Rethinking
Heaven dons the cover of the April 16 edition of Time magazine. Jon Meacham’s article, entitled Heaven Can’t Wait: Why Rethinking the
Hereafter Could Make the World a Better Place, draws upon a diverse range
of religious thinkers. His sources include scholars like Christopher Morse of
New York’s Union Theological Seminary, Cleophus LaRue of Princeton Theological Seminary,
and Anglican bishop and biblical scholar N.T. Wright.
Meacham
also cites pastors like John Blanchard who serves the 4000-member Rock Church
International in Virginia Beach. Blanchard says, Heaven isn’t just a place you
go—heaven is how you live your life. What’s trending is a younger generation,
teens, college-aged, who are motivated by causes—people who are motivated by
heaven are also people motivated to make a positive difference in the world.
Meacham continues, Heaven thus becomes for now the reality one creates in the service of
the poor, the sick, the enslaved, the oppressed.
The
model prayer provides a summary statement of the message emphasized in the
article, Thy kingdom come, thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven. An afterlife is not denied or minimized,
just re-framed in light of the transforming work that we are called to do here
and now. Heaven here and now is the hidden
dimension, sacred space, or thin
place in our ordinary, everyday lives. This hidden dimension reveals that
the love and resources that everyone needs are abundantly available, but
co-creating the Commonwealth of God requires us to do God’s will on earth as in heaven, one drop in the
ocean at a time.
As
I write, McMurry University students, along with some faculty and staff, are
spending a week in World Village, a
tent and shanty city on the grounds of the university, to raise awareness about
conditions in Haiti and India. A mission team will travel to each country this
summer to build homes and work with orphaned children. These students, along
with many others in their generation, inspire me. Their Christian vision is focused
more on joining God in the work of co-creating heaven here, disclosing the Commonwealth
of God in our midst, than on life after death.
God’s gift of life now—along with the stewardship of creation and its resources—is not eclipsed by the promise of
a future life, whatever shape that life may take. The gift of life is just as sacred
as a current gift—an on-earth-as-in-heaven
gift—as it is when understood as a future promise. Why minimize God’s good gift
now in favor of God’s gift in the future, as our tradition so often has done? It
is the same gift!
A
new day is emerging in the church’s mission and in theological reflection when
a Union Theological Seminary professor, an evangelical mega-church pastor, and
college students call us to Jesus’ vision of a changed reality here
and now.
Grace! Costly grace! Amen!
This post is dedicated to the students living in World Village this week.
This post is dedicated to the students living in World Village this week.
amen.
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