CHAPTER 1
CHRIS
"The kingdom of heaven has come near." (Matthew 4:17)
HEAVEN HAPPENS
When we marry into a family, go off to college, move to a different part of the country, or join a church, we discover there are words and expressions used in the family, college, region, or church that mean something to that particular community. Every word or expression has a story behind it, and if we don't know the story, the assumptions we make or conclusions we reach may range from comical, to confusing, to even harmful.
Context is so important. This is particularly true when it comes to understanding what Jesus was saying in the Beatitudes. In order to fully grasp the Beatitudes, we need a sense of their context. These declarations were made on the heels of a declaration Jesus made about the kingdom of heaven as well as a demonstration of its power. Having a sense of where Jesus was and what he was saying and doing just prior to the Beatitudes helps us better understand them and apply them to our own context in life.
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
Fred Smith was an influential businessman who mentored Christian leaders for several decades through Leadership Network. In the summer of 2004, he was hospitalized and not expected to live. Family members heard him repeat, "I want to go home ... I want to go home." After a family meeting of great angst, they decided to respect his wishes, removing him from dialysis, knowing that his death would come in three to five days. For the next thirty-six hours, they sang, read Scripture, prayed, and said their goodbyes. But unexpectedly, the anticipated peaceful decline was anything but. Fred went into pulmonary failure and choking aspiration. His daughter, Brenda, sat with him through the difficult night. The coughing, however, stirred Fred out of his semiconscious state and he fully awoke. Brenda quietly told him of the family's decision to follow his desire to go home. She explained that he would slip into unconsciousness and then step from here to there.
Suddenly Fred's eyes were wide open and he made the effort to speak: "Home? I didn't mean heaven, I meant Parkchester" (his house on Parkchester Drive). Laughing through her tears, Brenda quickly called for the doctors. His dialysis was rescheduled and Fred recovered to go home and live three more years. For Fred, home was more than a place on the other side of the grave. Home was also on Parkchester Drive. Context is everything. Fred was talking about his life on this side of the grave when he used the word home while his family was thinking of home as a reference to his life on the other side of the grave.
This same thing happens with many of us in understanding Jesus' words about "the kingdom of heaven." For Jesus, the kingdom of heaven had everything to do with life on this side of the grave while many of us are inclined to think it mostly has something to do with life on the other side. Consequently, we think of Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of heaven coming near as meaning through Jesus we now have access to the place of heaven after we die. Even though this is one aspect of the context, it is not the entire context.
While Jesus is the Way to life beyond the grave, what Jesus was referring to when he spoke of the kingdom of heaven coming near, and what his original audience would have pictured when they heard him proclaim that the kingdom of heaven coming near, was more immediate.
Jesus' listeners were brought up reading the prophet Isaiah's proclamations about the kingdom of God (the phrases "kingdom of God" and "kingdom of heaven" are synonymous). Isaiah described the kingdom of God not so much as a realm beyond the grave, but as the sphere of God's reign, rule, activity, and work upon the earth.
In Isaiah's prophecies, "kingdom of God" doesn't refer exclusively to a place beyond the grave, but a "happening" upon the earth. In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus comes on the scene declaring that the reign, the rule, the activity of God—"the kingdom of heaven"—is near. The kingdom of heaven is happening.
WHEN HEAVEN HAPPENS
And when heaven "is happening" on the earth, lives are changed. Seventeen passages in Isaiah speak of the kingdom of God and all seventeen of them speak of it in terms of one thing: deliverance or salvation. This makes the meaning of Jesus' name all the more significant: "the Lord saves" (Matthew 1:21). Jesus' name is inextricably intertwined with what the kingdom of God represents. The saving, delivering, rule, reign, activity of God comes near in the life, ministry, message, and presence of Jesus upon the earth. Isaiah fleshes out what this deliverance and salvation means, very specifically. Salvation is described in terms of peace (14 times);healing (7 times); joy (12 times); return from estrangement with God (9 times); and righteousness, justice, fairness (16 times).
When Jesus echoes Isaiah's language about the kingdom of heaven, he's referring to the saving, delivering, rule, reign, and power of God on the earth that makes a qualitative difference in people's lives on the earth. In Jesus' saving reign, people would experience peace, healing, joy, a newfound sense of restoration with God, and an atmosphere of righteousness and justice.
