Will We Enjoy Heaven?
Sermon
LIGHT IN THE LAND OF SHADOWS
Sermons For Advent, Christmas And Epiphany, Cycle B
Many characters in the Bible prove identifiable in our contemporary world. As we sit here today on the downhill side of winter and contemplate the meaning of our lives, one biblical character especially leaps out at us: the prophet Jonah. Most of us associate Jonah with being swallowed by a legendary whale or giant fish. The book of Jonah, however, is actually a poignant parable about the relation of Israel to other nations. The book skillfully and forcefully calls Israel back to her universal mission of preaching the wideness and totality of God's mercy and forgiveness to all nations.
In Jonah's day the Ninevites were enemies of the Jewish people. One day God called Jonah to rise and go to Nineveh for the purpose of preaching to them so they could be saved. Full of disillusionment and hatred, Jonah ran in the opposite direction. According to the legend, he told God that the people of Nineveh were not worth saving. Attempting to flee God by ship, Jonah was thrown overboard and engulfed by a giant fish. He resided in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. In his utter distress he prayed to God constantly but God did not seem to hear him. Finally Jonah was delivered from the belly of the fish. Immediately he journeyed to Nineveh to preach repentance. Alas! the Ninevites repented and God chose to save them. This angered Jonah. He felt that God was turning soft. Embracing his past hatred, he cried out for punishment of the "wicked" people.
The crux of the book of Jonah is to be found in the fact that Jonah emerged from the belly of the fish with the same hatreds and limited perceptions which had accompanied him when he began the confinement. In short, he failed to emerge from a trying situation as a new person.
Fortunately, Christianity is a religion which deals with the sordid aspects of life. Christianity is something to be done. It is a task to be completed, a way of living life on earth. Christianity makes the absurd claim that individuals can live as peaceful men and women in a hate-filled world. It is a peaceful religion. Adolph Hitler, according to his chief architect, Albert Speer, often lamented that Germany had the wrong religion. Christianity's not being a religion of the sword diametrically opposed the Nazi dictator's purposes.
Christianity makes the all-encompassing claim that life on earth has a religious purpose. This planet of ours races through the universe at a fantastic rate of speed. It is a transient planet in an exploding universe. Many people take this to mean that life is utterly meaningless, coming from nowhere and going nowhere. They suggest that there is no purpose behind anything that happens in life. They embody Macbeth's haunting description: "full of sound and fury signifying nothing."
If, indeed, Christianity has an all-encompassing purpose, then our eternal future is with all God's children, as diverse as they are in matters of philosophy, religion, race, morals, and earthly status.
Our American electoral process is the culmination of a tremendous experiment in government. A truly diverse people of all nationalities, income levels, philosophical beliefs, races, and religious persuasions yell at each other for months; then tens of millions vote for one candidate and tens of millions for another. Then, they are all governed by the winners, and the losers subscribe to it. After four years the process repeats itself and the winners hope they have maintained enough positive thrust and programs to enable them to win again, while the losers hope they have changed enough, or conditions have changed enough, to enable them to become the winners. It is a truly blessed way to keep all these diverse groups and people united and working together. It is a miracle we should treasure.
But suppose all those different nationalities, philosophies, races, and religious persuasions had to come together and stay together -- forever! When we are thrust together in some urban complex such as O'Hare Airport in Chicago or Kennedy Airport in New York what is most impressive about the horde of people is their differences. It causes us to pause and ask the question, "Will we enjoy heaven?" If God forgives all the rogues and sinners, will we enjoy living with them? If God is that soft, perhaps there is more of Jonah in us than we realize.
Someone once said when he heard of the death of Matthew Arnold, "Poor Matthew, he won't like God."1 That, of course, was certainly unfair, but it does describe the often critical attitude of Matthew Arnold. It is a legitimate question: "Will we enjoy heaven?"
It is no small question. A man came up to his pastor and asked, "When I die and go to heaven, will I know my wife and children and will they know me?" The pastor shrugged his shoulders and responded, "Why?" He exclaimed, "Well, I think I can make it until death! But beyond that I don't know."
