As there was quite a snow storm yesterday, many of the churches in the area canceled church. My RD, being the wonderful lady that she is, arranged for us to have church in the lobby this morning. We sang some Christmas Carols and then sat down to listen to a sermon from a pastor at MarsHill. The pastor was talking about the Kingdom of Heaven.
He was talking about how instead of the kingdom of God coming, maybe it is already here inside us. An alarm went off in my head, telling me to be careful how I interpreted this. If taken one way it could be seen as very secular humanistic. We are good, but we can be better, build a Utopia. But then I thought about C.S. Lewis’s idea in The Great Divorce. We are in Hell only if we choose to go back there…but if we keep going we get further and further toward what Christ has for us.
The preacher was talking about how Christ is here in us, the Kingdom of God is here, and we are the Kingdom of God to each other. We serve each other and we find joy in how God teaches us, blesses us and uses us to bless others. And if we keep serving we are coming closer and closer to the Kingdom of Heaven.
In my theology class we talked about how several things about the Rapture theory were confused as the words were misinterpreted. The word taken (as in one will be taken, one will be left) should be seen in this way: the word taken was not a happy word for the Jewish people, who mourned when they were taken from the Promised Land that God had given them into exile. Maybe instead of the believers being taken, those who didn’t believe will be taken. Another word that was misinterpreted is “meet.” Instead of meeting God in the air and going to Heaven, the word meet in this passage means to meet Christ as a victorious conqueror and welcome him into the city. Welcome him home. This of course would be the new Earth.
I am not sure what I really think of all this. I grew up believing the rapture and this is something we just recently studied in Theology so I haven’t really come to terms with what I believe yet, but it really interested me. Lewis thinks that once we have decided to not turn back we are on a constant journey in the Kingdom of Heaven, always drawing closer and closer to our Lord. Lewis believes very much that the Christian faith is a journey.
If we are already in the Kingdom of Heaven we could choose to just stay put, be lazy, not care for the other believers, not care for the unbelievers…but then wouldn’t even living in the Kingdom of Heaven be like a Hell? Maybe Hell is just staying put being content with where you are? Not thinking of others what so ever.
Now here is another idea. If you believe in Predestination think about what you believe that means. We are hand picked to go to Heaven? I don’t think so. We are picked to do a job. It’s part of a journey. To be chosen to be in the Kingdom of Heaven is to be sent on a mission. God hands us the task and we go off to carry it out to the best of our abilities. He blessed Abraham so that his descendants could be a blessing to all nations. We are called to live in the Kingdom of God and to accomplish the tasks God has given us to continue to bring the Kingdom of God to others. All this language is about a mission and a journey.
I am sorry these thoughts are not well scripted. They are all bouncing around in my head right now and I am trying to make sense of them. But I wanted to share them…maybe someone will have time to read the blog and let me know what they think. But we will see. In the mean time, I am going to keep pondering this.
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