, deeply convinced that there was no good to be found in war.
(continued...)

"The Good News of the Kingdom" Sermon by Rev. Patricia Farris, June 12 , 2005

"The Good News of the Kingdom" Sermon by Rev. Patricia Farris, June 12 , 2005

To my mind, one mark of a big, strong, healthy congregation is precisely that we are all here, with all those needs and wants. There is and should be among us a diversity of views and needs and perspectives. As one astute observer recently remarked, “The local church is one of the few places left where you can gather under one roof with people who think entirely differently from you on issues of the day, and still feel good about who they are as people.” This, I would add, is to be treasured.

But to take it now one step farther, to be a healthy congregation, like a healthy family, we have to get more comfortable with expressing our views and challenging one another and letting ourselves be challenged by another’s deeply held beliefs, all in a context of Christian love. The church should be a safe place for dialogue and study, for deep conversation and discernment about the most important and complex issues of our day. Otherwise we’re avoiding doing what Jesus has sent us into the world to do.

You know, Matthew tells us that when Jesus called the Twelve together that day, it says that he summoned the disciples. Disciples are students, learners, followers of a teacher. But then a powerful change happens. He gives them authority - the same authority he was given in his baptism, the authority that came from a place deep within him, he now gives to his disciples to cure every disease and sickness. In so doing, the disciples are transformed into apostles, as they are now called, apostles, those who are sent. That motley crew of a couple fishermen and a tax collector and a traitor become his apostles, sent into the world, out of compassion for people, to heal them and teach and set them free in the name of Jesus Christ.

Friends, there is no getting around the fact that the very specific Gospel of Jesus Christ engages us with the world and its people and their issues. We can’t just be disciples, content to gather in and hunker down and enjoy study and fellowship. To that we must add our identity as apostles. As the ones Jesus sends into the brokenness and pain and sorrow and need of this world to share good news.

Now, there is not one political program spelled out here. There are no policy guidelines. There is no one party platform. But there is an agenda and it is God’s agenda and we see it in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. God sends us into the world addressing the needs of the people, to care about their health and their education and their safety and the quality of their lives. We can and surely will argue among ourselves from now ‘til kingdom come about the best ways to serve them, the best ways to meet their needs. But what we cannot do is ignore them and their welfare. We cannot ignore human need because it’s uncomfortable to disagree with one another. We have to be engaged with the issues of our time. For God so loved this world that he gave his only Son. We give the best of ourselves, our best thinking, our best analyzing and our best commitment to addressing the needs of God’s people.
(continued...)

---

"The Good News of the Kingdom" Sermon by Rev. Patricia Farris, June 12 , 2005

As Methodists, we shouldn’t be as squeamish as we are about this. Engagement is in our Methodist DNA. It’s in our family story. John Wesley’s goal was the revival of the Church of England through disciplined study and spiritual practice, yes, but simultaneously through engagement with the needs of people. He personally worked unceasingly for the well-being of the poor, by changing laws such as those that permitted land enclosures that took away public grazing land and others that established debtors’ prisons. Late in life, when he was 81, he wrote in his Journal about how in one bitterly cold January the poor needed not only coal and bread but clothing as well and his little band of Methodists did not have the means to respond. He himself walked the streets of London for four days, morning to evening, feet freezing in the icy slush, and collected nearly 200 pounds to buy clothing for them.

Like the Grandfather Ames and the father Ames, both pastors, both adherents of the Gospel, faithful Christians are bound to see things differently and make different decisions about the most just and faithful way to act. In their time, it was war. In our time, it is war, and global debt and homosexuality and the living wage and affordable housing and education policy and tax policy and stem cell research.

Because we have been sent into the world by Christ himself, we have the hard work of facing into the toughest issues of our day and thinking and debating and praying our way through to a place of conviction and engagement. Then we still face the very hard work of learning how to understand and love and respect each other, how to find grace and forgiveness in the midst of difference, how to dig deep into the wellspring of compassion that is the source not only of our service but of our life in community.

We have been given authority in our baptism and commissioned to take up God’s agenda on behalf of all God’s people. For the work of the Kingdom, may God now grant us a full measure of courage and humility, passion and perseverance.

Amen.