In the name of the One who is Alpha and
Omega, our Way, our Truth, and our Life: Jesus Christ. Amen.
Here’s a riddle: a father and his son are in a horrible car accident and the father died at the scene. The son is rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. The surgeon enters the operating room, sees the patient on the table and says “I can’t operate – that boy is my son.” How is this possible? According to rigorous research at Boston University, only about 15 percent of people figure it out the first time they hear this riddle. The answer is quite obvious and simple: the surgeon is the boy’s mother. Also, nearly identical results are found when the scenario is changed to a mother and daughter being in the accident and a nurse saying “That girl is my daughter” with the nurse being the father. And, of course, children of same-sex couples would likewise be overlooked as possible answers to the riddle. This riddle is often used in racial equity workshops to demonstrate how bias clouds our judgment and makes us miss the obvious. When it comes to considering the topic presented to us in today’s text from Revelation we are similarly confused.
If
I were to ask you to point in the direction of heaven, most of us have been
conditioned to point up. And if I were to ask you which direction you’d like to
go when you die, likewise, most of us would point up. This is the result of
letting mythology and cultural tropes be our GPS instead of Scripture. When it
comes to questions related to heaven, we are disoriented and confused. And this
matters. It’s something like pin the tail on the donkey – we’ve been blindfolded
and spun around. Because of this disorientation, we’re likely to be way off
target. As we continue our series through Revelation in Easter, we consider the
direction and destination of all things.
When
it comes to heaven there are two questions that most people ask: what is heaven
and how do we get there? The standard answers given to us by culture and misinformed
Christians are “heaven is the place where God is” and “we go up there after we
die.” Both of these answers are fundamentally wrong. And I’m not just giving
you my take on things when I make that accusation, as it becomes as clear and obvious
as the boy’s mother being the surgeon when we pay attention to Scripture.
To
understand the final two chapters of Scripture, Revelation 21 and 22, we have
to keep in mind the first two chapters of Scripture: Genesis 1 and 2. In the
beginning, humanity finds itself in a garden where there is abundant food and
resources, where the tree of life is present, and where there is no death, crying,
or pain. And God is present in the garden. This is what God intended in
Creation and this whole setup is called “very good.” Then, because of
disobedience, humanity is no longer fit to remain in the garden, but God very
much longs, desires, and works to restore what has been lost to humanity, first
through the matriarchs and patriarchs, then the prophets, then through God Incarnate
in the flesh of Jesus, and then through the Spirit-empowered Church. Revelation
assures us of the culmination of the story – the goodness of Creation restored
fully. That, in a nutshell, is the entire story of Scripture. For us to
understand heaven, we have to keep Eden in mind.
It’s
odd that Christians so regularly get confused about this (and I absolutely
include myself in this). Daily, we pray “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in
heaven.” All we need to know is right there. We get it right every time we use
the prayer that Jesus gave us. The kingdom comes to earth like it is in heaven.
We don’t ask to be taken into heaven. That’s the wrong direction. Instead, we
pray that heaven comes here. When we turn to the vision of Revelation we hear John
record that “I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven.”
And then a voice comes from the throne, so presumably, it is the voice of our
Good Shepherd, the Lamb, who says “See, the home of God is among mortals. He
will dwell with them as their God.” It is not “God will bring us all up to
heaven;” no, very clearly, it is “God will come and dwell with us.”
This
is the first question about heaven that we misunderstand – the “how we get there.”
Surprise! It’s all about grace. We don’t have to earn our way “up there” or
choose to go to heaven, or even hope that we get to go to heaven. No, God comes
to us on earth as it is in heaven. This is important because it fundamentally
changes our relationship with the world around us.
Revelation
notes that there is a new heaven and a new earth – and translation matters
here. “New” does not carry the sense of meaning of brand-new. The lovely Bell
Tower Green that sits a block from here is a brand-new park. There is now a
park where there had not been one. Revelation speaks about a different kind of
newness, where there is continuity with what came before while having an added
depth and character. One of the best ways to understand this newness that
describes the new heaven and earth is the recently dedicated Transfiguration
icon. Jesus shimmers with the radiance of newness. He does not cease to be
Jesus, but something new, something deeper and truer is seen in him at this moment.
So we might say that “transfigured” is a better way of understanding being “new.”
Why
this matters is that it works against people who read Revelation as a prediction
that God is going to destroy all things and then replace them with version 2.0.
This erroneous belief leads us to neglect the sacred duty we were given in the
garden to be stewards and keepers of the earth. Some Christians wrongly believe
that since it’s all going to be destroyed and replaced, then it doesn’t matter if
we trash the planet. It also means that too often we disregard the holiness of
our bodies – calling them mere shells or containers for our souls. But the
witness of Scripture is clear – what God intends to resurrect is not some
immaterial soul, that’s a concept that comes from Greek philosophy, not Judaism
or Christianity. Rather, it is our very bodies that will be made new,
transfigured, in the glory of the Resurrection. And the same is true for this
planet and all things. So how we treat the animals that we eat matters, how we
care for the earth matters, how we use our bodies matters. All things are gifts
from God, and our faithful stewardship of these gifts matters.
