St. Paul’s United Church
Sunday, January 29, 2008
On
Earth as it is in Heaven – Rev. David Mundy
Revelation 21:6
Luke
20:27-40
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Julian Barnes is an
award-winning British author who claims he doesn’t believe in God but misses
God just the same. His wistfulness about God may be the reason for one of the
chapters in his clever book A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters. It is called The Dream but it is
actually about heaven.
The “dreamer” wakes up in a
place which he gradually realizes is heaven. He is in his own bed as he “comes
to” but that is just about the only thing that is the same. There is a
beautiful woman who is his room service waitress. She brings breakfast, but not
just any breakfast. The grapefruit is the perfect texture and he doesn’t have
to chase it around to get each segment out. The eggs are done precisely to his
liking and the marmalade on his toast is to die for, so to speak.
There is a newspaper on his
breakfast tray in which he discovers that a cure has been found for cancer. His
political party has won the election. All countries agree to ban nuclear
weapons. Little old ladies win the
lottery every week. Sex offenders repent and are released back into society and
lead blameless lives. It’s all good news.
During the day he can do
anything he wants so he meets famous people from the past. He drives around in
all the best cars. He decides to try golf and discovers that he is better than
he ever was in his previous life. In fact, as the days go by he gets better and
better. He also plays tennis against the greats and defeats them.
Strangely this all becomes a
problem with the passage of time. He actually starts to worry about how perfect
heaven is. He frets that the day will come when he can play eighteen holes of
golf in eighteen shots. Then what? He notices something else. When he asked to
meet Jesus, he is told that it wasn’t possible at the time. And God . . . where
is God? So he asks the woman who is the sort of concierge of heaven what this
is about.
“Heaven is
democratic these days,” she said. Then added, “or at
least, it is if you want it to be.”
What do you
mean, democratic?
We don’t
impose Heaven on people any more, she said.
“We listen to
their needs. If they want it, they can have it; if not, not. And then of course
they get the sort of Heaven they want.”
“And what sort
do they want on the whole?”
“Well, they
want a continuation of life, that’s what we find. But . . . better needless to
say.”
She goes on to say that there
is a difference between Old Heaven and New Heaven. The old heaven was more religious with more
God but they are fazing it out. She admits that after a while –thousands and
thousands of years usually – people often decide to die. There could actually
be too much of a good thing.
Could that be true? Could we
actually invent our own version of heaven and then get bored? We believe in
heaven or an afterlife or paradise or whatever we want to call it. I say
“whatever we want to call it” because heaven is actually an old English word
which only partially captures what is conveyed by the words used in the
languages of the bible. About 3/4's of Americans believe in an afterlife or
eternity, while here in Canada it is about sixty percent.
Jesus spoke about the life to
come although he had surprisingly little about what has been described as “the
furniture of heaven and the temperature of hell.” There is the prayer which
he taught his disciples and which we still repeat nearly every week which
addresses God in heaven “our father who
art in heaven.” He also speaks often of the “kingdom of heaven” according to
Matthew’s gospel the reign of God which will exist on earth as it is in heaven.
We know that in Jesus’ day some
Jews believed in an afterlife and some didn’t. The religious group called the
Sadducees were among the skeptics and on one occasion they decided to push
Jesus on his views, so they give him a scenario. They say, “ so Elizabeth
Taylor marries Nicky Hilton but they divorce, and then she marries a couple of
other guys and they divorce, and she marries and divorces Richard Burton twice,
and divorces and divorces again. She has eight husbands and divorces them all!
Who will be her husband in the resurrection?” Okay the way Luke tells it is
a little different, but it is the same general idea! The Sadducees want to make
the afterlife sound silly, but it doesn’t work.
Jesus tells them that they just
don’t get it. The issues we fuss about in this life will not be the same in the
life to come. Still, Jesus speaks of those who have gone before by name as a
reminder that their essence continues.
And he makes the statement “Now he is God not of the dead, but of the
living: for to him all of them are alive.”
