By now you know that we in the Disciples of Christ have an identity statement that I am very fond of. It’s a simple, concise statement that says clearly and boldly who we are:
“We are Disciples of Christ, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. As part of the one body of Christ, we welcome all to the Lord’s Table as God has welcomed us.”
It’s a good statement.
You probably also know that we in Bixby Knolls Christian Church have had for some time now a congregational mission statement: Our mission is “to seek justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.” That simple, concise statement comes directly from Micah 6:8.
It, too, is a good statement.
According to Mark’s gospel, when Jesus first began his ministry, he formulated his own simple, concise statement. Jesus’s simple, concise statement declared what his purpose and mission was all about.
That sentence is: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.
That is a very good statement.
Everything Jesus did and everything Jesus taught comes out of this simple, concise statement.
But what does it mean?
What does it mean, “the time is fulfilled?”
What does it mean, “the kingdom of God?”
What does it mean, “repent?”
What does it mean, “believe in the good news?”
Let’s explore each of those questions…
First: “the time is fulfilled…”
Jesus is saying that the time is NOW. What you’ve been waiting for, what you’ve been longing for, is now happening. The time has arrived; don’t wait.
Don’t wait for tomorrow. Don’t base your faith on promises for the future, while ignoring the present. The message Jesus proclaims is not a tomorrow message; it’s a message for today. It is a message of healing, wholeness, and salvation, for today.
Salvation is present today.
Which leads to the next part of Jesus’s statement: “The Kingdom of God has come near.” This phrase repeats the idea that the right time is now. The kingdom of God isn’t some far away, far in the future thing. The Kingdom of God is right now. The kingdom of God has arrived.
For some reason, growing up, I always thought that the kingdom of God meant heaven, that it referred to that “place” you go once you die… Streets paved with gold, and all that stuff.
But Jesus isn’t talking about “someday.” Jesus is talking about “now.” “The kingdom of God has come near,” he says. In the Common English Bible, Jesus says: “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom!”
And because the phrase “Kingdom of God” is misleading, other translators refer to it as the “Rule of God” or the “Reign of God.”
Simply put, the Kingdom of God is this world, in this time, with all people loving one another as God intends, demonstrating compassion and kindness toward one another, working for justice and freedom and equality for all.
The Kingdom of God is the vision of the prophets, of a world in which wolves and lions lie down with lambs in peace, a world in which the mountains are brought down and the valleys are lifted up so that the road on which all people travel is level and smooth, without any rough places to slow them down.
The Kingdom of God is what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as the Beloved Community.
It’s the world where everyone lives in wholeness.
It is a world where LGBT youth find affirmation, where immigrants find a home, where strangers find a welcome, where the earth is healed and cared for, where Black lives matter, where equal rights are real, and where there is no fear among God’s people.
Children won’t have to fear going hungry, Elders won’t have to fear being alone, women won’t have to fear unwanted sexual advances, refugees won’t have to fear the terrors of their homeland.
In the kingdom of God, the naked are clothed; the homeless are given shelter; the lonely are comforted; little children receive health care so they can grow up into healthy adults; and the nations work to make peace instead of war.
And this kingdom is right now? Yes! The kingdom, according to Jesus, exists right now among the people of God...Whenever people act in ways of love, compassion, justice, kindness… God’s kingdom is present. That’s all it takes for the kingdom to be real! Love, compassion, justice, kindness.
Unfortunately, we are too caught up in the kingdoms of this world, which get in the way of love, compassion, justice and kindness. We are too caught up in the kingdoms of this world, which is why we need to repent.
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent... and believe in the good news.
Repent literally means to turn and go in a new direction.
All our lives, we follow the crowd. What we wear, what kind of house we live in, what we eat, what we drive...to a large extent, every aspect of our lives is determined by what everyone else is doing.
We live in an age of mass consumption, an age when people believe that the more you have, the better off you are. Except it’s not true! The more you have, the more you consume;
the more you have, the more your life is spent working to be able to afford it all;
the more you have, the more time you have to spend organizing and storing and maintaining it all, and the less time you have for the things that really matter, the things that make God’s kingdom a reality.
So it’s time to repent; repent from this crazy world we live in, repent from our need to follow the crowd. It’s time to turn away from a life where the sole focus is material gain.