Will we enjoy heaven? Jesus appears to have forgiven everybody of everything -- from the soldiers who put him to death to the woman caught in the very act of adultery. He healed Jews, Gentiles, and lepers and even told a common, crucified criminal that he, too, could come into paradise. One can see from our scriptures that Jesus was light years ahead of his time in moving beyond the small walls of prejudice and prohibition.
One of the most profound realities in human existence is the fact that we are all equal down at the foot of the cross. The equality before God of all humans has been a hard pill for humans, especially religious human beings, to swallow. The Lord had said to Jeremiah, "Go into the streets of Jerusalem because Jerusalem is in trouble. But if you can find one truthful person, just one there, I will spare the whole city." Jeremiah did not go. He said, "Lord, the street people of Jerusalem are poor, and because they are poor, they don't have any sense; they are therefore not truthful."
Then there was Jonah. He ran away from God. He said, "I've been running because you told me to go to Nineveh and preach. But, if I did, those weirdos would repent and you are such a soft-hearted God you would forgive and redeem all of them. I didn't go because I want Nineveh to go to hell."
Jonah could embrace God's anger when it was directed against his enemies. But the tenderness of God, especially in the potential repentance of the hated Ninevites, was too much to bear. Jonah was not content to let God be God.
Jonah preferred God to be unchanging and predictable. In this regard, Jonah stands as a warning to the modern church. We must never build our vision of God too tiny to prepare people for living in the mansions of heaven where all the forgiven strangers will come from east and west and sit with us.
Fortunately, even for us, God is not flat and predictable. Our religious response from God is not always nailed down and unchanging. We are not one-dimensional people. Consequently, sometimes we can even be foreigners to our own previous religious perception.
Terminal illness can move us from universal concern into the room of Jesus loves me and the Lord is my shepherd for a while. Family problems and middle-age crises can move a change-the-world activist into the room concerned with family discipline for a period. Good health and even a college education or personal reading and insight can move a self-centered religious enthusiast into concern for the community and its societal victims for a long period of time. We are called to live, to grow, to move around. Jesus is "Lord of the living," not the dead. The saddest thing in the world is to see a group, a church, or even an individual tear down his or her religious house and construct a one-room, one dimensional dwelling, call it a church and insist that if it is to be a church everyone must live in that one room. This greatly restricts the wideness of God's mercy.
God essentially wanted Jonah to engage in God's process of judgment, repentance, and forgiveness. God came to Jonah twice. God comes to every church and every Christian twice. Our initial attraction usually comes when we grasp the idea of the sovereignty of God. God is, indeed, judge of God's creation. Yet God's nature is also one of tenderness and forgiveness. Consequently God's call is to grow, to be enriched by all God's creation, and learn from it. In short, God has made us and our churches co-creators in that process of judgment, repentance, and forgiveness. God is growing and we grow with God and God grows with us. This process so directly laid out for Jonah is a common denominator which is a recognizable line throughout the scriptures and church history.
Jacob returns to embrace Esau who wanted to kill him. Joseph embraces the very brothers who had sold him into slavery, accepts their forgiveness by God, and states, "I am not judge over you." Mary and Joseph take the child Jesus and flee to Egypt from Herod. They find safety in the very nation and among the people condemned to judgment by Yahweh as the waters destroyed the war wagons of Pharaoh. Barnabas takes Saul by the hand, gives him the ministry to the Gentiles at Antioch, and introduces to the disciples the forgiven former persecutor of the Christians. Jeremiah moves from judgment into hope as he purchases land in the very place he had condemned.
The interesting thing about examining all of church history is that at some point the process must unfold, regardless of the time interval, whereby judgment must tenderly acknowledge and live in the repentance of the other. Consequently if God is alive in our generation we may be certain that God will bring back to us the same message and task assigned to Jonah.
