We think that having things will make us happy. The truth is that happiness comes from sharing what you have with someone you love. Fulfillment is not measured by how much you have. Genuine fulfillment is measured by who you have it with. That is true in this life. I believe that is also true in the life to come.
Things in themselves don’t bring joy. It is having someone alongside, things or no things.
When Margaret and I first moved to Washington, we met two sharply contrasting families. Within a short time, we had been to each of their homes, and the differences were very obvious.
The first couple, not much older than we, had acquired many expensive things over only a few years. Their home was a show place, filled with prized possessions gathered from all over the world. Everywhere you looked there were rare books, fine pieces of art, beautiful objects which had been gathered with a collector’s eye. The house was almost like a museum, and when you went there, you felt as though you should speak in a whisper and take off your shoes. Since I am sort of a bull in a china shop, I jammed my hands firmly in my pockets, for fear of touching something and breaking it. And, since, at that time our children were very young, by the time the evening was over we were nervous wrecks, trying to keep the kids from damaging something it would have cost me a king’s ransom to replace.
But we did notice, in addition to all of the beautiful things in that home, something that was not so beautiful. We noticed a tension there. We heard an uneasiness in that family. That husband and that wife seemed edgy and restless. They spoke harshly to each other. They traded little barbed insults throughout the evening. Their children seemed nervous and anxious. We left that home with a discovery. What they had, materially, was wonderful; what they had in their relationship seemed pretty shabby.
Not long after that we were invited into another home, an older home. The couple there were almost the age of our parents, and had been around a long time. But it didn’t seem as though they had accumulated very much. The living room was sparsely furnished, and what there was had obviously been used a great deal. The dining room furniture was a jumble of different patterns, looking a bit like it had come from your friendly neighborhood yard sale. When I was served a cup of coffee, it was in a mug whose handle had long since broken off. Not exactly a museum piece.
But the clue to what life was really like in that home came when our little daughter, who was not quite five years old, got a bit restless, went exploring, as kids will do, and tipped over a little table that had been piled high with books and magazines. Margaret and I both jumped up to bring her back under control and pick up the mess, and of course we mumbled our apologies. But the gentleman of the house just laughed, gave our daughter a playful hug, and said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. Some people have invested in fashionable “Early American” furniture. But we call ours “Early Orange Crate”!
As the evening went on, and laughter tumbled out of this husband and this wife and their teenage daughter, we made another discovery: that joy comes not from having things. Joy comes from sharing whatever you have with someone you love. We saw that fulfillment is not measured by how much you have. Genuine fulfillment is measured by who you have at your side.
That is true in this life. I believe that is also true in the life to come. And just as we head down a dead end when we worry about accumulating things here, we also get off on the wrong tangent when we think about what we’re going to get over there. Instead, both here and there, both now and then, we need to be thinking about who it is that we’ll share it with.
The Bible has a great deal to say about life after death. I do not intend to cover it all today. Don’t even expect that. This is a subject which is steeped in mystery. Obviously there is no one around who can give us an answer to everything we might like to know. Despite what you may have read standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, I very seriously doubt that there is anybody who has been to the other side and has climbed back over the fence to tell us about it. We just don’t know very much about what life after death will be like.
But Paul, in the famous “Love Chapter” of First Corinthians, says that we do know in part. We know only in part. But we do know some things. And what we know is important. It makes the life and death difference.
I
First, we may know only in part, but we do know that there is a heaven, and that that heaven is companionship with God. We know that much: that heaven is wherever God is. Sad to say, however, beyond what we do know, we’ve constructed a lot of popular fantasies that really have nothing to do with solid information.
How many stories have you heard about St. Peter sitting at a desk, checking his computer printout of who’s naughty and nice? That is not touched on in the Bible. Do you think of everybody getting a set of wings and signing up for harp practice? Not very likely. Transparent souls sitting on clouds peering over the edge to see what’s going on down here? Frankly, I hope not. We know in only part, but we build fantasies about heaven.
