CHRIS

"The kingdom of heaven has come near." (Matthew 4:17)

HEAVEN HAPPENS

When we marry into a family, go off to college, move to a different part of the country, or join a church, we discover there are words and expressions used in the family, college, region, or church that mean something to that particular community. Every word or expression has a story behind it, and if we don't know the story, the assumptions we make or conclusions we reach may range from comical, to confusing, to even harmful.

Context is so important. This is particularly true when it comes to understanding what Jesus was saying in the Beatitudes. In order to fully grasp the Beatitudes, we need a sense of their context. These declarations were made on the heels of a declaration Jesus made about the kingdom of heaven as well as a demonstration of its power. Having a sense of where Jesus was and what he was saying and doing just prior to the Beatitudes helps us better understand them and apply them to our own context in life.

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

Fred Smith was an influential businessman who mentored Christian leaders for several decades through Leadership Network. In the summer of 2004, he was hospitalized and not expected to live. Family members heard him repeat, "I want to go home ... I want to go home." After a family meeting of great angst, they decided to respect his wishes, removing him from dialysis, knowing that his death would come in three to five days. For the next thirty-six hours, they sang, read Scripture, prayed, and said their goodbyes. But unexpectedly, the anticipated peaceful decline was anything but. Fred went into pulmonary failure and choking aspiration. His daughter, Brenda, sat with him through the difficult night. The coughing, however, stirred Fred out of his semiconscious state and he fully awoke. Brenda quietly told him of the family's decision to follow his desire to go home. She explained that he would slip into unconsciousness and then step from here to there.

Suddenly Fred's eyes were wide open and he made the effort to speak: "Home? I didn't mean heaven, I meant Parkchester" (his house on Parkchester Drive). Laughing through her tears, Brenda quickly called for the doctors. His dialysis was rescheduled and Fred recovered to go home and live three more years. For Fred, home was more than a place on the other side of the grave. Home was also on Parkchester Drive. Context is everything. Fred was talking about his life on this side of the grave when he used the word home while his family was thinking of home as a reference to his life on the other side of the grave.

This same thing happens with many of us in understanding Jesus' words about "the kingdom of heaven." For Jesus, the kingdom of heaven had everything to do with life on this side of the grave while many of us are inclined to think it mostly has something to do with life on the other side. Consequently, we think of Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of heaven coming near as meaning through Jesus we now have access to the place of heaven after we die. Even though this is one aspect of the context, it is not the entire context.

While Jesus is the Way to life beyond the grave, what Jesus was referring to when he spoke of the kingdom of heaven coming near, and what his original audience would have pictured when they heard him proclaim that the kingdom of heaven coming near, was more immediate.

Jesus' listeners were brought up reading the prophet Isaiah's proclamations about the kingdom of God (the phrases "kingdom of God" and "kingdom of heaven" are synonymous). Isaiah described the kingdom of God not so much as a realm beyond the grave, but as the sphere of God's reign, rule, activity, and work upon the earth.

In Isaiah's prophecies, "kingdom of God" doesn't refer exclusively to a place beyond the grave, but a "happening" upon the earth. In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus comes on the scene declaring that the reign, the rule, the activity of God—"the kingdom of heaven"—is near. The kingdom of heaven is happening.

WHEN HEAVEN HAPPENS

And when heaven "is happening" on the earth, lives are changed. Seventeen passages in Isaiah speak of the kingdom of God and all seventeen of them speak of it in terms of one thing: deliverance or salvation. This makes the meaning of Jesus' name all the more significant: "the Lord saves" (Matthew 1:21). Jesus' name is inextricably intertwined with what the kingdom of God represents. The saving, delivering, rule, reign, activity of God comes near in the life, ministry, message, and presence of Jesus upon the earth. Isaiah fleshes out what this deliverance and salvation means, very specifically. Salvation is described in terms of peace (14 times);healing (7 times); joy (12 times); return from estrangement with God (9 times); and righteousness, justice, fairness (16 times).

When Jesus echoes Isaiah's language about the kingdom of heaven, he's referring to the saving, delivering, rule, reign, and power of God on the earth that makes a qualitative difference in people's lives on the earth. In Jesus' saving reign, people would experience peace, healing, joy, a newfound sense of restoration with God, and an atmosphere of righteousness and justice.

SHOW AND TELL

Jesus didn't just declare that the kingdom of heaven was near. He demonstrated it as well. He was into "show and tell."

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him. (Matthew 4:23–25)

This is the story immediately preceding Jesus going up on a mountainside to give what came to be known as the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5—7), which begins with the words of the Beatitudes. But before he spoke from the mountain, he delivered people in their valleys. In the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his followers about the nature of the King and what it means to live in light of the reign of God on the earth. And he gives listeners a living picture of the kingdom. He heals people: the aged and infirm, the fevered and the paralyzed, the mentally anguished, the epileptics, the afflicted—he healed them all.

HEALING MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

So suppose you lived in Palestine, in the area of Galilee, in the days of Jesus and were chronically ill. In addition to suffering the adversity of the illness itself, you also would have endured a ripple effect of related consequences.

There were...