Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!
One of the best, distinctively Lutheran (pretty much) doctrines is the teaching of the Two Kingdoms. The Kingdom of the left hand and the Kingdom of the right hand. The Kingdom of Law and the Kingdom of Grace. In Latin we have the fancy coram mundo and coram Deo which is ‘amidst the world’ and ‘amidst the Lord.’ What this teaching does is draw a pretty deep line in the sand between worldly stuff and heavenly stuff. The worldly realm is ruled by and operates on the concept of law and order. The heavenly realm is ruled by and operates on the concept of grace and mercy. We see the allusion to this very clearly when our Lord Jesus is standing before Pontius Pilate in the heart of His passion. He says to Pilate “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world” (JN 18:36). What does this mean and why do we care?
This means that we as God’s beloved and baptized people live in both of these Kingdoms at the same time. We are ‘in the world’ but not ‘of the world.’ We live in countries and provinces and cities all that have law and order to help maintain civility. Do these things, don’t do those things. Stop at the red light, go when it’s green. Pay your taxes to Caesar because it’s his picture on the coin. Follow the law of the land. St. Paul hammers away at this in Romans 13: “3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (3-4). So you have this earthly Kingdom, the Kingdom of the left hand, a Kingdom of law and order. Do good, you live in peace. Do bad, you go to jail. Simple. None of this is new or ground breaking stuff, right?
So what about the other Kingdom? The Kingdom of the right hand, the Kingdom of grace and mercy. This is the one we heard about today in all of our Scripture readings for this 7th Sunday after Epiphany. The light of God’s Heavenly Kingdom is ever being revealed more and more, and in particular, in how God’s people embrace and live out the amazing grace of God by showing love and mercy and forgiveness to only those people you like and only those who vote the same way you do and agree with you on social media! Oh, oops, that’s a mistranslation of the original language. Rather what does our Lord say? “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (LK 6:27). It’s precisely the opposite! Let the light of God’s Kingdom of the right hand shine on the darkness of those who hate you and disagree with you and don’t like you or your politics!
And this truly is the hardest part about Christianity. When you realize that Jesus our Lord was crucified not only for those who loved Him but also all of those who hated Him. The Pharisees and the scribes, the Jews, the Romans, all the people who wanted Him dead and gone and suffering. The mockers and the nay-sayers. “Love those people” the Lord tells us. Do good to those people Jesus says. “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” This is the stuff of the Kingdom of the right hand. Our Lord Jesus wants His people, you, to be conduits of His grace.
Around our house we tend to be coffee snobs. There’s no pre-ground Nabob or Edwards coffee cans on our pantry shelves. We buy whole bean espresso and hand grind it with a burr grinder to exact grind specifications. Then after properly weighing out the right amount of beans and water, the brewing process begins. Be it Bialetti or Aeropress, strong and bold coffee that is rich in flavour and Chutzpah is the product. Anything less would be uncivilized! Recently, I got a fancy pour over style coffee decanter. It looks like some kind of science potion fleaker you broke in high school chemistry class! You put the ground coffee in the top and then gently pour over 85 degree water, slowly and carefully, backwards and forwards in a gentle spiral! Then, through the miracle of time, you have the smoothest and most velvety coffee you’ve ever had. The hot water drips through the ground beans and coffee is born! … Wait a minute, isn’t that exactly how every regular drip coffee maker works?? Shhhh! This is different!
The more I thought about it, the more this pour over coffee maker became an analogy to God’s Kingdom of grace! There’s all the goodness of God’s grace and mercy that needs to get into the world, the kingdom of the left hand. Through the Holy Spirit He pours it out lavishly and it drips down into the world through His people. In the ways that you deal with and respond to others, you share the Kingdom of grace with people. Just as Christ Jesus has been gracious and merciful to you, as His Kingdom of light has come to you, He wants us likewise to do the same for other people. “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (LK 6:35-36).
This is really revolutionary stuff. Nobody wants to extend grace and love to people who hate you. Half the time we don’t want to do this to people we actually like let alone our family members! It’s revolutionary because to embrace God’s Kingdom of the right hand, you need to confess that you haven’t been gracious. You haven’t been merciful. You haven’t been kind and loving. You’ve been a poor, miserable sinner like everyone else in the kingdom of the left hand. We behold the cross of Christ and see the love of God for us though. If God can forgive me, if He can show grace to me for my short comings and sins, then I can do the same for others. In and of ourselves we can’t do this. We have no ability to do this. Our sinful genetic programming won’t allow it. So we need to be reprogrammed. This happens in repentance. We confess our sins, turn away from them, and pick up our own cross to follow Christ our Lord. This is the way of the Kingdom of grace.
This also happens in our Baptism where the Holy Spirit drips His grace upon us in the washing and regeneration of the Word. To show other people grace and mercy we need to remember that we ourselves have been shown grace and mercy. And this happens in our Baptism. Baptism is the entrance, the gate into God’s Kingdom of the right hand. It is the very heart of faith to receive the grace of God either as an infant or an adult in the baptismal font. Likewise also the Lord’s Supper where that same grace and mercy of our King comes to us in a king-sized meal of bread and wine. There the true body and blood of Christ fill us from the inside out with forgiveness, life and salvation. The old adage “you are what you eat” has never been more true than when it comes to Holy Communion. You will be like Christ when you are what you eat at the Lord’s table.
“14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. … if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:14,20-21). This is how the Kingdom of the right hand works. Be like your Father in heaven by abounding in grace, mercy and forgiveness to others - regardless of what they have done to us and regardless if they can return the grace or not. The consequences of sin will always remain in the kingdom of the left hand. You break the law, there will be consequences. You break God’s law, there are eternal consequences. But we leave this up to God and His time of vengeance. Instead we seek to be agents of grace, ambassadors of the Kingdom of the right hand in all we say, think and do as we dwell in the Kingdom of the left hand. Amen!
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