"For Jesus, the question wasn't 'How do I get into Heaven?' but "How do I bring Heaven here?' The questions wasn't, 'How do I get in there?' but 'How do I get there here?'" -Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis
"Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them." "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control..." -Matthew 7:20 and Galatians 5:22-23
A few months ago, as I talked about in the last post which was far too long ago, I was in Purdy, Missouri at Camp Barnabas with my amazing group at Berea Friendship working with some truly extraordinary kids who just happened to have some developmental disabilities. The work was crazy hard. The sleep was slim. The sweat was beyond glistening. And the joy and smiles were infinite!
You see, Camp is the closest thing to perfect I've ever tasted. More than any Mexican food I've ever eaten or any pretty girl I've fallen droopy eyed for.
And when we got back, everybody's first question, naturally, was, "How was the trip?!"
I'd prepared for this moment. After four previous trips to Camp, I've learned that it's better to have your answer planned out so when it's asked, I could roll out the highlights and the most meaningful moments, the most ridiculous laughs, and the deepest trials. So when our bus rolled up at the church blaring "Call Me Maybe," I knew how I was going to answer the fateful question.
But then something strange happened. I got off the bus and a mom asked, "So, how was your week?" And the answer I'd been preparing for two hours left me.
"It was heaven," I responded.
It was the only thing I could come up with.
For the following two weeks when others would ask, my answer grew. I shared stories of Nolan's name calling profanity and the wrestling in the pool to steal my sunglasses, the Elvis costume and Cross Carry. But even then, the answer always began, "It was heaven..." And that's because for the week we were there, heaven was in our midst.
Jesus had a lot of ways to describe the Kingdom of God. He called it a banquet, a pearl, a feast (my stomach's favorite,) etc. And he also called it a seed. I LOVE this image of heaven. I think it tells us so much of the nature of God's Kingdom.
Jesus tells a parable about a sower of seeds. The sower spreads the seed along the path, but it lands in different places. Some lands in the rocky soil, some in the thorns. Some has no shade. And still some fall on fertile soil. Then, somewhat counter to his nature of ambiguity, Jesus explains the parable. The seed is the word of God, and the soil is us, our hearts, our souls. What he is saying is that the word, the reality of who God is, lives IN us.
He then immediately follows this passage with 2 parables about the Kingdom: the growing seed and the mustard seed. Both of these stories illustrate something very simple: seeds grow, they mature into plants and bear fruit. The word gets inside us, it messes us up and transforms us (not always a painless or easy transformation) and the kingdom begins to take root in us. This is HUGE!
Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Heaven HERE, in our midst NOW.
We live in the in-between, both in the present reality, yet also in the midst of heaven's presence. I've never understood why we assume eternal life begins when we die. Heaven is a blessing and reality here and now, just as it is in the then and there.
But the conversation about seeds and their fruit doesn't end here. In this really cool tag-team, Jesus and Paul paint a beautiful picture of what it can look like when the kingdom's plant begins to take root in us. In teaching his disciples Jesus talks about people as plants who either bear good fruit or bad fruit and "Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them." It's like he's saying, an apple tree doesn't produce oranges. It produces apples.
In the same way, the kingdom bears certain fruits. Paul even shares some with us: "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."
These are things that bless, no matter who you are! These are qualities that welcome and bring together. They are what the Kingdom of God is like. And when we carry heaven around with us we bless EVERYONE and invite others into a beautiful story.
That's what it means to be a disciple of Jesus: to be someone who carries heaven where they go and to bless others because of it. We're called to be in the business of bringing heaven HERE, even if just in imperfect glimpses and snapshots. Because if heaven is all we describe it as, I want to taste as much of it now, its purity and its perfection, its beauty and its majesty. I want God to be so rooted in my heart that my life would be marked by nothing but the fruits of his Kingdom. Those fruits are sweeter than any I've ever tasted.
And that's what Camp Barnabas was. For a week in Nowhere, Missouri, a group of teenagers from across America were so rooted in Jesus that heaven could not be missed in their every step. It was everywhere. And the fruit was sweet...
forever unfinished...
