Nehemiah 9: 16-20, Psalm 78: 14-20, 23-25, Romans 8: 35-39, Matthew 14: 13-21

Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

For the past several weeks we have heard a series of readings that give us glimpses into God’s relationship to us. Our gospel lessons are full of parables, stories that were told by Jesus to his followers to help them understand their relationship with God and one another. We heard about the sower and the seed – how preparation of the soil was necessary for growth, we heard about the grain and the weeds – how harvesting of a crop should be carefully done to prevent injury to the grain, then last week we heard several parables hinting at how the Kingdom of Heaven could grow even when hidden in the midst their daily lives. We heard of the mustard seed growing to be a large tree; we heard about yeast being hidden in a measure of flour causing it to grow and become a sustaining loaf of bread, and we heard about the coin hidden in the field and the pearl of great value. These are all wonderful stories and give us glimpses of how God’s Kingdom’s works and they give us glimpses of how important God’s Kingdom is and should be to us.

I truly love these parables, but in some ways, I feel that we have been tiptoeing around a very central question. What really is the Kingdom of Heaven?

What really is the Kingdom of Heaven?  If you were to sit and close your eyes, what do you see as your picture of the Kingdom of Heaven?

Do you see a glittering city sitting upon the clouds shining with an internal light, sitting on a foundation of jewels, surrounded by tall walls made of jasper, with gates made of a single pearl and streets paved with pure gold made transparent like glass? There are certainly stories written and included in the Bible with this description of such a place. We often think of this heaven as the “place” we go to receive our reward after death.

Do you see a Kingdom of Heaven on earth, “a new world order” where all the current nations of the world have disappeared and all the “unworthy” have been purged leaving an earthly paradise, a kingdom ruled by God. This also is a picture held by many people of faith and is supported by Biblical writings and the interpretations of the “end times”.  But this vision of the Kingdom is also a future vision. Just as the glittering city is a vision of heaven to be reached after our death, this perfect earth is only established after the abolishment of our current world. Some believe that this is a near future vision and some believe this is a far future vision of Kingdom of Heaven on earth, but it is a future vision none the less.  Reading of the actions of some of these “end times people"; I believe that this vision is often used to evade personal responsibility of stewardship, the charge given us by God to maintain and support the earth and one another.

We have clues, though, to a deeper understanding of the Kingdom of Heaven. We start our worship services every Sunday with this call. “Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” We all then respond, “Blessed be his Kingdom, now and forever.”  We also pray every Sunday during the Eucharist as Jesus taught, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” With these affirmations and others in our worship life, we acknowledge that the “Kingdom of Heaven” is anywhere and everywhere that God’s will is done.

How do we know the will of God?  People have been asking this question since the beginning of time. The answer is found in several stories of the Bible but one of my favorites is in 1 Kings when the prophet Elijah was at his most desperate and in hiding, The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was no in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.” The will of God is in the still small voice. In another Old Testament reading, the prophet Jeremiah is also told where to find the will of God. “You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart.” The will of God is in our hearts.

God speaks to us in moments of despair, just as God spoke to Elijah. Those moments waken hope that is shared with us from a stranger.

Our Old Testament reading today gives us a direct description of God’s will and a clear picture of the Kingdom of Heaven. Even in face of stubbornness, presumptuousness, and disobedience of people; God is “ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” – In these ancient times God did not forsake his followers. “You gave your good spirit to instruct them, and did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and gave them water for their thirst.”

This is the will of God and is an example for us of how we to relate to one another. We are to forgive, to be gracious and merciful, slow to anger and practice love.

In today’s gospel we encounter hungry people being met by a suggestion from the disciples that Jesus send them away to get something to eat. But Jesus had something else in mind. Jesus told them not to send the hungry people away. He said, “They don’t need to go away; you give them something to eat.” The disciples didn’t think there was enough for those hungry seekers. They might even have been afraid of that many people turning into an ugly riot because of their hunger and the absolutely inadequate resources available. But in the end the disciples turned over what they had – five loaves of bread and two fishes and everyone was fed.

This miracle can give us hope and direction today in the face of insurmountable odds and inadequate resources. This miracle can give us hope today if we can see that everything is possible with God. We need to listen to the still small voice in our own hearts, to allow the love that comes from God to flow through us and start, simply start to address the needs of our brothers and sisters. That does not mean that there are easy answers and it does not mean that we have to provide all the answers on our own. It is God’s power and God’s love and God’s will that we make only the first steps to bringing the Kingdom of Heaven into our lives. Jesus said “YOU give them something to eat.” But we must always remember that everything that we have first came from God’s abundance.

The Kingdom of Heaven is God working through us, in us and by us. We are the Kingdom of Heaven, which is manifested into the physical world through us individually when we act and collectively when we worship together. We need to know that the Kingdom of Heaven is not something in the future, or someplace that to which we go when we die. The Kingdom of Heaven is Jesus’ name for his followers, for us – the total Body of disciples and believers.

If we truly seek to be the Kingdom of Heaven within our daily lives, if we accept our responsibility and realize our ability to act, then we will be able to proclaim boldly as Paul did in his letter to the Romans: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? --- No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Amen