St Matthew’s Church, Oxford, 1st July 2012. Readings: Revelation 21 and John 14: 1-6
This is the fourth in our series of sermons on the ‘last
things’: death, judgement, Hell and Heaven.
You might think I have got the easy one: Heaven. But in many ways I think the subject of Heaven
is just as difficult as say the subject of Hell. If we can get our heads around Hell, Heaven is
relatively easy to comprehend. But the reverse isn’t really the case.
In this sermon I want to pose some questions about Heaven. I don’t intend to give you many
answers. For example I am not going to paint for you a rosy
picture of heaven such as the one on the right.
Some of you might
find that unsatisfactory but tough. In
the end we all have to make up our own minds about Heaven – just as we have to
make our own minds up about God. I, nor
anyone else, can tell you what to believe about Heaven.
But I also want to encourage your belief in Heaven. I am rather assuming here that we all do
believe in Heaven at least to some extent.
Forgive me if you don’t.
Now we don’t say the Creed – the agreed statement of what
Christians believe - very often at St Matthew’s – at least not at the 10.30
service. However it is worth looking at
it from time to time. The Creed says
two things about Heaven.
Firstly that
Jesus has gone there:
‘And the third day he rose again
according to the Scriptures,
And ascended into Heaven’.
And secondly
that there is life after death:
‘And I look for the resurrection
of the dead,
And the
life of the world to come.'
But it should be noted that the Creed says nothing more than
this. In saying the Creed we say nothing
about what we think Heaven is like.
In this sermon I am taking Heaven to be a time and place
after death. I know some people think Heaven
is here and now – or at least can be glimpsed here and now – but this sermon is
one of a series on the last things so by Heaven I mean the life of the world to
come which is not Hell. However I’ll
come back to the possible timelessness and spacelessness of Heaven later.
So what does the Bible tell us about Heaven? When choosing bible readings for today’s
service I wasn’t exactly spoiled for choice.
To be frank descriptions of Heaven are few and far between in the bible
– much less common than descriptions of Hell.
I ended up with the reading from John’s gospel: where Jesus is talking about Heaven as a
house with many rooms. And the reading
from Revelation: which is John’s vision of Heaven as a rather strange but
beautiful city. And of course there is the notion of heaven as
a banquet, a party, which I have talked about many times.
In wondering what to today I started by wondering what
people really wanted to know about Heaven. The
first question I think people want the answer to is, ‘Does it really
exist’? The second is, ‘What is it
like?’ and the third is, Am I going there?’
So let’s start with: ‘Does it exist’? I
think we do rather have to assume that it does. The Bible is surely pretty clear about this:
even if it has little to say about what heave is like. We affirm our belief in Heaven every time we
say the Creed.
Even John Lennon, in one of his best known songs, which
begins with the words ‘Imagine there’s no Heaven,’ starts with the assumption
there is a Heaven – either on the part of the singer or the person the song is
being sung to.
I am afraid I cannot prove to you that Heaven exists. Just as I cannot prove that God exists. We have to take the existence of Heaven on
trust – because God has promised it.
This promise is a promise we know we can trust because Jesus has risen
from the dead. As Paul says in his
first letter to the Corinthians, ‘If Christ has not been raised our teaching is
in vain and your faith is in vain…But in fact Christ has been raised from the
dead, the first fruits of those how have [died]’.
The second big question people seem to ask about Heaven is,
‘What is it like?’
Now Heaven, almost by definition, is a nice place and somewhere
God is. When the Bible does talk about
what Heaven is like it is clear at least on these two fronts. Jesus says to his disciples ‘Let not your
hearts be troubled…In my Father’s house there are many rooms’. John says ‘He {God]
will dwell with them, and… there shall be no mourning nor crying nor pain any
more’.
We often used to sing a chorus at St Matthew’s which begins,
‘Heaven is a wonderful place, filled with glory and grace, I want to see my
saviour’s face, Heaven is a wonderful place.’
But beyond the recognition of Heaven as where God is and that
it’s a wonderful place we are likely to have many questions. Let’s
start with some seemingly trivial ones first.
First will we have to wear white clothes? Mrs. C.F. Alexander in one of her best known
songs: Once in Royal David’s City, views Heaven as a place where we ‘like stars
his children crowned, all in white shall wait around.’ She gets the notion of wearing white clothes
from various verses in the Bible including Revelation 6: 11. Do you think we will be wearing white clothes?
Next what will we do in Heaven? The rather common – if now somewhat old
fashioned idea - that we are going to spend a lot of time playing harps also
comes from Revelation. Revelation 14.2
says, ‘And I heard a voice from Heaven like the sound of sound of loud thunder;
the voice I heard was like the sound of harpers playing on their harps, and
they sing a new song before the throne.’
But this verse hardly seems to justify the notion that we will
all be continuously playing harps in Heaven.
But, if not, what we will be
precisely doing? Will we eat and drink in Heaven - as the song
that we will sing after this sermon suggests?
Will we work, will we sleep? The
Bible is distinctly unclear. Mrs CF
Alexander’s suggestion that we will wait around sounds rather lame to me.
Interestingly – and as a bit of an aside – people seem to be
distinctly uncertain about the last line of Once in Royal David’s City. One version has it that, ‘All in white shall
stand around’ and another that, ‘All in white shall be around’. And indeed perhaps we will do nothing in Heaven
but just be?
