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 Readings
Deuteronomy 30:11-14 My word is very near to
you
Now what I am commanding you today is not too
difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is
not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, "Who
will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim
it to us so that we may obey it?" Nor is it
beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, "Who
will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to
us so that we may obey it?" No, the word is very
near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart
so that you may obey it.
Matthew 3:1-3 The kingdom of heaven is near
In those days John the Baptist came, preaching
in the Desert of Judea and saying, "Repent, for
the kingdom of heaven is near." This is he who
was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: "A
voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the
way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'"
Matthew 4:12-17 The kingdom of heaven is near
When Jesus heard that John had been put in
prison, he returned to Galilee. Leaving
Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which
was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and
Naphtali--to fulfill what was said through the
prophet Isaiah:
Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way
to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the
Gentiles--the people living in darkness have
seen a great light; on those living in the
land of the shadow of death a light has
dawned.
From that time on Jesus began to preach,
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."
Matthew 10:1, 5-8 The kingdom of heaven is
near
He called his twelve disciples to him and gave
them authority to drive out evil spirits and to
heal every disease and sickness. . . . These
twelve Jesus sent out with the following
instructions: "Do not go among the Gentiles or
enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to
the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, preach this
message: 'The kingdom of heaven is near.' Heal
the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have
leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have
received, freely give."
Heaven and Hell #302 Our close connection
with heaven
I
have talked with angels about the union of
heaven with the human race, and have told them
that people in the church do say that everything
good is from the Lord and that there are angels
with us, but that very few people really believe
that angels are so close to us, much less that
they are in our thoughts and feelings. . . .
Yet in fact the union is so vital that we could
not think the least thought apart from the
spirits who are with us. Our spiritual life
depends on this. . . . And if this connection
were severed, we would instantly drop down dead.
If we believed the way things really are, that
everything good comes from God and everything
evil from hell, then we would not take credit
for the good within us, nor take blame for the
evil. Whenever we thought or did anything good,
we would focus on the Lord; and any evil that
flowed in we would throw back into the hell it
came from. But since we do not believe in any
inflow from heaven or from hell and therefore
believe that everything we think and intend is
in us and from us, we make the evil our own, and
defile the good with a feeling that we deserve
it.
Sermon
From that time on Jesus began to preach,
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."
(Matthew 4:17)
Most of the people living on this earth probably
do not spend a lot of their time thinking about
heaven. In fact, I would venture to say that
even for the people attending church today,
heaven is not a primary subject of everyday
thought. Most of the time, we are too busy
focusing on getting along in this world
to have much time left over for contemplating
the other world.
Of course, there are certain occasions when we
spend more time thinking about the
afterlife--such as when we have lost someone
close to us. And if it is someone in our own
household and our own immediate family that we
have lost, our thoughts may linger in heaven
much more. After all, when a piece of our heart
is in heaven, our mind will naturally follow our
feelings of love and closeness to the one who is
no longer with us.
Yet for most of us, heaven is something far off,
over the horizon. In our younger years death is
usually far from our minds. That's something
that happens to much older people. As far
as we're concerned, our own death is so far away
that it's not even worth thinking about. Even in
the middle years of our lives, we are usually so
busy with work, family, and community
responsibilities that our minds are very firmly
anchored in this world.
Our elder years, as we move closer to death,
would naturally be a time to think about what
comes next. But especially in this culture, many
people avoid thinking about death as long
possible. For many of us, I'm afraid, it is only
when death is staring us right in the face that
we start thinking seriously about what might
come next.
The fact is, none of us knows what the day of
our death will be. We probably have in our mind
some estimate of how long we're going to live,
and as we go about our daily lives, we presume
that we'll have about that much time left to
accomplish what we want to accomplish here. As
long as we are young, it seems very likely that
we will be able to do a lot of great things with
our lives, and we may go out into the world with
great idealism.
It is often only when we have left the halfway
mark of our lives behind that we realize there
simply won't be enough time to follow all our
dreams--and that we're no longer quite as
healthy and adventurous as we used to be,
anyway. And then we may make some wild attempts
to grasp something of heaven for ourselves right
here. A new sports car. A new face. A new
career. A new husband or wife. Time is running
out, we realize, and if we are going to
experience any of our dreams, we'd better get
going on it before it's too late!
Sooner or later, though, as another decade or
two goes by, we reluctantly realize that most of
our life is behind us. We may still be able to
do some wonderful things here on earth. Even if
we are not physically as strong as we once were,
our retirement years can give us some of that
precious time to ourselves that we never had
enough of before. In that time, we can choose to
follow some of the interests and dreams that
before would have been impossible. We can also
have the pleasure of watching the younger
generations coming along, without so much
pressure of responsibility keeping us from
savoring each moment with those whose bodies are
as young as their minds, and who are still full
of wonder at the miracles happening all around
us.
