Village Shepherd

I remember watching a television documentary on BBC 2, on St Paul's Cathedral. The final programme was a look at the choir school, with boys from as young as seven or eight years old until about twelve or thirteen. They had to work immensely hard, with the older boys regularly working something like a 13-hour day before they had any real free time. But they seemed quite happy with their punishing schedule, because for all of them their life and soul was in the choir and the music.

One lad was desperate to be chosen as head chorister. His brother had been head chorister before him, and this lad was frantic to follow in his brother's footsteps and lead the choir. Sadly, he was so eager and worked so hard that his voice couldn't cope with the strain, and he developed nodules on his vocal cords which eventually prevented him singing at all. He was chosen as head chorister, but had to resign after only two or three weeks. I don't know what happened to him after that, for the programme failed to show us what effect this devastating development had on the boy's life.

Of course people of any age can have a dream which may develop into an ambition, and ambitions vary enormously. Many people have a real ambition to win the lottery or somehow or other become a millionaire. Others have the ambition to reach the top of their chosen field. It's this burning ambition which keeps sportsmen and women constantly training and constantly pitting themselves against tougher and tougher opposition.

Other people have less elevated ambitions, but those ambitions may be all encompassing nonetheless. Perhaps the ambition to own a beautiful house, or a certain type of car, or maybe simply the ambition to be happy.

Some people are thrown into unexpected ambition through life's events. Since the murder of his daughter Julie in Kenya nearly 20 years ago, businessman John Ward has devoted his life to battling against the enormous odds of authority and red tape to bring Julie's killers to justice. As did Doreen and Neville Lawrence, father of Stephen Lawrence who was murdered by racist youths in London.

Many people who experience personal tragedy find themselves devoting their lives to trying to prevent similar tragedies happening for other people. So the families of those who have died from leukaemia or cancer or whatever, are always in the forefront of organisations to raise money for research into the illness.

People with burning ambition of whatever sort and for whatever reason, would give their eye teeth to realise their ambition. Some have been known to die for their ambition.

It's in these all-encompassing and ultimate terms that Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God. He says that anyone who really understands what the Kingdom of God is like, would give their eye teeth for it. Or at any rate, they'd sell all they possess for the Kingdom of God.

But he doesn't only describe the Kingdom of God as some paradise to be experienced after death. His pictures of the Kingdom of God are very down to earth and very immediate. And he repeats over and over again that the Kingdom can be realised from tiny beginnings.

What is this Kingdom which is so amazing that people would give their whole selves for it? According to Andrew Harvey, author of a fabulous book, "Son of Man", the kingdom is God's "..great dream to bring all of Creation - every human being and fern and dolphin and stone - into the glory of the divine, to take back all things into the all, transfigured by love and justice and you are called upon to realise it with and in God and with your whole heart and mind and body and soul gathered up and blazing in one flame of love." (Preface, page xix)

Later he describes God and the Kingdom as "..the furnace of love ... the passion ... radiant and invincible in you and as you. Every atom of the universe and every being is in God and God in them. This is the truth of all things and the hope and the beauty and the glory without end.

In the Gospel of Thomas, one of the many gospels written which didn't find their way into the New Testament, Jesus is recorded as saying, "The Kingdom is inside you and outside you." (Logon 3). As Andrew Harvey says, "..the kingdom is now, is here, is the inmost heart-core of reality itself, the fire of love and justice blazing at the heart of all things and beings." (Son of Man, page 15)

How is it possible to "enter" this amazing Kingdom? According to Jesus, you just have to want it enough to be prepared to give up anything. The door is always open, and those who really want to enter, will. But lots of things get in the way, and dilute that desperate longing. Things like wealth and position and pleasure seeking and laziness and fear. Things which hold us back, which prevent us giving our all.

Jesus told a story in which he said the Kingdom was like a glittering and glorious banquet, to which anybody who was anybody, was invited. But those invited people weren't prepared to give their all. They weren't prepared to let go of wealth and position and laziness and fear, so the banquet was thrown open to those who had nothing to get in the way.

Those who have nothing - the poor and downtrodden and destitute - find the entrance to the Kingdom more easily than the wealthy, because the poor have nothing to lose.

If the Kingdom is inside us as well as outside us, then we need to get to know ourselves. According to the Gospel of Thomas (Logon 3) Jesus said, "If you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty." If you don't know the Kingdom you live in the poverty of confusion and misery and anxiety which is the opposite of the excitement and joy and delight which characterises the Kingdom.

But the Kingdom is like a mustard seed, the tiny seed of the God within. Once that God within begins to become conscious through prayer and meditation and service, then it grows rapidly and becomes a large tree capable of sheltering and nurturing others (Andrew Harvey, Son of Man page 19).

And when the Kingdom is alive and active through just a handful of people, then its spread and its growth just can't be contained.

The Kingdom gives us direct access to the Spirit of God. The door is always open. And the Spirit is waiting to empower all beings and so transform reality.