Thy Kingdom Come On Earth

Strength for the Journey

May 25, 2011

Thy Kingdom Come On Earth

Over the past several weeks there has been a lot of buzz in the news, on face book and on other electronic media about Harold Camping, the 89-year-old doomsday prophet, who predicted the world would end this past Saturday.  Many have made jokes about the end of the world and what would or would not happen.  People have always been curious or concerned about these things.  

This was true in Jesus’ day as well.  On more than one occasion, Jesus was asked to tell his followers when these things would happen. One of these conversations goes as follows: “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see ‘The Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven’ with power and great glory.  And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. . . .‘From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that he^* is near, at the very gates.  Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.   Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.  But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son,^* but only the Father.’”(Matthew 24:36)

As the people of God we can argue, and do, about what this wonderful, powerful and symbolic language means, about what Jesus means about this generation not passing away before these things happen and about many other things.  But about the when, Jesus is pretty clear: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the father.”

Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, in what we call “The Sermon on the Mount,” we see a prayer that moves our focus from heaven to this earth on which we live and move and have our being.  “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.  Your kingdom come, Your will be done, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.  Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.  And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.”(Matthew 6:9-13)

This prayer leads me to believe that Jesus is at least as concerned about how we live on this earth as He is about how we get to heaven.  It also leads me to believe that Jesus believes God has heaven under control and that His purpose in being here on earth is because our life here is important.  How we treat others is important and matters eternally.  In fact, a little later in the Sermon on the Mount He reminds is that “in everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets.”(Matthew 7:12)

And last (for today) but not least, Jesus unrolls the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah and proclaims his purpose in his first sermon at his home town synagogue: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

When God created the Heavens and the Earth he saw that it was good, very good.  God sent Jesus to redeem all of creation, Earth as well as Heaven and we have been called according to the scriptures to do what Jesus did and even more, we are called to be co-creators with God.  Whatever God has planned for the end of the world and whenever and however that will happen, I believe Jesus calls us to work with Him so that “God’s Kingdom will come, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN!”

Blessings and Peace,

Ben

Some Reflections on the Death of Osama bin Laden

Some Reflections on the Death of Osama bin Laden

May 2, 2011

Any time another human being dies, it should cause us to reflect seriously and humbly on our relationship with God and with all other human beings in the world.  As I reflect on the death of Osama bin Laden, I must go back to Christmas of 2002.  On Christmas Eve at “Midnight Mass” Christians are ‘forced’ to read and to hear the following reading from the 8^th century BCE prophet, Isaiah.

“^{2 *}The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined. ³ You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder.  ⁴ For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.  ⁵ For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.  ⁶ For a child has been born for us,a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. ⁷ His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.  He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onwards and for evermore.  The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.” (Isaiah 9:2-7)

As many will remember, the fall of 2002 was the time of the debate over whether to go to war in Iraq or not, and as we know now the time of the building up of resources for that war.  As a Christian priest serving in New Orleans at that time, I could not hear this passage, especially the sentence, “for a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” without preaching on the Christian view of the possibility of this impending war.  To the best of my knowledge, I am the only preacher in New Orleans at that time who even touched on this difficult subject.  This is what I said:

“As Christians, and as followers of the Prince of Peace, we are called if it is Humanly possible to avoid war at all costs.  AND, if it is not possible to avoid War, then we should enter into it on our knees with a prayer in our hearts and tears in our eyes.”

My reflections continue with the execution of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.  Even though he was a man who carried out very evil and inexcusable deeds, since I did not believe that we belonged in Iraq in the first place, I did not believe we had the right to execute him.  I understand that he was allegedly executed by his fellow Iraqis, but I would take exception to that argument.  This action really gnawed at the pit of my stomach and I still have a difficult time with it. 

In many ways, I see the death of Osama bin Laden differently.  First, bin Laden, unlike Saddam Hussein, did have something to do with 9/11, a great deal, in fact.  He was responsible for the deaths of over 3000 people on that day as well as the subsequent illness and deaths of many of the first responders and volunteers who assisted with rescue efforts.  The resulting war in Afghanistan can to a great extent be laid at his feet as well.  I believe he and his organization, Al Qaeda, have continued to propagate death and destruction in the United States and around the world.  I believe the world is better off without him in it and that his death was certainly the surest way to accomplish this.  I pray for those who carried out this mission.  I give thanks for their bravery, and I also pray for them as they deal with what the taking of another human life does to a person.

Having said all of this, I choose to use this occasion, not to jump up and down and cheer, “USA, USA, USA” (though I understand that reaction). But to pray and reflect on: our relationship to God, our relationship to other human beings, enemies as well as friends, the use of religion (any religion) as an excuse for violence, and how we can use this event as a way to move closer to Isaiah’s dream.

For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.  ⁶ For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. ⁷ His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.  He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from

this time onwards and for evermore. (Isaiah 9:2-7)

           

Jesus is Going Ahead of You to Galilee

After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.  Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, `He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.' This is my message for you." So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Greetings!" And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me." (Matthew 28:1-10)

Jesus promised to go ahead of his disciples to Galilee and be there when they arrived.  In our lives, Jesus will go ahead of us to our Galilee as well, to be waiting there for us when we arrive.

