The World Turned Upside Down (The Kingdom of God)
Sermon Recap: The Fourth of July often invites Christians to reflect on the relationship between faith and country. While gratitude for our nation is entirely appropriate, our loyalty to Christ should always give us the freedom to love our country honestly—including telling the truth when it falls short of God's vision for the world.
Using Jesus' invitation to "take my yoke upon you," the message explores what it means to live under Christ's authority rather than the competing claims of politics, culture, or power. Scripture tells the same story again and again: human kingdoms tend to place their burdens on those with the least power, while Jesus reveals a different kind of kingdom—one where authority exists to serve, burdens are shared, and love moves toward those everyone else overlooks.
Instead of offering political answers, we're invited to ask a distinctly Christian question: Who is carrying the burden? That question challenges not only how we think about our society, but also how we live our own lives. Ultimately, following Jesus means learning another way—not another ideology or another empire, but a way of self-giving love that bears one another's burdens and reminds the Church where its deepest allegiance truly belongs.
(Given 7-5-26, St. Augustine's Church, Kingston RI)
If you read through the Gospels, one thing quickly becomes clear: Jesus talks about the kingdom of God—a lot. In fact, it is the central theme of his public ministry. His first sermon in Mark's Gospel begins, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news" (Mark 1:15).
Despite how often we hear that phrase, it's easy to misunderstand. The kingdom of God isn't primarily a place we go after we die. It's God's reign breaking into the world through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Wherever God's will is done, wherever lives are reconciled, wherever mercy triumphs over violence and love overcomes fear, the kingdom is already beginning to take shape.
That doesn't mean God's kingdom is fully here. Christians have long described it as "already, but not yet." Christ has inaugurated God's reign, but we still await its fullness. We catch glimpses of it now while praying, as Jesus taught us, "Your kingdom come."
Perhaps the most surprising feature of God's kingdom is how completely it overturns our assumptions about power. Earthly kingdoms tend to measure greatness by wealth, influence, military strength, or the ability to make others serve us. Jesus turns that vision upside down: "Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant" (Mark 10:43). In God's kingdom, the first are last, the last are first, the poor are blessed, enemies are loved, and kings wash feet. The King himself reigns from a cross before he reigns from a throne.
Few theologians expressed this contrast more memorably than Augustine:
"Two loves have made two cities: love of self, even to the contempt of God, the earthly city; love of God, even to the contempt of self, the heavenly city" (The City of God, XIV.28).
For Augustine, the defining difference between God's kingdom and every earthly kingdom was not geography or political structure, but the love that ordered each one's common life. Echoing that tradition centuries later, Stanley Hauerwas argues that the Church's first political task is not to seize power, but to become a community whose common life bears witness to God's kingdom (Resident Aliens, 1989).
The kingdom of God isn't simply another way of organizing society. It's God's invitation to live under the reign of Christ here and now, becoming a people whose lives reflect the values of a King who rules through self-giving love. That vision has challenged Christians from the beginning. It still does.
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