Epiphany 3, Year A: Matthew 4:12-23
Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross
January 26, 2020
Jonathan Hanneman
“From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”
– Matthew 4:17
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus begins his ministry by echoing John the Baptist, announcing that “the kingdom of heaven has come near.” The passage then ends with Jesus “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom.” “Heaven” is a popular topic in American culture. Movies and cartoons show us a place in the sky full of clouds, harps, and halos. People more attentive to their New Testaments often imagine something like the description in the book of Revelation, with gates of pearl and streets of gold. The Hebrew Bible likens it to a feast on a mountain or the dawning of a new day, as in this morning’s Isaiah reading. Some think heaven is some sort of alternate dimension, a universe outside our understanding of time and space where everything is joyous and peaceful because everything is under the immediate direction of God’s everlasting goodness. We generally associate it with a future state of reward, the end of the old, corrupt world and the rising of a perfect new one. But despite all our descriptions and ideas, does anyone really know what heaven even is?
As a priest, I can tell you not to worry about walking on clouds or needing to practice up on your harp-playing skills—at least, they don’t show up anywhere in the Bible. And knowing that Revelation is highly symbolic in its descriptions, the pearly gates et al probably shouldn’t be taken literally either.
Despite our best guesses, the concept of heaven remains a cosmic mystery, something intuited but never quite known. Talking about heaven tends to raise more questions than it answers: what is “the kingdom of heaven”? What’s it like? Do we really “go there” when we die? Is heaven more of a concept, or is it something real? If it is real, where could it possibly be?
In the Gospels, we regularly find Jesus talking about the kingdom of heaven. One complication in understanding what heaven is, even when Jesus uses it, is that the word the Greek language used for “heaven” also means “sky.” It includes not only where we see the clouds and sun but the unknowable realms of the gods imagined to be beyond the clouds or outside physical reality. In an era long before airplanes or space exploration, the heavens/skies were a complete mystery. People thought that angels revealed themselves as the light of stars, and ancient scientists carefully tracked their positions and movements. Because of the predictable activity of these “beings,” people assumed that the home of the gods was one of perfection and order, a place where everything happened exactly as the God of gods desired. When anything was out of place or something new appeared in the sky, like a comet, it disrupted not only heaven but, as a realm subject to heaven, the earth as well—hence the magi’s interest in the Star of Bethlehem from our reading on Epiphany.
Although Jesus talks about heaven a lot, the most concrete description he gives is “the throne of God.”[1] He also says it’s somewhere “neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.”[2] He compares it to quite a few different things—or people—in his parables.[3] And although Jesus does occasionally reference it as something future, strangely enough, he seems to talk about the kingdom of heaven most often as if it exists in the present.
In some religious circles its popular to talk about the “already but not yet” of the kingdom of heaven. The idea is that believers are “already” living in the kingdom of heaven—the presence of the Holy Spirit being a kind of down payment for now; however, the fullness of the kingdom is “not yet” realized because Christ still hasn’t physically returned. This can be a helpful way to think of things, but sometimes I wonder if we haven’t missed the point.
In Matthew, Jesus tends to be a poetic yet practical teacher. His parables are all based on common experiences of the day. Understandably, as Christians e often try to wring spiritualized meaning out of Jesus’ words, but sometimes I think he might just mean exactly what he says. For example, his instructions in Matthew 10 when sending out the disciples on their mission are basically a lesson in how to avoid being robbed by the era’s bandits. Jesus regularly appears just as—if not more—concerned with what’s happening right in front of him than in the afterlife. So what if, when Jesus is talking about the kingdom, he isn’t focusing on some metaphysical future? What if he’s trying to get us to understand and do something right now?
The words he uses in today’s reading are revealing: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” I don’t think we’ve talked about it here at Holy Cross yet, but the idea behind “repent” is a sermon unto itself. “Repent” here more literally means “change your thinking.” As a Second Temple Jew, the Hebrew and Aramaic equivalent, which translate directly into English as “turn around,” would definitely have influenced Jesus’ understanding. I, for one, tend to think of the term “kingdom” as the territory of a particular ruler, but the Greek word strongly suggests an emphasis on not just a geographic region but the authority or power of the ruler. And “heaven,” as we saw earlier, involves a broader scope than our typical concept of the afterlife.
