Heaven on Earth?

When I was first asked to cover for Rev. Rack this week, I, of course, agreed. I have a sort of running, informal agreement with Hope Church where I will gladly substitute for Rev. Rack whenever he is away; unless someone else wants to do it. I don’t want to be hogging the pulpit, after all. And so today I have another opportunity to bring the message, and you have another week of Amateur Hour. Now, the thing is, I usually have a sermon idea or two brewing most of the time, but this time I had no idea of what I wanted to talk about. Week before last though, Rev. Rack spoke about how Jesus taught that the Kingdom of Heaven wasn’t something that was intended only to be something in the future, but should be a reality for believers here, and now. His sermon brought to mind one of the best books I’ve ever read, which was a book by Dallas Willard called “The Divine Conspiracy”. Dallas devotes his entire book to the subject of God’s plan to have his children live as citizens of heaven, while they are here on Earth. So hopefully Rev. Rack won’t mind if I piggy back off of his sermon from two weeks ago and talk a little more about this subject.
The Bible teaches us that in heaven there will be no more poverty and no more hunger. Everyone will be filled and there will be plenty for everyone. For believers, this is a wonderful thought. The idea of an end to poverty and desperation; an end to the ills that follow from the ravages of poverty… hunger, discouragement, despair, crime, all of these will go away. God will personally wipe away every tear and usher in a Kingdom of joy, and fairness, and equality, the likes of which this world has never seen. And we delight in the knowledge that this is a part of every believer’s future, but we can’t quite wrap our minds around the fact that it is the responsibility of the believer to work to make this Kingdom of joy and fairness and equality a part of each of our lives now… right here.
Poverty is not the result of a lack of resources. Yes, there are economic downturns and there are famines and there are absolutely times when parts of the world suffer through very difficult circumstances, but still, the world’s resources in total are greater than the needs of every individual. I used to have a garden and I planted zucchini once. I had never planted zucchini before but I like zucchini, so I decided to plant some. I think I planted about a dozen plants. Now, I did follow the instructions on the package with regard to spacing of the plants… sort of. But I had no idea how big those plants get, and within a month or so I had a veritable foot tall forest of zucchini plants. And not only did I have no idea about how big they get, I also had no idea of how many zucchini you get from just a single plant; much less twelve plants. By midsummer I was up to my elbows in zucchini and I was giving them away to everyone.
God has created this miraculous world that has the capacity to feed everyone, even the nearly 8 billion people who live on this planet today. No, the problem is not one of supply, it’s one of distribution. When some horde resources, others will suffer without; that is how you create poverty.
I’ve lived my entire adult life in a house that’s slightly less than 700 square feet. I’ve never really had much financial comfort and there have been times in my life that my wife and I have struggled to make ends meet, not that that’s anything unusual, I would imagine pretty much most of us have experienced that somewhere along the line, but I am grateful that we’ve always had a roof over our heads and have never missed a meal due to lack of funds. And even though I’ve never really lived close to the poverty line, I’ve certainly never thought of myself as being even remotely wealthy. But a few years ago I read a story that had a profound impact on my perception of wealth.
The story was of a woman in Africa who lived in a tribal area. She was pregnant and her family was working hard at saving some money. The thing for which they were saving their money was, they wanted to buy a new razor blade. You see, when the time came for the baby to be born, they would have to have something with which to cut the umbilical cord. And if they didn’t have their own new razor, they would have to use a used one, and using a used one would mean that they were running the risk of their baby getting an infection that could kill him, so using a new razor was important. But buying a new razor was putting a financial strain on the family. We are blessed live in a country where poverty at this level is unimaginable; we are insulated from the fact that nearly half of the world’s population lives on $2.50 a day or less, (That’s $912.50 a year) and 80% of the world’s population lives on $10 a day or less. I once heard a comedian comparing famine in Africa to having a fender bender in a 1970 Lincoln Continental. He said “I mean it’s tragic, but it’s SO far away”.
As believers, we are called to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth, and part of that responsibility is to work towards the alleviating of poverty and hunger. A small part of that we can accomplish by sharing a portion of our own resources, and most of us do that; but it’s just not enough. We also need to become advocates for fairness. We need to call out the hoarding of resources and we need to call out the mindset that blames the poor for their poverty, and uses that as an excuse to withhold the Kingdom of Heaven from them because somehow they have been deemed unworthy.
Psalm 24 says: “The Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof. The Earth, and all who dwell therein”. I actually really like the Good News Bible translation of this Psalm: “The world and all that is in it belong to the LORD; the earth and all who live on it are his.”
This is God’s world, it’s not ours. The resources of this world belong to God, not to us; we have merely been entrusted with them. I have two grandchildren who are toddlers, and I think that generally they are very good to each other and get along really well, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t the occasional clash over ownership of a particular toy. Every now and then an argument ensues when both want the same toy at the same time and invariably, one will claim ownership of that toy. The interesting thing about this is that the toy in question doesn’t always belong to the one claiming ownership, in fact, I’ve seen this happen where the toy being claimed actually belongs to the other child, and I’ve also seen toddler friends of my grandchildren who are visiting my son’s house, claiming my grandchildren’s toys as their own. When humans jealously claim God’s resources as their own, they are mistaken.