For many in the older generation, all of this is
enough to keep the mind, most of the time, off
of the inevitable approach of death and our
entrance into whatever comes next. Yet for all
of us, the time will come when, quite literally,
"the kingdom of heaven is near." However long or
short our life here on earth may turn out to be,
from the moment of our birth there is one fact
that cannot be avoided: each one of us will
die.
When we do die, if all the prophets, mystics,
and other travelers into the spiritual realm are
right, our lives will continue uninterrupted in
a world that is both above and within
this earthly world. And whatever our outward
accomplishments may have been in this world, in
that world only our inner character will
count. If we have devoted our lives here on
earth to gaining possessions, pleasure, and
power, without developing the inner qualities of
understanding, kindness, and love for our fellow
human beings, that inner emptiness will follow
us into the other world. We will find out too
late that we have "gained the whole world, and
lost our own soul" (Matthew 16:26). The course
we have set for ourselves here on earth
continues into the other life--and once we have
left our material bodies and the physical world
behind, our direction becomes set, and we can no
longer change course. To quote "The Teacher,"
King Solomon: "Whether a tree falls to the south
or to the north, in the place where it falls,
there will it lie" (Ecclesiastes 11:3).
Now we begin to see the force of the words
spoken by John the Baptist, by the Lord himself,
and by his disciples when they went out to
preach the good news: "Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is near." The word "repent"
may be a little old-fashioned, but it simply
means to change our attitudes, change our
direction, change our ways. It means to turn
away from the direction we have been going so
far, and start out in a different direction. It
means to aim our lives toward the things of God
and spirit, instead of toward the things of this
world.
When we realize that our entrance into the
kingdom of heaven (or the other place) is
getting closer and closer, these words gain more
and more weight for us. As we grow older and, we
hope, wiser, we begin to realize that the things
of this world can never satisfy us. We begin to
think that perhaps we should turn away from
temporary, material things and toward the
eternal, spiritual things of love, wisdom,
understanding, and compassion for the people who
share our world with us. We begin to realize
that the kingdom of heaven is near, and it is
time to turn our lives toward preparing
ourselves not just for life in this world, but
for eternal life in the spiritual world.
Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near!
Yet there is another sense in which the kingdom
of heaven is far closer to us than the day of
our death. The Lord tells us in our reading from
Deuteronomy:
Now what I am commanding you today is not too
difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is
not up in heaven, so that you have to ask,
"Who will ascend into heaven to get it and
proclaim it to us so that we may obey it?" Nor
is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask,
"Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim
it to us so that we may obey it?" No, the word
is very near you; it is in your mouth and in
your heart so that you may obey it.
In terms of time, we tend to think of heaven as
something for a future time, and not as a
present reality. In terms of space, we tend to
think of heaven as something far above us, and
not as something right here within us.
And yet, the Lord tells us that his word, which
comes down through heaven, is not at some great
distance in heaven where it is inaccessible to
us. No, it is very close to us. It is in our
hearts, in our minds, right in our own mouths,
where we can feel it and know it and express it
to one another. And like the Lord's words, the
kingdom of heaven is not some distant, abstract
dream. In Luke 17:20, 21 we read:
Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when
the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied,
"The kingdom of God does not come with your
careful observation, nor will people say,
'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the
kingdom of God is within you."
We think of heaven as a place where we go after
we die. But do we think of it as something that
is with us right now? Swedenborg tells us
that even while we are living here on earth, we
are inwardly inhabiting the spiritual world. He
says that we have both good spirits and evil
spirits with us all the time, influencing our
feelings and desires, and through them our
thoughts. In fact, if we did not have this
connection to the spiritual world, our minds
would go completely blank, and we would not be
able to feel a thing in our hearts. Further, if
we lost our connection to the spiritual world,
we could not even continue to live; we would
instantly drop down dead. This is what Jesus was
referring to when he said to Pilate, "You would
have no power over me if it were not given to
you from above" (John 19:11).
Whether we want to believe it or not, all of our
power, all of our thoughts, all of our desires,
come from the spiritual world every instant. Our
very life, our very bodies, are continually held
in existence from the spiritual world. So it is
not only when we approach our death that the
kingdom of heaven is near. The kingdom of heaven
is always near, in our heart and in our
mouth, calling to us, bending our will--but
never breaking it or forcing us--toward God and
heaven. We are continually in the hands of both
good spirits and bad, continually in a balance
between heaven and hell, so that we can freely
choose which path we will take, and what
direction we wish the tree of our life to fall
when we do, in the course of time, cross the
threshold of death and enter fully into the
spiritual world.
We are not merely creatures of this world.
Right now we are living in the spiritual
world as well. And if we can keep this in mind
as we go about our daily lives, it will help us
to stay focused on the things that really
matter. It will help us to focus each day and
each moment, not only on the things of this
world, but on the higher, more beautiful,
enlightening, and loving things that lead to
eternal life. Repent!--turn your mind
around; turn your heart around--for the
kingdom of heaven is near!
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