The Secret Message of Jesus June 25, 2006
Entering the Kingdom
John 3:1-21
I’ve been speaking over this last month about Jesus’ message – the Message about the Kingdom of God. Jesus taught us that the Kingdom of God is not something that will only happen in the future, but the Kingdom is also now, and you can join it now. You can change your citizenship from the old confining kingdom of egotism, racism, consumerism, hedonism and other associated “–isms” to the expansive kingdom of God. Today I want to talk about how to do that – how do you enter the Kingdom of Heaven, how do you change your citizenship? To start to answer that question, I’ll begin with a story that Brian McLaren tells in his book, “The Secret Message of Jesus.” In honour of the world cup, it is a soccer story
“It happened years ago, when I coached soccer for my kids. We were the mighty Yellow Jackets, an eight-and-under girls’ team, and in our first few seasons we would lose by double-digit scores that seemed more like football scores: 2 1—3, 17—0, 28—4. The girls liked each other so much, and they had so much fun just being together, they hardly noticed the score. Even after a trouncing, they’d run up to me, jumping and smiling and giggling. “Did we win? Did we win?” they would ask. “Well,” I’d say,
“we came in second.”
During one game, Alexi, a good-natured (but not so good-playing), was playing fullback. In an unusual moment of inspired intensity, she stole the ball and dribbled—or perhaps chased is a better word—the ball up to midfield. Soon she was swarmed by three players from the other team, and they instantly formed a knot of eight kicking feet, eight flaring elbows, and four swaying ponytails. In the middle of the scramble, Alexi spun around a couple of times, trying to keep the ball in her control. When she broke free, a little dizzy, surprised to have the ball still in her control, she saw something she had never seen before: a wide open field between her and the goal.
I saw her glance up at the goal and then down at her feet, and I detected a look on her face I had never seen. It was as if, for the first time in this sport, she knew exactly what to do, and all her resources were unified in a glorious moment of clarity, hope, and commitment. She—a fullback—was going to score!
So she started dribbling. She had never dribbled so well. She drove forward, head down, fists clenched, deep in concentration. Kick, kick, step, kick, step, step, kick. There was only one problem in the entire universe at that moment, a problem of which she was blissfully unaware: she was driving to the wrong goal.
I started yelling, “Turn around! Turn around, Alexi! It’s the wrong goal!” She plunged forward. Then the parents started shouting too. “Wrong way, Alexi! Wrong goal! Turn around!” She couldn’t hear us; she was in another dimension of time and space. Her fellow defenders didn’t want to steal the ball from their friend and teammate, so they backed away, confused. Kick, step, step, kick, pause. She neared the goal and looked up once more, oblivious to our shouting, grim in her determination, pursing her lips. She was a fullback, a defender, and she had never been in scoring position before. Her latent inner athlete had come alive, and the thrill filled her with ecstasy. As her right foot cocked back in her backswing—the backswing of the most important kick of her entire eight-year life—somewhere in the inner regions of her brain a tiny alarm went off. “Why was her best friend and teammate Robin in the goal box? Why did Robin look so afraid?”
“No, Alexi! No!” Robin shouted. But it was too late. My little fullback was already in motion. The reflexes of her newly awakened inner athlete had clicked into motion and could not be stopped.
As her right foot came forward and connected with the ball, you could see the agony of an awful recognition spread across her face. First her expression and then her crumbling body folded into a living parable of repentance as she collapsed to the
dirt. Her heart sank and the ball rose, sailing, sailing in a beautiful arc toward the net. Robin dove to her left, and at the last instant, the knuckles of her left fist grazed the ball so that it veered slightly to the right and down until it grazed the goalpost and dropped to the ground, rolling to a stop in a tuft of perfect green grass—just out of bounds. Robin had averted disaster for Alexi and for the Yellow Jackets. Her teammates, including
Alexi, ran to her and tackled her in a joyful, shouting, screaming mass of relieved girlhood. Alexi’s mistake was swallowed up in Robin’s amazing save.
We lost 9—0 that day, but at least we were spared the indignity of scoring more points on our own goal than on theirs. At our awards banquet at the end of the season, Robin received the most valuable player trophy. Alexi presented it to her, beaming with pride because, in a way, the memory of her mistake was no longer her moment of shame: it was their moment of pride.
How to receive the Kingdom
Repentance
One of the most transforming things that can happen to any of us is to have a moment like Alexi’s, where we realize that in spite of all our sincerity and drive, we’re closing in on the wrong goal. And even better, to find out that our worst failure has been swallowed up in someone else’s save.
Saul of Tarsis has this experience – he thought that he was serving God by persecuting the Christians and dragging them off to prison, Jesus comes to him on the road to Damascus and says “wrong goal!” Saul stops arresting Christians and joins them.