When they hoard those resources for themselves, they are denying resources to those in need; possibly desperately in need. “This is mine”, they say. “I’ve worked hard for this, why should anyone else be entitled to any of it?” This is something that we hear endlessly, but the Bible asks… “What do you have that you haven’t received? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you didn’t?”
If we’ve been born at a certain time, in a certain place, and we’ve been given an intellect and skills and an opportunity to develop that intellect and to hone those skills and we’ve been given the opportunity to put those skills to use and every single one of these circumstances is the gift of a loving and gracious God, then what would ever make us think that the purpose behind this shower of blessings that we have received would be for us to hoard our earnings to the exclusion of others? This world is populated by God’s beloved children, and as believers we are called to love them with the same devotion and the same passion with which we love God Himself. Selfishness and love are mutually exclusive. We can’t have both in our hearts at the same time; if we have one, we will not have the other. To have God’s love in our heart will cause us to despair over the suffering of others. To have God’s love in our heart makes poverty and hunger anywhere in the world completely unacceptable. To have God’s love in our heart should move us to become a strident voice for change; a voice that cries out for justice and fairness and compassion.
Ultimately, the goal of the believer is to have our hearts look like God’s heart; to view the world through the same lens with which God does; to care about the things that He cares about, to grieve over the things over which He grieves, and to rejoice over the things over which He rejoices. There are three essential components to learning how to do this. We must spend time in prayer, learning to listen to the Holy Spirit. (Remembering that it would be incredibly unusual for the Spirit to speak to us in an audible voice) The Spirit speaks to us in ideas, and notions, and inclinations.) We need to spend time immersed in the Word because the Word introduces us to Jesus. This is why Karl Barth said “In the church of Jesus Christ there should be no non-theologians.” Lastly, we need the influence and tutelage of mature believers, who can help guide us in our understanding.
In coming to know Jesus in these ways, we come to know a man who loved extravagantly, who was filled with compassion, and who accepted people without regard to their status, their gender, or their worldview. Don’t forget that among His inner circle were a zealot (someone who was an avid Jewish nationalist), a tax collector (someone who was a collaborator with the hated Roman occupation), women (Who had absolutely no social standing in His day), and some very decidedly blue collar fisherman.
We meet a Jesus who didn’t get angry at the people who tried Him on false charges, mocked Him, beat Him, and crucified Him (In fact, He prayed for these people). But he responded angrily when the Pharisees accused Him of violating the law on the Sabbath (You brood of Vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? Jesus said.) And He became enraged at the money changers and merchants in the temple, overturning their tables and chasing the merchants out with a whip he made of cords. Has anyone ever wondered why He did that?
The Jewish faith required that everyone come to Jerusalem for the high Holy days. When you came to the temple was when you paid your tithe and when you came to the temple was when you offered your sacrifices. Now, first of all, the tithe couldn’t be paid with the standard Roman coinage of the day. The standard Roman coins had pictures of the Roman Emperor and of Roman Governors; in the Jewish faith, these were graven images, and they weren’t acceptable in the temple. No, the temple tithe had to be paid in temple shekels. But not to worry, there were plenty of money changers at the temple who would gladly exchange your Roman coins for temple shekels, especially since they were permitted to keep a hefty exchange fee. In fact, the exchange fees were shamefully high and the money changers tended to be quite wealthy. When you brought your sacrifice, it had to be unblemished. A priest would inspect your sacrifice and if it was determined to be blemished (Which it probably always was) you could not offer it as a sacrifice. But not to worry, you could purchase a pre-approved unblemished sacrifice… for an exorbitant fee. The problem Jesus had with the money changers and the merchants wasn’t so much with the fact that they were doing business in the temple. It was with the fact that the businesses were run with the intent of fleecing the people for as much money as they could get out of them. Then with the money they took from those least able to afford it, they were able to live lavish lifestyles as part of the upper crust of Jewish society. Jesus wasn’t enraged by the operation of the businesses; He was enraged by the injustice.
What DOES the Lord require of us? In Micah 6 we find the answer: “To live justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God”.
When our heart looks like Jesus’ heart, the injustices of the world will enrage us as well. When our heart looks like Jesus’ heart the suffering of the poor will break our hearts too. When our heart looks like Jesus’ heart, for people to go hungry will be out of the question. In the second chapter of Acts we see how the first century church reacted to those in need. “All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”
Let’s face it… not many people are going to drop everything and go live in a monastery. Not many people are actually going to sell all they have. But the more our hearts look like God’s heart, the more we will be able to discern what is our calling and how is God calling us to make heaven real in our little corner of the earth. Amen