The English poet and playwright William Shakespeare is hailed as the most excellent writer of the
English language and the world’s greatest dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet. His
influence over the last six centuries is immense and continues to influence new authors. He is
said to be the most quoted writer in the history of the English-speaking world.
I came to appreciate Shakespeare from a young age through my father. He was an English language
teacher and a visiting lecturer in English Literature at the most prestigious university in Sri Lanka, the
University of Peradeniya in Kandy.
Shakespeare was his most favourite writer, and he knew his thirty-nine plays almost by heart. In 1991, the
British Council in Sri Lanka offered him a scholarship to visit England and attend the Shakespeare tour. It
was one of the most cherished times of his life. In 1991, as a birthday present, I bought my father leather-bound Collected Works of Shakespeare for his 55th Birthday.
In 1986, when I was preparing myself to enter Seminary, perhaps with a wish to instil in me an
appreciation of Shakespeare, my father explained to me in detail a less-known fact about Shakespeare’s plays.
He told me that Shakespeare was a serious reader of the Bible and made biblical allusions in all his plays.
My father told me these allusions, along with the themes and biblical storylines, were one of his best
methods of engaging his audiences in his day. My father said that these biblical themes and storylines were related to everyday experiences of our lives: family and friends, love and marriage, history and politics, law and finance, jealousy, betrayal, murder, suffering, and sacrifice, gardening, medicine, science, and birth and death.
This enticed me greatly to know more about Shakespeare. After reading a bit about Shakespeare, I gained a youthful enthusiasm to prove to my father that Shakespeare had used biblical allusions only with a personal motive to gain from engaging his audiences in his plays, not to convey something he had
believed. All of us who have been through teens and twenties would, I hope, understand my
rebellious wish.
At my father’s invitation, I attended a few private tuition classes he was conducting on Shakespeare’s
Hamlet that year for university students. I participated in the classes only to find the smallest clue to
argue and prove my point to my father.
The fifth class I had attended offered me the opportunity I was waiting for. My father was explaining the
text of Act Three, Scene 1 of Hamlet, where Hamlet asks the following question:
Who would choose to grunt and sweat through an exhausting life unless they were afraid of something dreadful after death, the undiscovered country from which no visitor returns, which we wonder about without getting any answers and which makes us stick to the evils we know rather than rush off to seek the ones we don’t?
The original text of Shakespeare my father was explaining, read in 16th century English thus:
Who would fardels bear to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?
I had my youthful -- but, of course, naive -- the moment of eureka! I asked myself: how come the great
Shakespeare, who used the Bible to provide themes to his plays, says death is an undiscovered country from which no visitor returns. That day after the class, until midnight, I argued with my father
to prove that Shakespeare did not know that death is NOT the undiscovered country from
which no visitor returns. Had Shakespeare thought of death differently, I fervently argued, the moral of
Hamlet would have been hugely different. This is especially the case because, in the play, Hamlet’s grief and misery are so great that he frequently longs for death to end his suffering. At times, he contemplates
suicide, but his fear of eternal suffering in hell prevents him from doing so.
The father-son-loving argument continued until my father finally admitted that although Shakespeare was a serious reader of the Bible, he was also a sceptic. He explained that Shakespeare’s allusions to the Bible in his plays do not necessarily make him a man of faith, nor is there evidence for his personal beliefs.
My father was proud of me for being able to stage such an argument at that age. He smiled at me and said that I would learn later in life.
I wanted to share this story with you because there is a parallel between Shakespeare using biblical
allusions in his plays, our Christian lives are also full of biblical allusions.
For example, as Christians, we live the way we live because our knowledge of God shapes our lives,
Jesus, our Lord, and what the Bible has taught us. A person of the Hindu or Buddhist faith, for example,
would immediately recognise that we are not of their faith because our attitudes, our behaviour, and
everything about us would reflect or allude to our understanding of God, Jesus and what the Bible has
taught us.
Today, I want to draw your attention to heaven and how our understanding of heaven would shape our
faith and lives. Heaven is the subject Christians are called to pay attention to during this season of Easter
leading up to Jesus’ Ascension into heaven, Pentecost Sunday, and Trinity Sunday over the next five
weeks.
Jesus’ declaration in the Gospel reading that there are many rooms in his Father’s house is an invitation
for us to understand what heaven is like. Then, Jesus went on to say to the disciples that he was going to the Father’s house to prepare a room for them and that he would come back to take them there so that they would be together with him. This promise of Jesus to his disciples also gives us the hope of lodging in the Father’s house and that Jesus would take us there so that we, too, will be together with him.
The Contemporary English Version Bible translates Jesus’ words (initially written in Greek) this way:
Don’t be worried! Have faith in God and have faith in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s house. I would not tell you this unless it was true. I am going there to prepare a room for each of you. After doing this, I will return and take you with me. Then we will be together. (John 14:1-3).
My Baptist Minister friend Rev. Nathan Nettleton, has translated Jesus’ words in the Australian
vernacular this way: Don’t go losing your nerve. Stick with God, and stick with me too. My Father’s house has plenty of room for everyone. If that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t have been telling you that I’m off to book you in, would I? And you can be sure that if I go and book you in, then I’ll be back to pick you up so that we can be together.
The Greek word for house is oikia, and it means a dwelling. The word for “room” in Greek is mone ,
which means “a staying” or an “abode.” Mostly, we have understood the rooms in the Father’s house as a
metaphor for a spiritual truth that we may not entirely understand. Assuming that there cannot be
rooms in the Father’s house, many have come to interpret Jesus’ words as there is plenty of room with God.
