Our backyard is heavily populated. It is home to birds and bugs, to snails and occasional snakes, and most of all, our backyard is populated with moles. The turf is home to those burrowing creatures, moles. I have the twisted ankle to prove it, thanks to sinking in one of the burrows. Our backyard has moles. In fact, if you would like to have the church picnic in my backyard, maybe some of you would be kind enough to stomp on them. Moles are unpleasant, destructive, and even dangerous animals – not so dangerous by what they are as by what they do. They dig and make ridges in the turf, where people can stumble, and that’s dangerous.
Now moles, as you may know, are animals with some unusual features. They have very small eyes; they cannot see very much. Moles really don’t need to see, because they spend most of their time underground. For all intents and purposes, moles are blind.
Nor do moles make any significant noises. They have almost no voice. Oh, a tiny squeal of complaint comes out when your dog gets after a mole, but, for the most part, they do not make sound. Moles are not only essentially blind; they are mute as well.
But it is not their blindness or their muteness that makes them a problem. It is what they do. They dig burrows. They make ridges in the lawn. The ridges are dangerous. When you trip on a mole tunnel, you are likely to stumble and fall. The mole is blind and mute, yes; but that’s not the worst of it. The mole is dangerous because he deliberately burrows the heart out of your finely tended lawn and makes dividing lines right through it.
So anybody for a mole-stomping picnic this afternoon? Hey, don’t laugh. Stomping moles is better than swatting yellowjackets, which we have sometimes done at church picnics in Rock Creek Park! Oh, I forgot. I have yellowjackets in my backyard too. I guess we’d better stick to the park.
Jesus showed us one day that there are moles in God’s world, and that they are blind and mute, and worse. They are divisive. Moles want to do damage. They do not understand, but they want to do harm. They will not speak a word of hope, but they will grumble about things and cause trouble. Blind and mute and worse; they are divisive.
It all happened when someone brought to Jesus a man who was indeed both blind and mute, and Jesus healed that man. One person, touched by Jesus, once blind and mute, could now see and speak. But now listen. Is anybody else still blind and mute, despite what Jesus has done?
All the crowds were amazed and said, "Can this be the Son of David?" But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, "It is only by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, that this fellow casts out the demons."
Isn’t that astonishing? The crowds said, “Can this be the Son of David?” If somebody is healed of his disabilities, doesn’t this mean God is at work? Doesn’t this mean that the Messiah we have hoped for is finally here? Isn’t it wonderful? Somebody who was blind and mute can now see and speak? That’s what the simple, uncomplicated folks saw.
But listen to the Pharisees. The religious leaders, the good folks, the ones who had studied their Bibles, went to church all the time, were diligent about getting it right – what did they say? What was their reaction?
“It is only by … the rule of the demons that this fellow casts out the demons.”
Can you believe that? They saw a man healed and made whole and decided that it was of the devil! Now I ask you, who is still blind and mute? One man got cured and can once again see and speak. But don’t you have the feeling that a whole lot of other folks are still blind and still mute? They don’t see; they don’t get it.
The moles in my backyard are not only blind and mute, but they do a lot of divisive damage as well. Let’s think about this. Jesus cured a blind and mute man, and the Pharisees react with irritation. They don’t like it. Why not?
I
Jesus saw that they were making excuses for their own failures. Jesus saw that they were trying to draw attention away from their own spiritual power shortage. And the way you do that is to pooh-pooh somebody else’s achievements. The way you get the monkey off your own back is to make excuses and to dismiss as worthless what others have done.
Jesus healed. The Pharisees knew they had never done that. Well, since we know we are right, since we know what God is about, since things like that just cannot happen – it must have been Satan that did it. Jesus is some kind of trickster, some sort of flim-flam man. We don’t know how He did it, but it wasn’t real, it wasn’t of God. The Pharisees labeled Jesus’ healing miracle as demonic because they had failed to do Kingdom things, so to get attention off their power shortage they wrote off His Kingdom accomplishments.