Jesus’ resurrection is about new life, about transformation and hope, not just for the people of his day but for all people for all time.  Jesus’ promise to go ahead of the disciples to Galilee applies to us as well, whatever our Galilee is.  As I reflect on the joy of the Resurrection and on Jesus going before us to Galilee I want to share with you the story of Christ Episcopal Church in Albertville, Alabama.  On April 24, 2010 a class three tornado struck Albertville and cut a three quarters of a mile swath through the town, including East Main Street where Christ Church is located.  The Nave and Sanctuary (worship space) were destroyed and thus began Christ Church’s journey from death to resurrection.

The people of Christ Church spent the past twelve months praying and talking and planning about and for their future.  In many ways this was a Galilee moment for Christ Church, and as we were promised in the Gospel from Matthew 28, Jesus was there ahead of Christ Church waiting for them.  On Easter Day, April 24, 2011, exactly one year after the storm destroyed the church, The Rt. Rev. Kee Sloan, Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama was at Christ Church to celebrate Easter with them and to break ground for their new Nave and Sanctuary.  Easter for Christ Church, Albertville this year was truly a time of resurrection, hope, renewal and transformation.

We all have our “Galilee moments” and I hope that we will all take a moment to share them with our friends as a part of our celebration of Jesus’ resurrection and of the hope that is within us. Thanks be to God for the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ and for his promise to go before us and be with us today, tomorrow and forever.

“The Lord is risen, he is risen indeed!”

Blessings and Peace,

Ben Alford

The Rev. Ben Alford is a retired Episcopal Priest living in Elmore County. He can be reached at benajr@aol.com.

To Be the Prophet, To Be the Church

To Be the Prophet, To Be the Church

Some Quotes and Some Reflections

From the book, Saving Jesus From The Church

By Robin R. Meyers, United Church of Christ Pastor

Jeremiah was a prophetic performer, shattering a clay jug and announcing, “Thus says the lord of hosts: So will I break this people and this city.”(19:11)  Ezekiel was also a star of prophetic street theater: “In a public placed, he is to lie on his left side for 390 days, then on his right side for 40 days, to symbolize the number of years that Israel and Judah are to spend in exile.  During all this time, he is to eat starvation rations such as would be available in a city under a prolonged siege, and he is to bake bread using human dung as fuel.  All of this would symbolize what was soon to happen to Jerusalem.”(4:1-17)

Then Meyers shifts to how prophets and the church are allowed to behave today: “And to think that today we arrest people for stepping over imaginary lines, or when the gather to protest war, or when they try to form a union.  We shame dissident pastors into silence and warn them not to discuss ‘controversial’ issues like immigration or equal rights for gays.  The truth is, we have few pastors in the church today who qualify as outrageous for the cause of justice, and in fact the most common model for ministry now is someone who is well married (preferably with children), respected, pious, and doesn’t cause trouble.  In this sense the church has turned ministry into a profession demanding decorum, rather than recognizing it as a divine calling with disturbing consequences.” (pp 224-225)

Now back to the Hebrew Prophets: “These God-intoxicated Hebrew prophets brought the abstract ideas of religion down to earth and fearlessly shared what they believed was wrong with the domination systems of the world.  Abraham Heschel describes ‘their breathless impatience with injustice’ and recognizes that they possessed ‘sympathy with divine pathos.’  They stood with the poor and against the elites as shamelessly as Hosea stood by his fallen wife and then claimed that it was never too late to go in search of her and bring her home.”

The primary focus of the entire book is that the church is a body, a community whose primary purpose is not to worship Christ in order to be taken to escape earth when we die, but to follow Jesus, doing what he did and what he taught us to do.  This excerpt is an excellent summary of the book as a whole.  As Meyers puts it in the prologue: “What does it really mean to follow Jesus as a teacher and not just worship him as a supernatural deity on a rescue mission?”

Meyers believes it is time for the churches across the land to hold a “teach in about Jesus the Galilean Jew, the world’s most famous missing person—but only if everyone is invited.”(p. 8) Meyers believes that the reason many mainline churches are dying is that “they have put so much energy into survival that they have forsaken their responsibility to be places of free and fearless inquiry and radical hospitality as well as spiritual substance.”(p. 9)

Meyers’ final challenge to those who read the book is: “to let the breath of the Galilean sage fall on the neck of the church again.  First we have to listen not to formulas of salvation, but to a gospel that is all but forgotten.  After centuries of being told that ‘Jesus saves,’ it is time to save Jesus from the church.”(p. 11)

The book is thought provoking, challenging, possibly disturbing for some, and an exciting vision of what the church has been and can be again.  I recommend this book to all for whom faith is both life giving and challenging.  If your faith is a struggle then this book may just be the tool you need make some sense out of it.

