The Kingdom of God: Transfiguring Ugly Into Beautiful
Notes from the message I brought to the home church yesterday.
Verses to look up:
Matthew 6:33
Mark 4:30-32
Mark 10:23
Mark 12:34
Luke 6:20
Luke 8:10
Romans 14:17
Luke 9:11** (he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal)
Luke 17:20-21**
It is living with God as your king. It’s under his rule and his way of doing things. It refers to heaven, but also to life here on earth. Not that all of life here on earth is God’s kingdom, only that as his sons and daughters, we can participate in it even while still in our physical bodies.
Where is God’s kingdom in our lives? How do you know that’s it, versus that’s not it? Jesus talked about proclaiming the good news about it, and healing a lot. Heaven is ultimately the restoration and redemption of this world. When the new heaven comes down in Revelation, it replaces with good all that is bad here. So, I think we experience the kingdom of God in this life when we take part in God’s work of redemption and restoration – when we help replace the bad we come upon with good. It’s living grace.
Some of the stuff from One Thousand Gifts comes back to …
From my blog post:
- Eucharisteo transfigures ugliness into beauty, through grace. Grace is the thing that wants to change ugly into beauty. Grace is God’s willingness to change us from wretched sinners into adopted, spotless, sons and daughters. There is no room for grace, unless there are difficulties in life. 2 Corinthians 12:9
- We have been living with unhealthy eyes many of us, and all we see is darkness all around. The secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.
Hosea 14:4 “I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.”
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Jesus always emphasized the priority of God’s kingdom over this world. God’s kingdom has more to do with the spiritual, whereas this world is all about the tangible and material.
Luke 5:17-20 “On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal. And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”
- They brought this guy to Jesus, so Jesus forgave his sins. Jesus was essentially saying, hey, doesn’t really matter whether or not you can walk, but it’s incredibly important how you’re doing in your heart. Then just to prove a point, he went ahead and healed him physically too. But the priority was made clear by Jesus – spiritual matters trump the physical.
Matthew 10:34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
- I did not come here to fit in with this world’s ways of doing things. I bring an entirely new way of thinking, a brand new system, drastically different, and better. And I am at war with this world’s system.
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Why is the kingdom good news? Because it proclaims that there’s a better way. And this IS good news, and it is exciting and contagious when people learn it.
Luke 10:9 “Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’”
- As you perform the miracle of healing, let the people know that this is God’s business. You’re beginning to enter into his realm - one of reversals, of healing, of creation.
- This reminds me of the excitement in Chronicles of Narnia when the rumor is flying around the forest that “Aslan is on the move” and you see the cold winter snow and ice melting away and being replaced with flowers, color, warmth, and beauty.
John 7:46 “…no one ever spoke the way this man does.”
- How powerful is that – yeah, everyone’s telling us, ‘hey praying for you brother’ and ‘hope you’re doing well’ – but THIS guy, man, there’s just something about this guy – he’s different. This guy changes lives when he talks.
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Luke 19:1-10 – Read the story of Zacchaeus
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from The Furious Longing of God (Brennan Manning) - two stories juxtaposed.
Story 1 - Getting it wrong:
Back in the late ’70s, I was living in a monastery in Philadelphia. Some millionaire friends from New York City called and asked if I’d like to come up to the city for the week, go to a play on Broadway, eat at Sardi’s. This, dear reader, was not a hard decision to make.
One evening we went to a play, and after the first act we went out in the street for intermission. The tuxedoed husbands got into a dense discussion with their bejeweled, evening-gowned wives on the influence of the German philosopher Schopenhauer on Samuel Beckett’s “Theatre of the Absurd.” Obviously, they asked me what I thought. I was about to deliver an observation so profound that it would render the discussion moot for eternity, when she walked by.
She was not one of the beautiful people. She wore a cab driver’s cap, double-breasted man’s suit with the pockets ripped out, holes in her nylons, and tennis shoes.
As she approached, I noticed she was peddling Variety newspapers, the show biz paper. In those days, it cost seventy-five cents. So, in a gesture of great generosity, I reached in my pocket, handed her a dollar, and waved her away, and then returned to my wealthy friends awaiting my next astute observation on the absurd.
And then she said, “Father?” In those days, I knew I couldn’t distinguish myself by my virtues, so I distinguished myself by my clothing; I always wore the collar.
“Father, could I talk to you a minute?”
I snapped, “What? Can’t you see I’m busy? Do you make a habit of interrupting people in the middle of a conversation? Wait over there and I’ll speak to you when I’m done.”
She whispered, “Jesus wouldn’t talk to Mary Magdalene like that.”
And then she was gone.
I’d treated the woman like she was a thing, like a vending machine you put your money in, and out comes your choice. I’d shown no appreciation at all for the little service that she was performing. No interest whatsoever in the little drama of her daily things. Not one ounce of cordial love impregnated with respect for the sacred dimension of her personality. Frankly, I was so caught up in trying to impress my millionaire friends with how aesthetically brilliant I was that I missed her. If she had even a sliver of a negative self-image when she approached me, I had made a mountain out of molehill.
Now let’s suppose, just suppose, that this woman came to church on Sunday and there was Brennan Manning, in the pulpit, exhorting her to believe that God loves her unconditionally as she is and not as she should be. My hypocrisy outside the Shepherd Theatre that night made the theatre of the absurd look inviting. How could she believe in the love of a God she can’t see when she couldn’t find even a trace of love in the eyes of a brother wearing a clerical collar whom she could see? A shriveled humanity has a shrunken capacity for receiving the rays of God’s love.
