Kindom-Building

The following are words I delivered to my beloved church community on Sunday, October 11.

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time (October 11, 2020)

Isaiah 25:6-10; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

*Note: You’ll see the word kindom, not kingdom, throughout this reflection- this is not an error. This term was used in the version of the gospel reading I read and is another gender-neutral word for the Reign of God. I love its beautiful reminder of our kinship.

Whew! When I first read, then re-read…and then re-read this gospel reading, I wasn’t too excited to preach about it. While I love the idea of the kindom of God being like the wedding feast, like the banquet Isaiah describes, I had a harder time digging into the murder, burning, and gnashing of teeth. What do I do with all that?

Some interpreters of this gospel would say that this story is a warning of how God will punish us for not accepting the invitation to the kindom or for not attending in the right garments, by “putting on Christ.” I have a hard time believing that God, who I understand to be Love, is looking to pounce on us like that. However, I do think we humans- sometimes confounding, sometimes maddening, humans- are well-experienced in that kind of shame, blame, and punishment. We do it to ourselves and we do it to each other. 

And so I want to get back to the kindom, to some sense of hope. The banquet is one part of the vision- a feast that offers enough for all and is accessible to all. We have enough food for everyone in the world right now, and yet that food does not reach all who need it, despite the work of Nobel Peace Prize-winning World Food Programme or Bread for the World, or Feed Louisville that was born just 6 months ago in response to food insecurity brought on by the economic crisis. Surely we can practice banquet-setting more expansively.  

When I imagine the kindom, and specifically the banquet, my mind goes to a hot Friday afternoon in Nulu, July 24 to be exact. A group of us, led by our Black siblings, had marched from the Big Four Bridge to Market Street. When we arrived at the corner of Market and Shelby, a group mobilized to first block off Market at Shelby and then at Clay. In the now pedestrian-safe street, a different group of people set out a line of tables with tablecloths, fresh flowers, and chairs. Snacks and water were made available. Demands to make the gentrified area more equitable for Black and Brown folks were prominently displayed. The atmosphere was festive and inviting. A trampoline was set up, a piano was brought out, and large canvasses, formerly known as mattresses, were set up with outlines like a coloring book for people to paint. After the space was set up, people were relaxing and enjoying each other, weaving together threads of intersectional community. This was a welcoming space for anyone who chose to join. This was a taste of kindom.

Like in the gospel, most of the city of Louisville didn’t take notice that it was happening. Some people turned away. Some, mostly white people, were angry, verbally attacking protesters, as they had before and have since, who would dare to disrupt their lives by creatively and joyfully claiming dignity and agency, the very essence of their divine nature.  

Shortly after this joyful space was created, police officers lined either end of the blocked street and also blocked off the side streets around us. They put up police tape and threatened to arrest anyone who was inside the perimeter because it was an “unlawful assembly.” It wasn’t long before the police broke the barricades set up by protesters, knocked down the tables, and started arresting people.  No longer a vision of hope, it became another example of state power asserting itself over those who are trying to bring a greater sense of kindom to us now. The police responses, that day and too many others, are not kindom images.

My mind returns to the streets of Louisville, particularly the area between 5th and 6th, Jefferson and Liberty, now known as Injustice Square or sometimes Breonna Square, for more glimpses of the kindom. Over the last 137 days, strangers have become friends and chosen families. Food, drinks, masks, clothing, and sunscreen have been shared. Rage, fear, grief, exhaustion, joy, laughter, gratitude, and hope have also been shared.

Yesterday many hundreds of mostly white people, some of whom I see here today, marched from Tyler Park to the square, some for the very first time, after listening to Black community leaders like Charles Booker and Sadiqa Reynolds. My vision of kindom includes valuing Black lives as much as white lives and trusting Black people when they tell us their lived experiences. My vision includes raising our voices together, in chant and in song, expressing the values that move us through the streets, to the polls, to empowered action of any kind. My idea of kindom includes experimenting with those values, being willing to own up to the mistakes and failures in the experiments, and trying again.   

When I continue to imagine the kindom of God, my mind turns to beloved community member Michael Whiting, whose death anniversary is today. What might our world look like if, like Michael, all of us made time for meditation, slowing down to ground ourselves in our deepest values? What if, like Michael, we took time to study multiple faith traditions and philosophies with openness and curiosity and encouraged interfaith and inter-ideological dialogue? What if all of us were so passionate about peacemaking that we wrote songs about it and taught children and young people and other adults about it? Might these be kindom experiences on earth?  

In my vision of the kindom, my mind turns to our opening song, a vision of community where all are welcome, and to these words of Wendell Berry from Jayber Crow: “for the community must always be marred by members who are indifferent to it or against it, who are nonetheless its members and maybe nonetheless essential to it.” I believe the kindom includes radical hospitality and the hard work of radical acceptance, even and especially of those we struggle to love and accept.

Perhaps because my imagination isn’t expansive enough to hold the full vision, like in Berry’s description, I don’t imagine the kindom to be conflict-free. But when there is conflict, I imagine restorative rather than punitive practices. I imagine accountability processes that create understanding, connection, and healing.

If we look around our world, it seems we are so very far from the kindom. Electoral politics, capitalism, racism, mysogyny, hunger, poverty, ecological devastation. We see the deaths of too many people from too many preventable causes. We see our Mother Earth burning. These are enough to cause weeping and gnashing of teeth. In fact, in 2020 as these realities become even more obvious, we are actually cracking more of our teeth, according to dentists.

In the midst of it all, may we tend to kindom-building, bringing kindom ways into how we care for ourselves, our relationships, our community, our world. The good news is that we are already doing it. May we lean further into these practices and experiments, learning as we go. May our practices and experiments ripple out beyond us, touching the places farthest from the kindom vision. Our lives and the lives of generations after us depend on it.