It’s time to repent from a life in which we are so busy rushing to work then rushing home from work that we never notice the people we pass along the way.
It’s time to repent from a life that is so stressful, so chaotic, that we live only for the weekend, or those two weeks of vacation we get each year.
It’s time to repent from a life that is unsustainable, a way of living that is choking the planet, creating massive amounts of garbage and greenhouse gases.
I think every Christian has, at one time in their life, asked, “What if…” What if I was serious about following Jesus? What if I really did sell my belongings and give my life completely to Jesus? What would that look like? What if I sold my house and bought one half the size, half the cost, and used the profit to do the work I feel God calling me to? What if I figured out a way to stop following the crowd, and really start following Jesus?
That, my friends, is repentance.
Repentance is Zacchaeus giving half his possessions to the poor, and paying back four times the amount to anyone he cheated.
Repentance is Simon and Andrew and James and John leaving their nets and their boats and following Jesus.
Repentance is taking your swords and turning them into plows... It's taking your spears and turning them into pruning hooks... It's turning away from fossil fuels and embracing sustainable energy, solar energy... It's living a simpler life, with fewer possessions... It’s investing in the community where you live, instead of trying to move out to a more upscale community.
It’s radical, is what it is. People will talk. You don’t just walk away from a successful life like that. You don’t...
Unless you believe so strongly in the Kingdom of God that you are willing to repent.
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.
...believe in the good news.
Just like our ideas about the Kingdom of God, that word, believe is misleading. Because that word is used in most of our English translations, countless Christians think that all they have to do in order to be good Christians is come to some sort of mental acknowledgement that Jesus is God’s Son, and *poof* that’s it. They’re a Christian. They can keep living their normal, respectable life, as long as they say they believe, as long as they’ve prayed “The Jesus Prayer.”
Among my evangelical friends, there is this thing called the Jesus prayer, and if you get someone to say The Jesus Prayer, then just like that you’ve made a new Christian.
Sometimes it’s called the salvation prayer. It goes something like this:
“I’m a sinner, I’m sorry, please forgive me. I believe that Jesus is my savior, and I ask Jesus to come into my life, forgive my sins, so that I can live with him in heaven.”
It’s not a bad prayer; but there is so much more to believing in Jesus than saying a little prayer. There is so much more to believing than saying “I believe.”
Which is why other translations will use other words in place of that word “believe.” The Common English Bible says “trust this good news.” David Rhoads and Donald Michie, who I read in seminary, say “put your faith in the good news.” Marcus Borg, instead of “believe,” said it’s better to say “be-love.”
It’s like the difference between saying, “I believe you,” and “I believe in you.”
“I believe you” means, OK, you’re telling the truth.
“I believe in you” means I put my faith in you; I am passionately committed to you and what you stand for. Jesus is asking you to repent, and passionately commit yourself to the work of God’s kingdom.
So while there is nothing wrong with saying, “I’m a sinner, but Jesus is in my life…,” following Jesus is so much more than that. It is a lifestyle change. It is repentance. It is passionately committing your life to the way of Jesus.
Coming to church on Sunday morning… this is our training ground. Coming to church doesn’t make you a Christian; it is your life and how you live that makes you a Christian.
Coming to church is, hopefully, where you learn how to be a Christian in your everyday life. When you leave from here, the hope is that you will make some change in your life that will help you follow more closely the way of Jesus.
In fact, we shouldn’t even call it “coming to church,” because when you follow Jesus wholeheartedly, the church is wherever you are, living out your life as part of the body of Christ, putting into practice all that you’ve learned about Jesus and his way.
“Believe in the good news” means believe that the kingdom of God, the beloved community, the kingdom of shalom, can really be real, NOW, in your life, through the Spirit at work in you, changing you, leading you to repentance, leading you to practice love, compassion, justice, and kindness.
“Believe in the good news” means re-orienting your life so that the good news becomes present in you and through you. Your friends, your neighbors, and even strangers will see you and say, “that person lives the good news.” If you believe in the good news, you will act to bring the good news to others. Believing and acting are two sides of the same coin. You don’t have one without the other. Those who do not train themselves in the ways of the kingdom - those who do not practice love, compassion, justice, and kindness in their everyday lives have not really believed in the good news.
But those who do follow Jesus with their whole heart, and who practice love, compassion, justice, and kindness - the kingdom is theirs. The kingdom is among them and within them.
