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.
It’s about time I preached on ‘heaven’. The number of friends and family who have been heading in that direction lately make it a pertinent subject for me personally. Besides that, I’ve just realised that I’ve never preached on the subject of ‘heaven’ before in my life!
I think I know why I haven’t preached on it before. I don’t like the term! It’s one of those words like ‘holy’ that really rubs me up the wrong way, and for the same reason. It’s been so often abused and used to mean something that it’s not, that I avoid using the term altogether.
What does ‘heaven’ mean to you? What is it? Where is it? Are you in a hurry to get there?
My 3-year-old daughter Imogen has worked it out. She’s realised that heaven is in a box. We made clear to her that Grandpa has now gone to heaven, and she saw that we put him in a box, so she’s put 2 and 2 together and realised that heaven is somewhere in that box.
My grandmother, it seems, is also dying at the moment, and it’s been interesting to hear something of her understanding of heaven. She’s been saying how she’s looking forward to seeing her daughters again (my mum and Aunt Helen) and she’s looking forward to seeing her husband again (which surprised me) AND that she’s looking forward to being the first person to see her grand-daughter Sarah’s new baby. You see, my cousin Sarah is pregnant, and not due until November, but Grandma has worked out that if she dies now, she’ll get to pass the new baby, who’ll be on his way down while she is on her way up!
What does ‘heaven’ mean to you? What exactly does it look like? Where exactly is it?
Back in the days when I used to do ‘street witnessing’, there was one group that I hung around with who used to communicate chiefly by handing out pictures of heaven. They were pictures of beautiful landscapes with waterfalls and ocean views and people flying around without clothes on (though this was quite tastefully done). The idea was that we would give out these pictures, and explain to people what a great place heaven was - how you got to fly, explore new planets, and have sex with a variety of people - and then, when the person expressed an interest in going there, we could turn over the picture and reveal a little prayer. Once it was prayed, their ticket to heaven was assured! We were quite successful.
Today’s reading from Revelation is a vision of ‘heaven’:
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.
The one clear detail we’re given here about ‘heaven’ is that there is no sea, which is quite at odds with the pictures I used to hand around. Mind you, in our ecological system, if there’s no sea then there are no clouds, and while many people might be able to imagine a ‘heaven’ without a sea, I can’t see many people accepting the concept of a heaven without clouds!
You see the problem here - the word ‘heaven’ means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, though there are certain elements that are common in our culture (broadly speaking). The presence of clouds and harps and angels with wings are standard components of the common perception of heaven. Others envisage heaven as something like one endless church service. Others envisage hell as something like one endless church service.
Most people, Christian and non-Christian alike, envisage heaven as some sort of ‘parallel universe’ that exists alongside the one we normally experience, so that when a person dies, they move from one dimension to the other, and so live on in heaven, the parallel universe.
I want to answer some basic questions on heaven today: ‘what is it?’, ‘where is it?’ and ‘how do I get there?’, and I want to focus on this verse in Revelation... where ‘the sea is no more’.
Why would the people of Israel envisage heaven as being without a sea?
1. The Jews were a people who hated the sea
This is the truth of course. Read through your OT and you’ll see countless stories of the great armies of Israel. You’ll never read any stories about its navy, because it never had one.
The Jews did not like the sea. They were not a coastal people. The Philistines were the people of the coast. The Jews lived further inland. They didn’t go for seaside holidays by the coast on their summer breaks, and they didn’t get into boats unless they had to.
That’s why the story of Jonah and the boat and the big fish is such a drama for the people of Israel. It was every Jews’ worse nightmare being caught in a boat in a storm at sea.
2. God formed creation out of the sea.
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while the Spirit of God swept over the face of the waters.
This is the uncreated mass (the ‘tohu wabohu’), as envisaged before the work of creation. God moulds land and life out of the dark and mysterious ‘formless void’ of water.
In the Hebrew mind, God pushes the water back to reveal land, and he holds it back so that people might be able to live (except in the days of Noah, when he deliberately let the waters move back, with all the resulting death and chaos).
That’s why when God parts the waters of the Red Sea so that Moses and his people can cross to dry land, it’s seen as a miniature reenactment of creation – or rather an extension of God’s creative work – holding back the waters and so giving life.
3. The Sea symbolises all that is dark and chaotic.
In the Hebrew mind, the sea is symbolic of all that is dark and chaotic in human experience. And I can sympathise with that.
There was a time when I used to think of the sea as my friend - when I used to be part of a rowing crew, used to swim regularly, and used to be out on the water or in the water on almost a daily basis. Those days ended for me when we had a boating accident only a few years ago where Veronica was almost drowned.
There we were, celebrating my birthday, paddling happily around in boats in the Lane Cover River National Park. One minute we’re all laughing and joking around. A few seconds later one of the boats has turned over, Veronica is trapped underneath it, and it’s dragging her down to the bottom. Next second I’m in the water, pulling Veronica down and out from under the sinking boat, and then realising that, in my boots and leather jacket, that I’m having trouble staying afloat too! We all survived, though my mobile phone was never quite the same again. But the other thing I lost that day was my love of the sea.
Indeed, I learnt later that lots of people have been killed on that idyllic little river. There were weeds and things at the bottom of that little river that could tie you up and kill you.
