Heaven Is Not Waiting: The Gospel of Mary on the Afterlife

The early Christian teaching that changes everything you think about heaven.

This was my talk on Sunday. Our pastor is on sabbatical, and a number of us stepped in to cover while she’s gone. 

It’s pretty raw — with lots of white space so I could keep my place while (trying to) occasionally look up to meet the eyes of my friends in the pews. 

The reception I got afterwards (warm hugs!) tells me that many in our congregations are eager to hear more about women in the early church, non-canonical texts, and contemplative thought.

I. Entering the Texts Together

This morning we’ve been given two ancient voices — Matthew and the Gospel of Mary— each asking us a deceptively simple pair of questions:

Where is your treasure?
And how are you seeing?

Matthew says:
“Store up for yourselves treasure in heaven… for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Mary’s Gospel echoes:
“Where the mind is, there is the treasure.”

Two very different traditions. Two different centuries. But one shared insight:

What we cultivate inside becomes our treasure — and our destiny.

And this morning, these two ancient teachings extend us an invitation:

to pay attention to what we’re nurturing, and to the part of ourselves that is doing the seeing.

II. My Own Place of Restoration

Whenever life gets too heavy, I go camping. When things feel too dark or too loud or too much, I return to the woods — sipping herbal tea (or a shot of tequila) by a fire pit, staring up at the stars, listening to the snaps and breaks as nocturnal animals move through the undergrowth. 

Right now, even just the memory of the flames, the wind through the trees — changes something inside me. My breathing slows, and my heart rate settles.

This past summer, something surprising happened during this idyll. A quote arose in my head from the Gospel of Mary. 

But we’ll get to that in a minute.

I’d been leading our women’s group through the divine feminine in early Christian texts — and in this gospel, Mary Magdalene isn’t a repentant sinner. 

As you may know, the myth of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute only came about in the the 6th century, when Pope Gregory I conflated her with the unnamed woman in the Gospel of Matthew who washed Jesus’ feet. The Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans never viewed her as a prostitute, by the way, but call her by her rightful name, “the apostle to the apostles.” 

She’s a teacher of disciples. She was the first to witness Jesus’ resurrection, and Jesus commissioned her to go instruct the others. Throughout her adult life, she receives a vision so deep and luminous that the others turn to her for understanding.

The Gospel of Mary we have today is in fragments. Whole pages are missing. It’s also awkward to read, at first, as it didn’t undergo 1,500 years of editing as did the canonical gospels. But if you sit with it long enough, its strangeness softens… and then it begins to reveal itself.

Here’s the passage I can’t shake. We heard part of it earlier:

“All that is created… all exist interdependently… and each will be dissolved again back into its own root.”

I remembered those words while sitting alone under the trees in Franconia Notch. And for the first time in my life — after years of wrestling with heaven and hell, with eternity and its alternatives — I felt at peace with the idea of simply… being dead.

Just feeding the tree, as they say.

Not in despair, but in the warmth of belonging.

III. What the Gospel of Mary Actually Teaches

The Gospel of Mary doesn’t deny an afterlife. It just suggests something more nuanced — and, to me, more beautiful.

In Mary’s Gospel, Jesus teaches a threefold understanding of the human person, shared with Judaism, Greco-Roman philosophy, and Zoroastrianism:

• Pneuma — the spirit: vitality, appetite, passion, life of the senses
• Psyche — the soul: memory, personality, attachments, ambitions, our logical mind
• Nous — the higher mind, the faculty that knows God, seeks truth, intuition

Each depends one the other; “All that is created… all exist interdependently.” At our birth these three strands weave together. Together, they make up a whole human being.

Mary asks Jesus:

“When we see a vision, do we see it through the soul or through the spirit?”

Jesus answers:

“One does not see through the soul nor through the spirit, but through the mind which is between the two — and where the mind is, there is the treasure.”

He’s saying:

It’s not the physical eyes.
It’s not logic.
It is the nous — the part of us that is in communion with God — the part that listens, attends, and perceives the divine that is able to see him. 

Then Jesus adds:

“Where the mind is… there is the treasure.”

And now Matthew’s line — the one we all know — lands differently:

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Both ask:

Where are you setting your attention? 
In what part of your self do you spend the most time?
What are you cultivating?

Somehow, it wasn’t until I read the Gospel of Mary that I understood Matthew. It’s not a static statement. It’s a directive— pointing us inward, to the place where God is speaking.

Jesus is telling us how to go there.

He is describing the part of us from which we should live.

IV. Heaven Is Not Later — It Is Now

This is where the threads connect.

Jesus in Luke says:

“The kingdom of God is not coming with observable signs… For the kingdom of God is within you and among you.” (Luke 17:20–21)

The Gospel of Thomas says the same thing, even more boldly:

“The kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.”(Thomas 113)

And Thomas 3:

“The kingdom is inside of you and outside of you.”

