Homesick For Heaven

"But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world filled with God’s righteousness. And so, dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to be found living peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight." 2 Peter 3:13-14 NLT

In the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, we are kept, to quote Rev Wong Tak Meng, from "jumping from the 'Hosannas' of Palm Sunday to the 'Alleluias' of Easter Sunday without pausing to savour Good Friday as anything more than a public holiday." This was what we had tended to do in the past years. As the Covid 19 virus sweeps over all the nations of the earth, we are confronted with the horrors of aging, suffering and death and our need to understand God's wrath in the light of God's steadfast love which endures forever:

"We live our lives beneath your wrath, ending our years with a groan. Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away. Who can comprehend the power of your anger? Your wrath is as awesome as the fear you deserve. Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom." Psalms 90:9-12 NLT

On Palm Sunday this year, there was a message calling on all meditators irrespective of their religious persuasion to meditate for 20 mins at 10.45 am. Many are praying and meditating out of desperation pleading for God's mercy to end the pandemic. Our prayers are rooted in what Marcus Borg has described as "Supernatural Theism" with "the image of God as the authoritarian parent: the rule giver and disciplinarian, the lawgiver and enforcer. This 'finger-shaking God' whom we disappoint again and again. It is the God whose demands for obedience were satisfied by Jesus's death in our place."

But it is in times like this, that we need to cry out as Jesus did on the cross, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?" It is a time when God is shaking us from a superficial faith of belief that is saddled with doubts to the deep faith of trusting in God instead of being filled with anxiety, a faithful relationship with God which keeps us from worshipping the idols of health, wealth and longevitiy and a rekindled faith that sees God with new eyes like Job did:

"I had heard about you with my own ears, but now I have seen you with my own eyes. That is why I take back what I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show that I am sorry.” Job 42:5-6 GW

We cannot see God who is holy when our hearts are filled with sinful desires, ulterior motives and hidden agendas. Jesus taught us that purity of heart is one of the "be-attitude" of the Kingdom of heaven:

"God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God." Matthew 5:8 NLT

The celebration of Passover on Maundy Thursday is to help us to go on a journey of faith - an exodus from slavery to sin in the Egypts of our lives to liberation in the Promised Land as well as the exile to the Babylons of our lives when we are tempted to turn away from God and then to our returning home to God's Kingdom. Marcus Borg saw the Jewish experience as a paradigm for our journey of faith:

"And for us Christians, that journey has a direction, and essential biblical stories and themes of scripture powerfully suggest what that direction is. If we take the exodus story as an indicator of that journey, it's a journey that leads from bondage to liberation. Or if we take the Jewish experience of exile in Babylon as the paradigm for the journey's story, it is a journey that leads from exile and alienation to return and homecoming, from seeing ourselves as being of little or no account to seeing ourselves as the beloved of God."

It is only when we see ourselves as the beloved of God that we will be homesick for heaven. Then we will make every effort to live peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight. The way we live and our responses to our struggles in life reflects our relationship with God and our image of God. When our minds and consciences are corrupted by the ways and values of the world, nothing is pure to us:

"Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure. But nothing is pure to those who are corrupt and unbelieving, because their minds and consciences are corrupted. Such people claim they know God, but they deny him by the way they live. They are detestable and disobedient, worthless for doing anything good." Titus 1:15-16 NLT

The Covid 19 virus exposes the cardinal sins which are so infectious and deadly in each one of us - lust, pride, greed, anger, envy, gluttony and sloth. It also reveals the spiritual hunger of our world for the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self control. As Christians we are called to be the broken bread and poured out wine of the Body of Christ so that God's kingdom will be revealed and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 

On Good Friday the veil in the temple was torn when Jesus died and this is symbolic of the pulling back of the veil between heaven which is God's realm and earth so that we can have a vision of God's new heaven and earth. This is another way of understanding "apocalypse" which also means "unveiling." The gloomiest notions some Christians have, according to Caroline Leaf,  is "the desire to get to heaven soon, since the earth is going to be destroyed anyway. They see the apocalypse as something terrible: lakes of fires, unending pain, disasters, and all sorts of horrors."

The wonderful message of Good Friday is that even as Jesus was dying a lonely, unjust and horrible death on the cross he comforted a thief who was crucified alongside with him: “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43 NLT). Life on earth can be an exciting adventure even as we face depression, disability and death when we set our sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand and think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth (Colossians 3:1-2 NLT). 

Morton Kelsey found that many nominal Christians are afraid to talk about death because they have not been touched by the kingdom of heaven now. He reminds us that love is the essential foundation of God and heaven. The doors of the Kingdom of heaven will open to us as we grow in love. And we need one another to make that love a concrete reality.  This world is not our home but it is our Father's world. We are not to be so comfortable in this world that we are no longer homesick for heaven:

"Friends, this world is not your home, so don’t make yourselves cozy in it. Don’t indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life among the natives so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they’ll be won over to God’s side and be there to join in the celebration when he arrives." 1 Peter 2:11-12 MSG

We don't have to wait until we die to get to heaven. All we need to do is not to edge God out but to embrace God only. Then we can have a foretaste of heaven even in the here and now when we are attentive to the wonders of our Father's world which is not nowhere but now here:

This is my Father’s world,
And to my list’ning ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world:
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas—
His hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father’s world:
Oh, let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world,
Why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is King: let the heavens ring!
God reigns: let the earth be glad."