Growing up in a Pentecostal church, I learned about heaven from a very young age. One of the earliest hymns I remember was “Mansion Over The Hilltop1,” which describes the ultimate in delayed gratification. I have very little now, but once I die and go to heaven, I’ll have a mansion, “a gold one that’s silver lined.” My earliest conceptions of heaven were of a place somewhere beyond the sky where we go when we die. These conceptions were often reinforced by the church and by adults who spoke of heaven as a place we go when we die (unless we have the misfortune to go to hell, located far underground). Popular culture also contributed to a view of heaven as far off both physically and temporally. Everything from silly cartoons depicting the dead with clearly inadequate wings and a requisite harp to films like Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life reinforced the idea of heaven as pie in the sky when you die bye and bye.
Of course, heaven has long been associated with the sky. When the creation account in Genesis2 speaks of an expanse that divides the waters, it is referring to the sky, for there is obviously water in the sky. It rains. And there is equally obviously water on the earth in streams, rivers, lakes, and seas. Likewise, when the Psalmist says, “The heavens declare the glory of God3,” it is just another word for the skies, as the next phrase makes plain: “the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”
Even well before the first century, however, heaven came to have a metaphorical significance as well. The prophets depicted it as God’s dwelling place4, his kingdom, where he is surrounded by angels and other celestial beings who do his bidding and continually proclaim his holiness and goodness. Even as metaphor, however, heaven remained distant5, unattainable by mortals.
When Jesus began preaching in Galilee and Judea, he came proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven6 is at hand. It is within your grasp, at your elbow, within reach. Most of his hearers probably understood him to be talking about a revival of Israel as an independent kingdom, no longer under Roman authority, but under the Messiah, the prophesied king who was to come. Even at his ascension most of his disciples still clung to this view7. They expected God to throw off the yoke of Roman oppression and make Israel a free monarchy as it had been under David. Their king had risen from the dead. Who could withstand him now? The Romans had already killed him without being able to stop him. Surely he would lead an army in revolt against Rome or call down fire from heaven on his foes.
Jesus did none of those things. Instead, he left, promising them that they would be empowered by God’s spirit to… be his witnesses. Not crush their enemies. Not reign with him. Not take over and make people live right. They were just going to tell people about Jesus and the new kind of kingdom he had inaugurated.
For Jesus had made it plain that his kingdom was not a political entity. His kingdom was not ruled by the rich and powerful but by the poor and weak. His disciples were not men of status and influence. They were humble fishermen and common people. He was not looking to overthrow the government but to gently subvert it by teaching people to live in mutual respect and care for all. He focused on those whom society respected and cared for least, because their needs were greatest, but his teaching applied to everyone. He was as willing to heal a centurion’s son as to visit the home of a tax collector. He touched lepers and let prostitutes touch him. Against all custom, he taught women and graciously accepted them among his followers. He made grandiose public claims about himself but also actively avoided fame, urging those he helped to keep silent and disappearing from public view when his fame became too great. In short, he did not act like an insurrectionist at all, never speaking against Rome and even urging his followers to cheerfully comply with Roman orders8.
Since God’s kingdom is not political, “not of this world9, what does it mean for it to be within reach? It is neither an unattainable ideal nor a distant, hoped-for destination for the afterlife. It is a present reality, a community of like-minded people who have decided that God’s ways, the ways of love, are worth pursuing with a wholehearted diligence. If the kingdom of heaven is within reach, it means that there is a task for you, for anyone who hears and believes, Reach out and take hold of it. Grasp the kingdom of God. Enter it. Upend your priorities. Redefine what success means, what a good life means. Discover a power based on patience and love rather than coercion and violence. You won’t get everything you want, and you will get suffering and persecution, but you will also get a life that lasts forever that no one can take away. Reconsider how you live because the kingdom of God is within reach.
- A quick online search turned up lyrics, but they had various issues with typos or other mistakes. Below are the lyrics the way I remember them.
Verse 1:
I’m satisfied with just a cottage below,
A little silver and little gold.
But in that city where the ransomed will shine,
I want a gold one that’s silver lined.
Chorus:
I’ve got a mansion just over the hilltop
In that bright land where we’ll never grow old,
And some day yonder we will never more wander
But walk on streets that are purest gold.
Verse 2:
Though often tempted, tormented, and tested
And, like the prophet, my pillow is stone,
And though I find here,no permanent dwelling,
I know He’ll give me a mansion my own.
Verse 3:
Don’t think my poor or deserted or lonely.
I’m not discouraged; I’m Heaven bound.
I’m just a pilgrim in search of that city.
I want a mansion, a harp, a crown. ↩︎ - See Genesis 1:6-8. ↩︎
- Psalm 19:1. ↩︎
- See for example Isaiah 6, Ezekiel 1, and Daniel 7-10. ↩︎
- Despite heaven being unreachable in ancient cosmologies, they seem cozy compared to our modern scientific understanding of the size of the universe. The most distant objects so far discovered are more than 13 billion light years away. That’s roughly 75,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles from earth, a number so vast that comparisons fail. The most distant object visible from the ground is probably the Andromeda galaxy, 2.5 million light years from earth. The farthest detectable objects are more than 5,200 times that distance. ↩︎
- Matthew is actually the only gospel writer who uses the phrase “kingdom of heaven.” Mark, Luke, and John use “kingdom of God.” However, since the prophets depicted heaven as God’s abode, and since Christian tradition has consistently identified heaven and God’s kingdom as one and the same, I think our preconceptions and expectations about heaven apply just as well to the kingdom of God. We often think of death as going to heaven and entering God’s kingdom despite Jesus’ insistence that the kingdom of God is already here. ↩︎
- See Acts 1:1-11. ↩︎
- Rome was the common enemy of the Jews, so when Jesus told his followers to love their enemies, it was natural for them to think of the Roman occupying force, which could be found everywhere. Roman solders could and did commandeer labor from any passerby, as they did when they forced Simon of Cyrene to carry Jesus’ cross. Jesus advised his followers to meet such demands with offers to do more than was demanded, refusing to let resentment twist their hearts but responding with generosity instead. ↩︎
- See Jesus response to Pilate when asked if he was a king, John 18:36. ↩︎