I’ve called this sermon, “How can we find the kingdom of heaven in our lives?” I was surprised to discover that both St. John the Baptist and Our Lord Jesus Christ began their preaching and their attempt to reach out to the Jews of first century Palestine with the same words: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” What would happen if here today at St. Aidan’s in Manchester we chose to reach out in the twenty-first century to both Christians and non-Christians with those same words: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Let’s try it. Let’s turn to our neighbours and say those words: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Wait a minute! Both St. John the Baptist and Christ are not telling the Jews of the first century to ask other people to repent, to change their lives. Christ and St. John the Baptist are urging the people to whom they are preaching to repent themselves of how they are living. Thus it is right that we too should begin by looking at ourselves and how we are living, rather than at how other people are living. So let’s begin with looking at ourselves, and how we are living with Christ before we start encouraging other people to change how they are living, or not living, with Christ.

Children, do you ever talk to yourself? I do. Do you ever think within yourself about what you are doing or what you would like to do? What would you like to change in your life? . . . I think that’s where we should begin this morning with this reading from the third chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew. Let’s look privately and silently at our own lives and how we are living with Christ and whether there are parts of our lives that might be changed. Many years ago talking to yourself was seen as the first sign of madness, but now it has been recognised that talking to yourself is a healthy way of considering how to act, of examining your own life and questioning whether there is anything in how you are living now that you would like to change. It’s your very own free choice, whether you talk to yourself out loud or think silently in your mind. It’s your very own free choice whether or not you wish to change anything in how you are living now. If you do wish to change something, how are you are going to do it—not how is someone else going to make you change, but how are you going to change something in your own life? I’m not going to do it for you; that’s for sure. Don’t forget that I’ve raised five children, the youngest of whom is now 43; and I’ve learned that everyone has a right to make their own decisions about how to live their own lives. Parents learn through experience to help and guide their children into growing up to become independent adults who take advice, but then make their own decisions. Teenagers too learn from experience to make their own choices. Children, if you get some ideas from this sermon, check those ideas out with your parents.

St. Matthew and Christ Himself are confronting us today with these eight words: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  Eight words—what do they mean? First, the verb “repent” and the noun “repentance,” mean more than simply being sorry about an earlier sin or changing your mind about something. As one Biblical commentator says, to repent is to begin “a radical and deliberate turning or returning to God that results in a moral and ethical change and action. To repent is to make a decision that changes the total direction of one’s life.”

My experience is that it is quite difficult to change the total direction of one’s life. We each need to be very careful that the change we would like to make in our own lives is actually the change that God would like us to make. Twice I decided firmly to change my own life; and twice God intervened to stop my idea of how to change my life. I lived for the first 18 years of my life in Atlanta, Georgia, in the deep South of the United States. There was great prejudice there—great hostility against anyone who was not white, especially against black people, whom today we would call African-Americans. Fighting racial prejudice was what motivated me, what I was determined to do. I was ready to go to Mississippi, to join the Freedom Riders, to sit at lunch counters, to do anything necessary to make sure that each person was treated fairly, not on the basis of the colour of their skin. What happened? God got me out of the United States fast before I was killed at an early age. I won a scholarship to go to study anywhere in the world, chose to come to England and go to the London School of Economics, and did not return to the United States for many years. I have no doubt whatsoever that if I had stayed in the United States I would have been dead before I was 25, standing up for the rights of others, very much alive, before being laid out, very much dead, buried by my grieving parents and friends, who shared my commitment to racial justice but were more patient than I.

Then at the age of 24, I married Sylvia; and we decided to go to live and teach in East Africa. Again, there was nothing wrong with the idea, but God stopped it firmly; and I remained in England, doing educational work on what was then called “world poverty” and what we now call “world development.” Many years later an Eritrean pointed out to me that it was good I had never lived in East Africa, because there were many diseases there, and my immune system is very poor. I have had mumps four times—not many people in the world can say that! As my Eritrean friend told me, with her friendly smile: “If you had gone to live in East Africa, you would have been dead within a few years.” Again, I have no doubt whatsoever that if I had gone to live in East Africa I would have been dead before I was 30. This time I would have left behind not only grieving parents and friends, but a young wife, perhaps with a child or two, but certainly not the five children that Sylvia and I raised, living here in England and Scotland.

When we repent, when we seek to change our lives and our relationship to Christ, what is “at hand”? What is near? What is about to happen? The kingdom of heaven! The third century theologian Origen tells us that “‘the kingdom of heaven’ is not a place but [a] disposition [that is, a tendency, an inclination, a prevailing frame of mind and spirit]. For,” as Origen says, the kingdom of heaven “is ‘within’ us.” The Greek word is metanoeite which means, “keep on having a change of change which [leads to] regret [about past conduct] and a change of [future] conduct.”

A modern Biblical commentator suggests that “the kingdom of heaven “is both a present reality and a future hope.” I find that somewhat confusing. How can the kingdom of heaven be within us now as “a present reality” and yet also “a future hope” which has not yet been realized? What happens in this “kingdom heaven”? What does the kingdom of heaven have to do with each of us?

In the New Testament, the Greek word for “kingdom” is basileia, defined as “a realm in which a ruler acts to carry out his will.” For us, as Christians, the ruler is God Himself. When we decide we would like to enter the kingdom of heaven, we are deciding to trust God to carry out His will within us, whatever our past mistakes, our past sins, our past failings. That is very exciting: we all make mistakes in seeking the kingdom of heaven, just as I have. However, whatever our ages, young or old, we can guide our attitudes and inclinations into trusting God to carry out His will within each of us, because God protects us from ourselves. He protects us from our own crazy ideas—those ideas of mine, such as seeking racial justice or teaching in Africa, did not appear crazy to me at the time. How was I to know that Christ was guiding me into a situation in which I could preach to you today, instead of being a dead body in Atlanta, Georgia or East Africa, where ever my soul might be?

This morning I told my wife Sylvia the title of this sermon, “How can we find the kingdom of heaven and asked her how she would answer that question. She replied, “Pray to the Lord and ask for His help. Listen to what He says and do it.” I said, “That’s not easy. She said, “That is the way.”

Please, remember this: the kingdom of heaven is carried out under the will of God, not our own wills, but we do need to seek that kingdom. So be it!

And so we ascribe as is justly due all might, majesty, dominion, power and praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen

Father Deacon Emmanuel Kahn