Some of you may know that I have started playing golf again recently, after 15 years or so of not playing very much and as any of you who are golfers or golf widows will know, that can quickly turn into an addiction. I practised so much while I was away over half term that I've give myself tendonitis in my hand. You get to constantly tinkering with and thinking about your swing and clearing the hips and making a full shoulder turn and so on. Honestly when the psalm talked about fetters of iron I was half wondering whether that was a 7 iron or a 9 iron.

So I hope you'll indulge me today in one one those extended metaphors vicars like when they compare apples and oranges and somehow manage to make out that they are both 'just like Jesus really'.

You see finally least week I'd had enough of blasting the ball over the right hand fence on the driving range and being an active danger to anyone standing three holes away to the right on the course so I got myself a lesson from the professional at a club in Swansea. He asked me to hit a few drives while he watched. Then he'd give me some tips he said.

He dutifully watched while I hacked a few in various directions and then I looked at him expectantly, as if he would tweak something and then I'd be ready for the Ryder Cup team. Instead, his response reminded me of that old joke where someone gets lost and pulls over to talk to a farmer – how do I get to so and so, Swansea or wherever, oohh he says if I was going there I wouldn't start from here.

Essentially if you are going to hit a golf ball, you shouldn't start from here either. It turns out my grip was wrong, my posture, address, take away, backswing, strike and follow through all need work. That's pretty much all of it. Although to be fair he said there was nothing wrong with the club. I need a rebuild.

The trouble is that everything he encouraged me to do feels so strange after 15 years of doing everything wrong that I am now FEEL LIKE I'm as likely as likely to miss the ball and fall over as I am to hit it, but whatever the feeling, now the fundamentals are better, when I manage to trust the process, trust the advice the ball actually goes roughly straight.

What's the tenuous link? Well I think its not actually a million miles from our gospel reading today, where Jesus is engaging in what theologians call apocalyptic. This is a away of imagining a future – but you paint that picture not so much in order to predict the actual form of the future – this is not mystic Meg picking out the lottery numbers. Rather it is a way of exposing what is wrong with the present – it is a way of saying that the way things are is not just, is not right. And justice is required.

Imagining a better future is the first step towards being able to effect change in the present. And that is what the kingdom of God is – not an inevitable future that we must simply sit back and wait for – it is a bold vision, a dream that, if we catch hold of it, can help us visualise – and then bring about the change we need.

In this respect it is very much like a golf shot – you have to visualise the result you want before you can make the shot – my problem I have got so used to seeing the ball shoot off to the right that I discovered I finish every shot looking and facing right – it has become so normal that it is part of the swing – and so a self fulfilling prophecy that will only get worse – until I learn to see it differently before hand. I need to imagine smashing it up the middle in order to have any chance of doing it. If you don't dream the dream, you wont get the result.

But the connections go further than this. It is in fact my whole body that has got used to doing things a certain way. To the point now where swinging the club right feels all wrong, and swinging it badly feels perfectly all right. Learned instincts and habits can blind you to the truth, even when there is plenty of evidence in front of you in the result that everything is not going to plan. I've always done it like this, this feels comfortable, this is just what I do now and so on. And it is not easy to listen to a smug little PGA professional dismantle the whole thing in 2 minutes.

In the same way, the content of what Jesus says is counter intuitive. We are so used to living our lives in one particular way, that changing that now is going to at least feel alien and uncomfortable, is going to feel wrong – and maybe worse than that.

What sense can we make of words like woe to those who are laughing now. And blessed are those who weep now. How much more difficult is it to be told woe to you when people speak well of you, blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you revile you?

We know how those things feel. We know how natural, how right it feels to seek the approval of other and to shy away from anything that we get us excluded or hated or reviled. It just doesn't feel right.

But Jesus is saying, what is right may feel wrong to you, because the fundamentals are wrong. You need a rebuild. From the feet to the hands to the arms, the body and so on. And in doing that, you may need to perform what feel like some pretty strange contortions. Love your enemies, do good to those that hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you and so on.

You see there is nothing wrong with laughing, or being full, or being respected. And there is a place for tears, for emptiness, and for being on the margins. But only when the fundamentals are right. I don't think Jesus was objecting to laughter or a good meal or having good relationships with people who think highly of you. He was objecting to the foundations these things were built on. He was objecting to those who laugh in the face of the tears of others. Being full at the expense of those who are hungry, being accepted at the expense of those who are excluded – like the school, or office, bully who joins in the victimisation of another person so that they can be accepted as one of the gang themselves.

And if we want to change that. If we want to dream, to visualise a world that is different, that means rebuilding what seems right to us, to bring that into line with what is needed to make that vision a reality.

And yet, as I find every time I go to the driving range, it is so easy for the old, well learned habits to kick back in. Of course you don't love your enemies. If he thinks I'm going to be nice to him after what he said about our Ethel. Of course I'm not going to turn the other cheek, what am I some sort of doormat. It just doesn't feel right.

Old habits die hard.

But like Jesus, we should not be afraid to ask difficult questions, to cast doubt on familiar and comfortable certainties and values. To ask if what feels right and what is right are really one and the same thing.

This then is one of those sermons you can finish for yourself. Take the time this week to indulge in a little apocalyptic, visualise a better future, catch on to the coat tails of the dream and let it call into question what is comfortable, what is settled in your life and maybe highlight any tweaks you need to make if you are to be the king of the swingers.

Meanwhile, if you are on a golf course, probably far off to the right, and you hear a vicarly voice shouting FORE – there are two things you should do. Firstly, you should remember that I don't always listen to my teacher and you could wonder whether you are listening to yours. And secondly, you should duck. Quickly. Amen.