We come again this morning to be shaped by God’s Word as it comes to us in the Spirit, through the gospel of Luke.

The last 2 weeks we’ve been in chapter 12, reading some pretty hard words about materialism and greed, not accumulating and valuing things; pretty tough words for many of us. Now we’ve skipped over a fair amount of Jesus’ teaching and preaching to get to chapter 13 today.

Let me just highlight a few of the things we’ve missed:

a) Jesus says “the Son of Man comes, and you’d better be ready. You don’t kn:ow exactly when, so be on the alert.”

b) Jesus says “if the master of the house returns unexpectedly and finds his servant lording it over others, he’ll be cut to pieces. If he finds him unready, he’ll receive a severe beating. “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required!”

c) Jesus says “I came to bring fire to the earth, and not peace but division…families will from now on be divided over me.”

d) “You hypocrites,” Jesus tells people. “You interpret the physical signs of storm and weather on earth but do not know how to interpret things that matter.”

e) “And why…do you not judge for yourselves what is right? Take care, lest you be thrown in jail.”

f) “Unless you repent, you will perish.”

All of that leads up to today’s passage. And immediately following today’s passage is next week’s:

“Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.

Whew! what a bunch of hard words! Anybody who thinks that Jesus is just a soft, cuddly guy with a beard sort of floating around first century Palestine in a pristine white robe had better think again. This is hard stuff! And he seems to be harder on his own followers than on anybody else! Jails, perishing, beatings, hypocrites, preparation, readiness…tough stuff!

Now, in the midst of this is a glimmer of hope and two parables. It’s a little island, a spark of flame in a dark landscape. The glimmer of hope is a story of a woman who had been crippled for 18 years. She was bent over, and unable to stand up straight. Jesus laid his hands on her, and said “Woman, you are free from your ailment,” and she immediately stood up straight and began praising God.

After Jesus spars verbally with the synagogue ruler who objected that Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, he speaks two parables.

Jesus’ question for us this morning is really this: Will you be a kingdom person?

The Kingdom of God. I wonder what that sounded like back in Jesus’ day? The kingdom of God. There’s something about it…you can’t really speak it haphazardly. It hasn’t become slang, or the punchline to a joke.

In CS Lewis’ Narnia books, when the children first hear the name “Aslan,” the Jesus-like lion who is king of the land…a bit of a hush comes over them just from hearing the name, something happens inside them.

The kingdom of God carries a bit of that weight, I think. The kingdom is one of, if not the central proclamation of Jesus’ teaching. God’s kingly rule that is near, that comes, that will come. And the coming of Jesus Christ somehow initiated this reign of God…without instantly bringing it to complete fulfillment. It started something, changed something fundamental in life. And seemed to bring the promise of more change. And more. The kingdom of God.

Somedays I can’t wait for it to come more fully. Some of you saw the movie Hotel Rwanda. We saw it a few weeks ago, but also this month I read a book called Shake Hands with the Devil.

Same story, but in much more detail. It’s the story of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. 900,000 people killed in 90 days, most civilians. Some civil war, but most of it ethnic cleansing, and most of it savage butchery with machetes.

And many children. In fact, they estimate that of the relatively few children who made it through that time alive, 90% of them personally witnessed the violent death of close relatives right in front of them. What will happen to them? And how could this have happened in our world, in this modern day?

Some days when dark things are at work in the world, I say “Come, Lord Jesus. Come back now, consummate your kingdom, I’m ready.” But for 2000 years the answer has been, “it’s not time.” There’s things to be done, and the kingdom has begun, in Jesus.

I’ll tell you right now, today is not really so much of a sermon as it is a handful of pictures of the kingdom. I think we catch it more than dissect it.

Jesus says, “The kingdom? It’s like the smallest of seeds that grows into a tree so large that the birds make nests in the security of its branches.”

Jesus says, “The kingdom? It’s like yeast which is stirred into flour. Invisible, and dissolves…but with water, quietly does the work of turning flour into loaves of robust bread.

Where can we see this kingdom? Where these apparently unnoticeable things are having great impact. Small things…with big consequences. It seems to be the way God chooses to work, so often. I’ve spent these last weeks accumulating these pictures.

I thought about someone like Rosa Parks, in 1955 who decided she didn’t have to give up her seat because of the color of her skin…she was tired and had enough. She was up against a system of racism and segregation and degradation that extended across an entire country, that had politicians and millionaires and ordinary people behind it, that were way too powerful for a little woman like Rosa Parks.

She did one little thing, barely, in the larger scope of things, perceptible. And it was like planting a mustard seed and it grew into a tree that others could get their rest in. Just a little thing. And a huge consequence. A glimpse of the kingdom.

I thought about the book I’ve recommended to several of you called Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. If you haven’t read it, it’s interesting. It comes out of the Pacific Northwest, and it’s one person’s journey in finding authentic faith.

Donald Miller attended Reed College in Portland, which you may know, has quite a reputation for being an un-friendly place for Christians. Apparently at Reed they have a festival which essentially shuts the campus down and turns into quite a very, very wild, no-holds-barred party. There was a very, very small group of Christians on campus, well below the radar, and Donald Miller had become part of that group.

As the wild festival weekend approached, the small Christian group was sitting around saying “We should do something to let people know there are Christians here.” And as a joke, Miller said “Yeah, we should have a confessional booth in the middle of the campus for Saturday night.”

And it got really quiet around the group. Miller said “I’m kidding,” but the rest of the group didn’t hear him any more. One of them had the idea that instead of a confessional booth that the wild partyers on campus would come to to confess their sins…the Christians inside the booth would do the confessing.

So they built the booth, and as they built it people would go by and ask about it,and ask who the confessions were to be made to, and they said “God,” and the most common response was ‘there is no God.”

