IMAGINGING HEAVEN

Scripture Reading:  John 14:1-7

 

 

Let me first say that it’s been a pleasure getting to know the attorneys who are members of this congregation.  Without exception, I have found them to be wonderful folks of high character and great sensitivity.  I simply can’t say enough about these wonderful people.

 

So this lawyer dies and goes to the pearly gates.  “How do I get into heaven?” he demands.  St. Peter says, “Well, just tell us of all the good, selfless acts you have committed in your life.”  The lawyer thinks about it for a while.  In fact, he thinks about it for two whole days until he finally comes up with this: “I remember one day on the way to the office handing some bum on the street a quarter.  Does that get me into heaven?”

 

“Hmm,” Saint Peter said.  “I’m going to have to think about this and consult with the others.”  For three whole days the lawyer waits there by the pearly gates until finally Saint Peter returns.  “I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news,” Saint Peter says.  “What’s the good news?” the lawyer asks.  Saint Peter answers, “Well, you’re going to get your twenty-five cents back.”

 

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places… I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus says in our Gospel Reading this morning and ever since then we’ve tried to figure out what exactly that means.

 

Perhaps our first question is the one raised by my terrible lawyer joke for which I profoundly apologize:  what is it that gets us in to heaven?

 

So this Pastor dies and goes before Saint Peter and Saint Peter explains, “We’re on the point system here in heaven.  You tell us all the good things you’ve done and we assign a point value to them.  If your good deeds add up to 1000 points, then you get into heaven.”

 

“Well, let me see,” says the Pastor.  “I served Christ’s Church in ministry for over 35 years.”

 

“That’s terrific,” says Saint Peter.  “That’s worth two points.”

 

“Two points?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Okay, well, I was faithfully married to the same person for over 53 years.”

 

“I’m proud of you,” says Saint Peter.  “And that’s worth three points.”

 

“Only three points?”

 

“Right.”

 

“I cared for my aged parents for 15 years.”

 

“Four points.”

 

The pastor’s finally had enough.  “This is crazy!  At the rate this is going, the only way I’ll get into heaven is by the grace of God!”

 

Saint Peter smiles and offers his hand, saying, “Welcome to heaven.”

 

You understand this business about who gets into heaven is all about grace.  It isn’t about you and I deciding who gets in or you or I earning our place.  It’s all about the grace of God, the sower who lavishes the seeds of love everywhere and to everyone.  I know this vision of God puts me at odds with those who want to make sure God keeps up the standards of the place, as if heaven were a neighborhood and we’re all worried about the resale value of our homes.  Those folks would have us believe that heaven will be filled with Falwells and Swaggerts while Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Newton, Spencer, Gandhi, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are shut out.  But if you had the choice of spend­ing eternity with Jimmy Swaggert or Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom would you choose? 

 

A preacher was once rebuked for associating with the transcendental­ist Emerson.  A brother preacher said to him, "Don't you know that Emerson is going to hell?" 

 

"I suppose so," the other replied, "but if Emerson goes to hell, it will change the climate of the place, and turn the tide of emigration that way."

 

I don’t really understand those folks who want to make heaven into some kind of exclusive club.  In Fred Craddock’s choice refrain, they're the ones who say, “What's the point in heaven if you can't look over the banister and say, ‘Ha, ha, ha!’" 

I don’t know about you, but the only way I’d be getting into heaven is by the grace of God and who am I to deny that to someone else?  So I try not to worry myself with figuring out who gets in and who doesn’t.  That’s God’s business, not mine.

 

But there’s another question, in some ways more pressing and more distressing:  What is this place we’ve been promised, this vision that sometimes carries us through times of difficulty and death?  What’s heaven like?

 

My father told me a story once from his earliest days as a pastor.  He was a student at Oberlin Seminary and serving a small church in Chatham, Ohio, when a man in the congregation died suddenly leaving a wife and two small children.  Dad was called out to their home.  This was quite a few years ago and in a rural area, so when he got to the house, the man's corpse was laid out on the kitchen table as was the custom then.  The wife and her two chil­dren were gathered around.  She was reassuring her children that their father was in heaven.  And then she said, "And now Reverend Savides will tell you what heaven's like."

 

What my Dad can remember of that experience was the look on those children’s faces as they looked up into his own, and his feeling of being terribly inadequate to the situation.  He started mumbling some words like, "Well, it's a wonderful place ... very peaceful ..." 

 

The woman started prod­ding him:  “The streets are paved with gold." 

 

"Yes, yes," he said. 

 

"And there are huge pearly gates," she added. 

 

"Of course," he said. 

 

"And everyone that he ever loved will be waiting for him." 

 

"That's right," he said.

 

I remembered my Dad's story the first time I made a pastoral visit on a dying person.  It was in the intensive care unit of a hospital.  The man was dying of lung cancer.  The family was gathered around him and an oppressive silence hung about the room.  Uncertainly breaking the silence with almost a whisper, I asked, "Would you like me to offer up a prayer?" 

