Daily Lesson for June 8, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 30 verses 4 and 5:

"If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. 5 And the Lord your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it."

This scripture is stunning as it is so contrary to the prevailing understanding of death and heaven in our time.  Our pop-theology today about the end times, borrowed from Greek philosophy, is essentially escapist. It is what Brian McLaren calls a "spiritual evacuation plan." Heaven is the place of bliss we escape to when earth either destroys itself or is destroyed by God.  Stretched to its ultimate logical conclusion this theology doesn't have much room for creation care, conservation of natural resources, peacemaking in the Middle East or really much else at all besides getting souls saved for heaven. The house is already on fire; our sole and soul purpose is to get out.

But the scripture today -- indeed the prevailing Biblical image, rooted in the Jewish understanding of Resurrection -- is not at all escapist. In fact, it's the very opposite of escapism. We are awaiting "a new heaven and a new earth" and the Son of Man will come from heaven back to earth.  The earth then is not a place to be escaped but is in fact the ultimate destination of the Son of Man and all those he will bring with him in the resurrection.

But as the great Rabbi Gamaliel said, "So what?"  Here's the so what.  What we do on earth matters because we are the makers of the new earth -- the Kingdom -- which the Son of Man is to inhabit.  Right now we are tilling soil and planting seed and building a city -- the city of God.  And we do this by planting trees, and educating children, and creating a system of justice, and building infrastructure healthy for human flourishing and "seeking the peace of the city".

What we do here and now matters because, contrary to the pop culture idea of earth as a place to escape from and heaven as a place to escape to, but rather for heaven to come to earth and for John the Seers revelatory words to finally come true, "Look, the dwelling of the LORD is among mortals."