SHOW AND TELL
Jesus didn't just declare that the kingdom of heaven was near. He demonstrated it as well. He was into "show and tell."
Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him. (Matthew 4:23–25)
This is the story immediately preceding Jesus going up on a mountainside to give what came to be known as the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5—7), which begins with the words of the Beatitudes. But before he spoke from the mountain, he delivered people in their valleys. In the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his followers about the nature of the King and what it means to live in light of the reign of God on the earth. And he gives listeners a living picture of the kingdom. He heals people: the aged and infirm, the fevered and the paralyzed, the mentally anguished, the epileptics, the afflicted—he healed them all.
HEALING MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
So suppose you lived in Palestine, in the area of Galilee, in the days of Jesus and were chronically ill. In addition to suffering the adversity of the illness itself, you also would have endured a ripple effect of related consequences.
There were economic consequences because there was no welfare plan or social security for you. You couldn't work due to illness and were in real trouble because there were no "safety nets." You lived day-to-day under the crippling weight of taxation in the Roman Empire. It didn't take you long to slip into the quicksand of debt at a pace where you would probably never catch up. You were so sunk financially that your primary option for survival was begging.
And you're alone. In the days of Jesus, people didn't just withdraw from you—they isolated you—trying to manage the disease, minimizing the opportunity for it to spread. But the isolation was also spiritualized: many suspected your sickness was a clue that you were under the judgment of God for your sins, or even the sins of your parents (see John 9:1–2).
You're chronically ill. Bankrupt. Isolated from society, and (to top it all off) told that God turned his back on you because of something you or your parents had done (again, see John 9:1–2).
Do the math and the sum total is a profound sense of brokenness, powerlessness, despair. A broken body and mind, but also a broken spirit.
Then Jesus appears on the scene, declaring the kingdom of heaven is near and healing all who were brought to him, including you. When Jesus healed you, he not only freed you from your suffering, but set processes in motion for you to return to society again; to be in relationships; to have the opportunity to work again and not be in a position to grapple with the shame of begging; and, the most significant healing of all, having your perceptions corrected about God having distanced himself from you. Imagine the kind of joy you would experience in the wake of being healed. Blessed (makarioi, also translated as joyful) is the description Jesus used for this experience of the kingdom of heaven upon the earth. The blessing that is the kingdom of heaven had real life implications: bodies healed, relationships restored, dignity renewed, false assumptions about God shattered. Jesus declaring the kingdom of heaven is near wasn't just something figurative, symbolic, or "internally spiritual." The kingdom of heaven coming near was making a difference in the quality of people's lives.
A FUNNY THING ABOUT THESE WALLS
Perhaps you're thinking, Thanks for the history lesson. But this isn't about ancient history, this is about "the here and now" and the future. Jesus' life and teachings aren't recorded to tell us who he was and what he did, but who he is and what he's doing. Heaven is happening today.
The Academy Award-winning movie The Shawshank Redemption tells the story of life in a maximum security prison for perpetrators of violent crimes. In the movie we meet up with Brooks (played by James Whitmore), who began serving a life sentence for murder in 1905. Now, fifty years later, he came up for parole and was approved for release. Learning of his approved release, Brooks promptly attempted to kill a fellow prison inmate—a friend, in fact. The other inmates and guards intervened and prevented him from doing so. Brooks broke down and wept like a baby. The guards never reported the incident. Reluctantly, Brooks left Shawshank Penitentiary to live in a halfway house and begin his new life in the free world.
Later, as Brooks's fellow inmates sat on bleachers overlooking the recreation area inside the penitentiary, they confessed to one another how baffled they were at Brooks's actions. For fifty years he'd been a peaceful and compliant man behind bars, yet the very moment he was approved for release he attempted to do something that would keep him behind bars for good. Red (played by Morgan Freeman), the resident sage among the inmates who himself was behind bars for a violent crime, offered this response, "It's a funny thing about these prison walls. At first you hate them. Then you get used to them. Then you grow to depend on them. Brooks was an institutionalized man."
Institutionalization isn't just something imagined in the movies. It happens in the real world. Sometimes a person can be in one condition for so long, surrounded by the same set of circumstances for so long, that it becomes "normal" to them. They can't imagine life without their walls. Perhaps this is why Jesus, on one occasion, asked a man who had been lame for almost four decades if he wanted to be healed (see John 5:6).
