Confining Jesus to Heaven

One of the things I greatly appreciate about the emergent church movement is a reemphasis on the kingdom of God, the rule or reign of God. Somewhere along the way, Christianity got so focused on personal salvation that it developed a very other worldly tint. God's reign and heaven began to be thought of as synonyms, and salvation was about being there in heaven rather than here on earth. Brian McLaren calls this a "gospel of evacuation." But Jesus speaks of God's kingdom drawing near, and he instructs us to pray for its coming, that time when God's will is done here as it is in heaven. In other words, we are to pray for salvation coming to earth.

It's easy to see how heaven got substituted for the kingdom. It's hard to imagine the world getting straightened out and becoming an ideal place. It's simpler to locate an ideal world somewhere else, some place totally unlike here.

I also wonder if placing the kingdom beyond our lives on earth doesn't allow us to keep our distance from Jesus and his call for radical change in anticipation of a new day drawing near. Jesus tells his followers to turn, to live now by the ways of God's coming dominion. But those ways are very different from the ways that govern  much of our daily lives. They call us to live out of synch with much that the world values, and almost all of us are significantly captive to the values of the world.

I started thinking along these lines after reading today's gospel where Jesus heals the Gerasene demoniac, allowing the spirits that possess him to go into a herd of pigs which then charge into the sea and are drowned. After this amazing event, people come out to see what has happened, and they respond in rather odd fashion. "Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood."

Strange that when people encounter the power of God at work in their midst that they want it gone. It's certainly true that modern people often underplay the frightening aspect of God's presence, but I think the story speaks of more than that. I think the people in the story correctly realize that God's presence will radically reorder things in ways they do not want. So best to send Jesus on his way.

I wonder if we don't do much the same thing when we try to keep him cooped up in heaven, the changed life that he calls us to safely delayed until after we are dead.

In the gospel reading, only the former demoniac wants to stay with Jesus. Perhaps it is necessary to experience Jesus' healing and transforming power in our lives before we are quite ready to let him tell us how we are to live.

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