We can take heart in the story of Jonah, for in the end God is as forgiving of Jonah as God is of those in Nineveh. In like manner, when Jesus prays to God that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven, then speaks of forgiving others, he is painting a picture of heaven as a forgiving place. And in his post-resurrection appearances he comes back to those he has forgiven and even breaks bread and is recognized not as a ghost but as one who shares the common meal with as yet imperfect humans. Apparently forgiveness still goes on in heaven when we bring our limited perceptions and judgments there.
Frankly, that should be a great load off our minds. Will we enjoy heaven? Most assuredly. Armed with that certainty, let us move forward with joy and forgiveness in this wonderfully large and diverse world. So be it!
____________
1. As quoted by Halford E. Luccock, More Preaching Values in the Epistles of Paul (New York: Harper, 1961), p. 192.
In Jonah's day the Ninevites were enemies of the Jewish people. One day God called Jonah to rise and go to Nineveh for the purpose of preaching to them so they could be saved. Full of disillusionment and hatred, Jonah ran in the opposite direction. According to the legend, he told God that the people of Nineveh were not worth saving. Attempting to flee God by ship, Jonah was thrown overboard and engulfed by a giant fish. He resided in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. In his utter distress he prayed to God constantly but God did not seem to hear him. Finally Jonah was delivered from the belly of the fish. Immediately he journeyed to Nineveh to preach repentance. Alas! the Ninevites repented and God chose to save them. This angered Jonah. He felt that God was turning soft. Embracing his past hatred, he cried out for punishment of the "wicked" people.
The crux of the book of Jonah is to be found in the fact that Jonah emerged from the belly of the fish with the same hatreds and limited perceptions which had accompanied him when he began the confinement. In short, he failed to emerge from a trying situation as a new person.
Fortunately, Christianity is a religion which deals with the sordid aspects of life. Christianity is something to be done. It is a task to be completed, a way of living life on earth. Christianity makes the absurd claim that individuals can live as peaceful men and women in a hate-filled world. It is a peaceful religion. Adolph Hitler, according to his chief architect, Albert Speer, often lamented that Germany had the wrong religion. Christianity's not being a religion of the sword diametrically opposed the Nazi dictator's purposes.
Christianity makes the all-encompassing claim that life on earth has a religious purpose. This planet of ours races through the universe at a fantastic rate of speed. It is a transient planet in an exploding universe. Many people take this to mean that life is utterly meaningless, coming from nowhere and going nowhere. They suggest that there is no purpose behind anything that happens in life. They embody Macbeth's haunting description: "full of sound and fury signifying nothing."
If, indeed, Christianity has an all-encompassing purpose, then our eternal future is with all God's children, as diverse as they are in matters of philosophy, religion, race, morals, and earthly status.
Our American electoral process is the culmination of a tremendous experiment in government. A truly diverse people of all nationalities, income levels, philosophical beliefs, races, and religious persuasions yell at each other for months; then tens of millions vote for one candidate and tens of millions for another. Then, they are all governed by the winners, and the losers subscribe to it. After four years the process repeats itself and the winners hope they have maintained enough positive thrust and programs to enable them to win again, while the losers hope they have changed enough, or conditions have changed enough, to enable them to become the winners. It is a truly blessed way to keep all these diverse groups and people united and working together. It is a miracle we should treasure.
But suppose all those different nationalities, philosophies, races, and religious persuasions had to come together and stay together -- forever! When we are thrust together in some urban complex such as O'Hare Airport in Chicago or Kennedy Airport in New York what is most impressive about the horde of people is their differences. It causes us to pause and ask the question, "Will we enjoy heaven?" If God forgives all the rogues and sinners, will we enjoy living with them? If God is that soft, perhaps there is more of Jonah in us than we realize.
Someone once said when he heard of the death of Matthew Arnold, "Poor Matthew, he won't like God."1 That, of course, was certainly unfair, but it does describe the often critical attitude of Matthew Arnold. It is a legitimate question: "Will we enjoy heaven?"
It is no small question. A man came up to his pastor and asked, "When I die and go to heaven, will I know my wife and children and will they know me?" The pastor shrugged his shoulders and responded, "Why?" He exclaimed, "Well, I think I can make it until death! But beyond that I don't know."
