Growing in God’s Graces

 

8th Sunday after Pentecost

Colossians 1:3-14                       

14 July 2013

Elizabeth M. Deibert                   

Guide us, O God, by your Word, and Holy Spirit, that in your light we may see light, in your truth find freedom, and in your will discover peace; through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Many of you met Catherine’s new puppy last Sunday.   Marty is 12 weeks old, the equivalent to a 20 month old child, if you use the 1-7 year dog to human ratio.   It is fun to watch him grow and learn.   His desire to bite us is so intense in this teething period, much as he is reminded regularly that biting is not pleasing to his alpha or any other humans, for that matter.   While he struggles to live appropriately in that area, he is doing great with housebreaking.   If given the right and frequent opportunities, he will nearly always succeed in doing his business outside.   

The point I am making is about the God-given potential this puppy has to grow in God’s graces.   You all know that a dog, not trained, can be a real pain in the patooty.   But with proper guidance, a dog can be a wonderful, loyal, loving companion.   Same is true to an infinitely greater degree with us humans – even us old dogs, who can still learn new tricks.   We have great potential to grow in God’s graces, but it doesn’t just happen without some work.   Left to chance, we poop in someone’s house, figuratively speaking and we will bark at people for no good reason, and we sometimes even bite with our words.   

Today’s scripture, the opening of the letter to the Colossians, written in the name of Paul by some close follower of Paul to honor his wisdom, is an affirmation of the human potential to grow, to lead lives worthy of the God who made and calls us.    Colossians chapter one, verses 3 to 14.   Listen for the Spirit speaking to you:

Colossians 1:3-14

In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

4 for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel 6 that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God.  7 This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, 8 and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit. 9 For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will

in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

(New Revised Standard Version)

For what is the writer thankful?   That the Colossians are living the great commandment:   they are putting faith in Jesus Christ and loving the saints.   When the New Testament refers to the saints, it is not speaking about a select few of super-heroes in the faith, but the whole collection of those who love God.   Love God.   Love People.   It all comes down to that.   And Jesus in our Gospel lesson, the parable of the Good Samaritan, tells us what it looks like to love the neighbor.   The lawyer wants Jesus to specify which particular neighbors we must love, but Jesus uses the story to say who is a good neighbor – the one who shows mercy.

Verse four tells us our hope is in the Gospel, which is bearing fruit in the world and in us, when we truly comprehend the grace of God.    You know I always like to use the Beginner’s Catechism to define grace.   

Anybody remember that definition?   What makes you a child of God?   Grace – God’s free gift of love that I do not deserve and cannot earn.

Do you truly comprehend that grace?   That grace, outside which, we cannot stand.   How many of you have seen Les Miserables?   It was an injustice that Jean Valjean had spent 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed a family member.   After his release, he couldn’t find a place to stay until a bishop graciously offered him lodging. But then Valjean, with a heart full of bitterness and desperation, stole some silver from the bishop and fled. Captured the next day, he was brought back to the bishop.  In this great moment of grace, the bishop said to the police that he had given Valjean the silver, and then he also gave Valjean two silver candlesticks to convince the police of his innocence. Overwhelmed with the extravagance of this turn of grace, Valjean’s priorities changed. He surrendered his life to God and worked to help others, extending the same grace to them.

Perhaps you’ve never felt so desperate as Valjean did in that moment, with his life and freedom hanging in the balance, but have you ever realized just how much God has lavished you with grace you did not deserve?   Have you realized just how far short we all fall of God’s glory and how much we need God’s grace?   It is so much easier to spot other people’s sins.   Richard’s most often quoted line from a sermon when we co-pastored in Alabama:  God loves the pediphile as much as the pediatrician.   God abhors what the pediphile does, but God wants salvation for that one hurts children as much as for the one that heals children.   To recognize that I am loved no more and no less than the pediphile and the pediatrician helps me to know grace.  We are all in a humble position of need before God.

Now Paul and Epaphras are so inspired by the Colossians faith, hope, and love, that they have not ceased praying for them – that they would be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that  they would lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work.   

