The reverberations of Heaven

I have realized of late that there is a real need for me as a Christian leader, as a pastor and a teacher of the Christian faith, to give more of a vision of not only what God is like and what life around him is like. I have come to realized that much of our teaching and preaching along with much of our music and worship tends to focus on God being great and awesome but at the same time transcendentally aloof. And we seem to like it that way. It is as if we are saying to God, “You can love me, but keep your distance. You can care for me, fulfill my demands and my needs but you are not allowed to impose yourself on me. You just keep your distance, do as we pray and everything will be just fine.”  It sounds like we think we have God over a barrel, up the proverbial creek and held hostage... doesn’t it? If we so have God in this heavenly headlock or arm bar (and we don’t) why is it that we so often pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”? Why do we ask for God to enable us to have his will done in us and to know the will of the living God, if we are not going to do anything about it?

The Gospel (Matthew 18.15-20) the last couple of weeks has been about binding and loosing. That is, whatever you bind or lose on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven. We need to recognize a couple of important things about God and God’s people. First, there is the reality that God has free will. God can choose to bless and to curse, to cure and to punish because his judgment in holy. Things are done in heaven according to only one will – God’s. Period. Finito. Kaput. End of story. Therefore, our daily work is to be about binding and loosing on earth below what we see bound and loosed in heaven. We are meant to work to give a perfect reflection of what happens in heaven above.

It does not mean that we are working to Plato’s idea of a utopian, ideal plane... by no means! All relationships, both with God and with one another are going to need work and are going to need to be maintained. What we do need to remember is that being connected to God means that He is going to have impact and influence on our nature, on our thoughts and our way of living. You see faith is not just about you, or even just about you and God. It is about God you and others. Community and faith are part and parcel of being Christian. I need you and you need me. And we have a personal and a collective need of God. And remember what Jesus said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” The Church, the ekklesia (called out ones), are meant to be the core of the life and the society that is to come.

This is why Matthew’s Gospel takes some time to show how conflict in the community is to be dealt with. Every effort is to be made to win people over. Please note that it is not to show them where they are wrong but to win them over with grace, care and love. When all that has failed then, treat them as people Jesus loved best – outsiders. Faith is a great gift and it needs to be wielded very carefully so that the community is preserved and protected from bitter rancour and pointless debate and dissention. Expulsion from the Body of Christ is not just a matter of conflict management for harmonious congregational dynamics. Spiritually speaking, being expelled is a matter of eternal life and death. Remember, the things we say and do reverberate in heaven.

Therefore, we need to work to win over those with whom we disagree; with those who have tried to hurt us, who have worked to discredit us, and called our faith into question. We are to draw on the grace and the compassion, on the strength and patience that God can provide and win them over, overcoming with them and for them whatever it is that keeps you apart. In this way, we fulfill the command of Christ, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Jason+