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love. Or not.
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Story 2 - Getting it right:
Back in the late 1960s, I was teaching at a university in Ohio and there was a student on campus who by society’s standards would’ve been called ugly. He was short, extremely obese, he had a terrible case of acne, a bad lisp, and his hair was growing like Lancelot’s horse-in four directions at one time. He wore the uniform of the day: a T-shirt that hadn’t been washed since the Spanish American War, jeans with a butterfly on the back, and of course, no shoes.
In all my days, I have never met anybody with such low self-esteem. He told me that when he looked in the mirror each morning, he spit at it. Of course no campus girl would date him. No fraternity wanted him as a pledge.
He walked into my office one day and said, his lisp evident, “Ah, you’re a new face on campus. Well, my name is Larry Malaney and I’m an athgnostic.”
I said, “You’re what?”
He repeated himself and I said, “Wow, congratulations! If you ever become an atheist, I’ll take you to dinner and we’ll celebrate your conversion.”
The story I’m about to tell you is what Larry got for Christmas one year.
Christmas came along for Larry Malaney and he found himself back with his parents in Providence, Rhode Island. Larry’s father is a typical lace-curtain Irishman. Now there are lace-curtain Irish and there are shanty Irish. A lace-curtain Irishman, even on the hottest day in summer, will not come to the dining room table without wearing a suit, usually a dark pinstripe, starched white shirt, and a tie swollen at the top. He will never allow his sideburns to grow to the top of his ears and he always speaks in a low, subdued voice.
Well, Larry comes to the dinner table that first night home, smelling like a Billy goat. He and his father have the usual number of quarrels and reconciliations. And thus begins a typical vacation in the Malaney household. Several nights later, Larry tells his father that he’s got to get back to school the next day.
“What time, son?”
“Six o’clock.”
“Well, I’ll ride the bus with you.”
The next morning, the father and son ride the bus in silence. They get off the bus, as Larry has to catch a second one to get to the airport. Directly across the street are six men standing under an awning, all men who work in the same textile factory as Larry’s father. They begin making loud and degrading remarks like “Oink, oink, look at that fat pig. I tell you, if that pig was my kid, I’d hide him in the basement, I’d be so embarrassed.” Another said, “I wouldn’t. If that slob was my kid, he’d be out the door so fast, he wouldn’t know if he’s on foot or horseback. Hey, pig! Give us your best oink!”
These brutal salvos continued.
Larry Malaney told me that in that moment, for the first time in his life, his father reached out and embraced him, kissed him on the lips, and said, “Larry, if your mother and I live to be two hundred years old, that wouldn’t be long enough to thank God for the gift He gave to us in you. I am so proud that you’re my son!”
It would be hard to describe in words the transformation that took place in Larry Malaney, but I’ll try. He came back to school and remained a hippie, but he cleaned up the best he could. Miracle of miracles, Larry began dating a girl. And to top it off, he became the president of one of the fraternities. By the way, he was the first student in the history of our university to graduate with a 4.2 grade point average. Larry Malaney had a brilliant mind.
Larry came to my office one day and said, “Tell me about this man Jesus.” And for the next six weeks, in half-hour increments, I shared with Larry what the Holy Spirit had revealed to me about Jesus. At the end of those six weeks, Larry said, “Okay.”
June 14, 1974, Larry Malaney was ordained a priest in the diocese of Providence, Rhode Island. And for the past twenty years, he’s been a missionary in South America, a man totally sold out to Jesus Christ. Do you know why? It wasn’t because of the six weeks of sitting in Brennan Manning’s office while I talked about Jesus. No, it was because of a day, long ago, during a Christmas vacation, standing at a bus stop, when his lace-curtain Irish father healed him. Yes, his father healed him. His father had the guts to get out of the foxhole and choose the high road of blessing in the face of cursing and taunts. His father looked deeply into his son’s eyes, saw the good in Larry Malaney that Larry couldn’t see for himself, affirmed him with a furious love, and changed the whole direction of his son’s life.
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Lodged in your heart is the power to walk into somebody’s life and give him or her what the bright Paul Tillich called “the courage to be.” Can you fathom that? You have the power to give someone the courage to be, simply by the touch of your affirmation. This might mean that you need to reach out a hand of reconciliation to someone you’ve estranged. It might mean making a telephone call to somebody with whom you’ve had a conflict. It might mean making a long-distance phone call to someone in your family that you haven’t talked to in years. It might mean inviting a work colleague, whom you can’t stand, out to lunch or dinner.
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From Brennan: “For Jesus, grace was relationship, the presence of Abba Himself in our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is the same healing spirit that dwells in the human soul of Jesus Christ that enables the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the lame to walk again. That’s the identical healing spirit that dwelt in the great soul of Larry Malaney’s father, empowering him to resurrect his son to newness of life. It’s the same healing spirit dwelling in the great soul of Aldonsa, from Don Quixote. The question is not “can she heal?” There’s only one healer in the New Israel of God and that is Jesus the Christ. The only question is “will she allow the healing spirit of the risen Jesus to flow through her; will she reach out, and touch Him?”
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“The question is not “can we heal?” The question, the only question, is “will we let the healing power of the risen Jesus flow through us to reach and touch others, so that they may dream and fight and bear and run where the brave dare not go?
Consider this:
1. Ask the Father to bring to your mind one person in your life who has administered the healing touch of Jesus to you. Spend a few minutes in gratitude.
2. Now ask the Father to bring to your mind one person in your life who needs that same healing touch. Take some time and decide on a tangible way you can return the favor.”