You know that you are prayed for by name by the congregational care team members – each person taking a day each week.   Con Care team, I challenge you to make your prayer like Paul and Epaphras’ prayer.   Sometimes we pray for people to be comforted, for their lives to be easier, but really, what most of us need is to grow in God’s graces – to be filled with spiritual wisdom so that no matter what happens to us, bad or good, that we might lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him.   

Read this verse with me slowly, this prayer of blessing:   11 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father.  That’s not asking for an easy life, but for a good life, a rich life, a meaningful life of growth.   You have heard that for a tree to develop any strength as it grows, it needs some storms – without some fierce winds, a tree will never be strong enough to endure anything.

Think about how a little child learns patience.   It is certainly not by getting everything asked for at the moment of asking.    Oh, how I remember trying to talk on the phone with four young children in the house, and how many times I had to say, “Wait, please.   Do not try to talk to me, or ask me for things while I am on the phone.”   Of course, I am sure I probably tied some shoes and poured some drink while talking, but many other things had to wait.   The child by waiting learns to be patient, by not having everything, learns to be grateful for the things she or he has.

This lesson of learning to endure all things with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to God is a lifelong lesson.   Nearly all of us learn to be patient.   We do not scream or cry when we are thirsty and must wait for drink.   We learn to be patient while waiting for someone to finish what they are doing so we can have a turn or so we can leave to go somewhere.   But then, some of us need to work at patience.   My mother told me last month that she is still working to teach patience to my brother who shares her home.  (He is turning sixty this year.   She has not given up.)  

If he is driving her somewhere and she is not ready to leave at the exact time she said she wanted to go, he turns into an ornery child.   It is easy for me to laugh at my brother, but the real question is this:  In what ways am I a toddler with God, my loving parent, unwilling to wait, unable to endure discomfort?

We are so much more sophisticated than Catherine’s puppy, Marty.   Our hearts, minds, and souls can be so filled with gratitude for grace, so immersed with spiritual wisdom, that we actually bear fruit.   By the power of the Holy Spirit, we can actually become like Christ, the One who saves us from our selfishness by forgiving us and empowering us to live meaningful lives.    Is your life fruitful and pleasing to God?   

Let’s take a few moments to prayerfully consider the following questions:

Do you know God loves you without condition and are you overflowing with gratitude for that gift?  Or Are you worried that you might fall from God’s grace, thinking that IF you are  good enough, God will accept you?

Do you have faith enough to trust God in uncertain times and hope enough to trust that all will be well no matter how it appears?  Or Are you always anxious and afraid to take risks, or frustrated about all things that are out of your control?

Do you put God and others first? Or  Are you so busy taking care of yourself that you help others only when it serves your own need?

Do your endure hardship with patience and humility, seeking to grow in spiritual wisdom and courage?   Or  Do you resent hard times and complain to God constantly when life is not going your way?

Our God of Grace and God of Glory has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.   So let our lives be armored with all Christ-like graces that we and others may be set free to love and serve you gladly.

Trusting God Enough to Go

 7th Sunday after Pentecost

Psalm 66 and Luke 10:1-9   

7 July 2013

Elizabeth M. Deibert    

Most of you know I’ve been away for three Sundays.   It is always good but difficult to leave town for more than two weeks.   I always become obsessive about accomplishing things that I would never do, if I had stayed here.   It is hard to trust God enough to leave the busy-ness of life behind – to believe that the house, the family, and the church will not fall apart in my absence.   That’s kind of an arrogant attitude isn’t it?   Thinking that life cannot be managed well without me.   That is what’s fundamental to the notion of a weekly Sabbath.   Stopping long enough each week to know that God is the One holding the world together – not me.   I rarely open my computer on Sunday after church until Monday evening.   Sunday sundown to Monday sundown is my Sabbath time.  When is yours?

On vacation, I dared to go as long as a week without checking email – so refreshing – yet risky.  What if I miss something crucial?   Oh well, God and the good people of Peace will take care of it.   And look what happened while I was gone! A signed contract to purchase the Aurora Property, pending your approval today, a grant of $23,000 from the Presbyterians in Dunedin – great news!