On Saturday night in the midst of the party when the first person came staggering in to see what the booth was all about, he said “So I’m supposed to tell you all the bad stuff I’ve done this weekend?” And Miller said “no, I am going to confess to you.”

And he did…confessed for himself and other Christians…that “as followers of Jesus we have not been very loving; we have been bitter; we’re sorry.” He apologized for the Crusades, for televangelists, for neglecting the poor and lonely and misrepresenting Christ on campus and to the world. And threw in the fact that Jesus loved him.

The booth was filled with partyers for several hours, lining up to hear the confession of the Christians. And hearing about Jesus.

A pretty little thing, all in all. A few pieces of wood, a few hours of work, feeling sort of silly for one night out of your life wondering how people would respond. Small and insignificant. Afterwards a group of students formed to work at a local homeless shelter, four discussion groups for non-Christians started to discuss the Christian faith, all sorts of other things happened that were very significant in people’s lives. The kingdom of God.

Two weeks ago I went to hear N.T. Wright, a British Anglican bishop, NT scholar and prolific writer speak. Twice, actually. Wonderfully articulate man. In a meeting with a bunch of us pastors, he gave me a couple more pictures of the kingdom.

The first was a piece of artwork he mentioned that was in the British Museum. It was done by a group of artists from the African country of Mozambique…and if you know anything about the history of Mozambique, you know that it has been racked by violent imperialism, civil wars and violent crime.

The artist made a sculpture of the Tree of Life (from Genesis’ Garden and from Revelation)…totally made out of weapons. The turning of death into life. Just a piece of art, a small thing. But coming from a country with over a million landmines spread around the land, a glimpse of the kingdom.

The church of Jesus Christ is a kingdom picture. N.T. Wright was talking about the Empire that Rome was in the first century. First century Rome was unrelenting in demanding the loyalty of its subjects. And whenever Paul would say “Jesus is Lord,” it also meant that Caesar was not.

Rome executed those who resisted its empire. And Paul’s work was a work of resistance. Planting little cells in the midst of the empire…that said “No, there’s another Lord than Caesar.” And so these New Testament churches began to spring up. One guy, small little churches, seemingly insignificant. Generations have read of them in the New Testament. The kingdom of God.

Even Jesus himself is a picture of the kingdom (as well as the kingdom). One person, willing to speak truth and live grace, able to take on the brokenness of the world and stay the course, crucified on a cross.

One man.

One man in one small part of the dusty Mediterranean world, away from seats of power.

One man whose death should have been the end of the church, and whose resurrection instead meant the seeding of a tree which has grown so large through the centuries that one can barely count the numbers being harbored in its branches.

The Kingdom of God.

Maybe you read or saw on TV the story from Clovis, CA. The high school team’s last basketball game of the year was almost done, and Clovis had a big lead. The crowd started to chant “We want Ryno. We want Ryno.”

The coach saw that there were four minutes left and he looked down at Ryan Belflower on the bench. Ryan was a special education student who had served the team for four years, carrying water, passing out balls, up at 6:30 in the morning. Four years, and the coach had honored him by putting him on the roster for the final game or two, and he was thrilled to be in uniform on the bench.

The crowd went wild as the coach put him in the game. He was slight, sort of half-hopped and half-ran, dragging a partially mobile left leg behind him at a funny angle. The crowd chanted his name. They cheered when he tried a shot and a free throw, but neither was even close.

The final seconds ticked down. Ryan received a last pass just beyond the three point stripe. He turned and threw up a shot. The gym got quiet, the ball hung in the air, and then as the buzzer sounded on the season…the ball swished through the net. Ryan said later “Nothing but net!”

In the stands, Ryan’s brother, a burly former player tried to scream, but nothing came out. Men and women in the stands hugged each other and cried. The coach said later “All the parents were bawling, and the students were too…I’ve never seen anything like it before. I’ll never forget it.” They carried Ryan around and around the court.

Surely the kingdom of God must resemble the celebration of that surprising, unexpected moment that no one would ever forget.

One last picture. Not too long ago, someone stumbled over a piece of Mozart music that had been undiscovered for centuries. It is clearly authentic Mozart, it’s beautiful and there’s only one problem. It’s just one piece of a quintet, with the others still lost. Yet it is clearly Mozart. And it points to something bigger, far more grand and complete, a bigger reality. We look for that day.

The kingdom of God, coming in Jesus Christ, will come to completion in Him again one day, and the darkness will be totally destroyed. We live towards that day. But now…we see glimpses. Enough glimpses that we might list out some characteristics of a kingdom that Jesus says is like yeast in bread…is like a seed that grows to a tree.

The things of the kingdom may seem small, like Rosa Parks…yet they bear huge consequences in lives. Are we willing to invest in small things?

The things of the kingdom sometimes look funny…like a confessional booth on a college campus. Are we willing to be awkward to see faith grow in others?

The things of the kingdom are often hidden…yet active and alive, like little cell churches subversively standing against the empire. Are we willing to be part of things that matter…but are below the radar that gets us attention?

The things of the kingdom are surprising and unexpected…like a Tree of Life made out of AK47’s, or a three-pointer from a boy who had no business even being on the court. Are we willing to be open to things we didn’t plan or expect?

The things of the kingdom turn the things of the world upside down, and Jesus, his cross and resurrection mean that the last will be first and the first last, that the one who is rich is actually poor and the one who is poor is actually rich, and that there will be big surprises over who is and isn’t in the kingdom. Dare we be part of such a wild, crazy, illogical plan?

The things of the kingdom…point us ahead to a bigger reality, where someday we’ll have all the music, see the whole kingdom.

The things of the kingdom always have to do with Jesus.

And where he is, you can bet that things are happening.

And that he invites us to be part of them…if we will. Let us pray.