Now have you noticed that many of those fantasies are focused on things? On what we are going to have when we die? Golden streets and gates of pearl. Great mansions, custom built, with a swimming pool where you never have to hire a pool cleaning service. Being clothed in new robes and shoes. Oh, don’t tell us, pastor, that the Bible doesn’t promise new shoes! “All God’s children get shoes!” I’m playing with you a little bit, but isn’t this what people think about heaven? Things! Rewards! We think we are going to collect what the Lord owes us for being good guys and gals. And that’s just the same dead end we follow in this life.
I got this story the other day: it seems a certain cat died and went to heaven, and the Lord said, “You’ve been such a good cat. What can I do for you to make your stay in heaven comfortable? The cat said, “Lord, all my life the family I lived with made me sleep on a hard floor. I’ve never had a nice bed. Could you do something about that?” And so the Lord said, “Say no more. You’ve got it.” And .. poof! .. a nice fluffy pillow appeared. The Lord went on His way. A few days later six mice were killed by a mowing machine, and they all went to heaven together. To them the Lord said, “You’ve been good little mice. What can I do for you to make your stay in heaven comfortable?” The mice said, “You know, Lord, we’ve been running all our lives. We’ve had to run from cats and dogs, we’ve had to run from mowing machines, we’ve even had to run from women brandishing brooms and kitchen knives. We’re too tired to run anymore.” The Lord said, “Say no more”. And poof ... each mouse was fitted with a tiny set of roller skates, to make it easier to scoot around God’s heaven. A few days later the Lord stopped by to see the cat and found him snoozing on his fluffy pillow. “How’s it going, cat? How do you like my heaven?” The cat stretched and yawned, “It’s wonderful here. It’s even better than I expected. Everything is beautiful. My pillow is comfortable. But the very best thing of all was those Meals on Wheels!”
Well, but when you stop laughing, you realize that we’re a whole lot like that cat! We think we deserve the goodies, even at somebody else’s expense! We think heaven should be what we want. We think of heaven the way we think of our present possessions: that the more we have the happier we’ll be. But we know only in part. I suspect that there is a strong lesson waiting for us: that joy comes not from having things. Joy comes from sharing whatever you have with someone you love. Fulfillment is not measured by how much you have. Genuine fulfillment is measured by who is at your side. That’s true here and now. I believe it will also be true there and then.
II
We know in part. If we don’t know all we’d like to know about heaven, we do know something. In the same way, we don’t know all we ought to know about hell either. But we do know enough.
Now somebody will say, “Hell?! We don’t know and don’t want to know about that unpleasant thought.” “Hell” is just a four-letter word to get people’s attention and express our frustration! Any number of people just toss this one out of their homemade theology, because they can’t imagine God allowing anyone eternal punishment. Lots of people just laugh at what they call ignorant “hell-fire and brimstone”, and write off the whole business of hell.
Well, guess what, hell is a reality with which we have to deal. We know only in part, but we do know something about hell. In fact, most of us know quite a lot about hell already. Because, you see, hell is not about fire and sulfur fumes, devils with pitchforks. Hell is not about being stuck ten thousand miles under the earth. Hell is about separation from God. Hell is about living for one’s self. Hell is about frustration, alienation, pain, self-hatred.
We know only in part, but this we know full well: that hell is being apart from God, no matter how many goodies we have. Hell is refusing God’s love. Hell is going farther and farther into the wilderness, away from God, away from those who love us, away even from ourselves. Hell is eternal death; it is death that won’t quit dying.
Do you believe in hell? I am not talking so much about a place as I am a condition. We know about in part, but we do know something about hell from experience. Hell is me trying to be me and you trying to be you, separate and alone. Hell is me trying to sustain myself with my resources and my ingenuity. Hell is me trying to be me trying to be me trying to be me, in an endless downward spiral where at the bottom line there is no freedom, no fresh air, and not a scintilla of joy.