The Lord’s Prayer invites us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come”. It invites us to ask the Lord to bring all He wants to bring into our world. Thy Kingdom come. The issue is, however, that when He does that, if it’s not the way we want it, and especially if it’s not because of what we’ve done, we put it down. We write it off. We pooh-pooh it and we even call it demonic. “Thy Kingdom come”, but if we are not open to see what God is doing, we will put the Kingdom down and we will be blind and mute. Like the moles in my backyard, blind and mute, the Pharisees couldn’t stand it that somebody like Jesus, without their approval, could do Kingdom work, and they couldn’t. So they rationalized their failure.
I think about what we are to do as witnesses for Christ. Has anybody come to Christ because of our word of witness? Has anybody actually become a Christian through anything we have done or said? Oh, I’ve heard lots of discussions on this topic. The first thing we do is run down other people’s styles of witnessing. We don’t like the televangelists; they are always after money. We don’t like the megachurches; they are all about numbers. We don’t like the tract-passers at the subway stops; they invade our space. We are very full of the kinds of evangelism we don’t intend to do, and consign them to the rubbish heap. But if we have prayed, “Thy Kingdom come”, and it is coming through somebody’s work and witness, aren’t we just rationalizing? Aren’t we just making excuses for our own failures? If we don’t like Brother Whosit’s style of evangelism, then what kind of evangelism will we pursue? If we don’t care for what Sister Thingamy does to win others to Christ, then let’s see what we will use to win them. There’s room for everybody to do something positive for the Kingdom. If all we can do is to be negative and consign to the garbage dump what others do for the Kingdom, then how dare we pray, “Thy Kingdom come”? We are still blind and mute.
Jesus was on a mission to redeem people from disabilities, from self-destruction, from sin. Jesus went out to show everyone how much God loved them and to give them signs of the coming of God’s Kingdom. It is an awesome thing to pray, “Thy Kingdom come”, because it reminds us that the Kingdom may come in ways that we do not expect and through means that we have nothing to do with. Kingdom work might be done, right under our eyes, and we do not see it; Kingdom things might happen and we feel embarrassment because we didn’t get there first.
When we pray, “Thy Kingdom come”, watch out! The Spirit may move in our community and do things that we are still just talking about. God’s Spirit might do things for children that we haven’t even dreamed of. Our Christ may heal families by using secular groups, all kinds of things that we may not understand. Who knows but the Spirit might use government agencies to handle troubled youth while we are just wringing our hands worrying about young people. Whey you pray, “Thy Kingdom come”, watch out! If all we can do is to rationalize our inactivity because we don’t like this or don’t care for that, God will answer our “thy kingdom come” prayer with us or without us.
And we will be left still blind and mute, dreaming vague dreams, writing timid little plans, and finding ourselves on the dust heap of history. Thy kingdom come; those who excuse their failure by running down t he work of the Kingdom are still blind and mute.
II
But now I also want you to see that the Pharisees did more than explain away their own powerlessness by dismissing Jesus as a flim-flam man. They were more than blind and mute. They were also divisive. Like the moles in my backyard, they not only failed to see or to speak, but they burrowed into Kingdom soil and pushed up ridges that would cause people to stumble.
Jesus talked turkey to these Pharisees about the issue of division. He said,
“Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.”
Jesus saw that the game these folks were playing was a game of divide and conquer. They preferred to magnify differences into divisions. They forgot that they and Jesus were essentially on the same side, and so they chose to be divisive and to put themselves over against His Kingdom work. And that, my friends, is dangerous business. Exceedingly dangerous – to be divisive for the sake of being divisive.
What did they do again? They magnified differences into divisions, and sought to create hostility among the people. Now there is a distinction between differences and divisions. We can be different without being divisive. They are not the same thing. Differences among us means that we may see things from our own culture or background or personality. And that’s fine. That’s good. That’s enriching. I am very glad indeed that not everybody in our church looks the same, sounds the same, speaks the same language, likes the same music, or, as we are about to find out, cooks the same food. I like that. That’s great. Differences enrich.
But there is a distinction between differences and divisions. Differences enrich, but divisions destroy. Divisions are those personal issues that make us want to beat up on each other instead of getting ahead with Kingdom business. Divisions are those old resentments that we just won’t drop. You know the kind: she insulted me once about a hundred years ago, and so anytime I get a chance I zap her! He laughed at my idea when we were on the same committee, so any time he brings up an idea, I shoot it down. Do you know what I am talking about? Have we had any of that here in this branch of Zion? Oh, good friends, if we are going to pray “Thy kingdom come”, we have to be prepared to let it come and maybe agree to disagree. If we are going to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” we’ll have to learn from differences and celebrate differences, but never, never let them magnify into divisions.
