Eternal Life and Other Whatnot: How the Cross is Just Getting Started

Ask a child what they think of when you say "heaven" and you'll get a myriad of answers:

"Clouds."
"Sunshine."
"Angels."
"Jesus" (it is a Sunday School question, after all).

When you ask them (or anyone) where heaven is you'll hear something along the lines of "out there." Crappy Christian art hasn't helped the matter much with images of a golden city floating out among the stars ("It's out there past Pluto. I think you take a left past Jupiter, go for about 200 million miles, go straight past Uranus, right on 53rd (you'll see a Denny's on the left) and head west until you see the golden glow of Heaven!"). To the Jews of Jesus' day heaven was not a fixed, unchanging, geographical location somewhere other than this world (plot-able on a Rand McNally atlas, listed just after Hawaii). For them (and, hopefully, for us) heaven is the realm where things are as God intends them to be, where things are under the rule and reign of God. And that place can be anywhere, anytime, with anybody. When Jesus talks about heaven and hell, they are first and foremost present realities that have serious implications for the future. And consequently, either can be invited to earth, right here, right now, through our actions. Ever heard anyone say, "It was hell on earth"? That's not just a turn of phrase; it's a legitimate reality. Ask the rape or abuse victim, the family of the slain soldier, the cancer patient in hospice care if hell can come to earth. On the flip side of the coin, ask the new mother and father staring goggle eyed at their 2 day old infant, the newlyweds on their honeymoon, the new disciple of Jesus, the homeless family that now has a home if heaven can come to earth. And all of these moments aren't simply based on strong emotional outpourings, but preludes of a greater reality out beyond the vanishing point that point to a continuation of the life we are living right now. Richard Foster wrote,

Getting into heaven is a matter of genuine consequence (and it does, in fact, come as part of the total package), but the evangel (message) of the Gospel is that abundant life in Christ begins now, and death becomes only a minor transition from this life to greater life.

The writer of Colossians 1 wrote, concerning Christ, "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross." There is something going on through the Cross, something bigger and more universal than just personal salvation and our guarantee of life in the age to come. Through the shed blood of the slain Lamb God is reconciling--restoring, bring back together into relationship--everything that is "under the sun." God is bringing it back to himself. Yes, God wants to put you and me together, restoring us to himself, because he is restoring everything.

I'll close with a Talmudic story about a Rabbi Joseph, son of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi. Joseph dies and returns back to life and his father asks him, "What did you see?" He replies, "I beheld a world the reverse of this one; those who were on top here were below there, and vice-versa." Joshua ben Levi said to him, "My son you have seen a corrected world."

shalom, matt