I came that day to appreciate the Hebrew perception of the sea - quiet and placid perhaps on the outside, but beneath the surface there were dark and mysterious things lurking - things that would kill you if they could.
And if you’ve seen any of the documentary-type films on the undersea world, you know that this is true. Everything appears calm and beautiful to the casual observer, but there’s really a constant war going on down there, where almost every creature there is dedicating itself to the work of killing and eating the other creatures there.
And so, to the Hebrew mind, the sea comes to symbolise all that is dark and chaotic, all that is mysterious and life-destroying.
Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows have gone over me.
Says the psalmist (Psalm 42) - and we know that feeling. That feeling like we’re ‘going down for the third time’. That feeling of being overwhelmed by circumstances beyond our control so that we find ourselves sinking, splashing, waving.
Ange and I went to court on Friday, and we were struggling to stay afloat in that environment – treading water madly in the middle of a sea of sharks. And like the sea, it was one of those environments that all looked very peaceful and well-ordered on the outside, but there were some dark and mysterious things going on in there.
For some of us, perhaps, all of life is like a furious struggle to keep your head above water?
Well, if that’s you, you’re tapping into a struggle that has been going on since the beginning of creation. In the beginning, Genesis tells us, when God created the heavens and the earth, He took this dark and mysterious ‘tohu wabohu’, this formless void of sea, and He started to order it, to tame it, to bring life and light out its dark and mysterious depths. And the story of the Bible is that the battle against these deep forces of chaos goes on.
And so when the book of Job deals with the pain of unjust suffering, it speaks of God as the master of the monsters of the deep - Leviathan and Behemoth.
And so when the prophet Isaiah looks forward to God’s coming, he speaks of the day when God will come down and kill the great dragon of the sea.
And so when we see Jesus walking upon the water, we know that God must be in him, for He is continuing this work of mastering the deep.
And so when Jesus calms the storm on the Sea of Galilee, we can understand why people stare at him in amazement - ‘who is this guy, even the sea obeys him?’
And so, when John in Revelation speaks of the coming of the Kingdom - of the final day when all will be wrapped up in a final act of grace - he speaks of the sea being ‘no more’, for all that is dark and chaotic has gone, and those of us who have been furiously paddling our little boats around over great depths will find ourselves all of a sudden secure on dry land.
And so heaven is a place without water, or at least without large bodies of water.
I said that I was going to attempt to answer three questions about ‘heaven’: ‘what is it?’ ‘where is it?’ and ‘how do I get there?’ You might feel that I’ve responded to none of these three questions yet.
The problem is that the term ‘heaven’ can mean a number of things in the Bible.
It can mean that dimension of reality where God dwells and where we do not dwell.
The coming of ‘heaven’, or ‘the Kingdom of heaven’ can be used to refer to the whole historical event that is envisaged in Revelation 21 -where God finally overcomes all the forces of chaos and darkness and institutes His rule. This event is normally referred to as the coming of the Kingdom of God. In Matthew’s gospel, Matthew does not like to use the name of God, so he refers to the Kingdom as the Kingdom of Heaven.
The term ‘heaven’ can just another word for ‘sky’.
When God created the ‘heavens and the earth’, it doesn’t mean that he created two separate parallel universes, but that He created two dimensions to our universe - namely, land and sky. Likewise, in Revelation 21, when John speaks of a ‘new heaven and new earth’, it’s clear there that the term ‘heaven’ is just another word for ‘sky’.
That’s a very common way in which the word is used in the Bible. Perhaps that is why the Bible never says of anyone that they ‘died and went to heaven’.
St Paul certainly believed that nothing could separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, including life and death. And he said of his own death that ‘to be out of the body is to be with the Lord’. Even so, no Biblical writers ever use the term ‘going to heaven’ as a way of referring to what happens to people when they die.
Now the historic Christian hope - the ‘hope of Heaven’ - is a hope for ‘heaven’ in the 2nd sense of the word - ie. it is a hope for the final coming of the Kingdom.
If we understand ‘heaven’ in this way, then to ask ‘where is heaven?’ and ‘how do I get there?’ becomes a bit like asking ‘where is the end of the war and how do I get there?’ We might say in response to that question ‘the end is in sight... that since the death and resurrection of Jesus, the end of the battle has been in sight’.
The key point I want to make is that the Christian hope is not that I get to go to heaven when I die. The Christian hope is for a new heaven and a new earth, where the old things have passed away and where death and dying and pain and corruption and all that is symbolised by the wild and raging sea has been tamed or destroyed and where ‘the earth is as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.’
Maybe you don’t see much difference here? I see a difference here.
The Christian hope is not just about me making it to heaven and you making it to heaven. It’s about this world making it, to the point where God is all in all.
The Christian hope is not simply that we as individuals might be able to cheat death and go on living, but rather that the world as we know it might be transformed into the world as God envisaged it, and that we might enjoy life on this planet in the way in which it was intended.
This means that life, for the Christian man or woman, is not some test wherein if we pass we get to escape from this life into a better life. Rather it is a war in which we have been ordered to enlist.. a battle that has been raging since the beginning of creation, a battle against the forces of chaos and darkness, a battle which Revelation 21 tells us we will surely see won.
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.And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.And 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;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away."
And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new."
Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill, May 25, 2001
Rev. David B. Smith
(the ’Fighting Father’)
Parish priest, community worker,
martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of three
www.fatherdave.org
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