The Kingdom of God in Our Midst

This sermon was preached Maundy Thursday evening at St. Michael's, Raleigh.

This month my Dad celebrated his 90th birthday.  We had a great celebration for him!  There was a family Eucharist, a reception for his family and friends from his retirement community, church, and General Electric, where he worked for 40 years, and a family dinner.  I put together a power point presentation with pictures of his life that looped continuously at the reception.  It was moving to see the old photos, to remember the events of his life and of our family.

Tonight, too, is a night to remember.  The apostle Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians that on this night Jesus took the bread and the cup of wine, said they were his body and blood, and told his disciples to do this in remembrance of him.

Memory is essential to our faith.  It is all too easy to forget who we are, whose we are, amid the seemingly endless demands of our lives and the temptations of the world.  Remembering the mighty acts of God, remembering Christ’s death and resurrection, reveals to us who we are – the people of God dwelling in the Kingdom of God.

Each time we celebrate the Eucharist we remember Christ’s Last Supper; we remember how Jesus offered the bread and the wine, his body and blood to deliver us from the power of sin and death.  Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross initiates the Kingdom of God on earth and in our lives.  According to the Russian Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann, each celebration of the Eucharist manifests the kingdom of God whether we are in a beautiful church like St. Michael’s or in a hovel in the wilderness.

 All too often we think of the kingdom of God as an other-worldly reality for the next life, but the kingdom of God through Christ is a past, present, and future reality in the world and in our lives.  Each time we participate in the Eucharist we recall our true nature and the true nature of the world.  The priest proclaims this reality to us immediately after the climactic height of the liturgy - the breaking of the bread.  She or he says, “The gifts of God for the people of God.” This is always one of the most moving moments of the service for me.  The phrase in Latin is “Sancta Sanctis,” literally, “holy things for holy people.”  Theologians over the centuries have battled over how or when the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.  Ultimately though more important, as Schmemann says, is not any supposed explanation but the revelation in and through the Eucharist of the sacramental, the God-infused reality of our lives and of all creation.  We catch glimpses of this reality, of the reality of the kingdom of God not only manifested in and through the bread and the wine, but also in and through the members of Christ’s body, in our very own lives.

 We see it in the twenty-three adults and young people who will go to Belize this Sunday to rehab the Holy Cross Anglican School’s sagging cafeteria floor, to apply reflective paint to cool the often 90 degree classrooms, to help build an open air classroom, and to provide an Easter Week Vacation Bible School for the vacationing Holy Cross children.  We realize it when we serve those in need through Step Up, Wake Relief, the Episcopal Farmworkers Ministry, Meals on Wheels, Wake Interfaith Hospitality Network, Safe Child, Backpack Buddies, Interact, PLM Families Together, Band Together, the Interfaith Food Shuttle and other social service organizations in our community.  We find the kingdom in our church members who serve on our altar guild, our children and adult education and youth ministries, community and global missions committees, acolytes, ushers, ECW, choir, the Vestry, and a host of other St. Michael’s ministries.  We manifest the kingdom when we say a kind word to a stranger, help someone in need, pray to the Lord, study the scriptures, write a pledge check to the church, take time during a busy day to tell our spouse, our children, our parent that we love them.  The kingdom of God is a present reality that is all around us if we but have eyes to see and ears to hear!

But this is not to say that we have fully realized the kingdom of God in our lives.  The apostle Paul said it well in his letter to the Philippians when he wrote, “I press on to make [the resurrection from the dead] my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (3:12 NRSV).  Although Christ Jesus had made Paul “his own,” Paul pressed on to make the full reality of the kingdom of God, the resurrection from the dead, his own.

The Eucharist not only manifests the kingdom of God in the world and in our lives, but it also shines the light of God in our hearts revealing where we have strayed from the Lord.  We confess our sins after we hear the Word of God in Scripture, because the Word reminds us how we have forgotten the Lord, how we have forgotten who we are in our deepest, truest sense.  But it is here we also feel the love of God the Father who forgives our sins and welcomes us with open arms to the banquet table of his Son in and through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Truly we are a pilgrim people, a work in progress, a people being transformed in and through the grace of God, in and through the Kingdom in our midst.

The Holy Eucharist, the manifestation of the kingdom of God, finally is a pouring out of the love of God in and through the gift of Christ’s body and blood, and a pouring out of ourselves, of our souls and bodies in our lives offered to the Lord.  On this timeless night, in this timeless moment, we remember the mighty acts of God, we encounter the One who died and rose for us, and we realize the kingdom of God in our lives and in our world.