05/24/20
“Heaven Is Close By”
1 Peter 4: 4-12 5:6-11; Acts 1: 6-14
Pearl: Heaven is close at hand to all of us.
Function: To bring the realm of heaven, the realm of God, close to listeners, as not so much a literal spatial “place” as a presence: the presence of God.
Where is heaven?
- Who has not imagined and wondered about the location of heaven?
- Today’s account of Jesus “ascending into heaven” causes us to look up. So we usually imagine heaven as being up and in the sky.
- At the same time many imagine hell as being at the center or core of the molten hot earth. Really? Do we really think that is where it is? Do we even really think that hell is a place? Do we really think that heaven is a place?
- It seems that heaven is more of a “realm” than a place. The “realm of God.”
- One theologian, Christopher Morse, who I will come back to again in this message combed through the biblical evidence and proposes that “…heaven is mainly ‘not about blue skies or life only after death.’ Rather heaven is the life that is now coming toward us from God, the life ‘of the world to come,’ a life that overcomes the present age. The opposite of heaven is not hell, but instead the ‘world that is passing away’” (“Christian Century” [CC], April, 2011).
- Are there any Star Trek fans out there? It doesn’t matter which version— Original, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise or Discovery — there’s a certain sameness to the way the spaceships are portrayed on the TV or movie screen. It also happens to be completely unscientific.
- When a Federation starship and its opponent belonging to the Klingons, the Romulans or whatever extraterrestrial race you’d care to name are locked in combat, the two ships are always symmetrically aligned with one another, in parallel planes. For both ships, “up” is up and “down” is down. You never have one spacecraft flying upside down, nor floating askew at some crazy angle. It’s as though they’re sailing ships upon the sea. They’re still behaving as though the earth’s gravitational field has some influence.
- In the real outer space, there is no gravity. That means there’s no up and no down, just out — 360 degrees from any given point.
- That’s a bit mind-blowing for poor, earthbound creatures like us. The producers of Star Trek are well aware of that, and that’s why they portray their spaceships flying as though there were an up and a down. (It’s only entertainment, after all!)
- Now, apply that thinking to Jesus’ ascension. If there’s no up or down outside the Earth’s gravitational field, then why does Jesus have to be taken “up” in order to get to heaven? One thing’s for certain: heaven is not “up” at all, just as hell is not “down,” deep within the Earth’s molten core.
- Now, maybe the disciples saw exactly what Matthew and Luke say they saw. But if they did, it had to be some kind of mystical vision, not an actual, scientific observation of Jesus on his way to a physical heaven.
Where is heaven? Heaven is actually close by, near to us all.
Jesus taught us to pray, “God’s kingdom (realm) come, God’s will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.”
- We are so spatially and physically oriented. But during this pandemic we are all learning so powerfully how the church is not a building, but a people. The church continued to worship and fellowship and carry on without missing much of a beat ever since we were mandated to “stay at home.”
- Highland Mobile Church was born and it will continue to go on right alongside with actual physical gatherings even once we have a vaccination for COVID-19 and we no longer have to be so very cautious sometime in the next year or so.
- The church is not so much a spatial place but you and I are the church.
- Heaven is a realm, but it is a spiritual realm. It is not physical. We tend to use physical images to describe it and to imagine it but just as God is Spirit, heaven is spiritual.
- Heaven is the presence of God. Heaven is the realm of God.
- We look forward to a new heaven and a new earth, provided by God.
- It is also God’s provision through us. Heaven on earth now—God’s doing through us!
- When I commend people to the life after death I commend them to God’s eternal keeping—to the presence of God—to the realm of God—heaven is not so much a place with rooms or streets of gold or anything like what we see on earth but the presence of God; it is God’s realm and reign.
- And since we look toward a “new heaven and a new earth” overlapping in perfect relation we can likely imagine that in the resurrection when all things are new, earth will be renewed and perfected such that we would recognize but not be able to imagine right now, similar to the way in which the resurrected Jesus appeared normal to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus but was also not recognized at first.
- The disciples stood gazing “out” toward heaven and the two men in white robes asked them why they were gazing out toward heaven? Then the two men said that they would see Jesus return to them in the same way.
- Jesus went out but would come back.
- With the Feast of Ascension last Thursday many passed around on social media comments that Jesus went away so he could “work from home.”
- The question is, “Is heaven really Jesus’ home? I think not. He is making all things new. He prays for God’s realm to come on earth. We look forward to a total renewal, a total transformation of earth into perfect synchronicity with heaven. They will become one and the same.
- Heaven is a temporary, spiritual realm until God makes all things new.
- It is happening now. Things are changing. New normals are being established due to a new problem. But this problem is an opportunity to change things.
- Many look for things to be different for the better after the pandemic not the same as before the pandemic.
- This is always the trajectory for people of faith—to see things change and transform for the better.
- Jesus went out but would come back.
Heaven is close at hand just as God is close at hand.
Returning to the theologian named earlier, Jesus being “taken out to heaven is not a spatial claim but an announcement that Jesus has been taken up ‘into the very life that is now forthcoming toward us.’”
- “Heaven is God’s unbounded love breaking in to every situation, stronger than any loss, even death. ‘In sum,’ Morse writes, ‘we are called to be on hand for that which is at hand but not in hand, an unprecedented glory of not being left orphaned but of being loved in a community of new creation beyond all that we can ask or imagine” (CC, 04/2011).
- Heaven is very close at hand because God is very close at hand.
- When we sadly must say goodbye to our loved ones, some of us in this congregation recently, and many of our world now due to COVID-19, (over 95,000 Americans and counting) we commend their spirits to heaven, to God.
- And we believe that this is where our loved ones are…in the presence of God, with God, in God’s eternal keeping.
- So today, this Memorial Day weekend, we continue our tradition of our “Service of Remembrance” of our dear ones who are now departed to the “church triumphant.”
- They are not really very far away. While it seems that they are, since they are gone physically from our lives, they are with God who is very near to us.
- If they are with God, they are close by to us.
- And just like heaven is coming to earth, they are coming to back to earth as well. The spiritual will become physical once again.
- We look forward to a physical, resurrected world.
- A New Earth overlaid by Heaven where they are one and the same.
- A new earth overlaid by God and in synch with God.
- God is bringing it forth and God is doing it in and through us.
- We look forward to a physical, resurrected world.
Back in the days of the American West, there were three classes of tickets on the old stagecoaches. The ride was equally bumpy and dusty no matter which ticket you held; the real value of the ticket emerged when the stagecoach got stuck.
- If you held a first-class ticket, it was your privilege to remain in the coach, while the crew labored to push it out of the ditch. If you held a second-class ticket, you were expected to step down from the coach and stand off to the side. If it was a third-class ticket you held in your hand, you had to get out, roll up your sleeves and push.
- Except for those who are young, disabled or needing the community’s special care, there aren’t any tickets in the church but third-class tickets.
- Everyone is expected to work, and use their talents to advance the mission of Jesus Christ. There’s no standing around, looking out toward heaven.
Because heaven is very close by; it is very close at hand, and our departed loved ones are also, very close at hand!
