Mark 1:14-20

How would you describe a color to someone who had been blind since birth?

[This would make a great moment to walk down into the congregation and turn your "audience" into "participants," or you can continue on probing the question yourself.]

What can you say about "blue" or "red" or "green" to someone who has no concept of color, of bright, light, or dark?

Well, you would almost have to use examples from the sense the blind person did have - touch, scent, sound, taste.

Blue is "cold" compared to a "hot" red.

Green is smooth and sweet, while yellow is sharp and pungent.

Purple has the depth of a bruise.

Orange may not rhyme with anything, but is feels like the sun on your face on a warm day.

Explaining the impossible to the unknowing describes much of the mission and message of Jesus.

How could he communicate the vastness of divine love to individual human hearts?

How could he present the fullness of time to a world parsed into days, hours, minutes, seconds?

How could he reveal the unity of all creation to warring nations, cracked communities, and fractured families?

To get his message across Jesus clothed the utterly unique work of God through Christ in language that seemed deceptively familiar. Jesus' preaching and teaching was all about "the kingdom of God". The first-century world understood the concept of "kingship" all too well. The nations of the world were ruled by kings, and kings were absolute authority figures with unquestioned control over their subjects. The Old Testament refers to the kingship of God more than any other divine quality. Israel was God's first kingdom, but in an eschatological future all the nations would recognize God's ruling status and bow down before him.

So when Jesus spoke of the "kingdom of God', his audience, especially the Torah-learned Jews, thought they knew what he was talking about.

Surprise. They didn't.

Jesus was not talking about establishing a place with borders, a kind of divine fiefdom. The kingdom of God wasn't a political polis or an eschatological, pie-in-the-sky, far-and-away dreamscape.

(from http://www.sermons.com)