Luke 17: 20-21, Revelation 21:1-4,
As
Americans, we are drawn to the reward, the end game of that which we are
doing. We allow ourselves to
become obsessed with the money of our work because of course that’s why we are
working…for the money. I mean, who
wants to work anyway. We
focus on that which is at the end of the rainbow, the journey, the work week
rather than allowing ourselves to live into the moment. Now how many of you as college students
have had those kinds of thoughts, I mean if I just make it through this week,
it’ll be better, etc etc etc and then we realize that it doesn’t get better.
But there is one place where it all gets better and goes away…heaven.
Heaven,
the place we get to go when we die (as long as we are good and don’t get coal
in our stockings). I may be missing
references here but it is a place that we have been told is waiting for
us. “My Father has many rooms in
his house. I go there to prepare a
place for you. You know those
words, especially if you have ever spent much time reading about heaven and
about what is waiting for us in the afterlife. But a focus on heaven has left many places of the church out
to be roting and without concern.
The
bigger problem though is actually the idea of heaven as one of the repeatedly
reinforces doctrines and beliefs systems of the Church itself. Because in fact, there is absolutely no
Biblical component to identify ourselves as being swept up into heaven. Nothing. In fact, there is a whole lot of oppositional scripture that
exists. But we’re dealing with
real emotions here. And before you
walk out and leave with the notion that the campus minister has no hope and
that he’s really someone who is trying to bring me hopelessness, I want you to
hear the Good News. But first, let’s think back in your memory.
How
did you first hear about the notion of heaven? Probably when you were little, when you had someone close to
you pass away, or for some of you it may be a pet. Some of you may have experienced family members who died,
even close ones, and this was the comfort you received that he or she was in a
better place. And you know what,
the good news is I think they may be in a better place. But that’s not the end of the story.
In
fact, it’s the beginning. Do you remember the words that we use in Church on
Ash Wednesday. When we take the
palms of last years Palm Sunday and we create in them ashes, which we mark on
people’s forheads. We begin that
season of Lent by inscribing that Ash with the words “from dust you came to to
dust you shall return.” This is
the Biblical mandate that comes from Genesis, when God creates the Adam from
the dust of the earth and when Yahweh (which is the closest to the Hebrew word
for God we have). Now that’s right
Cody, because our bodies are simply vessels for our souls, a place for us to
dwell until we return to the source.
But where that came from involves another story.
That’s
the story of the early Greek society having influence over the Church
fathers. IN fact, the Hellenistic
traditions of the Mediterranean world were seeking a way to help people justify
how their loves ones might pass one to the next world. It was a belief system that started
when Alexander the Great conquered Israel in 322 BC, and the Hebrew language
was slowly marginalized until there were mostly only Greek speaking
Israelites. This is what led to a
very important change in language that we see in the New Testament from the old
(the Hebrew canon was written in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek). And one important word above all was
changed…it is the word Hades.
Now
you know what Hades is from your any history classes you’ve taken. It is Hell, and what is most imporatnt
about Hades to the Greeks is that everyone is alive. But in the Hebrew belief system, people went to a place
called Sheol, which means “abode of the dead.” The Hebrews believed that when people died, they were dead,
in fact they went down to Sheol, a place of muddy waters. But the people were dead. And in Hades, in the Hellenistic
tradition, the people were alive.
Which means we needed an alternative.
Since
early on in the Hebrew tradition, believers had a sense that God dwelled
somewhere else, in a Heaven of sorts, but that is was somewhere that humans
were not meant to go…In fact, Psalm 115 speaks of this directly…
“Heaven is
Yahweh’s heaven, but the earth he has given to humans. The dead do not praise
Yahweh, nor all those who go down to silence” (Psalm 115:16–17)
But when tradition creates a place of Hades as Hell, as a
place of punishment and damnation, then people will naturally respond. It was the early Church Fathers in the
3rd century C.E. (so 500 + years after Alexander’s influence had
started to permeate Hebrew Culture) started to create doctrine to identify
Heaven as a place that people would go to. But it, like many doctrines and beliefs in the Church,
remained a reactionary statement to the culture. And there remained no Biblical merit for our leaving of our
bodies or that our bodies were simply a vessel for us to transcend to heaven or
hell.
But
there REALLY IS GOOD NEWS. The
Good news is in Luke, is in Revelation, is in the scriptures themselves. Instead, as the passage from Luke
attests, Jesus himself was asking people to look for the kingdom of Heaven in
the here and now. Don’t wait, as
so many churches now promote, don’t believe that the world is simply sin and darkness
and contrary to what heaven will be like, but Jesus says to the disciples to
pay attention and see the Kingdom of God in you, right here and right now.
This
passage is something that Biblical scholars and many pastors have been trying
to express for decades. The
kingdom of God is all around us, in the already but not yet. One scholar says that Jesus proclaims
that the kingdom of God is AT hand
but not yet IN Hand. We have to watch for it, to create it
with our communities and our mutual concern for one another and for a
world. We can create the kingdom
of God, the dwelling place, here on earth by paying attention to God’s work
that is already happening.
And
then comes Revelation, a book that is misunderstood and will take more than
simply this sermon to address. But in it, the most famous passage of all is in
chapter 21. Behold, coming down
from the clouds, I saw the new Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God descending from
above and all those who have gone being taken up from the ground. In this passage, the actualization of
the Jesus’ message comes true on the grand stage of Earth. It is not a far distant place, but the
place where Dust mingles with dust, which mingles with the kingdom and becomes
the kingdom itself.
The
Good News is that God has prepared many rooms, that Jesus goes to prepare the
way for us, but it does not mean that we are destined to travel out of our
bodies and ascend to a heavenly place.
It does not mean we are here to be tested as to whether we will have a
future with God. It means that WE
WILL have a future with God, and that the former world will pass away (that
being Sheol actually) and that the new world, the one where the kingdom of God
dwells, will see the resurrection of the dead and all the saints. But it won’t happen in an invisible far
off place, it will happen right here and now.
And
for anyone who struggles with this, let me tell you honestly how I feel about
death and the resurrection. In
this Biblical understanding and reality, it does not matter when someone passes
on. We look for the resurrection
of all persons when the time comes.
It won’t matter for those who pass on whether the resurrection happens
tomorrow or 1,000 or more years from now.
It will simply be but an instant and then all will be reunited.
If
the Church were really Christian, it might look directly into the scriptures
and find its true understanding.
God is still speaking, and God is still moving, and the kingdom of
Heaven is near, not far away. It
is build and captured in the moments like this, moments where we can come to
terms with each other and care for each other. It happens when we lay down our arms and seek to walk hand
in hand. And it happens for a life
here and now, and will happen in the future for all persons. Because Jesus does prepare the way for
us, but not for a far distant reality, but one which is already but not yet
real. Let us live in the here in
now, where all may dwell. From
dust we came and to dust we shall return, but we shall return again, and when
that comes, all shall be truly one.
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