Texts – “And he arose, and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”… “And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.’” – Luke 15:20, 31 (RSV)

Prior to Jesus, no one in human history had ever used the unique phrase, “the kingdom of God.” If that had been the case, the term would be found in the Hebrew Bible, which Christians strangely call the Old Testament. After all, the Jews were the only monotheists up to the time of Jesus anywhere in the world. And since no writer of any book in the Old Testament ever spoke of the kingdom of God, we may appropriately assume no one else ever used those particular four words before Jesus used them during the brief three-year ministry that forever altered the world.

During Advent we have looked at how Jesus perceived the individual self, and how he understood the world. Today we shall consider a couple of episodes in the Gospels of how he conceptualized himself. Next week, on Christmas Eve day, we will look at some of the statements through which Jesus explained his concept of God. All of these subjects are extraordinary in themselves, and Jesus’ ideas about them were also extraordinary.

There is nothing that Jesus perceived that anyone else ever perceived in exactly the same way. Each of us is unique in our own thought processes, and thus we have our own unique thoughts. But Jesus thought about things in a manner never even closely duplicated by any other person in the history of the human race.

Jesus expressed what appear to be totally contradictory ideas concerning every human individual. On the one hand, he proclaimed that every one of us is of infinite value to God, and that we should feel that way about ourselves as well. Of children he said, “Let the little ones come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” “You are the light of the world,” he told us. You and I: we are the light of the world. Of the least likely among us, Jesus said, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge me my generosity?” There is no one whom Jesus considered to be ultimately lost, no one who was “beyond the pale.” Everyone was infinitely precious to him.

Americans are getting older. Of course everybody is getting older, even newborns. However, by means of advancements in medical care, nutrition, and physical activity, many millions of Americans are going to make it into old age, whether they like it or not. Are we thinking about that? Are we consciously and conscientiously preparing for it? Or shall we just let it happen, come what may, with little or no thought given to it and what it might portend?

American culture is in decline. Anyone who does not recognize that is probably not yet old enough to observe the decline. The rest of us can certainly see it if we dare to look.

What was so distinctive about Christianity that it succeeded where the others failed? Here is a distillation of the basic concept that set Christianity apart from other western religions in its early centuries, and it was also distinguished from Judaism by this idea. The early Church came to teach that Jesus of Nazareth was the human incarnation of the one and only God there ever was, ever is, or ever shall be. That God is the God who revealed Himself to the Jews, but He became divinely incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

To refer to The Lost Cause in glowing, romanticized terms is to imagine that the Civil War was primarily an attempt by the Confederacy to perpetuate traditional agrarian southern culture. That meant an imagined chivalric code, a fierce spirit of independence, an abiding aversion to a strong federal government, and above all, the maintenance of what had been known for generations as “the peculiar institution.” The peculiar institution, of course, was slavery.

For all the years I have been preaching, I have had my sermon themes planned ahead for at least two or more months at a time. Because that is the case, had I known all that was coming, I would have called this sermon Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria, Climate Change, and Flood Insurance. This has been the worst year in history for Atlantic hurricanes, and it isn’t even over yet. Incidentally, if you think “Flood Insurance” was thrown in just for laughs, it is the most alarming part of this sermon for people living on a fragile barrier island on the coast of South Carolina.

“The kingdom of God” is a term that is used by Jesus dozens of times in the Gospels of Mark and Luke. It is used only a couple of times in Matthew and John. Why, I don’t know. On the other hand, Matthew tells us that Jesus used the term “the kingdom of heaven” many times. But in every context in Matthew in which Jesus used those particular words, Matthew seems to have meant exactly what Jesus meant when he was quoted using “the kingdom of God” in Mark and Luke.

Jesus was a deliberate biblical-law-breaker. He observed most laws of the Torah, but not all. Therefore he was considered a sinner by most contemporary religious leaders. We don’t use the word “sinners” very much anymore. At least most Mainline Protestants and most Roman Catholics do not. Many fundamentalist and evangelical Christians still refer to certain people as sinners, but the rest of us are so acculturated into the larger society that we don’t use that terminology very often, even among ourselves. However, “sin” was big in Jesus’ time. The Pharisees, Sadducees, priests, and scribes talked about sin a lot. It was their religious “stock-in-trade.”

We are constantly judging people. We do it out of necessity. When a stranger tells us something, we intuitively judge whether what he says is correct or not. When we go to buy a used car, and the salesman tells us the price of a 2012 Toyota Corolla with 16,000 miles is $6,200, and that it’s a steal. Thus we wonder whether it was stolen, if it is a steal, and if it really has only 16,000 miles on it. When our best friend says, “Trust me; I won’t lead you astray,” we have to judge whether what she or he says is really valid, even if that person is our best friend.

If you had been able to see the sun in total eclipse last Monday, you would have noticed that around its darkened circumference there was a ring of light. On May 24, 1919, British astronomer Arthur Addington was in South America to witness a total solar eclipse. As a result, he postulated that the corona around the darkened sun was light from distant stars that was bent around the edge of the sun, so to speak, by the sun’s gravitation. In making that hypothesis, he gave “proof” of Einstein’s theory of relativity before Einstein had even published his theory. The gravitation of stars and planets causes light to bend. That is amazing. Astronomy is amazing. Space is amazing. But to say that is not the point this sermon is trying to make. The point comes later.

Being anxious about anything doesn’t change anything! It only makes the problem worse, whether the problem is a severely depleted bank account, or a child whose marriage is falling apart, or a diagnosis last week that you or someone close to you has stage three pancreatic cancer. Anxiety changes none of those things, and it is certain to make it worse for how we deal with them. There is no point in becoming unstrung by what we cannot change if we can’t change it. And if we can change it, we need to figure out how to do that rather than throw ourselves into an even deeper hole by obsessing about it rather than changing it.

Let us be honest. It may seem very hard to love certain people from whom we have become estranged for whatever reason. Who can easily love someone who constantly rubs you the wrong way, or stabbed you in the back, or cheated you or cheated on you or fired you without justification or betrayed you in a professional or business relationship? Is Jesus asking the impossible of us? Is it realistic to suppose that normal human beings can truly love their personal enemies?

The first saying is Matthew 5:39, “Do not resist one who is evil.” Here are the five verses which provide the entire context for our text. "You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. For if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also, and if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go a mile, go with him two miles. Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse from him who would borrow from you” (Mt. 5:38-42).

It takes a lot of chutzpah to try to draw three sermons out of a New Testament letter that almost no one has ever heard of and over whose title there is no unanimity of pronunciation and that also has only twenty-five verses. Furthermore, if a preacher were going to try to pull this off, why would he wait fifty-two years before attempting it?

This is the second of a series of three sermons based on Paul’s letter to Philemon. Philemon was a leader of the church in Colossae in what now is Asian Turkey. He owned a slave named Onesimus. Onesimus ran away from his master, fleeing to Rome, where Onesimus located Paul, who was under house arrest. (There is more to this story than just that, but that’s all the time I have to repeat the background for those who were not here last Sunday to hear the first sermon.)

Paul’s letter to Philemon is the third-shortest book in the New Testament. It isn’t a book, really; it’s a letter, an epistle, a mere email, if you will, two thousand years before there were emails. Philemon is so short that there are no chapters. There are only verses, twenty-five of them, to be exact. When I announced that I would be reading “Philemon 1-10,” your heart may have skipped a beat, or three, imagining that you would be subjected to listening to ten full chapters of holy writ. Holy cow! But since there are no chapters, only verses, you just heard 40% of an entire New Testament “book.” And you survived it, no less.