My Kingdom Come Or Thy Kingdom Come

Matt 7:21-29

Although I do love to be beside the seaside, I am no good at sitting idly on the beach.

I can’t just lie there, bearing all, and soaking up the sun.

I can’t read on the beach either, the pages glare back at me and the wind turns them over before I’m ready.

I can’t often listen to the Test Match on my headphones, either the reception is poor or else I get a dig in the ribs for being unsociable.

The only thing I like doing on the beach is building sandcastles.

This used to be fine when my girls were young because I’d have two enthusiastic assistants.

Now they have to be cajoled or encouraged, in fact most times now they won’t join in at all.

So it’s just me digging industriously away.

And I cast glances to my left and to my right as I work.

Are there other people building sandcastles and are they going to be better than mine?

A sad reflection on life is that, needing to be better than everyone else, wanting to stand out from the crowd, making of my life a kingdom of my own, that no one better dare touch.

I work away tirelessly at my sandcastle. Long after others have retreated to the ice cream van or a game of Frisbee – I’m still digging.

Thinking that if I put in the hours, if I keep going, mine will be good, mine will be best.

As if I’ll be able in the end to stand before God on the basis of the hours I put in.

Then there’s the bit I like best. I dig out a channel from my castle moat down to the water’s edge, so that the water runs neatly up it and trickles round the castle walls.

All very authentic, and you want to know what makes me cross, some child runs by without a thought and treads on my channel.

A reflection on my life with God, I always think.

God like the water of the ocean, is allowed to trickle into the kingdom of my own making, along the channel I have prescribed, but his presence must be controlled and managed, after all, this is my kingdom.

Then very soon, the drama will begin as I know it must.

The tide begins to rush up the beach.

Others take their deck chairs further up onto the stones, the games of Frisbee are abandoned.

I stay with my kingdom, desperately trying to stem the on rushing flood.

I build my channels deeper and my towers taller, and end up sitting on top of my uppermost mound, a King Canute of the twenty first century.

Defying the tide to wash it all away.

And wash it all away, it always does

And I reflect upon God and the way He messes everything up.

He takes my carefully laid plans, my schemes and my hopes and sends them crashing down until I have no kingdom left to speak of.

Nothing of my own devising is ever left standing.

Pray the Lord’s Prayer at your peril my friends – thy kingdom come, it says – and if you pray that and mean that – the results could be disastrous for your personal well being.

Because you’re saying you don’t mind about the tide washing it all away.

This is the fate of the foolish man who built his house on the sand.

This is the fate of one who cries out “Lord this” and “Lord that” but only ever sees life from his own pitiful viewpoint.

I wonder what you might think about the will of God? Does He have one?

There are several schools of thought.

Some tend to think that God has everything mapped out.

That at the creation of the world, the mind of God had it that on this day I would be here talking to you about sandcastles.

Some would dismiss that but point to various happenings in their lives which indicate an underlying direction which surfaces from time to time.

 Like waking up in the morning, being handed a copy of the “Church Times” and seeing the advert “Vicar Wanted – St Matthew’s Redhill”!

Others will say that if we truly have freewill then God has voluntarily relinquished the  hold he could have upon our lives – so that every response we make is free and genuine and any love shown is therefore real.

Is there a will God has about issues – about research on human embryos, about countries invading other countries, about Governments and elections – and if he does then where does that stop when it comes down to my little life and its sandcastles?

“Not everyone who says to me, Lord! Lord!, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven”

To be honest, it’s a text that makes me tremble – for I am never quite sure where I stand in that – just how self centred my motives for good actions really are.

Is it Thy kingdom come I am on about or My kingdom come.

I think that’s a clue to the way through this complex maze.

That all through his teachings Jesus spoke about the kingdom of heaven and making it happen with us on earth.

His stories were examples of how kingdom values would work.

His miracles were moments when that kingdom actually broke through in real time.

His cross is how that kingdom establishes its reign.

So that His will becomes us allowing His love, that sort of love, to flow into every situation in which we find ourselves without us putting our own personal spin on things,  resisting the temptation to spend our lives toiling away at kingdoms made of sand and daring to call that discipleship.

It is taking the principles we find in the Gospels and applying them again and again with no thought as to how that might make us look, or how other people think of us, or personal satisfaction and gain, or going with the majority.

This is the kingdom built on the rock and it seems to me that its constituent parts include:

Accepting each other as we truly are – because God accepts us in that way.

Seeing the best in each other – because God has touched each one of us with his best.

Including everyone especially those on the margins, with not a thought as to how they might be a threat to what we thought was our territory.

Promoting healing, promoting unity, promoting peace.

Taking God more seriously than we do and taking ourselves less seriously.

Rejecting the impulses which say that in order to be strong we must be king of our own castles.

Becoming so steeped in the life of Jesus that we instinctively know what this mounts up to.

Thy kingdom come or my kingdom come – what is it that you and I really are praying in that moment?

I drag myself away from the beach, my sandcastle flattened beneath the tide.

When the tide goes out again, it will be as if my kingdom of sand had never been built.

A salutary lesson.

The beach is flat, open and inviting.

Thy kingdom come or my kingdom come.

I wonder what it is I shall build today.

RH 1.6.08