It is always a risk to go places, but God calls his people to go.   The Psalm for today reflects on the successful passage of the Israelites from Egypt – now that was a risk!    Do you think they wanted to leave Egypt?   You might say, “Well of course, they did.   Slavery was tough!” But slavery in Egypt was all they knew.   At least it was predictable.   People in abusive relationships often stay because of the security of the familiar.   It is dangerous to try to exit.   But God said to Moses, “Take my people and go.”    They were anxious, but they went.   Had they not gone, they would not have been able to express this sentiment of trust that the exodus from Egypt inspired, a journey which became their primary narrative for understanding who they were – they were people rescued by God.   Here now this portion of Psalm 66:

5 Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds among mortals.

6 He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot.

There we rejoiced in him, 7 who rules by his might forever,

whose eyes keep watch on the nations—

let the rebellious not exalt themselves.

8 Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard,

9 who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip.

You know one of the biggest differences between the ancient people of faith and us.  They gave God credit for everything – good and bad.   We are more nervous to acknowledge God’s sovereignty, even though as Presbyterians, as part of the Reformed tradition, we claim that to be one of our most important doctrines – that God is in charge of the world, not us.   Notice the Psalm does not say that Moses turned the sea into dry land, but God did.   Come and see what God has done!   That is the best message of evangelism, of witness to the truth.   “Come and see what God has done.”   It is all in how you tell the story.  Nobody wants to hear your brag about your life, but change the language and say, “See what God has done and it can become great news!”  Come and see that despite all my parental mistakes, my children are still alive.  Amazing!  Come and see my church – the people are great, despite all my pastoral weaknesses.   Come and see my God – who loves me, even though I am a mess.   

Come and see the miracle that with all the risks of life, we are still alive today.   Why do we presume so much?   If we just stopped to realize every day that God has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip, we would be grateful.   I am more aware of the fragility of life when with my mom.   Every step is a potential foot slip moment, and a foot slip moment could mean a broken hip, and a broken hip often leads to worse things, even death, in someone who is older.   But my mom trusts God and likes to go places, even with the risk.   She even joined her grandkids on the outdoor dance at the wedding party of my nephew last week-end.   Trusting that God is sovereign takes courage.  It means interpreting history in such a way that you express that trust.  

We could be worried that it did not work out for us to build a 3 million dollar church on the five acres that Presbytery bought for us.   We could be mad that it did not work out for us to stay here and lease longer or even buy this place.  We could be upset that it did not work out for us to buy the Faith Church property.    But we’re not because we trust that God is sovereign.

We could be anxious that our timing of transition produces some challenges this fall, but instead we are choosing to believe that God has a hand in all these unusual twist and turns, and that in the end, if we concentrate on simply being faithful and prayerful each step of the way, we will have our own “promised land” just where and when God intends.   By God’s grace we can become our best selves as a congregation with the most flexible, grateful, loving and faithful character we can possibly have.   I can tell you already that when I listen to other pastors and they listen to me, they are often envious of me – for having such an adaptable and dedicated congregation.  They moan about 20% of the people doing all the work in the church, but at Peace, it is just the opposite.   80% of the people are significantly involved, working week in and week out, to keep the church’s ministries and mission going.

And speaking of mission, that brings us to our next reading – another scripture about taking risks.   Jesus, the Lord of the harvest, sends the seventy out to accomplish his work, to labor in the field.   It is not an easy mission.  The harvest is plentiful, laborers few.   Oh, and by the way, take nothing with you – trust God to take care of you.  Hear the Gospel reading from Luke:

Luke 10:1-9

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs

to every town and place where he himself intended to go.

2 He said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;

therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

3 Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.

4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road.

5 Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house!'

6 And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person;

but if not, it will return to you.

7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide,

for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house.

8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you;

9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.'

As we consider our next move as a church, not only are we called to trust God in going, but we are also called to trust that we will have enough.   We do not have all the money we will need, but we will count on God’s providence.  We are not being ridiculous.   We have a well-reasoned plan, that includes trusting God about our future.  And it is not just about finding a place for our comfort.   We are kingdom people.   We are in the business of sharing the peace that God has given us with others.   We need a building and land, not just for us, but so we can do more to share the peace which is ours in Christ.   Our Savior said to his followers, “Go, trust God, and share peace with others.”  If the peace you share is not received, don’t worry.   You’ve lost nothing – that peace comes back to you.   But keep taking the risk to share it, because you will not deplete Christ’s peace.   There is always enough of that to share.