This repenting is not an easy thing.
Stephen Covey tells this story of the Corps of Engineers building a road through the jungle. They have been working for weeks when one of the engineers decides to climb a tree to see how they are doing. He gets to the top above the jungle canopy and is shocked by what he sees. He yells down “We’re in the wrong jungle!” the other men yell back up, “Be quiet! We’re making progress here!”
To repent is to make a paradigm shift. I remember when I was first learning about the concept of paradigm shift from Giuy Chevreau back in the early 1990’s he talked about how when we make a paradigm shift, we go back to zero. We might be the best makers of steam engines in the world , but when internal combustion engines come in, we start again on the ground floor building internal combustion engines. There might be some carry over, but we are basically on par with someone who is just starting in the industry. You can imagine someone standing in the middle of their steam engine factorys asking “How can we give up all this to start building internal combustion engines?”
That is why it was so hard fort the Pharisees to accept the Gospel that Jesus preached – they would have to step down from their position of religious importance and be on the same level as the fishermen, tax-collectors, prostitutes and sinners who were accepting Jesus’ message. Paul says it well when he writes “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him…” - Philippians 3:4-9
We sing this in the song, “Knowing You”
All I once held dear,
built my life upon.
All this world reveres,
and wars to own.
All I once though gain,
I have counted loss.
Spent and worthless now, compared to this:
Knowing You, Jesus
Knowing You.
There is no greater thing.
You’re my all, You’re the best,
You’re my joy, my righteousness,
And I love you Lord.
This is what confession is, it is saying, “I am shooting for the wrong goals, I am working in the wrong Jungle, many of the things in my life that I’ve been focused on are worthless, and even wrong in the grand scheme of things.
Some people stop at confession – they name the problem, and then continue to do the actions that cause the problem, I’m in the wrong jungle, but I’m making progress, so soldier on. What is called for is repentance.
Repentance is climbing down from the tree of confession and packing up all the tools and getting into the right Jungle and starting over again. That is why it is hard, I is starting over again.
This is the sense of being “Born Again” or “entering the kingdom as a child” that we can sometimes miss as modern Christians. We get the “being brought to life by the Holy Spirit” part, but there is also another facet to being born again, and that is starting all over again from the ground up. It is like saying that I’ve been shooting at the wrong goal for so long, I’ve got to relearn the game all over again, It’s like I never knew how to play in the first place.
Faith
The next step in entering the Kingdom of Heaven is faith. I call these “steps” but they are not necessarily chronological, they may happen all at once, or faith might come just before confession and repentance. It is a lot easier to admit our wrong when we know that there is a God who will forgive us our wrong.
If we go back to the soccer story, faith is believing that what Jesus did on the Cross makes the save for us – we were shooting at the wrong goal, the cross blocks the shot. Believing this is not just accepting intellectually that it is true – it is trusting God that it is true. Some one translated this as placing your whole weight on God.
Receiving
Receiving God’s forgiveness. If God’s forgiveness means that he does not hold our mistakes and wrongs against us and treats us as if we had never done them, then receiving that forgiveness means not holding them against ourselves, and it means a commitment to not hold the mistakes and wrongs of others against them.
But receiving is far more than just that, it is being receptive to whatever God has for you: forgiveness, acceptance, love, hope, empowerment, strength, encouragement, perseverance, everything that you need to live in the Kingdom of God.
The big receiving is receiving the Holy Spirit. God promises that everyone who believes in Jesus will receive the Holy Spirit to live with and within them. The Spirit is the conduit for all the things God wants to give us, and he is the one who tells us from within if we are shooting at the right goal or not.
Sorry, please, thank you
Going Public
The fourth move flows naturally from the first three. It is a move of going public with your repentance, faith, and receptivity. We do this through baptism. Baptism is a symbolic washing- symbolically expressing your belief that you had previously been dirty and now you want to be cleansed. It symbolizes the moves of repentance (“I’m washing away my old life – even burying it” I’m getting a restart, and starting again like a child”) faith (“I trust Christ enough to follow him in his kingdom”) and receptivity “(I’ll receive God’s own Spirit and all God wants to give me”).
Baptisms at family camp?
Following
Jesus tells his disciples to teach all nations to practice what he taught. This is a new kingdom we are entering, with new customs and a totally new way of life. We are used to shooting on the wrong goal, building in the wrong jungle, we need to relearn and practice what we learn in this new Kingdom. Just as a child learns the ways of life from their parents, we, as new children must learn the new ways of life from or Father God and our Brother Jesus and our Friend the Holy Spirit.
Jesus says, come, follow me.
Invitation – do you want to shift your citizenship?