But surely the most pressing question people have about what
Heaven is like is whether we will be able to meet our friends and family
there? This is clearly a big question
people want to know, particularly when someone they love has just died. What
might usefully said to help us with this question? Two
things perhaps:
Firstly that being is surely relationship. All agree that Heaven is where God is and
being in Heaven means being with God: having a relationship with him. But our relationship with God is not, and
surely never will be, mutually exclusive of our relationships with other
people. If in Heaven we are to have a
relationship with God then might we have relationships with other people as
well?
Secondly our promise and hope of Heaven – as I said earlier
–is based on the resurrection of Jesus.
When Jesus returned from the grave he was recognised by his friends – in
some cases not immediately to be sure – but this surely too gives us confidence
that in Heaven – we will keep our identities – at least to some degree –
retaining the possibility of being recognised for who we are.
When thinking about what Heaven is like we run – I think –
into a number of difficulties. I have
assumed up to this point in my sermon that Heaven is a place and also a place
where time is in operation.
But is it really? In
the old days people used to think of Heaven as a physical place - under the
earth or beyond the stars – but in a physical place nonetheless. Nowadays, knowing the Earth is not flat and
how far distant the stars are, we no longer think of Heaven as an actual
place. Or do we? It seems to me that we cannot imagine Heaven
without thinking of it as somewhere we go, or can we?
And it is also nearly impossible to think about existence in
places without also thinking about time.
When I said that many of us would like to know what we will be doing in Heaven
you might have recalled that doing, as opposed to being, involves time. We can do anything without time. Playing a harp – for starters – requires
time for it to be meaningful. A tune
involves a sequence of notes played over a period of time.
Without time that tune could only be a
single note infinitely short in duration.
Having a conversation with
someone we love involves a sequence of exchanges over a period of time. A
common notion of Heaven is that it is everlasting. But if for God there is no time then is
there really time in Heaven?
It seems to me that all visions of Heaven necessarily
involve seeing it as located in space in time.
One of my reasons for thinking this
is that Jesus both in his earthly life and in his risen life was located in
time and space.
The incarnation means
that the physical body, located in time and space, is made holy. In the end our physical body may be
transformed but must retain its physical connection with time and space. Jesus talks about Heaven as a house with many rooms and that
he is going there to prepare a place there and then come back. In other words that Heaven is a physical
location located in time. This perhaps
sounds shocking to our modern ears – or would do so if the words had not begun
to be taken as a sort of metaphor or parable.
St John’s vision of a new Heaven in Revelation rather plays
with the notion of space and time.
Revelation seems to have a view of time as circular or at least cyclical
rather than linear and where the events are set seems indistinct. But John’s Heaven is not entirely timeless
and spaceless.
A vision of Heaven that I particularly like and commend is
that to be found in CS Lewis’s book The Great Divorce. In this fantasy the narrator takes a bus
trip from Hell to Heaven. The
inhabitants of Hell can make this trip if they want and stay in Heaven as long
as they like if they choose to. Most of
the travellers on the bus choose to go back to Hell but some stay. Lewis’ vision of Heaven is of a land where
the grass hurts the feet of the people from Hell because it is so real and
where the inhabitants are shining spirits who are on a journey from the plane
(where the bus from Hell lets off its passengers) to the mountains where God is. Lewis’ vision of Heaven is located firmly in
time and space – albeit on a grand scale.
For instance he talks about Hell being a grain of sand down a crack of
the earth of Heaven.
The third big question about Heaven that I think most people
want to know is, ‘If it exists, am I going there? I cannot presume to answer this for you. All I can say is that God has promised us Heaven
if only we can grasp that promise.
Now a promise is a performative form of speech. I have talked before about the difference
between descriptive words and peformative words. Descriptive words – if true - just reflects the
world like a mirror. Performative words
if true change the world. There is a
vast difference between me saying Heaven is like this - say a place with grass
and mountains - and God saying I promise you Heaven. The
first set of words changes nothing and may even be untrue, the second set of
words changes matters completely. But God’s
promise of Heaven needs us – to whom he is making the promise – to trust that
promise. We need to engage with God’s
performative words if they are to become true.
Since I have been using lines of songs to illustrate
different perspectives on Heaven, here is one last song relating to the question
of how we get to Heaven. There is a
song many of used to sing around campfires as children which began, ‘You'll
never get to Heaven In an old Ford car 'cos an old Ford car Won't get that
far.‘ And there was another verse
which ran: ’You'll never get to Heaven in a Playtex bra ‘cos a Playtex bra. won't
stretch that far.’ This song reminds us
that in the end, not only can we not really know what Heaven is like, but we
cannot get there under our own steam either.
We just have to trust in God to prepare a place for us there. Any provisional description of what Heaven is
like is less important than God’s promise of its existence.
So to summarise what I have said. There are, I think, three big questions
about Heaven: The first is, ‘Does it
really exist’? The second is, ‘What is
it like?’ The third is: ‘Am I going
there?’ Although I said I wasn’t going
to supply many answers to questions, my answers – in short - to these questions
are: Yes to the first, yes Heaven does
really exist. However we can’t really answer
the second - ‘What is Heaven like?’ - beyond the promise that God will be there
and it will be a good place to be. And
my answer to the third? Well yes I hope I
am going there, and I hope you are coming with me.
