A FANTASTIC VISION
What is heaven
like? Do we get to go there right after we die? Or, must we wait, in a type of
timelessness not unlike the Roman Catholic notion of purgatory limbo, until the
glorious second coming of Christ? What is the resurrection life God has
promised us through our relationship with Jesus Christ like?
Admittedly,
within most mainline churches these types of questions aren’t discussed much
these days, yet they are questions we all wonder about.
Believing that
life does not end with our last breath is a core element of our Christian
faith. Since that first Easter morning when the power of life defeated the
power of death, Christians have believed what can only be described as the
fantastic; that God’s power, that the power of life, is greater than the power
of death.
In the reading
from Revelation this morning we have listened to a fantastic vision of a new
Jerusalem and the new life within it. It is a vision of God’s power of life
over death. The old passes away and the new is born. Anyway we look at it,
John’s prophetic vision of a new Jerusalem and a new way of human life is truly
challenging to accept. For John’s holy vision is truly a re-creation of
creation. Its message is that with God
all things are possible. God made everything once, and God can do it again.
There are no limits to God’s power, not even our sinfulness.
In this vision,
as in Peter’s dream when he was in Joppa, we learn that God’s divine reality of
ultimate joy, of ultimate restoration, ultimately overcomes the partial
fragmented reality of humanity. At the end of history, God reclaims the
creation for his very own.
This undeniably
fantastic, yet nonetheless glorious vision of God’s heaven in which all things
are whole, has for centuries sustained and encouraged the Christian community.
However, many of
us in the church today have allowed our vision of heaven, our vision of God’s
glorious future to languish in our hearts. Consequently, we have cut ourselves
off from an important source of nurture and strength for our discipleship in
the present. For a variety of reasons we are reluctant to even
think about heaven, much less actually talk about what it may be like for us.
To have a vision
of heaven in our hearts is important in at least two ways. (1) It gives us
solace to know that life does not end with biological death, that there is a
greater reality than the one we can see and touch. (2) A vision of heaven, of
God’s future, can positively influence and change the reality we can see and
touch today. Knowing that God wants us to live in peace, to accept and love one
another, to know there is strength in weakness, changes how we live and relate
with each other here and now.
However, we have
become increasingly reluctant to talk about or to invoke the prophetic images
revealed in scripture of what heaven will be like. One reason for this is that
many of us have come to understand how much these fantastic images have been
manipulated and abused by cynical church and secular leaders in dealing with
the poor and oppressed.
For example, for
almost 500 hundred years in Central and South America the rural and urban poor
have been told to suffer their lot in dignified acceptance because after they
die, God will reward them richly for their present suffering. That is an abuse
of scripture. The Jesus I find in scripture never accepted abuse or oppression,
in fact Jesus fought to have all people seen as deserving of dignity and worth.
Adequate income always is a part in that equation. Scripture does not sanction
poverty and suffering!
Or take yet
another example. For centuries women have been counseled by the church to stay
in abusive marriages. Too often, the church has said that the physical abuse a
woman suffered at the hands of her husband would ultimately be rewarded in
heaven, if the woman took it quietly. Such counseling is an abuse of
scripture. Even the Apostle Paul’s words on marriage do not give a husband the
right to treat his wife abusively.
Our recognition
of these abuses of heavenly images of restoration and ultimate divine justice
have made us reluctant to invoke the glorious images of God’s future. Add to
that our contemporary scientific-rational mind set, and very quickly talk of
new life, of a new Jerusalem, of a new creation recedes.
John’s vision of
a new Jerusalem descending from the clouds, 1500 miles across, 1500 miles high,
and 1500 miles deep, does not easily lend itself to our scientific rational
mind set. It is fantastic - beyond belief!
John’s vision of
a new creation where disease is no more, where injustice is no more, where the
distinctions between races are erased, where we live face to face with our
creator, is too fantastic for the contemporary rational mind. We know all too
well that disease ravages those we love. We experience the short-end of
relationships all the time. We know how hard it is to accept someone who is
different from us. John’s vision of the new creation is just too fantastic for
us to rationally talk about.
Let us add one
more reason why we don’t like to talk about heaven; our ambivalence about
anything that exceeds our immediate experience. In the modern
era we have become preoccupied with our individual immediate experiences. The
controlling questions for life have become; Have we seen it or touched it? Are
we stimulated? Are we entertained? Is this experience pleasurable or
unpleasant? In short, we have made ourselves the final judge of whether
something is possible or not. If we haven’t experienced it, then it must not be
possible.
Now, since none
of us have experienced a new Jerusalem, such a thing must impossible. Yet
scripture reveals that we human beings are not the beginning and end of
experience. We are not the Alpha and Omega - God is!
Despite all of
these reasons why we have stopped talking about God’s future, scripture can
still call us home. If we are open to let John’s vision of the re-created
holy city of Jerusalem into our hearts, it can affect us here and now.
It is important
to remember that John had no intention of writing what we today would call an
“eyewitness” account of his prophetic vision. The description of God’s future
he gives us in this passage is a literary theological account from beginning to
end. This is not to say that it is not true, it is to say that John used words
and images to communicate the vision which God revealed to him.
For example,
when John says he saw no temple in the city, he is saying that all of life in
the new creation will be lived in the presence of God. There will not be a need
to separate out a particular place to worship and experience God.
John reinforces
this idea in chapter 22:4 when he wrote, “they will see his face”.
Remember in the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:8, Jesus said, “the pure of heart will
see God”. In heaven, God’s presence will be unmediated. We will be face to face
with God’s glory.
In verse 25 of
chapter 21 John wrote of the new Jerusalem, “Its gates will never be shut by
day - and there will be no night.” In the new creation there will be no
darkness. John means this both literally and figuratively - no one will be
cut-off from God’s presence. The “gates” of the new creation are wide open for
all to enter. From the beginning of recorded history, the darkness of the night
has given birth to fears and hatreds which then carry over into the light of
day. However, in the new Jerusalem that which separates us now, will not
separate us then.
All in all,
John’s vision is a fantastic one - it is beyond belief. Such a world as he
described, a world without sickness and death, a world without hatred and
violence, a world without deceit and injustice; a world where we are face to
face with God, living constantly in the light of divine goodness seems, based
on our immediate experiences improbable at best, and nothing more than a pipe
dream at worst.
Yet this is
exactly God’s revelation! In the new creation, when heaven is revealed on
Earth, all these elements of this fantastic vision will be present and more,
much more will be made known.
Scripture dares
us to imagine heaven, are you willing to take the risk? When John received his
revelation, it was too wonderful for him to grasp, so he tried to imagine what
his world would look like if it were perfect in God’s sight. The verses before
us today are the result of his imaginings.
This morning I
ask you to do the same. Allow your vision of heaven to come to the surface of
your mind and heart. What does the new creation look like in your mind? What is
the setting? What colors do you see? What do you smell? What do you feel?
I urge you to
live in that hope, to nurture it, to sustain it in faith. The promise of John’s
vision is that it will fundamentally affect your life right here, right now.
Heaven is not just for tomorrow, it is also for today - for how we live today.
Examples John’s
first hearer-readers would have faced….
Examples we face
today where this ultimate vision can sustain us even now…..
Let us embrace
the notion of a new heaven and a new earth, and a new Jerusalem. John’s
fantastic vision of the holy city of God descending from the clouds reassures
us that no matter how improbable or illogical our fondest hopes and dreams may
be, the power of God to restore and re-create is not limited by anything.
So may it be in
our lives. Amen!
Reverend Marc V.
Mason
6th
Sunday of Easter 2007
Trinity Presbyterian
Church
Travelers Rest,
SC