This 85 year old couple, having been married almost 60 years, died in a car crash. They had been in good health the last ten years mainly due to her interest in health food, and exercise. When they reached the pearly gates, St. Peter took them to their mansion which was decked out with a beautiful kitchen, master bath suite and Jacuzzi. As they “oohed and ahhed” the old man asked Peter how much all this was going to cost.
“It's free,” Peter replied, “this is Heaven.”
Next they went out back to survey the championship golf course that the home backed up to. They would have golfing privileges every day, and each week the course changed to a new one representing the great golf courses on earth.
The old man asked, “What are the green fees?”
Peter’s reply, “This is heaven, you play for free.”
Next they went to the club house and saw the lavish buffet lunch with the cuisines of the world laid out.
“How much to eat?” asked the old man.
“Don't you understand yet? This is heaven, it is free!” Peter replied with some exasperation.
“Well, where are the low fat and low cholesterol tables?” the old man asked timidly.
Peter lectured, “That's the best part. You can eat as much as you like of whatever you like and you never get fat and you never get sick. This is Heaven.”
With that the old man went into a fit of anger, throwing down his hat and stomping on it, and shrieking wildly.
Peter and the old man’s wife both tried to calm him down, asking him what was wrong. The old man looked at his wife and said, “This is all your fault. If it weren't for your blasted bran muffins, I could have been here ten years ago!”
Heaven. We only seem to talk about, or think about heaven when someone dies. Heaven, to us, often seems surreal, something left for the hereafter, in the by and by. Not necessarily something for the here and now, but for the later on, something to think about when we get old. Heaven is so much more than that, though. The mission Christ calls his body to has a reason, an end and a destination. We're working for something and toward something. That something we call heaven. Thoughts about heaven aren't designed to satisfy our curiosity about the future, but to comfort us through this life.
We can’t talk about heaven without reading the Revelation of John the Apostle. There are 400 ladies who show up here every Wednesday to study the Revelation as part of the Bible Study Fellowship group. There are 400 because they are studying the Revelation. Usually there are 200 – 300 ladies. I know that if we want to generate a crowd for After Hours, all we have to do is announce a study on the Revelation. Everybody wants in on that one because we’re all concerned about the future, and we believe the Revelation can give us a glimpse into the future. Yes, we think heaven gives us a glimpse into the future, but like the Revelation, it’s as much about the here and now as it is about the by and by.
We read today only seven verses from Revelation 21, but I must let you know we can’t talk about heaven without keeping the final three chapters of the Revelation in mind. Chapters 20 – 22 are the Apostle John’s glimpse behind the veil of eternity. I’ll reference all three chapters this morning, but I don’t think you’d sit still for me to read all of them. Because heaven is as much for the here and now as the by and by, there are three truths I want to point out this morning that should make a difference in our lives today. First, heaven is real. Second, heaven is relational, and third, heaven is redemptive.
The first truth we should grasp is that heaven in real. Unfortunately, through bad theology and terrible cultural representations, heaven has met with bad press. We’ve come to see heaven as sitting on a cloud wearing a halo, while little angels play harps as they float through the heavens. Others see it as an unending church service, or singing hymns for all eternity. Like the opening story, some think of it as a celestial retirement city. It all seems so unreal. No wonder so many people see heaven as a place of numbing boredom, or secretly say to themselves, “Is that all there is?”
Heaven is not some ethereal existence where we float about as spirits without bodies. Why would God take the trouble to create a new earth if there was not going to be anyone to live on it? Why would we be given new bodies if we were not going to live in a material world? Heaven is a real world, real place that is coming down to us. God is heaven’s source. John said he saw a holy city coming down from God. Heaven is a real place with real, meaningful and rewarding work for us to do. Heaven is the fulfillment of what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The old earth will pass away and God will create a new earth. Dallas Willard assures us “The life we now have as the persons we now are will continue in the universe in which we now exist.” It will not be a strange apparition, but the real world we have known, only new and better. T. S. Elliot wrote:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
And, the mission of the church is to work to make it happen in the here and now. Yes, it is wonderful what it will be, but the mission is to strive for its reality now.
