So What Does the Kingdom of God Have to do with Cheesefare/Forgiveness Sunday and Orthodox Lent?

The Gospel according to St. Matthew 6:14-21

‘The Lord said, “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

            “And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

            “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”’

So when the Kingdom of God comes, what will it look like? What will it be like? We Orthodox hear about the Kingdom of God all the time in our Liturgies. And if we are listening to the Scripture readings, we hear about it there. And if we are reading our Bibles on our own, we will come across the Kingdom of God again and again in our New Testament and especially in Jesus’ teaching. The Kingdom of God is obviously a major concern of our Lord. In fact it is the concern of everything he does and the subject of everything he says. But if that is the case, it’s curious, to me at least, that the Kingdom of God hardly registers on the list of those things that concern us in our own experience of Christian faith. We hardly even know what it is, much less are any of us concerned to construct our lives around it. The thing to remember about the Kingdom of God is that there is a King! And a king reigns, and the people over whom a king reigns are his servants. They attend to what he says. They do what he commands. You can tell a person who is committed to living for his Lord a mile away because of the way that person lives, that person is different, his priorities are different, the way he treats others is different, the way he uses his resources and his time is different. The Kingdom of God is where the King is reigning, where he rules, where he is Lord. And for our purposes today, the Kingdom of God is not some territory, it’s not a place; rather the kingdom of God is the hearts of the men and women in whom Jesus is now Lord, over whom the Lord Jesus is reigning right now.

But most people who identify as Christians and who maybe even go to church live as if they never even heard there is a king. They do what they want to do. They follow the crowd around them in terms of what they are really living for. They gossip and speak badly of other people because they are jealous or envious of some slight advantage they think that person has. They actually think that getting rich, getting access to money, becoming successful, experiencing prosperity is what our lives are about. We are like the Old Testament Book of Judges all over again: ‘In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.’ (Judges 21:25) And the writer of Judges, by the way, does not think that this is a good thing.

We see this in particular at Lent. I don’t know why, but for some reason, Orthodox Christians don’t think Lent applies to them. Many Orthodox Americans are like this, too. This is how many Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians are like, as well. And many Orthodox Kenyans are this way, too. When I lived in Kisumu and traveled around western Kenya, I observed that almost everywhere I went, I was the only one trying to keep the Lenten fast. And almost nobody was fasting on Wednesdays or Fridays either. And even on Sundays, often when I was invited to preach in a parish, I would be invited to join the priest for breakfast before the Liturgy!

And when I gently inquired as to why so many Orthodox Christians ignored fasting, you can already guess what I was told: ‘This is Kenya!’ they said. ‘You can’t expect a Kenyan to go without eating meat,’ they said. Actually, what I think or expect is irrelevant. But I think that what my Orthodox friends are really saying is that there is no king in Israel and we will do what we want to do.

I have a problem with our gospel reading this morning. Just listening to it gives the impression that Jesus is giving us a list of rules that we must follow. And the rules in our passage have to do with forgiving our brother and our sister, with how we should fast, and with how to use our money and our things. And when we take this passage out of its context, which is what we are doing this morning (!), this is certainly what it sounds like: Do this and do this, don’t do that but do this instead. But Jesus is not giving us a list of rules for his followers to do. And even though our Church has thought it a good idea for us to consider this passage on the Sunday before Lent, this passage has nothing to do with Lent, as Lent did not exist when Jesus spoke these things. Instead Jesus is doing something very different.

This passage in Matthew 6 is part of a bigger section that we call the Sermon on the Mount. ‘You have heard it was said,’ says Jesus; ‘but I say to you…’  He says this again and again. Jesus is not underlining what good and holy people need to do in order to rightly keep the law. Instead he is overturning everything, like the money changers’ tables in the Temple, he is redefining everything, he is recreating everything. The Sermon on the Mount is not just Jesus giving profound religious teaching about life, that people will subsequently pay no attention to. Jesus is describing what it means to live in the Kingdom of God. The Sermon on the Mount is his manifesto for the Kingdom of God. He is describing what someone who is living in the Kingdom of God will look like, will be like. And the reason he can do this is because the King has come back to Israel. He is the King, and this is his Kingdom, and you are invited to live under his reign and as you do so, this is what your life will look like. Not because you have to keep this law and that law, but because you will want to live this way. This is precisely what Jesus is talking about with Nicodemus: ‘I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again…  Truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.’ (John 3:3, 5)