I am thinking back to my early days here. I remember having to learn cultural differences funeral customs. One of my very first funerals was for a lady from one of the Caribbean islands. All of her friends had certain expectations that I knew nothing about. We got out to the cemetery for the graveside service, and they said, “Aren’t you going to sing that song?” That song? What song? Oh, you know, THAT song we always sing when we throw clods of dirt into the grave. When you do WHAT? Well, I learned that day that for at least some island folks, singing, “We loved you, dear friend, but Jesus loved you more”, while clumps of dirt are thrown into the grave – that’s important. It’s not my culture. It’s not my history. It’s different. Now a few of our white American members snickered a bit at that custom. It seemed strange.
But then not long after that, suddenly one Monday morning, our beloved church hostess was found dead in her home. Monday morning, and by Wednesday she was in her grave, quick as lightning. By Sunday many of our African-American members were saying, “Why so fast? What was the hurry? These white folks are always in such a rush to bury!”
Differences. There was a chance that somebody would make those differences into division? Somebody could have chosen to make that an opportunity for one group to put down the other. I thank God that didn’t happen. We have been wonderfully protected from that sort of racism. Jesus said that no house divided against itself will stand; and if we choose to be divisive, if we play divide and conquer games in the church, if our own personal issues are more important than the Kingdom, then praying “Thy Kingdom come” will be hollow and even evil!
Moles, you see, are not only blind and mute; they are dangerous because they burrow into the earth and push up ridges that make us stumble. Let us be aware that when we push differences so hard that they become divisions, we are still blind and mute.
III
But Jesus made us a promise about the Kingdom. Jesus promised, “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you.” Jesus promised that when He did His Kingdom work, we would know that the Spirit was casting out demons. I am here this morning to testify that the Spirit is at work among us. Demons are being cast out, for we keep on praying, “Thy kingdom come.” The Spirit is making it happen.
We have prayed for healing, and some of you have been healed. You have seen real things happen, things that your physicians could not explain. That means that the Kingdom has come to us.
We have prayed for financial miracles. We prayed that our church’s debt be removed, so that we could be free to use our resources in other ways, and in less than a year and a half, it was gone. That means that the Kingdom has come to us. We prayed for financial miracles for needy members, and heard about checks arriving at the absolute right moment. That means that the Kingdom has come to us.
We prayed for leadership resources, and new people have come, with wonderful leadership gifts. The Kingdom has come. We prayed for resolution of conflicts in some families, and harmony came into those homes. The Kingdom has come. We prayed for housing for homeless members, and shelter was found. The Kingdom has come. We prayed for understanding when there was conflict, and reconciliation has come. “Thy kingdom come” is not just an abstraction with us. It’s real. We have seen it happen. We are seeing it happen. The only thing that limits us is the breadth of vision to know what to pray for next! If we will see what the Kingdom is about and pray, greater things than these shall we see.
“Thy Kingdom come.” Will that mean reaching new people for Christ? Surely. New people who are not like the old people? Yes, without question. Will it mean ministries that touch broken lives? If Jesus is still healing the blind and curing the mute, yes, it will. Will it mean expanded facilities on this corner? Will it mean more classes for discipleship and for Bible study? Will it mean people hearing the call of Christ for seminary study and for ministry and missions? Will it mean trained leaders and energetic followers and heart-singing musicians and dynamic teachers? I am absolutely certain that all of these things are coming, because “The Kingdom has come.”
The prayer of God’s people has been, is now, and must always be, “Thy kingdom come.” The kingdom will come, for “if by the Spirit of God I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you.” The only issue is whether we will choose to live like moles, still blind and mute. Will we make excuses for our failures, or will we rejoice when somebody, anybody, does Kingdom work? Will we magnify our differences into divisions, or will be stand together, one people in Christ, awed by His power? “Thy Kingdom come.”
Just a warning; moles do not see the light of day. They die as they had lived, buried in a burrow. Believers, on the other hand, who see and speak the Kingdom, know the light that is never extinguished and the air that is never exhausted. Pray it, “Thy Kingdom come”, and you will never again be blind or mute.
