[THO] Anticipation

Sharon is planning a party for me tonight but there is a lot of secrecy on her part as to what it will entail. I am not even sure who is coming. The feeling is actually quite exciting and it reminds me of the anticipation of the Kingdom*.

Recently I've been chatting with a few folks about the misunderstandings of heaven. In our reading last Wednesday night Mark's gospel tells of an encounter with Jesus and the Sadducees where they try to trip him up over the issue of the resurrection. See the Sadducees didn't really believe in the resurrection, so they thought for sure they were going to nail this would-be prophet. But one phrase catches them and most of us, "You are badly mistaken!" (Mk 12:27b) A lot of us have our ideas of heaven so packaged up that we too are badly mistaken.

Heaven is not a straight forward concept in the New Testament. It exists in the beyond and the unknown. Someone asked if I believe in heaven, and I do. But I think we are often badly mistaken about the nature of heaven.

The primary reason is that we recognize the groaning of this world and it incites our flight response. Wouldn't it be great if we just got to completely start again? I think many of us are convinced that is exactly what will happen. There is a level on which this is true, but there is also the reality of this life that we need to take seriously. In fact it is this reality we should be committed to, because it is the only one we are fortunate enough to have agency in and towards. God knows that. He sent Jesus because of that. He sends us because of that.

Heaven is part of the hope package, but not in terms of a pie in the sky where someday we'll fly pipedream. No it is grounded in something imminently more real than that, and I find even more compelling. Heaven is part of the hope of the Kingdom. It is the utopian edge to this reality. Heaven for the OT prophets is the restoration of the goodness of the whole created order. When we see the Kingdom come, we see heaven break into our time healing, righting, loving and restoring! So indeed we taste the future that is coming in the present that is groaning, longing for the manifestation of all that is hoped to be. Unfortunately we live in the neverland of being badly mistaken and miss the fact that the gospel is supposed to be good news and not a story of destruction, decline and suffering.

In this sense Heaven, and the anticipation of heaven, is very much like me waiting for my party tonight. In some ways I can't wait. In others I am frustrated because it is not yet, which is so evident by my struggle with keeping the kids occupied while I await the promised event (they are mercifully eating lunch right now). Not that I don't enjoy this time right now, the time when the kids are doing things that grab my heart in a good way. Much like we should enjoy this life and the fundamental prelapsarian goodness that creeps around the edges of life. People are amazing. I spent last night with two of my dearest friends, and it was a really good time. But good as those things are the reminders are constant that we are only seeing in part. Injustice abounds at all levels of life. Including my own lack of patience with my kids. But I have hope, heavenly hope.

I have hope that tonight will be another night where the Kingdom of Heaven will shine in around the edges. But my anticipation is the edge that I want to focus on. We want to know who is in, who is out, who is coming, who is not. We want to know what it will be like, just like those Sadducees, we want to know who's wife she will be. But it is the unknowing anticipation that fills us with expectation of the goodness of God pouring forth. It is that sense that anything is possible, especially with God, that God calls us to live in. Not a waiting around for wings and a harp, but a looking for and forward to the Kingdom of Heaven breaking into the now with a taste of the future. We should stop pretending we know what beyond is like and enjoy the now God has graciously given us.

Otherwise we are just badly mistaken. I'm hoping you are not badly mistaken. God is good. We need to live like we really believe that. I'll try if you will? Let you know how the party tonight goes, and I hope to see you in the final party still to come!


* I know I promised a series on the Kingdom of God, and I will get around to it. But at this point things are just too hectic.