https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/20150125sermon.mp3
Text: Matthew 6:9-13
When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, he taught them to say: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus spoke often of the Kingdom of God, or, the Kingdom of Heaven, and remarkably, taught that it was already at hand, near, already present. Some scholars have emphasized how Jesus presented the Kingdom of God as an alternative to the Kingdom of Rome. Others have noted its essential grounding in Jewish understanding of redemption and salvation. The Kingdom of God is a reality in which relationships are mended, or mending, and creation is freed up to become a fuller and fuller manifestation of goodness and beauty and creative outpouring.
In our religious vocabulary we have developed the notion of us going to heaven, but in Jesus’ ministry and in the prayer he taught us, he emphasized the flow going in the exact opposite direction. Heaven is coming to us, breaks in at unexpected times in unexpected places. Your kingdom come on earth, as is already is in heaven.
The universal nature of this kingdom, which spans all ethnic and national divides of persons, means that, by way...