 

“Yes,” his wife said.

 

“What would you like me to pray for?” I asked.

 

“I'd like you to pray for his soul to be saved."

 

Pray for his soul?!  Pray for his salvation?!  It struck me then what an incredible privilege and terrific responsibility this calling can sometimes be.  Like my Dad before me, I felt sorely out of my depth.  But I closed my eyes and opened my mouth, and, by the grace of God, words came out that comforted, that helped.  After I left that hospital room, it was ten minutes before I stopped shaking.

 

It's not that I didn't believe.  And it's not that I was afraid, exactly.  I was shaking from the effort of trying to see a vision other than an earthly one, trying to peer past the space-time continuum, past the grocery stores, baseball games, and rainy mornings of our earthly experience to envision the eternal. 

 

To talk about heaven, it seems to me, you need the imagination of a poet.  You need to be a poet like John the Seer writing the book of Revelation, putting words to visions that almost defy earthly ex­pression:

 

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home* of God is among mortals.
He will dwell* with them;
they will be his peoples,*
and God himself will be with them;*
4he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more…’

 

To talk about heaven, you need to be a poet like Jesus envisioning a place where even the bedrock of human intimacy, even marriage, would be unnecessary in a time and a place where God reigns triumphant and everyone shares an intimacy and love that transcends earthly marriage:

 

”For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels…”

 

To talk about heaven, perhaps you need to be a poet like the former slave preacher, John Jas­per, who preached the following when envisioning the hereafter:

 

“What will I do if I get there?  First of all, I'd go down and see the river of life ... After that, I'd turn out and view the beauties of the city - the home of my (Almighty) Father… Then I'd cut roun' to the back streets and look for the little home where my Saviour's set my mother up to housekeepin' when she got there.  I 'spect to know the house by the roses in the yard and the vine on the porch.  Look there; mighty sweet house; ain't it lovely.  And look next door; see that on the door; hallelujah, it says John Jasper.  Said he was gwine to prepare a place for me, and there it is!  Too good for a poor sinner like me, but he built it for me, a turn-key job, and mine forever.  Oh, what it must be to be there!”

 

To imagine heaven you need to be a poet, to have the imagination of a poet.  And it’s that kind of expansive, poetic of imagination that seems to be missing from the disciples in our Gospel Reading this morning.  Thomas speaks for all of them when he pleads, “Lord, we do not know where you are going!”

 

And then Jesus does something wonderful.  He doesn’t explain the wheres and whats about heaven.  He shifts the focus, moves the conversation from where and what to how.  Heaven, it seems, is not so much a place to Jesus as it is a way.  And how do we travel that way?  Jesus tells us:

 

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

 

Not where, not what, but how, how to live a heavenly life right now:

 

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

 

Maybe that’s why Stephen in our New Testament Reading is given such an awesome view of heaven at the end of his life - because he has followed the way of Jesus, a heavenly way, a heavenly road, that culminates in his final words that extend a radical forgiveness to his executioners:  “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

 

“Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.”

 

That’s the way of Jesus, the way of forgiveness, the heavenly way.

 

A woman was especially loved by God for the way she had lived her life: graciously, generously, lovingly.  And so one night in a dream God visited the woman, saying to her, “I would like to give you whatever it is you wish.”  In her dream, the woman responded, “God, all my life I have heard these words, heaven and hell, and I have wondered what these places are like.  Could you show me a vision of heaven and hell?”

 

Immediately the woman was transported to a huge and luxurious banquet hall where people lined the tables and an incredible array of food was on the table: turkey and potatoes and pizza and chocolate malts and sweet corn and ripe tomatoes.  But the people sitting at the tables moaned and shrieked in pain and frustration.  For they had no elbows and therefore no way to feed themselves.  “This is hell,” God’s voice whispered to the woman.

 

And now the woman was transported to a different place.  But this place was identical to the first: a large banquet hall, sumptuous food, people sitting at the tables, and they too had no elbows.  But these people were joyous and singing and happy and content.  “This is heaven,” God told her.  “But it looks the same as hell,” the woman said.  God explained, “Yes, but in heaven, people fed each other.”

  

What will heaven be like?  Well, maybe I should take a clue from those of greater imagination than me and tell you that the streets will be paved with gold, there will be huge pearly gates, and everyone you've ever loved will be waiting there for you. 

 

Or maybe I should repeat the wise words of the Apostle Paul that reminded us of the limits of our imagination:  “Ear has not heard, nor eye seen, nor human imagination envisioned what God has prepared for those who love God.”

 

Or maybe I should just let the wonder wash over me and say, with John Jasper, "Oh, what it must be to be there!" 

 

But this morning we are reminded that heaven is not so much a place as a way, a way shown to us in Jesus, a heavenly way that we are invited to walk here on earth.  Who knows?  When you leave this place this morning, walking the way of Jesus, the heavenly way, we may find that East South River Street has been paved with gold.  Amen.

                                                                     

Sermon preached by Reverend Steve Savides at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on April 20, 2008.