But here’s the other message from this passage:  Sharing Christ’s peace with others means getting involved with them – eating their food, whatever it is, getting involved with them enough to go where they are – not just wait for them to come to you.   Christianity is relational.   It is about a relationship with Jesus Christ and a relationship with other people.   Relationships involve risk.  They take energy.   They require that we look beyond ourselves and our needs to consider the peace that others seek and how to build relationships with them, so that peace can be effectively shared.   

Finally, I’d like to talk about those who founded this country so many years ago, and the courage they had to go – to leave their country, to leave their families, to leave all that was familiar and comfortable.   Some of them left because of poverty.   Some of them left under force and were thrust violently into slavery here.   Some of them came seeking religious freedom.   But all of them developed a spirit of courage and adaptability in going – whether they went joyfully or reluctantly or fearfully.  They learned to trust God, to depend on God, and to be grateful for God’s gifts.   

Some of them had the attitude that this was the new “Promised Land” and that God’s preference was for us, over and against all other nations and peoples.   That attitude has not been helpful.   But on this holiday week-end, let us remember to give thanks to God for the blessings of this great land, for our freedom, and for all the opportunities we have here and the sacrifices made on our behalf.   Let us thank God for the openness with which our country was founded, as a melting pot of different cultures, a place where people with differences can and should live in respect and mutual dignity.   And let us commit to continuing the best of that legacy.

And let us give thanks to God for this congregation and the journey of faith we share with Christians of all nations and some degree with all people of all faiths. We have the opportunity this day, people of Peace, to step forward in faith, trusting God – that our feet will not slip.  When you read the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt and traveling through the wilderness, it is the Lord leading them in a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.   They don’t know exactly where they are going and when they will get there.   There are times of complaining and murmuring, of getting confused and worshiping idols instead of the true God, but they learn to put their trust in God, and so do we, as we keep taking risks to go where God calls and to do things that might otherwise be impossible, but with God’s help we can do.   We keep extending the peace of Christ wherever we go, whether that peace is embraced or not, we never lose it – even though we are lambs in the midst of wolves.  We trust God to provide and we journey on.

THE KINGDOM PRAYER

Matthew 6:9-13
23 June , 2013
Reverend Grant Lowe

Peace         

We call it “The Lord’s Prayer” because we received it from Jesus.  But we could also call it “The disciple’s prayer” because Jesus gave it to his disciples. Or, we could even call it “The Kingdom Prayer”.  “Thy Kingdom come” we pray.

Jesus really focused on The Kingdom of God.  He taught it, he practiced it.  The phrase Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven appears 72 times in the NT.  The version in Matthew emphasizes Jesus is not talking about a kingdom to come in some apocalyptic fury at the end of time, nor when we die in the realm of afterlife, but here and now “Thy will be done on earth as in Heaven”.   Jesus is talking about God as King of the world, and prays that the knowledge of God’s grace and mercy may grow and be effected throughout the world.  The Gospel of Mark describes Jesus beginning his public ministry with the words “The Kingdom of God is at hand”.

Is the Kingdom of God at hand then?  As Fred Buchner put it “Insofar as here and there, now and then, God’s kingly will is being done in various ways among us, even at this moment, the kingdom has already come.  Insofar as all the odd ways we do God’s will are at best half baked and half hearted, the kingdom is a long way off.”

God’s Kingdom is God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven.  Jesus embodies God’s will.  What Jesus is saying is “What would the world look like if God sat on Caesar’s throne, if God was in Herod’s palace”.

“What would a just earth look like?” “What would peace on earth look like rather than a world of force and violence?”  What would our world be like if on the airwaves and bumper stickers hate messages were replaced by respectful dialogue when we have differences?  Jesus was a living demonstration of how to live in God’s Kingdom, a reign of justice and peace that contradicted the structures of his time.  The Kingdom of God contradicted the structures of the temple and it contradicted the structures of Rome.

