Sights and Sounds of the Kingdom

Sunday liturgies over the last several weeks have given us access to the Kingdom of God. We have been invited through the metaphors of the many parables in the gospel to imagine, pray, and participate in the Kingdom of God among us. The Kingdom is the presence of God among us, sometimes in words, and at others, in action. In our prayerful imagination we have been invited to play with the signs and symbols of God-with-us.

Religious imagination is the stuff of prayer and of liturgical celebrations. Matthew, in his gospel, gives us the start of the journey to discovering the Kingdom. Over and over we learn from Jesus as the good teaching rabbi: “The Kingdom of heaven is like…” The journey began with the sower and the wide spreading of the seed of God’s word on the earth. We learned about the mustard seed springing to overflowing life from the dark earth. Yeast provided the comparison to the leaven of the Kingdom. We witnessed that weeds and wheat grew together and that premature weeding (read judgment) might disrupt the tasseling of the wheat.

Our response to the Kingdom was challenged by the story of the hidden treasure in the field and the finding and purchasing of the pearl of great price. Everything else is as nothing after we have discovered the Kingdom.

Like the sown seed of several weeks ago Jesus, in Matthew’s gospel, provides further thought to the universality of the Kingdom. This past week we had a concluding parable about the huge net cast into the great sea. All manner of fish were caught, some good and some bad. Many other things were probably caught in the net as well. Only as the net was hauled ashore was treasure separated from trash! Again, patience was required and judgment put off until the completion of the task. Only in the end fullness of the Kingdom is there valuing and reckoning.

Words provide visual images and suggest the actions and relationships of the Kingdom. There is relationship between the sower, the farmer, the fishermen and the earth. Involved are skills and talents. Also, there’s the difference between a limited beginning and the more wonderful conclusion to the story. There is more than we had hoped for and imagined. The story was bigger than human imagining.

Liturgy: Sights and Sounds
As the parables invited us with words and imagination to the Kingdom, our Sunday experience of worship with its words, actions, signs, symbols, and interacting believers continues the invitation to find the Kingdom in very visible and tangible ways. The Kingdom moves beyond imagining, when believers see the gathering of the

Church, the People of God on the way to the Kingdom. Real people, diverse families, individuals, believers on various levels of faith are called together. Strangers are strangers no longer as they gather in response to the Father’s invitation in Christ.

Art and music call us together and join our spirits even as the Spirit of God moves among us. We see with our eyes and hear with our ears the action and words of God among his People. Art with its shapes, colors, form, and enticement allows the Kingdom to happen. Likewise, music with its rhythms, soundings, silence, and unity of voices opens us to the hearing of God’s Word among us.

The image of the Table of all God’s children in the Kingdom is realized as all of the believers gather around the Eucharistic Table. There our common Father calls us. There we are fed and given to drink in Christ. The imagined victory of Jesus over sin and death is known in the eating and drinking of the Eucharistic food and drink. Realized in our midst, we are like the disciples on the road to Emmaus: our hearts burn within us on hearing his words and we come to know him in the breaking of the bread. The imagined becomes the real.

As with the verbal parables of the Kingdom, the visual and sensual images of the Liturgy need to be explored and re-imagined. In that conversation with the sacramental signs, we come to actualize the Kingdom of God with us. As we converse with God in his Word and hear and understand within the heart of the believing community, we become what God speaks and we are transformed by his actions into the reality we eat and drink. We imagine and God makes real his Presence in us. This is done in singing, dancing, processing, sitting, standing, and being in the Presence of God in one another.

As the parables are more than “just” words, so our gathering for worship is more than “just” human words and actions. By the action of God’s grace our words, actions, and our imaginings become our transformation into the Kingdom of God. At the Lord’s Table it is for this reason that we pray for the coming of the Kingdom, as we pray the Lord’s Prayer. We are given food and drink for the journey to the Kingdom in communion. Communion for us as a community and as individuals becomes the Presence of God, the beginning of the Kingdom. We are taken up into Christ. We become the Kingdom People gathered in Christ by the action of the Spirit.

As we leave the Liturgy on Sunday, the challenge is to imagine and be that wonderful mystery of God in our world. Sit with the mystery, pray and celebrate the mystery. We might see and know the Kingdom even in our times.

CDH