3 Advent Yr C RCL 12 13 09

Sermon Notes:

The 4 Parts of the series:

1 Advent - The Resurrection of the Body and Redemption of Creation.

2 Advent - The Judgments – Particular & General

3 Advent - The Kingdom of Heaven & the Son of Man

4 Advent - How many Ends do you need?

Review part 1:

The Creation is good and loved. The Resurrection is the redemption of the whole person - body & spirit. Now we have the Kingdom in part, as a battlefield is held in part by an army. The Kingdom is here in the Sacraments and in the Mission. When the Kingdom comes in full, Earth is redeemed and joined to heaven, as the body is redeemed in resurrection and glorified. 

Review part 2:

We need not fear the Day(s) of Judgment. The victim of oppression and injustice doesn’t fear judgment. Judgment is the means by which the corrupt is replaced by the incorrupt. The Particular Judgment is at the moment of death – “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” The General Judgment is at the resurrection when Heaven comes to Earth an all is made new. Jesus, together with the Saints (that’s us) will Judge all of creation.

Sermon Notes part 3:

There are over a hundred names, titles and metaphors for Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament. When you add in all the references to the Second Person of the Trinity and to The Unity, and run the Hebrew Scriptures and the Apocrypha you get a boggling number of names.

You can be forgiven for not always being able to tell exactly who we are talking about. If The Word is Jesus, Jn 1:1 & The Door is Jesus, Jn 10:9, then who is at the door?

From the original Not Ready For Primetime Players:

--knock at the door

Lorraine:           Yes?

at door:            Mrs. Jarlsburg?  (mumbled)

Lorraine:           Who?

at door:            Mrs. Boroughyu?  (mumbled)

Lorraine:           Who is it?

at door:            Flowers.

Lorraine:           Flowers for whom?

at door:            Plumber, maam.

Lorraine:           I don't need a plumber. You're that clever shark, aren't you?

at door:            Candygram.

Lorraine:           Candygram my foot.

                        You get out of here before I call the police.

                        You're the shark and you know it.

at door:            Uh, uh, I'm only a dolphin, maam.

Lorraine:           A dolphin, Well, ok.

--Lorraine opens the door and is eaten by the Landshark

Now I just finished pointing out last week that we need NOT be afraid when Jesus comes, so I’m trusting you here to get that the take-away from the Saturday Night Live skit is NOT “When Jesus comes, He’ll eat my face!”

But even though the Bible uses hundreds of Names for the same Jesus, they are not interchangeable. You cannot read John 1:1 as:

In the beginning was the Door and the Door was with…

The origin of this is that God is too big! Our minds and our language are inadequate to the task of describing God. A good breakdown of Logos - Word as used in John 1:1 fills a small book.

Today we are just going to try to pin down 2 terms that are essential in our understanding of The End or Eschatology.

Kingdom of Heaven & Son of Man

I. A. Kingdom of Heaven (& Kingdom of God)

Kingdom – Gk basileia rule, reign, kingship & kingdom. ccc2816

of Heaven – Gk ouranos sky, celestial realm

of God – Gk theos God, god

 Only St. Matthew uses “Kingdom of Heaven” and it is used where other authors use “Kingdom of God.” Mt 5:3 Lk 6:20 (there is good linguistic scholarship on the reason for this which you can read elsewhere).

So read Kingdom of Heaven = Kingdom of God and vice versa

B. The Kingdom of Heaven is not in Heaven.

We pray “Thy kingdom come” because we want the Kingdom here & now.

Start thinking “Reign of Heaven”, and you quickly see that heaven doesn’t reign over heaven, but we would very much like heaven to reign over the Earth.

C. Described by Parables

The Kingdom of God:

is within (or among) people, Lk 17:21;

approached through understanding, Mk 12:34;

entered by acceptance like a child: Mk 10:15;

entered by Baptism, Jn 3:5;

doing the will of God, Mt 7:21;

does not come to, or come to contain, the wicked, 1 Cor 6:9;

II The Son of Man circle.

Before we begin – do not call the gender police. Jesus called, he will stipulate that Pronouns of one gender include the masculine, feminine and neuter.

A. Adam was a man; but not the man he should have been. Gen 3:11

B. Every man is a son of man; but neither father nor son are the men they should have been. Gen 5:1

C. Jesus is the man that Adam, and we, should have been. The true Son of Man or, heir of humanness? 1 Cor 15:21

D. By becoming what Jesus is we too become what we should be. Jn 1:12

And so we arrive at The End in the place we began. In the Garden, God Reigned and humans lived in His perfect will. In the Kingdom, God Reigns and we, perfected by Christ and Glorified by Resurrection live in His perfect will.