Shamayim is a Place on Earth

Oohh baby do you know what that's worth?
Oohh, heaven is a place on earth.
The say in heaven, love comes first.
We'll make heaven a place on earth.
Oohh, heaven is a place on earth...

I can't stop thinking of that old song by Belinda Carlisle as I prepare to talk to my youth group about Matthew 6:19-24.  The topic is storing up treasures in heaven.  I think that when we imagine the afterlife as some kind of ethereal, otherworldly experience, we find it almost impossible to figure out what kind of treasures we might have.  Some might explain that this "treasure" consists of such things as "the deeds of kindness a man did upon the earth" or having something to do with "character" (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, vol.1, pp.241-242).  Barclay goes on to say this:

If everything that a man values and sets his heart upon is on earth, then he will have no interest in any world beyond this world; if all through his life a man's eyes are on eternity, then he will evaluate lightly the things of this world.  If everything which a man counts valuable is on this earth, then he will leave this earth reluctantly and grudgingly; if a man's thoughts have been ever in the world beyond, he will leave this world with gladness, because he goes at last to God. (Ibid.)

I'm becoming more and more convinced that there is an unwarranted dualism in this kind of thinking.  I think there is definitely something more that we look forward to as the people of God.  It is the consummation of Christ's kingdom on earth, or as Revelation 21:3 puts it, "the dwelling of God...with men."

Shamayim is the Hebrew word for the "visible heavens, sky" or "the abode of God." (definition taken from Crosswalk.com)  The authors of the Old Testament understood the transcendence of God.  "His palace, established over the heavenly ocean (Psalm 104:3) is the heavenly sanctuary..." (Gerhard Kittel (ed.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 5, p.505)  The Hebrew people also understood the immanence of Yahweh, however.  God is even said to live "with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit..." (Isaiah 57:15)  Thus, they did not think that God was confined to some otherworldy realm. 

I won't claim total clarity on this subject, but it seems to me that our difficulty in understanding passages like Matthew 6:19-24 is that we tend to assume a certain discontinuity between this life and the next. 

...they suppose God will simply throw the present world in the trash can and leave us in a totally different sphere altogether.  There is then really no point in attempting to reshape the present world by the light of Jesus Christ.  (N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, p.179)

Of course, this can go the other way, too.  We might imagine "we can actually build the kingdom of God by our own hard work." (Ibid.)  I like the way N.T. Wright describes Christ's return to earth:

...this will be a fresh act of grace, of radical newness.  At one level it will be quite unexpected, like a surprise party with guests we never thought we would meet and delicious food we never thought we would taste.  But at the same time there will be a rightness about it, a rich continuity with what has gone before so that in the midst of our surprise and delight we will say, "Of course!  This is how it had to be, even though we'd never imagined it."

The conclusion that Dr. Wright wants us to come to in all this is that there is a both/and about our final destiny.  It will be both radically different and the same.  In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul attempts to describe something that is probably indescribable in some sense—the resurrection bodies that we will someday possess.  As N.T. Wright points out, this whole section ends with a plea based on the continuity I'm speaking of:

Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm.  Let nothing move you.  Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)

It seems to me that this line of thinking makes much more sense of texts such as Matthew 6:19-24.  Our labor in the Lord is NOT in vain!  What is done by the power of the Holy Spirit in this world will last.  This is not simply about the saving of souls or remembered acts of kindness.  Our "treasure in heaven" is not about having built good character!  I think these statements from Jesus are a fundamental plea to be involved with things that truly matter in the long run.  This is not a denial of all things material, although we don't want to forget the temporal nature of "things." 

I want to close this overly long post with a final quote from the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.  This is in reference to that Hebrew word shamayim:

...one should remember that heaven could not be at central interest for the faith of Israel.  Even if it was sometimes depicted as the place of the salvation prepared for Israel, this was a salvation which comes to earth. (p.509)

Oohh baby, I think Belinda is on to something!

Comments

[ScottB]

Bill - great thoughts! I'm thinking (off the top of my head) that Matthew's use of "the kingdom of heaven" instead of Mark and Luke's "kingdom of God" might play a part in this as well - it doesn't seem as though Matthew uses "heaven" the same way we do in other places, so why would he do so here? If the kingdom of heaven is God's will breaking into the present age (as I'd read it), then it seems that Jesus is telling us to invest in God's kingdom and not build our own.

[Boris Alexandrov]

Hi
My name is Boris and I am a musician too .At the momen I am working as a pianoentertainer and travel around the world .And offcourse I am very interested in same things like you.After my opinion this is the way .Offcourse nobody knows when or are we going to rich the goal we wanted.I will be very happy if you share with me your experiance on the way to the TRUTH .

Thanks and all the best.

Boris