On the Precipice of the Promised Land

The Twenty First Sunday After Pentecost

Matthew 22:34-46

On the Precipice of the Promised Land

            So some of you know that I was a world religion major during my time in undergrad, and how that experience or that journey in learning was very important in my spiritual formation.  In fact I am often fond of saying that if it weren’t for the study of Buddhism, I am not totally certain that I would still be a Christian today.  What I mean by that is that the study of other religions, Buddhism in particular, provided me with a pair of new lenses which allowed me to see the religion of my birth in a whole new light.  I am grateful for that, and actually I can recall several similar examples in my formation during that time.  One of my favorite examples of this was when I had the chance to write on any religious topic I wished, and I chose Bob Marley and Rastafarianism. 

            It was a fascinating topic, and aside from the usual criticisms of the Rastas and some of their questionable sacramental practices, I received another gem or a gift from studying this religion as well.  You see, in Rastafarianism, eternity, heaven, the Kingdom of God is not out there somewhere.  It is not some beautiful place in another life or another dimension.  It is not something that has to be earned or deserved.  Rather, it is already right here (actually it is in Ethiopia, but…….).  For a Rasta, we are all already in heaven.  We’ve been given the gift.  The Second coming has already happened, but we all just simply haven’t realized it yet.  In other words, we haven’t awoken to the fact that this is heaven and that we are responsible for making it what we wish, and it will not truly be heaven until we are all awoken to the truth. 

            Interesting right?  Maybe it seems strange to us because we are so accustomed to thinking about Heaven and Hell the way we do, worrying about whether or not we deserve God’s love or whether we are worthy of the gift of eternity, but what I realized is that such a concept of the Kingdom of God is actually not all that foreign to our history and our beliefs.  I think we see that in our text today and that there is an important lesson here.  See, in Judaism, the Hebrew people saw Zion, Jerusalem, the Temple, as the place where God dwelt with His people and it was known as the world to come.  In our own tradition, Jesus says often that the Kingdom of God is near.  He doesn’t say that it’s coming or it is on its way or that you have to do something first in order to get it.  He says that it is near, right here, just reach out and touch it, or awaken to it.  Actually, just two chapters after our Gospel reading this morning there is a piece of scripture that, depending on the translation you read, suggests that Heaven will not be realized, the end will not come, until the Gospel, the Good News, has been spread to the entire world.  We of course hear that as evangelism, but is it?  Or could it mean simply to awaken all to the reality of Heaven right here and now through the good news of God’s never ceasing love?

            This is all very interesting to me of course.  My real intent though is not to get anyone to change how they view the afterlife or eternity.  I simply think that there is a lot of power in this change of perspective, and I want to challenge us today to play with that, to test ourselves, if you will.  I want you to imagine for a second that you are standing there on the precipice of the promised land like in our Deuteronomy reading.  There you are.  Moses has already gone.  He has finally seen the face of God and been taken.  He has completed his work.  He has led you all this way, been with you through the ups and downs.  He has given you the way forward and he has left you with the path to follow, the Law, so that all of you together will make the promised land the heaven on earth that it was meant to be, a place where God and humanity dwell happily together. 

            In a way, that changes everything, right?  If the promised land, eternity, heaven is a place that you are responsible for shaping and creating rather than a big eternal party that you’re just hoping to arrive to, then I am pretty sure the way that we live our lives as Christians, as people, would be totally different, right?  Truthfully, I am not so sure that this isn’t what Jesus is doing in our Gospel today as well.  He is preparing to go to Jerusalem, to Zion.  His work is almost completed.  He knows what will happen there.  So, He is leaving us with the way forward.  He is leaving us with the path, the greatest commandment, Love, not so that we might have something to do or keep us occupied while we await the Kingdom of God.  Not so that we might have a way to be judged on whether or not we can ever enter the Kingdom, but so that we might actually create it, bring Zion here, so that He can return and we might all live in union with God once again. 

            That’s just not the way we tend to look at this world, this religion, these teachings though, is it?  Maybe to do so would be just too much expectation, too much pressure, to actually build a better world, to create Zion now, to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is not near, but is here.  Well I don’t know about you, but with the way that things are feeling in this world right now, with the tension and division that runs straight through almost every single aspect of our lives, from the global scale even down to our most sacred and private spaces, I find myself wishing that we would see our call this way, that we would take seriously Jesus’ command for us to Love God wholly, Love our neighbors and all of Creation, Love ourselves, for the creation of Heaven on earth.  I don’t know what heaven looks like or the Kingdom of God or if there’s a separate place or whatever, but I will tell you one thing I do know:  The gift of Jesus Christ is that we have already been given the gift of heaven, whatever that is, and our job, our call, our responsibility as Christians now, is not to obsess and worry about that gift, but to spread that same gift, the message of Love, into every aspect, every moment, every second of our strange and messy and tense lives.  I know, that is not easy, but if we don’t even realize that that is our responsibility, then we will never even begin to try.  I don’t know about you, but when I close my eyes and see myself standing at the precipice, that is exactly the kind of promised land that I would like to see. 

Amen.