For Jesus, heaven and hell were present realities. Ways of living we can enter into here and now. He talked very little of the life beyond this one.

We often rush through the experiences that have the greatest shift.

I would hope that wherever I go I bring good news - that's what that word means, right? It began with the first followers of Jesus taking a Roman military propaganda term and co-opting it for their own subversive purposes, insisting that the world isn't made better through coercive military violence but through sacrificial love. How great is that!? Unfortunately this word has been hijacked in several years for other purposes but no worries, we're taking it back.

At the center of the Christian tradition since the first church have been a number who insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God.

Jesus is bigger than any one religion. He didn't come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his day. He will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain and name him, especially the one called "Christianity.

We live in a world where we have friends, neighbors, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, people we journey with for years who are gay. And we need to love, affirm and all of us together work on the real problems that we have in the world.

When you forgive somebody, when you are generous, when you withhold judgment, when you love and when you stand up to injustice, you are, in that moment, bringing heaven to earth.