Last Stop, Bunkie, Louisiana

As my post retirement friendship tour began to draw to a close, this after my wife, Lynn, informed me that me “to do list” was getting longer and longer, I found my way to Bunkie, Louisiana.  Now I have to admit, that Bunkie is not at the top of most people’s “bucket list,” but it was truly an important place for me to visit during the second week of my retirement.  The reason goes back to the first of this three column series on friendship: “make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other is gold.”  One of my oldest friends, or better said, a friend I have had for the longest amount of time lives in Bunkie, Louisiana.

My friend, LaMon Brown is Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Bunkie, and I have known him since he and I were five years old.  Allow me to share some of our history.  Back in the days when five your olds could, I walked the three blocks from my home to Mr. Martin’s Store to buy baseball cards with bubble gum wrapped inside.  On the way home, I passed a house where I saw another five year old with a tricycle with attached wagon filled with bottle caps.  The caps also came from Mr. Martin’s Store.  It seems that as I was working on my baseball card collection, LaMon was working on his bottle cap collection. 

Skip forward to third Grade.  LaMon and I were both in Miss Rousseau’s class.  I sat in one corner of the room and LaMon sat in the other corner of the room (a sure sign that we were both to grow up to be preachers).  Over the years, we were in the High School Band together, occasionally  dated the same girls (not at the same time) and on some occasions my mother would pick LaMon up and take him home from school instead of me. 

LaMon and his wife Pat served as Missionaries in India and Thailand and at one time he and I both served the Church in New Orleans, I as a pastor and he as a professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.  We spent lots of time together during those New Orleans years, played lots of Golf and talked lots of theology.  During one important golf outing we decided that our calling as ministers was to bring people back to the Center. Not the middle, but the center.  The two are not the same thing. The middle is all about compromise and the Center is Jesus Christ.

So, a trip without spending time with LaMon would be like a day without sunshine.  We spent time talking about the things which are important to us: our families, our health, Jesus the Center, and believe it or not, we even played a little golf.  It is truly a blessing to have had a friend for fifty-eight years, a friend who will be honest with me, who will disagree with me and still love me, a friend who brings out the best in me.  This friendship is a “pearl of great price,” and a reminder and an assurance that all friendships are gifts from God.  A reminder that we human beings were not created to live alone but to live in fellowship with God and with one another, now and forever. 

With all the distractions life in the twenty-first century offers us, this “friendship tour,” reminded me, and I hope my sharing of it reminds you, of what is important in this life, as well as in the life of the world to come.”

May God grant us these friendships that make us more than we could ever be on our own!

Blessings and Peace,

Ben Alford

Two weeks ago my wife Lynn, our friend Janette and I went to Saint Simons’ Island to a Methodist Conference Center, Epworth by the Sea.  The purpose of our visit was to attend the seventh annual January Adventure of Emerging Christianity.  The speakers were Barbara Brown Taylor and Brian McLaren, two of my spiritual heroes.  The both spoke about what it means to be a Christian in today’s world and particularly about the importance of the kingdom of God being “on earth as it is in heaven.”

It was exciting to be around 700 people who believe that God is so much bigger and much more inclusive than most of us believe and to have two speakers who challenged us to see God and humanity in new and different ways.  Both speakers believe that while Jesus came to save the world,  that he came to save the entire world, not just the members of one faith. This is quite a concept in a world in which most people of faith believe that their faith has all the truth and all other faiths are incorrect.  Jesus spent most of his time teaching people to “do unto others as they would have others do unto them,” “to love the Lord their God with all their heart and mind and soul and strength and to love their neighbor as themselves.”  This truly represented the kingdom of God, come on Earth as in heaven.

Perhaps Jesus’ greatest sermon, one I believe he preached over and over again, is the one we call the Beatitudes, found in Matthew 5:1-12 and in Luke 6:20-23.  In both of these passages, Jesus taught his followers what the kingdom of God was like: the hungry, both physically and spiritually would be filled; the mournful would be comforted; the meek and lowly would inherit the earth; the pure will see God and the peacemakers will be called the children of God.  Jesus cautioned that when they did these things some would be persecuted, but that as many as were persecuted, they would inherit the Kingdom of God.

I believe Jesus is telling us that the kingdom is bigger than we are.  That people will be included whom we would not allow in on our own.  Then Jesus gets more personal and tells his hearers and us that we are blessed when people revile us and persecute us and utter all kinds of evil against us falsely on His account.  That we should rejoice and be glad, for our reward will be great in the kingdom.  The fact that as Christians we may be persecuted does not keep Jesus from calling us into partnership with him.  It should not prohibit us from doing the things he calls us to do.

A young evangelical, Shane Claiborne, wrote in a recent article in Esquire Magazine: “to those who have closed the door on religion – I was recently asked by a non-Christian Friend if I thought he was going to hell.  ‘I said, I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you.’  ‘If those of us who believe in God do not believe God’s grace is big enough to save the whole world… well, we should at least pray that it is.’”

Blessings and Peace,

Ben

Change, an Invitation to Life: Re-Discovering Jesus and the Kingdom of God

Change, an Invitation to Life: Re-Discovering Jesus and the Kingdom of God