Fundamentals: The story of Heaven, Part II

A few years ago I went to a gathering of ministers in Denver.  I didn’t pay the price of admission, and cobbed rooms from a couple of friends.  One friend was the Reverend Doctor Michael Van Horn.  As I was drifting off on the floor, wrapped in an extra blanket, I asked the Rev. what the word spirit signified to him.  He said something like, “Spirit means orientation, toward God or away from God.  That’s your spirit.”

That’s probably the best definition of spirit I’ve heard: orientation.  Not an extra substance, not something separate from our existence as flesh and blood men and women, but where our focus is.  It’s not necessarily a comforting idea, but it seems consistent with both scripture/tradition and with experience.

In the Book of Genesis, God breathes into the nostrils of the clay-man Adam.  The clay man becomes a living thing.  Some people say that’s what sets us apart from animals: the breath of Gods in our lungsÅ.  Christians might say that this is the origin of the soul, the eternal part of the human person.  The breath of God stuck in Adam’s lungs and became our eternal bit.  I think a rabbinical story based on that might say that in each person that breath is constantly longing to return to the creator.  Or perhaps it’s the breath of God that animates our thoughts and desires.  Or maybe it’s the spark of life that then allows our bodies to emanate spirit.

Then, of course, there’s the whole issue of eternal life.  Jesus talked about it, to be sure.  St. John’s gospel is replete with references to eternal life and how to get it.  Immediately we jump from that phrase to our own ideas of something called heaven, a place of . . . well, no one is sure, but there is a lot of talk about knowing things of which we are currently ignorant, getting to do what we love, be it bowling, hunting, having sex, or eating.  And sure, there are definitely some references in the rest of scripture that speak of something beautiful and unimaginable in the future.  But the story of heaven that gets passed around the majority of Christianity sounds more like a Buddhist grasping at detachment than a Jesus story of eternal life.

When John’s version of Jesus talks about eternal life, the other gospels refer to the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heavena.  Kingdom of God is usually followed by a story, a parable about what the realm/reign/reality is like.   Interestingly, this reign or commonwealth or kingdom doesn’t have even the slightest whiff of our common conception of “heaven”.  There is not one word concerning, “after you die”.  Instead, it seems like a turning-on-its-head of the world-as-we-know-it.  Justice is done, the hungry are filled, and the rich go away empty.  Reading the parables Jesus tells of this kingdom, one cannot help noticing that 1) it’s not a fair reign, since everyone is treated well, not only those who have earned it, and 2) it has a very earthy feel to it.

The kingdom of heaven is political.  Before you run to get your bible and find the spot where Jesus himself tells Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world; otherwise my followers would fight for it,” remember that being “not of this world” is not the same as being ethereal.  “The world” is used in much of the New Testament to indicate the way things are, the systems built on corruption, or systems built ostensibly to fight against corruption. 

In the mid-nineties a group of kids passed through Gunnison, Colorado, where my wife and I were living.  They had just finished a Rainbow Family Gathering and were on their way to Oregon.  They camped for a couple weeks in the National Forest near town, and we got to know some of them.  Most of these kids spoke derisively of the world system – the government, capitalism, communism, everything – as “Babylon”».  They picked that word up from Rastafarianism via reggae music, which in turn gleaned the concept of an empire of oppression from the Bible.  The Bible both describes the historical Babylonian empire (which enslaved its neighbors and reeked havoc in the name of keeping the peace) and the metaphorical Babylonian empire(s) centuries later.  The ending book of the New Testament, in fact, identifies Babylon with Rome and her empire.  It’s a natural step to understand all empires, be they economic like multi-national corporations, political like the United States, or religious, like ____________ (name your favorite).

The kingdom of heaven stands in stark distinction of any empireb because it is not about power over, but power under.  Power over is how all empires operate.  They expand by incorporating their surroundings, absorbing everything, appropriating what works and crushing what doesn’t, always changing, always hungry.  The power under kingdom of heaven constantly gives, taking as its source of energy the weakness of God in Christ, giving itself away to the unworthy, especially the weak, the oppressed, the marginalized, but also to the power-mongers, turning the other cheek, surrendering shirts and going the extra mile. 

The kingdom of heaven is personified in Jesus and is always on the move, never finding a place to sleep, hounded, afraid, but relentless in love.

            Despite their bad press in the pages of the gospels, the Pharisees gave birth to two important children: the Christian movement and the rabbinical tradition.  And despite their divergence from one another and from the source(s) of their inspiration, both movements have a lot to teach one another.  Around the time of the Jesus movement, the rabbis started talking about something they called, in Hebrew, Tikkun Olam, or world repair.  Fixing the world.  Today it means any kind of social justice work, but maybe there’s something lost if it doesn’t include the importance of prayer.

            In the same way, Jesus taught his followers to pray that God’s realm would come on earth as it is in heaven.  In other words, despite the apparent separation of God from creation, the fractured nature of things as we see them, God desires to repair the world and desires our help in doing so.  In fact, says St. Paul, we are to be co-workers with God (or for God, or of God) in Tikkun Olam.  This is the kingdom of heaven, not a gauzy afterlife on a cloud.

            The end of the Book of Revelation is about “the kingdoms of this world now become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ,” of the celestial realm descending and God dwelling with God’s people.  There is definitely a future element to the kingdom of heaven, but waiting it out isn’t part of our present.  Working for it is.

            Hoping for an eternal existence of taking our ease, fat on soul food at the heavenly cafeteria (good and corny as that sounds even as I re-read it) isn’t the goal of any life, and especially not of the Christian life.  The entire story of Jesus, death and resurrection, is a pattern for all of creation, not least of which is humanity.  Jesus was only the first to pass under the mountains and emerge on the other side, glorified and ready to face the sun.  We are also headed that way.  Resurrection is seldom understood in any Christian setting, liberal or conservative.  Instead, the focus is on the symbolism of the resurrection, which for liberals is feeling better about myself and for conservatives is dying and zipping off to heaven.  Maybe resurrection means a little more.  Maybe it signifies the rebirth of the cosmos.  Not just signifies, but anticipates.  Maybe St. Paul’s creation groaning for the appearing of the sons and daughters of God in our resurrection is a real thing and symbolic of the work we’re to be about.  Maybe.

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Å I think it’s the ability to tell stories that make us different.  But some animals, especially chimpanzees, can tell stories.  They can lie.  So, maybe I’ll have to rethink my theory.

a This was out of reverence for God’s name and a reluctance to toss it around too cavalierly.  We might do well to think about that precaution.

» One guy, whose “Family name” was Sasquatch, refused to come to our house and shower, even though his friends begged him to.  He asked me one day as we rode around in his van if there is any evidence of combs in the Bible.  I didn’t know.  A little research showed that ancients were somewhat concerned with hygiene, even though they might be dirty by contemporary American standards.

b Some people have actually used the word “empire” to translate the NT word Baseleia.  That isn’t inaccurate.  In fact, it works as well as kingdom.  One of the problems with much of NT theological work is that it uses words and phrases from the world around the writers.  The writers often do not simply tweak those phrases, but twist, turn, pound, and reshape them to mean nearly the direct opposite.  The emperor was “Son of God” and “Savoiur”.  The Roman Empire brought a kind of peace among those who pleased the Son.  A quick glance at the NT shows how those words were co-opted to very different ends.