Many of us know what it is to be "walled in" in our lives by an awareness of our brokenness. If we live long enough with such an awareness and void of hope of things being any different, I suppose it's possible for us to transition from hating our walls, to getting used to our walls, to even depending on our walls. But according to God's track record in Scripture, he's been known to tear down walls—of all kinds. In the midst of a world of institutionalization, God brings about transformation. This is what the kingdom of heaven is about.
One of the things Jesus would later teach his disciples to pray for was for things to be on earth as they are in heaven (Matthew 6:10). In heaven tears are wiped away; there is no poverty, sickness, suffering, addiction, bondage, division, hatred, racism, oppression, sin, guilt, or shame. In calling us to pray for things to be on earth as they are in heaven, Jesus is calling us to join his movement, prayerfully contending for the transformation of our lives and our world and refusing to yield to a spirit of institutionalization. We see heaven happen when we witness moments where a poverty-based need is met, sickness healed, suffering alleviated, sobriety settles in, justice established, equality affirmed, or sins forgiven.
MAKING THE ASCENT
After a demonstration of healings, Jesus ascends the mountainside and pronounces blessing.
Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them. He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."(Matthew 5:1–3)
The Beatitudes are Jesus' commentary on all that his disciples have been witnessing and will witness by Jesus' side in the future. They are his "inauguration speech," in which he is articulating the values of the King and how God administrates his kingdom because God longs for us to align our lives accordingly. Matthew says that "his disciples came to him." Here's the picture of a disciple—one who comes out of the crowd and makes the ascent to be with Jesus. But every ascent to be with Jesus is for the purpose of making another descent—going down from the mountain to live in the valleys of brokenness as conduits through which the kingdom of heaven happens.
HOME
For Fred Smith, "home" wasn't just heaven. It was also on this side of the grave, on Parkchester Drive. For Jesus, the "kingdom of heaven" is also on this side of the grave. As well the well-known pastor and writer Frederick Buechner notes:
If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to be born within ourselves and within the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don't know its name or realize that it's what we're starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us that [is] greater than our own strength. The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it.
What Buechner refers to as "home" is not limited to a reality found on the other side of the grave. It is something we taste on this side of the grave. Through Jesus the kingdom of heaven happens. It's closer than we think and more accessible than we realize.
It's where we belong.
And it's time to go home.
CHAPTER 2
CHRIS
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:3)
FOR THE BANKRUPT
For much of the summer of 2010, we helplessly watched our oldest child lie motionless in hospital isolation for weeks, his body battling bacterial meningitis, and later MRSA (a staph infection resistant to most antibiotics). We were painfully aware that Skyler's body did not have enough resources to contend with what was trying to kill him. Infectious disease doctors themselves acknowledged the limitations of their own resources to help him. Thankfully, Skyler was spared. Today, our thirteen-year-old has a peculiar awareness, for his age, of his own mortality, vulnerability, and limited resources.
My father-in-law had this awareness as well. At the age of thirty-two, within three weeks of being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he was in a wheelchair. For the last seventeen years of his life, he lived with the disease gradually stripping him of his capacity to do simple daily routines that many of us take for granted. He taught me much about living with a deeply rooted faith in the goodness of God in the midst of his suffering, all the while being acutely aware that he did not have enough resources, in and of himself, to conquer multiple sclerosis.
I have a grandfather who was a lifelong entrepreneur who went broke three different times in his life, another family member who's battled depression since he was a small child, a dear friend who has been an alcoholic for more than thirty years and is celebrating four years of sobriety. And then, of course, there is my own reflection in the mirror every morning.
Sooner or later, we face brokenness in our lives and world that far exceeds the resources we have, in and of ourselves, to address and repair the brokenness. It could be a struggle with an illness, depression or addiction of some kind; a financial disaster; or the end of a relationship. All kinds of life experiences can usher us into a profound awareness of our own bankruptcy—be it physical, mental, financial, emotional, or spiritual. Few things are more disheartening than the realization that we don't have "what it takes" to make ourselves (or ones we love) whole; or to meet a challenge; fulfill an obligation; live up to a standard. The writer of Proverbs had something to say about the crippling weight of a broken spirit: "The human spirit can endure in sickness, / but a crushed spirit who can bear?" (Proverbs 18:14, emphasis added).