A lot of you believe there is
an afterlife and when you were asked last week if heaven is a place, nearly all
of you who responded said yes. I’m sure that if you had the opportunity to say
more than just “yes” or “no” you would have added that while heaven is real it
is a state of spiritual being rather than real estate. It’s not like going to
that other H place – not Hell, Hogwarts. We don’t stand on platform 9 3/4
waiting for the train to magically whisk us, ala Harry Potter and his
friends, to our new and exciting home
away from home where the streets are paved with literal 24 carat gold. One of
you responded that you believed that heaven is a place but wrote in this
explanation “Yes, but not physically limited as places are in our physical
world.” I don’t know about you, but I think that this a succinct assessment
that many of us share.
It’s interesting to see what we
have done with heaven through the centuries. There is some sense that we
re-invent the afterlife as we go along. Heaven has been seen as a reward for
the trials and tribulations of this life. Many African American spirituals hold
out the promise of a place where suffering is no more and inequality has been
banished. When this life was often so brief and so painful, heaven was a
wonderful possibility and cause for hope.
Heaven has also been viewed as
the place where all the questions we have now about injustice and unfairness
are answered. There is a cartoon which shows a group of people with halos and
robes carefully studying question sheets while God provides the answers: “
number 48 true; number 49 false; number 52 The Ponderosa; number 53 every other
Tuesday...
Heaven has also been used as a
form of threat, oddly enough, almost as potently as hell. If we don’t follow God in a precise way, or
if we don’t say we love Jesus with very specific language we don’t get in. So,
heaven becomes the reward for our good behaviour, with lots of conditions, in
the way that hell is the punishment for our bad behaviour. Somehow the notion
of eternal life as God’s gracious gift to us in Christ gets pushed into the background.
So what is the good of heaven
if it is more than “pie in the sky when we die?” Does heaven still matter? What
we know is that it just isn’t going away.
Some scientists argue that
humans seem to be “hard-wired” for God, that it is built right into us to ask
the big spiritual questions. I think we could say that as humans we are
uniquely equipped to consider both our mortality and our immortality and
nothing can stop us from that desire for something more than this life has to
offer, even though this earthly existence has been full and satisfying.
As secular as we think this
world has become we are still wistful for God and we desire the fullness of
life which is eternity. It’s driving the atheists crazy! In my previous congregation we had a study
series on heaven in which we considered the Christian perspective and invited
an Islamic leader and a Jewish Rabbi to share their views as well. Our guest on
the last evening was a chaplain, a Christian Reform pastor who did his doctoral
thesis on the images of the afterlife in the Star Trek series. He was the
ultimate Trekkie and knew every episode as though it was gospel. He pointed out that the creator of Star Trek,
Gene Roddenberry was a humanist who was actually anti-religious. To his great
frustration the story line developers and producers of the various Star Trek
series kept introducing spiritual and after-life themes into the episodes.
Where were Captain Kirk and the crew boldly going – heaven!
As a minister I have been at
the bedsides of many people who were about to leave this life for the life
everlasting. I realized during preparation for this Sunday that in all of the
years no one has asked me if they were going to get into heaven, as though they
needed a back-stage pass for the grandest concert ever. There have been many
conversations about the “blessed assurance” of a new and wonderful existence
which Christ opens to all who are willing to receive it.
The book of the New Testament
which is the most descriptive of heaven is the challenging Revelation to John.
The descriptions within John’s imaginative and inspired vision are vivid. They
have been the source for many sermons and hymns, including a couple which we
sang today. The words from the Revelation I appreciate most are found at the beginning
of the fourth chapter: “after this I looked, and there in heaven a door
stood open!”
Perhaps what we simply say
about heaven is that we are willing to enter into that door which is ajar for
us in this life and the next.
We can say that we are with
Jesus in our trust that the kingdom of heaven is already at hand us if we are
willing to see it and experience it around us. This life on earth can be
heavenly as we follow and serve Christ and savour the diversity and beauty
around us.
Still there will be more and
there can’t be too much of a good thing! Eventually we will leave this life
behind with both its joys and its pain and sorrows to begin the adventure which
no one has yet described adequately or ever could. Rather than being fearful
there can be a sense of anticipation for the hopeful realm in which God will
wipe away our tears. Remember that you are immortal through Christ and in
Christ and it may be the greatest concert ever.
Heavens above! And around us!
And within us!