{"id":6180,"date":"2020-04-14T16:32:03","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T06:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6180"},"modified":"2020-04-16T14:28:48","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T04:28:48","slug":"do-i-qualify-for-the-kingdom-of-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/do-i-qualify-for-the-kingdom-of-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"Do I qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Do I qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adapted from a sermon by Fr Antonios Kaldas<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we look at Tuesday Morning of Pascha, the last Gospel\nintroduces the theme of two different kinds of people who relate to God. We hear\nJesus talking about the end of the world and He asks, \u201cWho will be on my left\nand who will be on my right.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The criteria Jesus gave for who will be on His left and who will be on His right says, \u201cI was hungry, and you fed Me, I was sick, and you visited me, I was naked, and you clothed Me” (Matthew 25:36).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gospel tells us it\u2019s hard to judge who will be where. When we\nlook at those who Jesus speaks to at the end of the world, do you think it\nwould be easy to tell who fed the hungry, who visited the sick and who clothed\nthe naked and who didn\u2019t? When you look around yourself and look at other\npeople in your day to day life, do you know who feeds the hungry? Do you know\nwho has visited the sick? Do you know who has clothed the naked? Chances are,\nthose that do, aren\u2019t walking around boasting about it. We simply, do not know.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gospels of Wednesday help us to try and understand how a\nperson qualifies to be at the right hand of Jesus. Not so that we can look at\nthe people around us and say, \u201cyou\u2019re going to heaven,\u201d it is so we can look at\nourselves and determine if we qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven. The first hour\nof the Gospels is about the marriage banquet, here there are two types of\npeople, those are invited to the wedding feast and refuse and those who rejoice\nto attend the wedding feast of Christ. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second Gospel was the coming of Christ, here we see two types\nof people again. Two men in the field, one to be taken and one to be left. \u201cWatch\ntheir fall because you do not know what hour the Lord is coming\u201d \u2013 which one of\nthem qualifies for heaven? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third Gospel speaks of the two groups of virgins. The five\nfoolish virgins on the left \u2013 they weren\u2019t ready and the five wise virgins – they\nwere ready. The fourth Gospel then talks about the hypocrisy of the scribes and\npharisees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWoe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, 30 <\/sup><\/strong>saying, \u2018If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.\u2019 31 <\/sup><\/strong>Thus you witness against yourselves.<\/em>\u201d (Matthew 23:29-31) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are the people who think <\/em>they\u2019re\ngoing to heaven. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I give God my 5 minutes of prayer,\nI pay my tithes. What do I have in my life that is important enough for me to\nrush my prayer? What is more important than giving God my attention when I\nspeak to him? Our prayers tell us something about our relationship with God,\nour prayers in itself give us a glimpse of which group we fall into. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are people who believe that\nGod created us to love Him and there are people that believe we create God to\nlove us. The first group says, I exist for God. God is the one who made me,\nwithout God I would not exist, He wants me to experience the Joy of love.\nTherefore, all I do is for God and anybody else. Then there is the other group\nwhere, they make up a god in their <\/em>image and their <\/em>likeness. He\nis a god that is kind and merciful and doesn\u2019t mind the sins I am committing.\nThey never feel they have any problems. The problem is, they haven\u2019t met the real\n<\/em>God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to be awfully careful to not create our \u2018fantasy\u2019 god. The god who will give me everything I want. A god who must<\/em> make my life very successful. We can\u2019t lead our real God into what we <\/em>want Him to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the famous words of C.S Lewis,\n\u201cHe is not a tame lion.\u201d We must not think he will come and lick our hands; He\nhas a mind of His own. We are His servants, that is why we say \u201cthy<\/em> will\nbe done\u201d when we pray Our Father. There are no footnotes at the bottom of Our\nFather saying, \u201cbut let my<\/em> will be Your will. Please Lord want what I\nwant. Please Lord give me what I want.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We must deal with the real <\/em>God,\nnot this fantasy god. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judas, created a fantasy god. He\ncreated a fantasy Jesus. Judas didn\u2019t like it when he had to face the real <\/em>Jesus,\nthe real<\/em> Jesus, didn\u2019t approve of his greediness. Ask yourself this\nquestion, \u201cAre my thoughts, my motivations, my actions, my words motivated by\ncare for myself or are they motivated by genuine and sincere care for God and\nmy neighbour?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent times, the Church has been tainted with Western ideas. We think of our relationship with God ultimately as standing before a judge. A judge in a \u201clegal\u201d sense where He has a law, He has witnesses of what we\u2019ve done. If we\u2019ve broken the law, we take our punishment. If we haven\u2019t, we will meet Him in heaven. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Orthodox view has a different emphasis. Those who are going to go to Heaven are those who live in Heaven on earth. It\u2019s not going to be a matter of getting there and having your accounts checked. If we start to live in Heaven on earth, when we get to meet Jesus and ask \u201cLord, can I please go to heaven,\u201d His answer will be \u201cNo, because you\u2019re already in heaven\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does it mean to live in\nHeaven on earth? It is to live united with God while we\u2019re here on earth.\nHeaven is not defined by a location or characteristic, it is defined by the\npresence of God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can create our own hell on\nearth by turning away from God. By turning into ourselves and not to God, we\nturn away from Our God who is everywhere. God has said to us, your soul and\nyour heart is free, God does not force Himself upon us or into our heart. This\nis why in oneself; we can turn away from God. We become selfish and\nself-centred. The person who lives in hell on earth, goes up and stands in\nfront of Christ and says \u201cno, I don\u2019t want to be with you. I prefer myself.\u201d\nAnd Christ would say \u201cokay, I won\u2019t force you.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, as it turns out, it is not God who decides where we go. We choose ourselves. This is the free choice God has given to every one of us. The choices we make in our lives, makes us who we are in the end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us ask ourselves:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who am I? What kind of person am\nI? Who is the real person I am that nobody sees? Have I met with the real God,\nor am I dealing with my fantasy god?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen the King will say to those on His right hand, \u2018Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world\u201d<\/em><\/p>Matthew 25:34<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\udc8e Full Sermon<\/a> \ud83d\udc8e<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do I qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven? Adapted from a sermon by Fr Antonios Kaldas If we look at Tuesday Morning of Pascha, the last Gospel introduces the theme of two different kinds of people who relate to God. We hear Jesus talking about the end of the world and He asks, \u201cWho will … Continue reading “Do I qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[256,24,223,177],"class_list":["post-6180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-passionweek","tag-christ","tag-heaven","tag-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6180"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6237,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6180\/revisions\/6237"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}