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The Rev. Frank
Logue
Heaven on
Earth Heaven. For Christians, heaven is the big pay off. The jackpot. The grand prize. Yet as Jesus describes the Kingdom of Heaven through several parables, he never mentions streets of gold and he entirely skips the part about laying around on clouds and strumming a harp. Jesus instead describes the kingdom of heaven as a mustard seed, yeast, treasure hidden in a field, a pearl of great price, and finally as a net filled with every kind of fish. The kingdom of heaven doesn’t sound like any heaven I’ve heard described at all. The closest Jesus gets to describing heaven itself comes in the 14th chapter of John’s Gospel when he said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”—John 14:1-3 There are no great details, only the promise that this life is not all there is and in heaven, we will be together with God in a way that is not possible now. I will add that you should be very skeptical of anyone who tries to describe to you the furnishings of Heaven or the temperature of Hell. The Bible is not so specific as some other writers. What the Bible does tells us again and again that life in heaven is life lived with God, fully present to God. C.S. Lewis notes that this is not a big reward to everyone. He calls heaven a reward that does not sully the motives. If your goal is to be with God, that statement alone says something about you. Lewis writes, “It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.”[1] As Christians, we approach death with hope. We have God’s promise of a new life lived with God. Exactly what that life will be like is never described in detail. We have to take it on faith. What we know is that the God who created this world, that contains great beauty and many wonders almost too much to take in, has promised us something more. And yet, heaven is not all there is either. Jesus ends today’s reading saying, So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. In the Episcopal Church, we tend to emphasize life with God, rather than fire and brimstone, but if I’ve paused to fill you in on what the Bible does and doesn’t say about Heaven, we should make a comparable check of Hell. Jesus also refers to hell in terms of punishment and destruction. In Matthew 10:28, he says, Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. He also refers to Hell in terms of abandonment and separation. Jesus says that they will be cast into outer darkness (Matthew 22:13). It is this image of eternal separation from God that is predominant in scripture. The image of a lake of fire is also found in the Bible. The Book of Revelation says, All were judged according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”— Revelation 20:13-15 But in Revelation, it is not the people themselves who are in a lake of fire, but Death and Hades. They have been destroyed. Being cut off from God is an eternal death, which Revelation describes as the second death. So while there are a few more details, the gist of what scripture tells us about life after death, the part the Bible considers most important, is that Heaven is life lived present to God and Hell is life lived separated from God. Pause to think about that just a moment. Heaven is life lived present to God and Hell is life lived separated from God. That is also a formula for Heaven and earth and Hell on earth. Lots of people put themselves through Hell living a life cut off from God and what God desires for their life. A person can go around with a God-sized hole in their soul and try to fill it in lots of unhealthy ways. And then at the other end of the spectrum, there are people who suffer through great trials, but get through them more easily because of a connection to God. Heaven on earth might not look like perfection, but it is a life lived present to God. It is this second sort of Heaven—Heaven on earth—that I think is at the heart of Jesus’ parables about the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven for Jesus is the reign (that’s r-e-i-g-n) of God that starts in the here and now and continues into the afterlife; the Kingdom that is both breaking in to the present and only fully coming at the end of the age. Let’s stop and see what we have learned and how it adds up. Heaven is living life fully present to God. Heaven on earth is our life lived in the here and now with God. Of course, none of us does that great a job at realizing that we are always living our life in God’s presence. Perhaps that is why the image for Jesus is a mustard seed. Just the tiniest of seeds known in Palestine. That tiny little seed grows into a big bush. The funny thing about that image is the mustard seed itself. It helps to know that mustard was a common plant that grew like a weed from those famous little seeds to a bush of about six feet tall. It was such a pernicious little weed, difficult to get rid of and then the next thing you know, you have another mustard bush along your fence row. It may be helpful to picture Kudzu here. I’m not overstating the case. Jewish law prohibited planting mustard seeds in your garden. Here are quotes from two compilations of Jewish laws: No kind of seed may be sown in a garden-bed, but any kind of vegetable may be sown in it. Mustard and small beans are deemed a kind of seed. (Mishnah, Kilaim 3.2)
Mustard seed and small beans, even though they be planted to be used as vegetables (i.e., greens), may not be planted in a garden. (Tosephta, Kilaim 2.8) It’s as if Jesus described the Kingdom of Heaven as a virus, the smallest of life forms that can spread through your whole system. You are supposed to be left scratching your head wondering if you want the Kingdom of Heaven to be like a virus. For a first century Palestinian farmer, it would have been something close to describe it as a mustard seed. For not only is a mustard seed something small that grows large, but it is also like a weed that you can’t pull without it popping up again someplace else. If you have tried to live your life apart from God only to find people and situations calling you back to consider what you think about things divine, then you have experienced this for yourself. God has a way of popping up. Of course, the goal is not to keep pulling the otherwise weed, but to tend your relationship with God. After all, Jesus will go on to describe living a life present to God as a treasure hidden in a field and as a pearl of great price. I believe that when Jesus describes the Kingdom of Heaven as yeast, he is teaching in a different way in telling his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth.” We who are attempting to live our lives more and more aware of God’s ongoing presence then become the yeast that gets spread through the rest of our community. The whole community can rise to a new standard through the influence of that yeast. The goal is not to wait for Heaven to live your life present to God, but to begin that process right here, right now. Only when you start to see God’s presence as something you need more of does the mustard plant start to grow, the yeast start to rise and the pearl begin to gleam as the one of great price. Of course this is not easy. It is easier to put Heaven off until later. What Jesus’ suggests is not easier, but infinitely better, for nothing can get in the way. That’s why our reading for today is paired with those beautiful words of the much maligned and persecuted Paul who wrote, Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.—Romans 8:35-39 Know that nothing can and will separate you from the love of Christ. You can stake your claim on that treasure that is the Kingdom of Heaven hidden in the here and now. You don’t need golden streets, or a harp and a cloud. You need to open the eyes of your heart to see God’s presence in every place and in every moment of your life. Amen. [1] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962), p. 130.
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