The issue for Jesus is not following some religious advice, it’s not keeping a list of laws or regulations. It’s not even being religious. The issue for Jesus is transformation. None of us can live the Christian life or be like Jesus on our own. But when the Holy Spirit fills us and transforms us, when we are born again into the Kingdom, we want to do what Jesus wants us to do, we want to follow Jesus, we want to be his people, we want our lives to look like his life. And the Sermon on the Mount is his blueprint for a kingdom life, and for a kingdom community. So when Jesus tells us, ‘Forgive your brother, forgive your sister,’ we forgive them. We don’t make excuses. We don’t say, ‘They started it, or they have treated us badly, or they are a jerk.’ We forgive them, because this is what it means to live as a man or a woman in the kingdom of God.

And when Jesus says, ‘And when you fast’- you will notice that he’s not saying, ‘if you fast.’ He’s saying, ‘when you fast.’ Jesus is assuming that if you are in his Kingdom, then you will be fasting. So if that’s the case, we don’t make excuses. We don’t try to cut corners. People outside the kingdom do this all the time. But if you have been born again and if you are in the kingdom of God, then you will fast. Full stop!. The Orthodox Church is not the one commanding this; rather, the Church is trying to help us do what the King has instructed us to do. And when we are in the kingdom, we understand why fasting is so important. This is because repentance is so important. This is because recognizing our need for forgiveness and salvation is so important. When we see the Lord for who he is and see ourselves for who we are, we will fast, because we will want to fast, because we will need to fast. And so if you have never taken fasting seriously, you can start to do so now. Tomorrow, all of us who are on the inside of the kingdom will start the Lenten fast. And if you are an Orthodox Christian, then the assumption is that the circle of those who will start fasting tomorrow will include you.

And the same with our money. Most of us live as if our money and our things and our time and our abilities are ours to do with what we want. But God is the one who has given you all these things. Nothing that is in your hands this morning, or in your bank account, or that you are wearing or riding in – nothing belongs to you. You are like that slave in Roman times who has been given responsibility to manage the master’s property. Is the property that you are managing yours? No. It belongs to the master, and your job is to manage it according to what he wants you to do with it. The same with our money and stuff and time. Does any of it belong to you? No. The Lord has given it all to you and for the purpose of managing what you have been given for his purposes, in line with his priorities. If we used the things that God has given us for his purpose, then we would be like the church in the Book of Acts. Luke says, because of their stewardship, there was not a needy person among them. (Acts 4:34)  Imagine! So is your heart in the Kingdom this morning or is your heart running after the things of this world? Jesus tells us how we can know: ‘Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ (Matthew 6:21)

The church has given us a list of issues against which to measure ourselves. Are we forgiving our brother and sister? Are we fasting rightly for repentance’s sake, for God’s sake, and not to be seen by others? Are we good stewards of what God has given us to manage for his glory? But important as these things are, these are not the real issue that confronts us as we look to begin the Lenten fast tomorrow.

The real issue is this – the King has come. And the King has inaugurated his Kingdom. And the Kingdom of God is not some future far off thing that is irrelevant to me and you today. The Kingdom of God is here right now. The real issue is, are you a part of the Kingdom of God, or not? Have you bowed your knee and your neck to the King, or not? Are you living a Kingdom life or not? Or to put it further in the words of Jesus, have you been born again? Are you filled with the Spirit and are you being transformed to be more and more like the King? Are your blind eyes beginning to see what God is doing, in his church? In your own life? This is the issue that faces you and me this morning. And how you answer will determine whether or not the next 50 days of our fast as we journey towards Pascha will further God’s work in your heart, or will it just be another two months or so (or thirty years or so) of wasted opportunities living for yourself.

And if you have never asked God to do this for you, start by asking him to open your eyes, to change your heart, to fill you with his Holy Spirit, to give you the new birth. These are prayers our Lord loves to answer. It all starts with this. The forgiveness, the fasting, the stewardship will follow in due course.

A sermon preached this morning at Sts. Anargyroi Orthodox Cathedral, Nairobi, Kenya on Cheesefare/Forgiveness Sunday.