But the most intriguing part of the statement for me this week has been the single word behind the phrase “has come near.”[4] The form of the word Jesus uses here doesn’t seem to exist outside of the New Testament or the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible commonly used in Jesus’ day. It’s strictly a Biblical term. Its root, which is a common word, is generally translated as “near” but literally means “in hand.” Jesus has turned this adverb into a verb, and the tense he uses indicates not something yet to happen but a completed action.
I’m definitely going out on a limb here, but I’m starting to wonder if a more current translation of the whole sentence should be something like, “Think it over—the reign of the heavens is already here!” Pushing the language even further (and probably past its breaking point), I’m playing with the idea that the “has come near”/“is already here” may be even more root-literal than those phrases. What if Jesus is really trying to tell us, “the reign of the heavens is in your hands”?
Maybe that’s why Jesus’ gospel was so radical for his listeners.
Despite acknowledging the “already but not yet” of the kingdom, what if we, as modern American Christians, have been looking at things upside down? What if we’ve been putting way too much emphasis on the “not yet” when the true wonder, mystery, and power of the kingdom of heaven lies in a stronger focus on the “already”? What if we aren’t just metaphorically “storing up treasures in heaven”? What if our actions here and now are enacting portions of heaven where we live on earth? What would that even mean for us? How might our lives change if we could see ourselves as the inbreaking of a new era, as heralds of something that renews the fabric of reality itself?
I can’t say what it might look like for you, but for me, the emphasis on the kingdom as now adds both a gravity and a confusing levity to my day. The gravity comes from observing how much there still is to do for things to be “on earth as it is in heaven.” But underlying that gravity is almost a sort of mental relaxation. It’s like traveling for a long time and suddenly finding yourself at your destination or maybe like that feeling of knowing with certainty that you can accomplish your goal because you’ve already succeeded at something similar before. For me, it reaches past the seeming pointlessness of many of my daily routines to reveal the genuine dignity inherent in our present actions.
But gun violence, starvation, human displacement, political instability, and manmade ecological disasters; lying, bribery, and greed—none of these things fit into our understanding of heaven. Yet we read or hear about them every day. Shortly after this morning’s reading, Jesus shares that the point of the Christian life is for people to “see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”[5] What if addressing our problems, starting with ourselves but eventually expanding to our broader spheres of influence, isn’t just part of the “good works” that Paul says we were “created in Christ Jesus” to do[6] but an invitation to work alongside God in the revelation of God’s vision for humanity, for creation itself?
I’m not saying that we can “bring in the kingdom,” somehow forcing God’s hand and ensuring the immediate return of Christ (a sadly common theme of Western history). But we can certainly extend and enrich it. What might you do today to unveil more of the kingdom of heaven in our world, not just to daydream about it but to build the realm where God’s kindness and power hold sway? Maybe you can offer a hug to a lonely person. Maybe you can work toward better health by skipping that extra cupcake or seeking help for an addiction. Maybe you have extra time in your schedule and could volunteer to tutor or coach less advantaged youth. Maybe you could run for office and enact more just and equitable laws. Or maybe you can just save some water by fixing a leaky faucet.
When everything you do has the possibility of revealing God’s kingdom, suddenly the small things, the mundane and dreary tasks of the day, matter far more than we realized. Even our tiniest actions become significant, because we are the kingdom of heaven. We are the presence of God in the world.
So knowing that, what will we do now? I mean,
“Think it over—the reign of the heavens is in our hands!”
[1] Matthew 5:34
[2] Matthew 6:20
[3] Matthew 13, 18:23, 20, 22:2, & 25
[4] https://christswords.com/content/hand
[5] Matthew 5:16
[6] Ephesians 2:10