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.
“We are Disciples of Christ, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. As part of the one body of Christ, we welcome all to the Lord’s Table as God has welcomed us.”
It’s a good statement.
You probably also know that we in Bixby Knolls Christian Church have had for some time now a congregational mission statement: Our mission is “to seek justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.” That simple, concise statement comes directly from Micah 6:8.
It, too, is a good statement.
According to Mark’s gospel, when Jesus first began his ministry, he formulated his own simple, concise statement. Jesus’s simple, concise statement declared what his purpose and mission was all about.
That sentence is: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.
That is a very good statement.
Everything Jesus did and everything Jesus taught comes out of this simple, concise statement.
But what does it mean?
What does it mean, “the time is fulfilled?”
What does it mean, “the kingdom of God?”
What does it mean, “repent?”
What does it mean, “believe in the good news?”
Let’s explore each of those questions…
First: “the time is fulfilled…”
Jesus is saying that the time is NOW. What you’ve been waiting for, what you’ve been longing for, is now happening. The time has arrived; don’t wait.
Don’t wait for tomorrow. Don’t base your faith on promises for the future, while ignoring the present. The message Jesus proclaims is not a tomorrow message; it’s a message for today. It is a message of healing, wholeness, and salvation, for today.
Salvation is present today.
Which leads to the next part of Jesus’s statement: “The Kingdom of God has come near.” This phrase repeats the idea that the right time is now. The kingdom of God isn’t some far away, far in the future thing. The Kingdom of God is right now. The kingdom of God has arrived.
For some reason, growing up, I always thought that the kingdom of God meant heaven, that it referred to that “place” you go once you die… Streets paved with gold, and all that stuff.
But Jesus isn’t talking about “someday.” Jesus is talking about “now.” “The kingdom of God has come near,” he says. In the Common English Bible, Jesus says: “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom!”
And because the phrase “Kingdom of God” is misleading, other translators refer to it as the “Rule of God” or the “Reign of God.”
Simply put, the Kingdom of God is this world, in this time, with all people loving one another as God intends, demonstrating compassion and kindness toward one another, working for justice and freedom and equality for all.
The Kingdom of God is the vision of the prophets, of a world in which wolves and lions lie down with lambs in peace, a world in which the mountains are brought down and the valleys are lifted up so that the road on which all people travel is level and smooth, without any rough places to slow them down.
The Kingdom of God is what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as the Beloved Community.
It’s the world where everyone lives in wholeness.
It is a world where LGBT youth find affirmation, where immigrants find a home, where strangers find a welcome, where the earth is healed and cared for, where Black lives matter, where equal rights are real, and where there is no fear among God’s people.
Children won’t have to fear going hungry, Elders won’t have to fear being alone, women won’t have to fear unwanted sexual advances, refugees won’t have to fear the terrors of their homeland.
In the kingdom of God, the naked are clothed; the homeless are given shelter; the lonely are comforted; little children receive health care so they can grow up into healthy adults; and the nations work to make peace instead of war.
And this kingdom is right now? Yes! The kingdom, according to Jesus, exists right now among the people of God...Whenever people act in ways of love, compassion, justice, kindness… God’s kingdom is present. That’s all it takes for the kingdom to be real! Love, compassion, justice, kindness.
Unfortunately, we are too caught up in the kingdoms of this world, which get in the way of love, compassion, justice and kindness. We are too caught up in the kingdoms of this world, which is why we need to repent.
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent... and believe in the good news.
Repent literally means to turn and go in a new direction.
All our lives, we follow the crowd. What we wear, what kind of house we live in, what we eat, what we drive...to a large extent, every aspect of our lives is determined by what everyone else is doing.
We live in an age of mass consumption, an age when people believe that the more you have, the better off you are. Except it’s not true! The more you have, the more you consume;
the more you have, the more your life is spent working to be able to afford it all;
the more you have, the more time you have to spend organizing and storing and maintaining it all, and the less time you have for the things that really matter, the things that make God’s kingdom a reality.
So it’s time to repent; repent from this crazy world we live in, repent from our need to follow the crowd. It’s time to turn away from a life where the sole focus is material gain.
It’s time to repent from a life in which we are so busy rushing to work then rushing home from work that we never notice the people we pass along the way.
