A Long Letting Go by Marilyn McEntyre

Author:Marilyn McEntyre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Published: 2015-06-17T15:38:42+00:00

Like a Seed

The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed. . . .

Matthew 13:31

Heaven has been trivialized and sentimentalized in movies and children’s books, and at the hands of artists who deal mostly in pastels. When death is near, thoughts naturally turn at some point toward heaven. All of us who are facing death — our own or another’s — may find ourselves browsing through a thick file of images, stories, and phrases about life after death in an effort to deal with the anxieties that accompany the preparation for the transition from this life to the next.

The Gospels and Christian tradition offer a wide range of ways to imagine the “kingdom of heaven,” most of them more mysterious than explanatory, all of them inviting us to approach its mystery with hope. As we sit in the shadow of an impending death, it can be helpful to reflect on these, gleaning gently some of the insight and consolation and challenge they offer as we find ways to help someone we love prepare to go to the place prepared for us all.

Each of the metaphors for the kingdom of heaven — a concept not confined to the afterlife, but also about the depths of the present — offers comfort as well as insight. The kingdom is like a seed that carries a promise of huge, varied, continuing life within its tiny compass. It is like a field of wheat where weeds are allowed to grow and from which the wheat will be harvested. It is like leaven, working in silence and time to make ready what has been prepared. It is a treasure to be discovered and claimed. It is a gathering and a wedding feast. No single image is entirely sufficient. Together they invite our imaginations to stretch to the edge of what imagery can convey.

We have the wisdom of saints and theologians to help us reconsider and reframe our notions of heaven when they dwindle into the banal or simplistic. In one of his finest sermons, Jonathan Edwards left lavish testimony that “heaven is a world of love.” St. Catherine of Siena’s assurance that “All the way to heaven is heaven” underscores Jesus’ teaching that the kingdom of heaven is among and within us — a declaration that thins the partition we imagine between this life and the next. Desmond Tutu offers this cheering reassurance: “We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.” And C. S. Lewis foreshadows it in The Last Battle, where a character cries, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.” That heaven is our home is probably the deepest, most comforting truth we can claim when we find ourselves facing terrible feelings of abandonment as the one we are losing prepares to “go there.

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