You may be surprised to know that the truth is that there are rooms in the Father’s house. Jesus confirmed this is true when he emphatically said: I would not tell you this unless it was true. Of course, they are not built-in timber or concrete like our earthly homes. Jesus said things in heaven are unlike what we have in this material world (Matthew 6:19-20). But there are dwelling places in the Father’s house, heaven. Heaven is real, as are the rooms Jesus said he would have prepared for us in
advance. How can we be so sure?
First, the Bible witnesses to heaven. There are over 575 references to heaven in the Bible. Jesus made
many references to heaven and said that is where he has come from (John 3:13; 6:38). At Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove from heaven. Jesus blessed food with reference to heaven (Mark 6:41). Jesus taught us to pray to the Father in heaven (Matthew 6:9). Jesus told the
repentant thief that he would be with him in Paradise (Luke 23: 43).
In 2 Corinthians 12:1-9 St Paul refers to heaven with a personal experience. He says that he was “caught
up to the third heaven” but was not allowed to say what he saw there. What indeed St Paul saw in heaven
or paradise? Stephen, the first Christian who was put to death for his faith, saw heaven opened up to him at the point of testifying to the faith before the council (Acts 7:55). In the Book of Revelation, John the
Evangelist saw heaven in his visions. Second, like many mystics and saints, Julian of Norwich saw heaven in her visions. Heaven is mentioned 197 times in her book Revelations of Divine Love.
Third, the people who had near-death experiences have given the experience of heaven in their
testimonies. Since my own near-death experience in 1986 (which I will share with you on another
occasion), over the last thirty years, I have met and interviewed 363 people of all ages and many cultures
who had experienced heaven first-hand in their near-death experience. Despite of the age and cultural
differences of these people, the basic description of heaven has been constant. Those medical personnel and scientists who study near-death experiences of people have recorded the same observation. The carefully collected accounts of heaven go into many thousands. I am a member of three international academic organisations that study peoples’ near-death experiences.
After the testimony of the Bible, it is the genuine accounts of these people that have made me accept the
truth of heaven with humility.
Among many, my friend Dr Eben Alexander III, the Harvard-trained neurosurgeon, described his
experience of heaven the following way: “I found myself in a completely new world. The strangest, most beautiful world I’d ever seen. Brilliant, vibrant, ecstatic, stunning . . . I could heap on one adjective after another to describe what this world looked and felt like, but they’d all fall short. I felt like I was being born. Not reborn or born again. Just . . . born. I was flying, passing over trees and fields, streams and waterfalls, and here and there, people. There were children, too, laughing and playing. The people sang and danced around in circles, and sometimes I’d see a dog running and jumping among them, as full of joy as the people were. They wore simple yet beautiful clothes, and it seemed to me that the colours of these clothes had the same kind of living warmth as the trees and the flowers that bloomed and blossomed in the countryside around them. A beautiful, incredible dream world . . . Except it wasn’t a dream. Though I didn’t know where I was or even what I was, I was absolutely sure of one thing: this place I’d suddenly found myself in was completely real. (” Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2012) ·
All in all, heaven, the Father’s house, where Jesus said he would go and prepare a place for us, is real.
Heaven is our home base. (A few years ago, a spiritual teacher told me that the homes we yearn to create
and have for ourselves in this world are a faint subconscious memory of our home in heaven)
Heaven is where we were created and where we have come from in this world (Ephesians 3:15). It
is our true home. It is where we are naturally at home with. That is where God knew each of us and every
day of our lives, even before none of those days had come to exist (Psalm 139: 16). God appointed
us to go to this world to fulfil specific missions (Jeremiah 1:5).
Since our native home is heaven, in faith, deep down, we know that we are foreigners and strangers here
(Hebrews 11:13). However, while away from heaven, we are tried here. We are expected to learn and
care for one another with our heavenly qualities so that we may bring glory to God (Matthew 5: 2-11; 16;
45). While we are blessed to live our lives here, we are not to hold on too tightly to things that are only
temporal in this world (Matthew 6: 30-32; Colossians 3:1-4; 1 Peter 1: 4-5). Our yearning is always to
return to heaven (2 Corinthians 5:2; Hebrews 11:16). Heaven is where we will return to at the end of our
life’s journey here on earth. (Luke 13:29-30; 2 Corinthians 5:1).
Jesus’ promise to his disciples and us that he would prepare a room for us is not only a promise but a way of Jesus’ expressing how each of us is precious to him and how much each of us is loved. These sentiments are also a continuation of Jesus’ promises to us as the Good Shephard from last Sunday: his
acknowledgement that he knows each of his sheep and that he would protect us (John 10:14). His promise to prepare a room in the Father’s house also echoes his teaching about the true shepherd who would leave ninety-nine of the herd behind to search after the one lost sheep (Luke 15:4). Jesus’ pledge to prepare a room for in his Father’s house ahead of us is also a reaffirmation of his promise never to leave us orphaned in this world, and that he would come back to us (John 14:18).
Let us hear Jesus’ words again. Don’t be worried! Have faith in God and have faith in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s house. I would not tell you this unless it was true. I am going there to prepare a room for each of you. After I have done this, I will come back and take you with me. Then we will be together.
Let us know more about heaven. May everything of heaven be reflected in our lives. Let us be mindful of
our kinship there. If we trust and build on that mindfulness of our kinship there, we can keep ourselves
anchored while we are here on earth, to the Father’s house from which we came. Amen