It’s time to repent from a life that is so stressful, so chaotic, that we live only for the weekend, or those two weeks of vacation we get each year.
It’s time to repent from a life that is unsustainable, a way of living that is choking the planet, creating massive amounts of garbage and greenhouse gases.
I think every Christian has, at one time in their life, asked, “What if…” What if I was serious about following Jesus? What if I really did sell my belongings and give my life completely to Jesus? What would that look like? What if I sold my house and bought one half the size, half the cost, and used the profit to do the work I feel God calling me to? What if I figured out a way to stop following the crowd, and really start following Jesus?
That, my friends, is repentance.
Repentance is Zacchaeus giving half his possessions to the poor, and paying back four times the amount to anyone he cheated.
Repentance is Simon and Andrew and James and John leaving their nets and their boats and following Jesus.
Repentance is taking your swords and turning them into plows... It's taking your spears and turning them into pruning hooks... It's turning away from fossil fuels and embracing sustainable energy, solar energy... It's living a simpler life, with fewer possessions... It’s investing in the community where you live, instead of trying to move out to a more upscale community.
It’s radical, is what it is. People will talk. You don’t just walk away from a successful life like that. You don’t...
Unless you believe so strongly in the Kingdom of God that you are willing to repent.
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.
...believe in the good news.
Just like our ideas about the Kingdom of God, that word, believe is misleading. Because that word is used in most of our English translations, countless Christians think that all they have to do in order to be good Christians is come to some sort of mental acknowledgement that Jesus is God’s Son, and *poof* that’s it. They’re a Christian. They can keep living their normal, respectable life, as long as they say they believe, as long as they’ve prayed “The Jesus Prayer.”
Among my evangelical friends, there is this thing called the Jesus prayer, and if you get someone to say The Jesus Prayer, then just like that you’ve made a new Christian.
Sometimes it’s called the salvation prayer. It goes something like this:
“I’m a sinner, I’m sorry, please forgive me. I believe that Jesus is my savior, and I ask Jesus to come into my life, forgive my sins, so that I can live with him in heaven.”
It’s not a bad prayer; but there is so much more to believing in Jesus than saying a little prayer. There is so much more to believing than saying “I believe.”
Which is why other translations will use other words in place of that word “believe.” The Common English Bible says “trust this good news.” David Rhoads and Donald Michie, who I read in seminary, say “put your faith in the good news.” Marcus Borg, instead of “believe,” said it’s better to say “be-love.”
It’s like the difference between saying, “I believe you,” and “I believe in you.”
“I believe you” means, OK, you’re telling the truth.
“I believe in you” means I put my faith in you; I am passionately committed to you and what you stand for. Jesus is asking you to repent, and passionately commit yourself to the work of God’s kingdom.
So while there is nothing wrong with saying, “I’m a sinner, but Jesus is in my life…,” following Jesus is so much more than that. It is a lifestyle change. It is repentance. It is passionately committing your life to the way of Jesus.
Coming to church on Sunday morning… this is our training ground. Coming to church doesn’t make you a Christian; it is your life and how you live that makes you a Christian.
Coming to church is, hopefully, where you learn how to be a Christian in your everyday life. When you leave from here, the hope is that you will make some change in your life that will help you follow more closely the way of Jesus.
In fact, we shouldn’t even call it “coming to church,” because when you follow Jesus wholeheartedly, the church is wherever you are, living out your life as part of the body of Christ, putting into practice all that you’ve learned about Jesus and his way.
“Believe in the good news” means believe that the kingdom of God, the beloved community, the kingdom of shalom, can really be real, NOW, in your life, through the Spirit at work in you, changing you, leading you to repentance, leading you to practice love, compassion, justice, and kindness.
“Believe in the good news” means re-orienting your life so that the good news becomes present in you and through you. Your friends, your neighbors, and even strangers will see you and say, “that person lives the good news.” If you believe in the good news, you will act to bring the good news to others. Believing and acting are two sides of the same coin. You don’t have one without the other. Those who do not train themselves in the ways of the kingdom - those who do not practice love, compassion, justice, and kindness in their everyday lives have not really believed in the good news.
But those who do follow Jesus with their whole heart, and who practice love, compassion, justice, and kindness - the kingdom is theirs. The kingdom is among them and within them.
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.
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