The second truth we must grasp is that heaven is relational. We’ve been busy doing funerals around FUMC this week. Funerals remind us of the relational nature of heaven as we think about those who have gone before, and we look with eager expectation to the family reunions that awaits us. Singer Eric Clapton lost his five-year-old son, Coner, after he fell from the window of their fifty-third floor Manhattan apartment. Clapton poured out his grief in song and wrote Tears in Heaven. In the song Clapton asks:
Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?
It is the question to which a lot of people would like an answer. The truth is we will meet those we have lost who knew Christ and lived for him. Our relationships will not be lost. We will experience these relationships at a level we have never known before. Deep, rewarding and fulfilling relationships will be the hallmark of heaven. Here and now, we let each other down and disappoint each other. Many times, without knowing it, we hurt each other and fail each other. But then, as the Apostle Paul writes, “we will all be changed — in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). This same Apostle John writes, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Our fallen, imperfect nature will be healed and we will be capable of intimacy in relationships that we cannot even imagine here and now. If it can be that way then, shouldn’t we be striving for that now? Isn’t that part of the mission Christ calls us to fulfill? Isn’t that why we work for the reconciliation of people?
Heaven is also relational in the sense that we’ll be with Jesus there. For all the hope of seeing others who have gone before us, there is the reality that we will have a new relationship with Jesus Christ. I’m reminded of the words we share from John’s Gospel at almost every funeral we officiate: In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also (John 14: 2 – 3 NRSV).
More than Jesus being there, heaven is the place God is, and our relationship with God will be forever changed. No more will our love for God be compromised by a selfish love for ourselves and an enchantment with the things of the world. Our love for God and our relationship with him will be unspoiled. There will be nothing between us, no separation. Our sinful nature will be taken away, and we will no longer struggle with sin and temptation. Our relationship with God will be so intimate that John describes it as a bride coming to her husband, full of love and passion, with arms open wide. Heaven is ultimately about God, my friends. It’s not about us, and we remember that heaven already came down to us, and the transformation of the world (the mission of the church) began on the cross, continued through the resurrection and lives and works through us and the power of the Holy Spirit. We come to the table spread with bread and wine, and don’t we realize that every time we break off a piece of the bread we are breaking off a little piece of heaven in the here and now? The cross changes us. The resurrection changes us. The sacrament changes us…in the here and now as we anticipate all the glory yet to be revealed.
The final truth we learn today is that heaven is redemptive. I said we must read the final three chapters of the Revelation to comprehend the complexity of heaven, but we must also read the final three chapters in light of the first three chapters of Genesis. There in Genesis, we find the Garden of Eden…paradise. Heaven will be Eden restored. We have been living east of Eden since Adam and Eve sinned, but the day will come when the original paradise God intended us to be a part of will be restored. The new Jerusalem is not floating in space, but comes down to earth. It’s not only relationships that are restored in heaven. It’s creation itself. Paul says in Romans 8: 19 – 21: “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
Moreover, Heaven is the place where all the wrongs of the world will be made right, the place where evil is absent, and everything good is present; everything sad will be gone, and only joy will exist; everything disappointing will disappear, and everything exciting will appear; everything depressing will be gone, and everything hopeful will come; everything violent and hateful will be gone, and everything born of love will be prevail; every unfaithfulness will be in the past, and steadfast loyalty will be present; everything detestable will be gone, and everything desirable will abide with us; every sickness will be gone, and complete wholeness will take over our lives; every struggle and frustration and failure will be over. As John says in our passage today, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (21:4). He echoes the deep tradition of the Jewish people as proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament: “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind” (Isaiah 65:17). That’s the vision he’s entrusted to us, and it is the vision we work for in this life, but even as we work in the here and now, we know its fulfillment lies in the future.
In C. S. Lewis’s, The Chronicles of Narnia, the characters who have lived in Narnia have completed their time and work there. In a closing chapter of book 7 The Last Battle entitled “Further Up and Further In,” Aslan, the lion who represents Christ, has come for them to take them home. They are headed away from Narnia and are about to enter Aslan’s land. But they are met with familiar scenes. One of the characters cries out, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”
I believe that when we enter the real heaven, we will say, “This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old earth so much is that it sometimes looked a little like this.” It will be a new earth, restored and redeemed. It will be the place we were meant to live. Real, relational and redemptive—sounds heavenly to me, and it is the culmination of the mission Christ has given those who follow him. It is a mission we believe to be entirely possible.