On September 2, 31 BC Octavian went forth to battle and defeat the fleet of Mark Antony on the Ionia Sea. He thereby became the sole ruler of the Roman Republic and began the Roman Empire. A monument is there with Caesar’s inscription

IMPERATOR CAESAR, SON OF THE DIVINE JULIUS, FOLLOWING THE VICTORY IN THE WAR WHICH HE WAGED ON BEHALF OF THE REPUBLIC IN THIS REGION, WHEN HE WAS CONSUL FOR THE FIFTH TIME AND COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF FOR THE SEVENTH TIME, AFTER PEACE HAD BEEN SECURED ON LAND AND SEA (pace parta terra marique), CONSECRATED TO NEPTUNE AND MARS THE CAMP FROM WHICH HE SET FORTH TO ATTACK THE ENEMY NOW ORNAMENTED WITH NAVAL SPOILS

Note the supreme confidence, reminiscent of a man who claimed “I found Rome a city of bricks; but left her a city of marble”, permeated the monument dedicated to the gods.  It also emphasized that the victor for whom the monument was built was son of the divine Julius.  janusquirinus.org/

The battle was 31 BC and by 29 BC the monument was up and he was Caesar Augustus.  Octavian Augustus was called son of God, divine, and “savior of the world”.  On 1 January 42 BC, the Senate recognized Octavian’s father Julius Caesar as a divinity of the Roman state.  Octavian was then the "Son of God".

Millions of people revered Caesar as God.  But a few followers of a wandering Jewish rabbi in an insignificant province looked at Jesus and said “That’s what God really looks like.”  Both statements are acts of faith.  One statement is an act of faith in Roman imperial ideology based on weapons and force, and the other is an act of faith in Kingdom of God theology as demonstrated in the life of Jesus.  

As Dom Crossan, former professor of theology at DePaul University put it, we often miss the point how it undermines Caesar when the early church said “Jesus is Lord”.  When Caesar Augustus was called the savior of the world it wasn’t just a political ploy – it was something that made sense to millions of people.  He won his victory, and brought peace and security.  The ideology of the imperial Roman Empire was not just the ideology that Augustus was divine, but that Augustus was savior of the world.  To call Jesus God, savior of the world, God from God, divine, to give Jesus all the titles that had been ascribed to Augustus Caesar was undermining the ideology of the empire.  That is basically high treason.

They didn’t admire and praise this Jewish peasant teacher because he reflected their idea of God.  To the contrary, what happened in their encounter with Jesus is so radical that they were actually forced to construct a completely new understanding of God because of what they had seen in Jesus.  In our theology of incarnation we don’t just take our notion of God and ask “How does Jesus fit into that?”  If we shape our understanding of Jesus by our notions about God we have it backwards.  We look at Jesus and we get a better vision of God than we even had before.  This is important:  Taking the incarnation seriously means looking at Jesus and seeing this is the revelation of God.  People knew about kings and kingdoms.  They knew about it from Herod and Caesar and Rome. The Kingdom of God as we learn it from Jesus is a whole new understanding of Kingdom.  

Jesus is not launching a rebellion against Rome.  But he is saying that it is NOT the Kingdom of God.  Jesus embodies an alternative way of living that is the Kingdom of God, where human inequality is overcome, where the poor have good news preached to them, especially those who are the outcasts and abandoned of society.  This is the alternative Kingdom which has our loyalty.  It’s no wonder the empire regarded Christians with suspicion.

The church in the 3rd century and beyond focused on “Who was Jesus” and “Was Jesus divine?”  and “How was Jesus divine?”  But the real question was, is “Caesar divine or is Jesus divine?”   

The Gospel of Luke begins the story of Jesus “A decree went out from Caesar Augustus…” At the end of the Gospel of John the people are saying “We have no king but Caesar.” The story of Jesus is bracketed by the power of Caesar.  In the middle of all that, Jesus calls the disciples to an alternative obedience.