Why? Because joy comes not from having things. Joy comes from sharing whatever you have with someone you love. And in hell there is no companionship; there is only aloneness. In hell there is no fellowship with God and no caring for anyone else. Some of us are tasting hell already. We are living a prelude to what is to come. We are tasting the hell when our careless actions push everybody aside who might try to love us. We are tasting hell already when our caustic words criticize and to complain about everybody and everything. We are lapping at the fiery fonts of hell when nothing is good enough for us, nothing satisfies, and everybody else is out of step but us. We have created hell, here and now, out of the stuff of sheer loneliness and self-imposed bitterness.
For fulfillment is not measured by how much you have. Genuine fulfillment is measured by who is alongside you. That is true in this life. That is also true in the life to come.
III
We know only in part. We don’t know all we would like to know about heaven. Nor do we know all we should know about hell. But there is something we do know: that it is the presence of God that makes all the difference.
Paul says that prophecies will come to an end. Knowledge will come to an end. Wealth will come to an end. Prestige will come to an end. All our achievements will finally come to an end. Why, now, they say, even Yankee Stadium may come to an end! But we are told that one thing never ends. One thing is eternal. One thing lasts in time and beyond time. Love never ends. God’s pursuit of us never ends. God’s desire to know us and love us back to Himself never ends. “Now I know only in part’ then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. .... Love never ends.”
I guess you have figured out by now that I am not interested in shopping for the furniture of heaven or in worrying about the temperature of hell. There is no value in wondering what my mansion in heaven will be like or in being anxious about slaking my thirst in hell. The only thing worth focusing on is where God is. That makes all the difference. That is the life or death difference, the heaven or hell difference. Where God is, there is heaven. Where God is shut out, there is hell. But love never ends.
A friend of mine told me this week about a family to whom she is trying to minister. In this family, there is a brave woman, dying of cancer, but living in continuing faith, and cherishing the presence of God in her heart. Though she has lingered near death for several weeks, she reaches out to others and tries to help them see Christ. But, says my friend, off to the side is her husband, a man with neither faith nor hope, dealing with his grief by drinking himself into oblivion. Trying to go into a lonely stupor so that he will neither see nor feel the pain. I ask you, who is already in heaven, and who is in hell? Who has tasted the love which never ends, and who is trying to hold it off? We know only in part. But we do know that the only thing worth focusing on is where God is. God’s love never ends.
How far will God’s love go to reach people and save them? It will go to lonely homes, where there are men and women whose lives seem to be together, because they have plenty of things, but whose hearts are breaking, for they have no real companionship. That is a prelude to hell. But God’s love can reach that hell.
How far will God’s love go? God’s love will reach high school hallways, where students live in fear of others, scared that the wrong word, the wrong attitude, will touch off violence. But a hellish place like that is not beyond love’s reach.
How far will God’s love go? It will go to the streets and alleys of this city, where winos sprawl and prostitutes sell their bodies for the price of a fix. Those places look like hell, and they are, but they are not beyond the reach of God’s love.
It will go to the jail cells, the hospital wards, the group homes, wherever there are people who suffer the consequences of their sin. And it will go to the anxiety-ridden, ambition-driven, conflict-filled mansions of the rich, who can afford to air condition their hells, but hells they are just the same!
Are there any limits to the love of God? Is it ever too late for God’s love? I have seen God’s love touch the sweat-bathed brow of a dying man, who, in the last moments of his life yielded to the hound of heaven who had pursued him down the corridors of his twisted life. And twenty-four hours before death claimed him, he claimed life! God’s love never gives up!
The love of God, how rich, how free, how measureless and strong! The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell.
We know in part. But we do know one thing. “When the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end.” The only place I have seen God’s love stopped is at the threshold of a cold, proud heart that thought it could claim rewards in heaven and didn’t know it was already in hell. But even there shall his right hand find you, someday. Faith, hope, love abide, but the greatest of these is love.