The kingdom is not later.
It’s now — present, but often unnoticed.

Thomas 70 gives the most challenging version:

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

If we don’t cultivate heaven now, we won’t suddenly find it after we die.

Jesus in John agrees:

“Those who hear and believe… have eternal life. They have passed from death to life.”(John 5:24)

Eternal life is present tense.

And in John 17:3:

“This is eternal life: that they know you.”

Eternal life = perception, not duration.

The Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Thomas, Luke, John, and Matthew are all teaching the same spiritual truth:

Heaven is not a location. It is a way of seeing.
And that way of seeing is to be cultivated now.

V. It’s Not Just Mary — The Whole Bible Says This

Once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it.

Proverbs 2:4–5:
“Search for wisdom as for hidden treasure… then you will understand the knowledge of God.”

Luke 12:33–34:
“…a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Romans 12:2:“² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (the nous). Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

1 Corinthians 2:
Paul distinguishes between the psychikos (person who focuses on their worldly life), the pneumatikos (the person who lives through their body and physical senses), and the person who has the nous — the mind — of Christ.

2 Corinthians 4:7:
“⁷ But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” — Meaning our bodies are the jars, which are fragile and will eventually break, but they contain that which is eternal — the indwelling presence of God. 

Early Christian mystics continued this theme:

Evagrius:

“The mind that is pure is the temple of the Holy Spirit. A mind freed from passions sees God.”

And the Odes of Solomon:

“My heart was pruned and its flower appeared, and grace sprang up in it.”

The thread is unmistakable:

Treasure in heaven is not the afterlife. It is the inner life — the part of you capable of perceiving God. It is the cultivation of the nous — the God-seeking mind.

VI. My Crisis, and the Nothingness I Encountered

This teaching matters to me because I once thought I had the afterlife figured out.

I grew up in church. I believed in heaven and hell — until I didn’t. In my twenties, through study and prayer and contemplative practice, I became certain — not intellectually, but experientially — that something in us survived.

And then I had a medical event.

One moment I was walking with a friend in Amsterdam; the next, my knees buckled. My head hit the cobblestones. And in that instant, I was consumed by a void.

What was there?
Nothing.

No ancestors.
No light.
No tunnel.
No “I.”

Just… nothingness.

If this was a taste of death, there was nothing waiting beyond that door.

I recovered physically, yes. But spiritually — I carried that absence for thirty years.

I learned to nod politely when people spoke of heaven. But inside, I carried a memory I could not reconcile — not for three decades.

VII. How the Gospel of Mary Helped Me See Again

What the Gospel of Mary opened for me — under that oak at Franconia Notch — was a new way of imagining survival. Just as the three parts of ourselves come together at our birth, they separate again when we die. 

Each returns to the place from which it came.

The Psyche

This is our personality, our opinions, our accomplishments — our presence in the world. These will be stories remembered by those who knew us, but also (less romantically) census data, tax rolls, and other public records. 

After death, our logical mind returns to data points. 

The Pneuma

This is our embodied life — our breath, hunger, desire, physical delight. Our atoms will rejoin the earth to become soil, water, creatures, and trees — like the sheltering oak at Crawford Notch.

After death, our body returns to the dirt.

Our Nous

This is our God-attuned mind — the part of us that seeks meaning, truth, compassion, and the presence of the Holy. It’s our love, our heart, our compassion. It is the still point inside all of that listens for God beneath thought and emotion. 

After death, the part of us that’s in communion with God returns to its source.

“Store up treasures….each will be dissolved into its own root.”

It’s not about what happens after we die.

The part of us that will spend eternity in the Kingdom of Heaven is already there, in this moment. 

We don’t get an instant upgrade after we die; we’ll never be more part of God’s realm than we are right now.

VIII. So What Does This Mean for Us?

It means we can stop worrying about the afterlife and start paying attention to the inner life.

It means the question isn’t, “Will I survive?”
The question is:
“Which part of me is growing in God?”

Eternity begins here — in:

• time spent in contemplation and study
• development of our compassion for everyone, at all times
• living from the part of us that is in communion with God

It means we can ask ourselves:

• Where is my mind dwelling?
• What helps me love more deeply?
• What returns me to God?

Treasure in heaven is not a later reward.
It is a present practice.

The Kingdom of Heaven is — as Jesus said — within and among us.

It’s not something we hope to receive.
It’s something we grow.

IX. Closing Invitation

As you go into the week ahead, take with you two sentences — one from Matthew, one from Mary — like twin lanterns lighting the same path:

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
“Where the mind is, there is the treasure.”

May we set our minds where heaven already lives.
May we cultivate what endures.
May we live from the part of us that belongs to God — now and always.

Amen.

This was originally published as Heaven Is Not Later: The Gospel of Mary on the Afterlife