The
vision of our faith and of Revelation is not that God will make all new things,
but rather that God will make all things new. And this happens by God coming to
dwell with Creation and thereby bring heaven to earth. The direction of heaven
is not that we go up, but rather it comes to us.
And
to the second question – what is heaven? The standard answer changes a bit from
person to person, but it usually includes the word “place.” It’s the place with
golden streets, it’s the place where God’s throne is, it’s the place we go
after we die, it’s the place of eternal life. Such responses might have some
truth in them, but they’re not quite right. Even if we acknowledge the limits
of metaphysics, heaven is not properly described as a “place.” Heaven can never
be talked about in terms of “where,” but rather “who.” Heaven is a relationship,
not a place; and the word that best describes heaven is “communion.”
This
is what humanity’s relationship with God was like in Eden – humans were fully
in communion with God. There were no barriers in the relationship. As we heard
in Revelation though, there are barriers for us on this side of Eden. Those
barriers are described as tears, death, mourning, crying, and pain. The vision
of Revelation is that the home of God is among mortals – and that is what
heaven is: God being with us. It doesn’t matter if that happens here or there. What
makes heaven is communion with God.
Given
this understanding of heaven, the accessibility and availability of heaven is
radically changed. Heaven isn’t a place across the River Styx where only the
dead can go. Heaven is not a place only for the righteous or those who have
followed all the rules or had the right formula for religious belief. No,
heaven is communion with God. To be sure, we still struggle with pain, sin,
doubt, selfishness, ignorance, and death – so our glimpses of heaven are always
limited, as looking through a glass with smudges on it. But they are glimpses
nevertheless.
And
there are certain times and encounters when the fog lifts and we do have fuller
experiences of this mystic sweet communion with God. Sometimes such glimpses
are called the “beatific vision” – when we have glimpses of the fullness of
heaven even on this side of the transfigured earth. One place we see this is in
the lives of the saints. They show us the sort of courage, generosity, and commitment
that come from a deep and intimate relationship with God. Another place we are
brought into closer communion with God is in the Holy Eucharist – when we are
given a foretaste of the banquet of heaven. God came down to us in Jesus and
gave us his Body and Blood, the Bread of Heaven and the Cup of Salvation that
we might commune with God and one another more fully. This is what makes the
Eucharist so special and holy and why it is at the center of our identity and
worship – it is the gift by which God makes heaven available to us by becoming
both our host and our food to nourish us in grace and love.
This
heavenly communion with God is also something that I see in the recently
dedicated Pentecost icon. What is depicted there is the Day of Pentecost which happened
some 2,000 years ago, but it is, at the same time, also a window into the timeless
and transcendent communion of heaven. For one, bread and a chalice are present,
but so is the fullness of beloved community with the children of God across
time and space – and all are gathered in the power of the Holy Spirit of God’s
presence with and among us. That icon, like all icons, is not a piece of art
that we observe from the outside, rather it is a reflection of a deeper reality.
That icon does not end with the frame that surrounds it, rather it extends into
our church, our community, our world. In college, my campus minister was fond
of telling us to “see Communion in everything,” which is another way of saying “see
heaven everywhere” which is possible because God is always with us. And when we
are aware of this communion with God, we enter into heaven.
Now,
the future hope of heaven is when this relationship with God is unencumbered by
the distractions of mourning, crying, and pain; when Sin and Death no longer have
influence over us. So I am not saying that heaven is no better than what is all
around us; to be sure, God intends and promises us fully into communion in a
transfigured way. But heaven is also not something less than what surrounds us;
because heaven is not a place, it is a relationship. And this means that
spending time cultivating this relationship allows us to experience heavenly
more fully. Just as in any relationship, doing things like sharing meals and conversations
deepen and grow the relationship, so when it comes to God, when we invest time
in prayer, surrounding ourselves with beauty, service to others, and participating in the Sacraments, we put ourselves
in a place to be nourished from the abundance of God’s love. Heaven is not a
place, but rather the presence of God with us.
The
way we think about heaven is too often like wandering through a forest with no
map or compass. Scripture though tells us exactly what heaven is and how we participate
in it. Heaven comes to us from the overflowing and gracious love of God, and
this love is for us to know, enjoy, and share right now. For a lot of people,
this is a paradigm shift; a radical rethinking and reordering of things. It
will take time for this corrected vision to help us to see our faith and our
world more truly and fully. For now though, every time we pray “thy kingdom
come on earth as it is in heaven,” we can say that line not just as rote
prayer, but rather as our hope and as a reminder of the gift of heavenly
communion with God, both now and to be perfected in eternity.