Jesus calls us to be part of this alternative Kingdom. For Jesus that alternative starts with a personal relationship with God as “Abba”, and that personal relationship is transformative. The question is “How does our personal relationship with God play out in the world?”

Jesus prays for the Kingdom of God and he embodies that kingdom, a kingdom that doesn’t oppress, it liberates, it doesn’t inflict pain and torture but submits to a redemptive kind of suffering.  The Kingdom of God turns our world upside down.  It’s not a Kingdom of insiders and outsiders; it’s a “come on in” kingdom in which Jesus beckons both Jew and gentile, Greek and Roman, Syrophonecian woman, tax collector, honest fisherman, temple leaders, roman centurions.  For the temple leaders it was all about who was in and who was out, who is acceptable to God and who is unacceptable, and they kept themselves apart from outsiders, those they deemed unacceptable to God.  For Jesus, the Kingdom of God is not a question of who is in and who is out, who is saved and who is lost; it’s the establishment of the rule of God over all.  

The church of Jesus Christ has a message for a fearful world that can’t see any alternatives to its own morass of force and violence.  

What would the world look like if God sat on Caesar’s throne, if Jesus was in power in Herod’s palace?

For one thing, following Jesus example and Paul’s words to divided followers of Jesus, we would recognize that in God’s Kingdom there would be no racial or ethnic barriers between people, and we as the church are called to labor for the abolition of all forms of discrimination, and to minister to those injured by it. – Courage and commitment by ordinary people can make a difference.  On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on the bus in Montgomery AL.  Rosa was arrested and later went to church and four days later the church leaders gathered to make plans for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, because we recognize that we as the church are called to labor for the abolition of all forms of discrimination.  Many of you became part of that movement. That’s our calling.

In God’s Kingdom we are called to be peace makers and to seek reconciliation among nations.  Although nations may serve God’s purpose in history, the church which identifies the sovereignty of any one nation or any one way of life with God’s Kingdom denies the lordship of Jesus Christ.  As citizens of God’s Kingdom we can seek to be peacemakers, that’s our calling.  It’s not easy, because there’s a lot of hostility in the world, pent up anger, and most of us share in it.  It takes a lot of discipline to be a peacemaker.  

In God’s Kingdom enslaving poverty is an intolerable violation of God’s good creation.  Jesus identified himself with the poor and needy. And if we condone poverty or evade responsibility we make a mockery of God’s love for all God’s children.  

The following was part of a report at a white house conference on human trafficking April of this year:

Slavery and other human rights abuses are an ongoing threat in U.S. tomato fields. Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Molloy once called Florida’s tomato fields “ground zero” for modern-day slavery in the United States. Over the past 15 years, seven cases of forced labor slavery have been successfully prosecuted, resulting in more than 1,000 people freed from slavery in U.S. tomato fields.

One of the most successful and innovative programs we researched is the Fair Food Program, developed by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and promoted in partnerships with T’ruah (a group of Jewish Rabbis) and the International Justice Mission, among others including the Presbyterian Church USA. As citizens of God’s Kingdom we can get involved in efforts to end poverty, that’s our calling.

Jesus confronted resistance and today we face very deep cynicism about seeking God’s just Kingdom.

As Jim Wallis puts it, skepticism is a good and healthy thing. Be skeptical and ask the hard, tough questions. But cynicism is a spiritually dangerous thing because it is a buffer against personal commitment. Becoming so cynical that we don’t believe in God’s just Kingdom allows us to step back, protect ourselves, grab for more security, and avoid taking any risks. But we have accepted God’s call, and I believe God is calling us to model what it means to be part of the Kingdom of God and thereby to attract a new generation of young people by helping them seek the Kingdom of God, and to seek justice around issues like human trafficking, the stewardship of the planet, or the morally unacceptable worldwide rates of deadly poverty and disease. We need to support each other in this, with deeper study, fervent prayer, and new conversations together, all leading to the personal commitments to God.

Finally, and where we began, we can raise the most fundamental question of all, “Who is this Jesus and why does he matter?”

Brothers and sisters let us recommit ourselves to the one who has called us to be citizens of the Kingdom of God, to do what we say when we pray Thy Kingdom come on earth as in heaven.