‘Set your heart on his kingdom first, and on his
righteousness’
In the Gospels over the past few weeks Jesus has been
telling us quite a lot about how we should live our lives. This concentration
should alert us to two facts: it is important and it isn’t easy. How we live
our lives matters, as it is how we put our faith into practice and also it
forms our moral character: we become what we do. Living a Christian life isn’t
a matter of giving our assent to principles, or signing on the dotted line, it’s
about a relationship with God and each other, which we demonstrate not only by
what we believe, but how our beliefs shape our actions.
The call to holiness of life is rooted in the goodness of
the created order: God saw all that he had made and it was good. The path to
human flourishing starts with the response of humanity to the goodness of God
shown in the goodness of the world. It continues with the hope which we have in
Christ that all things will be restored in Him, for in this hope we were saved.
Living out our faith in the world
can be a tricky business: we cannot serve both God and money. A world which
cares only for profit and greed, for the advancement of self, is surely a cruel
uncaring world which is entirely opposed to the values of the Gospel. The
Church has to speak out against poverty, injustice, and corruption, in order to
call the world back to its senses, to say to it ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of God
is close at hand’. The kingdom is the hope that we will live in a world where
the hungry are fed, the naked clothed, and all humanity lives in the peace of
God. Christianity is a radical faith which looks to nothing less than the
complete transformation of the world – you may see us as idealistic, as
dreamers not rooted in reality, but this Kingdom is a reality here and now, and
it’s up to us to help advance it.
Such is the power of advertising
that we are forever being bombarded with enticements to buy new clothes, to
diet, to celebrate, to spend money so that it makes us happy, but also so that
we feel guilty, we take out loans to finance our extravagance. Against this we
need to hear the words of Jesus ‘Surely life means more than food, and the body
more than clothing’. But, I hear you cry; you’re wearing fine clothes, and
standing in a pulpit telling us about this. Indeed I am, but priests and
deacons wear beautiful vestments not to point to themselves, not as a display,
put to point us to God, the source of all beauty, to honour Him, in all that we
do or say, to remind us why we are here today, to be fed by God, to be fed with
God, in Word and Sacrament, so that we may be strengthened and transformed. A
God who loves us so much that he died for us on the Cross, the same sacrifice present
upon the altar here – given for us to touch and taste God’s love, this is the
reality of God’s love in our lives.
So how do we respond to it? This
is the kingdom of God, right here, right now, we’re living it, and we need to
trust the God who loves us and saves us, and live out our faith in our lives,
we need to embody the values of the Kingdom, and help others to live them so
that we can carry on God’s work. Every day when we pray the Lord’s Prayer we
say ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. As we
look towards Lent let us all encourage each other to do God’s will in our lives
so that we may hasten the coming of God’s Kingdom and do His will, living out our
faith in our lives, helping each other to do this and inviting others in to
share the peace and love and joy of the Kingdom, so that the world around us
may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit, to whom be ascribed, as is most right and just, all might, majesty,
glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
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