Pentecost 9C 2025

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

“Fear not, little flock, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the
kingdom.” These words of Jesus are meant to instill hope and relieve anxiety as he
“sets his face toward Jerusalem.” His followers, his “little flock,” have a pretty good
idea of what awaits him, and maybe them, when they get there.

The phrase “fear not” is said to appear in some form in scripture 365 times.
Personally, I haven’t counted, so I’ll take the words of others as true. That means you
get to be afraid once every four years, unless it’s at the turn of the century, when there is
no leap year. Maybe leap day is the one day every four years when God goes fishing.

There are legitimate reasons to be afraid. But many times we allow fear to
overwhelm us and prevent us from finding a way through a difficult time. You know,
maybe if we don’t say it out loud then it won’t be true sort of thing. Acting in response
to fear is one way to ensure our fears actually come to fruition, because they can be at
the very heart of our decision-making process.

In one way, fear can be the opposite of faith, or might even become a substitute
faith. Fear might be a sign that we’ve lost faith in God, especially when we work to
overcome fear by ways that diminish life, whether it be our own or for others. Fear can
be a manipulator, a way others use to cause us to bend to their will. It has been an
effective tool for winning many elections.

Fear can also cause us to forget the next part of Jesus’ sentence. “It is the Father’s
good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Not just “good pleasure,” but Luke’s words
mean “great delight.” Think about those times when you’ve given a gift to someone
who expresses surprise or joy in receiving it. It makes you want to do it again, even if
you want to take some pride in your altruism. Take a little time later on to ponder the
humble joy of being altruistic. Go ahead. Feel a bit of what God feels in the gift of grace
toward us.

So, you might ask, and even if you didn’t, just what is this “kingdom” God wants
to give us?

It seems to depend on our understanding of the word “basileian,” which is the
Greek term Luke uses that is always translated as kingdom. We understand kingdom to
mean a geographical area under the dominion of a king, a person of royal lineage who
by birthright inherits the right and responsibility to rule that area. Most recently, we’ve
witnessed the transition from Queen Elizabeth II in England to King Charles III, her
oldest son. His oldest son, William, will succeed him, and his son, George, will follow
suit.

1Greek literature traces the meaning of basileian to Homer. He uses it to describe
the role of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, who is gone for twenty years. She rules in
his stead, and her decisions are seen as his own. There are those who think Odysseus is
dead, since he’s been gone for so long, but she denies her suitors and continues to act
faithfully in his name. Eventually he returns home, and finds her faithfulness to be an
everlasting tribute to their fidelity to one another.

Sound familiar? The early Hebrew prophets denounced Israel, and eventually
Judah, as faithless spouses to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Hosea announces
the infidelity of Israel in graphic terms that in former times would cause much blushing
and cases of “the vapors.” But if you remember the opening words of our marriage rite,
you’ll get the connection. Holy Matrimony, we say, “signifies to us the mystery of the
union between Christ and his Church . . . .”

In the last book of scripture, The Revelation to John, the church is referred to as
the bride of Christ. This expands the description of God’s people found in the Hebrew
prophets, where God asks what caused them to stray and worship other gods, even
though, as God says, “I was their husband.”

So let me put this in contemporary terms. In effect, what Jesus says is that God
wants a faithful companion who will act and live in God’s stead—in God’s name—to
care for all God has created. In more intimate terms, we need to go back to Genesis and
the work of creation, where God breathes into the nostrils of the created human being
and gives it life. That life is part of God’s life, emanating from God’s own being.
So “fear not, little flock, for it is the Father’s pleasure to give you the kingdom”
really means that it is God’s delight, God’s joy, to give us life, and even more than that,
to share God’s life with God’s people. It is God’s delight, God’s joy, to see the people
Isaiah says are named “Mine” living as fully human while also continuing God’s work
of creation, of giving and sharing abundant life, with all that and whom God has
created.

This means that we are engaged in a mission, a people with a purpose that
transcends walls and street addresses and geography. We are engaged in theosis, a term
meaning that in some mystical way, we embody the presence of our Creator. How that
happens is up to God; it is God’s gift to us as a people. We do not become God, but we
remain fully human even though some regard celebrity status as godlike. When we
embody the presence of God, we become engaged in God’s eternal life, right here, right
now. And, to bring us back to earth, so to speak, it is the answer to our familiar prayer,
“your kingdom come.”

In case you’re wondering, that is why we’re here. Our buildings, programs,
liturgies, and everything else, are just commentary on our life with God and our living
interpretation of the life of God, and serve to answer whether our prayers, and our
lives, continue in the faithfulness to our eternal spouse, our husband, our God.
When we live into the fulness of what that means, why, it could be like heaven
on earth.