Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 6/22/08
Kingdom Living
Psalm 86:1-10
Romans 6:1-11
I’ve been surprised this past week by the reaction to Tim Russert’s unexpected death; even more by the genuine sorrow and sense of loss that it has generated. I can’t remember ever seeing that for a journalist before, not to this degree.
By all accounts, he did a wonderful job presiding these last seventeen years over “Meet the Press.” He drew accolades from both sides of the political spectrum: not just David Remnick in “The New Yorker” but Peggy Noonan in “The Wall Street Journal.”
But why so much attention? There are plenty of gifted, insightful journalists in the field today. What apparently set Russert apart wasn’t just the quality of his work, but the depth of his character. As Peggy Noonan put it, “After Tim’s death, the entire television media for four days told you the keys to a life well lived…”
“A life well-lived.” It is a great epitaph for a man who was passionate about his family, his faith and his work. He was a good and decent man who, in spite of his success and the influential role he played, always remained down to earth and very human. As Newsweek’s Joe Klein wrote, “that was Tim – exuberant, irreverent, brilliant and devout, a thrilling jolt of humanity.”
Everyone mentioned his faith. Some may have made only a passing reference to it, but it was central enough to his life that virtually everyone who knew him was aware of it. If he helped to show us, as Noonan writes, what a life well-lived actually looks like, his faith was very much a part of it. His faith, in other words, helped make Tim Russert who he was.
Again and again, Scripture tells us that Jesus came proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom – that realm where God abides; that space or dimension where we can taste life as it is meant to be lived.
We’ve all met people who have gotten it to one degree or another, and they aren’t necessarily Christian. They can be Jews or Muslims, atheists or agnostics. What they share is some piece of the Kingdom. That’s what Tim Russert had. They are people of compassion or integrity. People committed to the truth, or to the cause of justice. People like nineteen year-old Ross McGinnis of Knox, Pennsylvania, who – while serving in Iraq – threw himself on a grenade to save the lives of four other men in his unit.
You don’t have to be a Christian to find your way to some piece of it. The literature of the world is full of Kingdom truths. But we believe that being a follower of Jesus offers the best and fullest picture. It is Jesus who shows us the way to the Father, Jesus who opens the door to the Kingdom in all its fullness.
That is what Paul is talking about here in our text this morning. This text is really about Kingdom living – what it looks like, and how we find our way there. It is summed up in the third verse in which Paul tells us that everyone who was baptized into Christ Jesus was baptized into his death.
It is a strange phrase. Its meaning is not readily apparent. But it really forms the heart around which these eleven verses revolve. What Paul is talking about here is a death to ourselves, or, more accurately, the death of that ego around which our lives tend to revolve.
The great, primal instinct of humanity is to put self at the center. It begins in infancy, and is, in fact, essential to the infant’s survival. Hungry? Start crying, let the world know. Uncomfortable? Start crying. Lonely? Cry. Frightened? Cry. And each time their small world responds the child grows in the belief that he or she is the center of the universe.
Part of growing up, of course, is realizing that there are other people in the world and that their needs also matter. If you have a brother or sister it’s hard not to learn that lesson – that Christmas when you realize their gifts were actually better, or that moment when it hits you that they got more ice cream for dessert. Brothers and sisters give us a taste of reality as we grow older.
But the instinct remains. It is there for all of us in varying degrees. For many, as we move past adolescence and into adulthood it takes various forms of the question, “what’s in it for me?” We get this idea, reinforced by the world around us, that the good life is about finding as much pleasure as we can.
But what if it is just the opposite? What if, against all our instincts and intuition, the good life – the abundant life – is about giving and about making a difference?
This summer countless young families will be taking off for vacations together, and fathers and mothers everywhere will be discovering that vacation has a whole new meaning with children in tow. It is not just their vacation anymore. The presence of those children with all their needs and all their demands change everything. The parents can fight it and try to keep themselves at the center – a sure recipe for frustration and disaster. Or they can let go and make the shift and find that deep and quiet joy which comes of offering their children a very special experience.
That’s the way of Jesus, the way of the Kingdom. It is what Jesus meant when he said, Mt. 10:39, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” He is talking about dieing to ourselves. He is talking about taking this ego that stands at the center of our existence and nailing it to the cross.
We are so much more than our ego, so much more than this self that wants everything to revolve around it. As long as it is our ego that drives our choices, that deeper self, that truest part of who we are, is going to be choked off. It is going to die. The only way to thrive, the only way for that deeper, truer self to emerge and enter into the Kingdom, is to nail that ego to the cross – it is to die to self in order that we might live for Christ.
Go into a marriage thinking about all the ways the other person is going to be a blessing to you, and that marriage is doomed from the start. Go into parenthood thinking that those kids are going to somehow serve your needs and you have laid the foundation for absolute misery. Parenthood, like marriage, is not for selfish people.
This is the baptism into Jesus’ death that Paul is talking about. It is the very conscious decision to let that self which wants to dominate our lives, die there upon the cross with Jesus. It is the key to living into the Kingdom, and into that full and good and abundant life that God wants to share.
Fourteen years ago when Bonnie and I moved to Colorado, we found there were all kinds of changes that went with that move. Hiking in Colorado was a big shift from hiking on the trails of Cleveland’s metro-parks. All of a sudden, we had to keep an eye out for mountain lions. We never had to do that in Cleveland. And we had to keep our dog on a leash – not out of consideration for other hikers, but out of fear that he might run into a rattlesnake or coyote.
My wool top-coat was next to useless. It is perfect for our damp winters here, but winters there are a whole different thing. In fact, a lot of my clothes just didn’t work. I’ll never forget interviewing out there and running into a member just outside the church. Squinting through a haze of cigarette smoke, he took one look at my blue blazer and gray flannels and grumbled, “You’re from the east, aren’t you?” It didn’t feel real warm or fuzzy. People dress differently out west.
My point is that when we moved west we understood that there were going to be lots of changes. You take that as a given when you move from one region of this country, one culture, into another.
It is really no different when we talk about making the shift from this world to the Kingdom of God. We are still here, still a part of this world, but now we approach it from a whole new perspective. You have to make the shift. If you want to know the Kingdom of God, then there are certain changes that come with it. And it is Jesus who shows us the way.
Tim Russert certainly experienced success in this life. But that’s not the reason his death drew so much attention. So many eulogized him, so many felt a deep and genuine sorrow in his passing, because along with that success he was genuinely good and caring and fair. He was a person of deep faith who loved his work and loved his family. He was a person, in short, who got life right.
That, finally, is what the Kingdom of God is all about: getting life right. Jesus shows us the way. It is the way of the cross, the way of self-giving love.