Will we enjoy heaven? Jesus appears to have forgiven everybody of everything -- from the soldiers who put him to death to the woman caught in the very act of adultery. He healed Jews, Gentiles, and lepers and even told a common, crucified criminal that he, too, could come into paradise. One can see from our scriptures that Jesus was light years ahead of his time in moving beyond the small walls of prejudice and prohibition.
One of the most profound realities in human existence is the fact that we are all equal down at the foot of the cross. The equality before God of all humans has been a hard pill for humans, especially religious human beings, to swallow. The Lord had said to Jeremiah, "Go into the streets of Jerusalem because Jerusalem is in trouble. But if you can find one truthful person, just one there, I will spare the whole city." Jeremiah did not go. He said, "Lord, the street people of Jerusalem are poor, and because they are poor, they don't have any sense; they are therefore not truthful."
Then there was Jonah. He ran away from God. He said, "I've been running because you told me to go to Nineveh and preach. But, if I did, those weirdos would repent and you are such a soft-hearted God you would forgive and redeem all of them. I didn't go because I want Nineveh to go to hell."
Jonah could embrace God's anger when it was directed against his enemies. But the tenderness of God, especially in the potential repentance of the hated Ninevites, was too much to bear. Jonah was not content to let God be God.
Jonah preferred God to be unchanging and predictable. In this regard, Jonah stands as a warning to the modern church. We must never build our vision of God too tiny to prepare people for living in the mansions of heaven where all the forgiven strangers will come from east and west and sit with us.
Fortunately, even for us, God is not flat and predictable. Our religious response from God is not always nailed down and unchanging. We are not one-dimensional people. Consequently, sometimes we can even be foreigners to our own previous religious perception.
Terminal illness can move us from universal concern into the room of Jesus loves me and the Lord is my shepherd for a while. Family problems and middle-age crises can move a change-the-world activist into the room concerned with family discipline for a period. Good health and even a college education or personal reading and insight can move a self-centered religious enthusiast into concern for the community and its societal victims for a long period of time. We are called to live, to grow, to move around. Jesus is "Lord of the living," not the dead. The saddest thing in the world is to see a group, a church, or even an individual tear down his or her religious house and construct a one-room, one dimensional dwelling, call it a church and insist that if it is to be a church everyone must live in that one room. This greatly restricts the wideness of God's mercy.
God essentially wanted Jonah to engage in God's process of judgment, repentance, and forgiveness. God came to Jonah twice. God comes to every church and every Christian twice. Our initial attraction usually comes when we grasp the idea of the sovereignty of God. God is, indeed, judge of God's creation. Yet God's nature is also one of tenderness and forgiveness. Consequently God's call is to grow, to be enriched by all God's creation, and learn from it. In short, God has made us and our churches co-creators in that process of judgment, repentance, and forgiveness. God is growing and we grow with God and God grows with us. This process so directly laid out for Jonah is a common denominator which is a recognizable line throughout the scriptures and church history.
Jacob returns to embrace Esau who wanted to kill him. Joseph embraces the very brothers who had sold him into slavery, accepts their forgiveness by God, and states, "I am not judge over you." Mary and Joseph take the child Jesus and flee to Egypt from Herod. They find safety in the very nation and among the people condemned to judgment by Yahweh as the waters destroyed the war wagons of Pharaoh. Barnabas takes Saul by the hand, gives him the ministry to the Gentiles at Antioch, and introduces to the disciples the forgiven former persecutor of the Christians. Jeremiah moves from judgment into hope as he purchases land in the very place he had condemned.
The interesting thing about examining all of church history is that at some point the process must unfold, regardless of the time interval, whereby judgment must tenderly acknowledge and live in the repentance of the other. Consequently if God is alive in our generation we may be certain that God will bring back to us the same message and task assigned to Jonah.
We can take heart in the story of Jonah, for in the end God is as forgiving of Jonah as God is of those in Nineveh. In like manner, when Jesus prays to God that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven, then speaks of forgiving others, he is painting a picture of heaven as a forgiving place. And in his post-resurrection appearances he comes back to those he has forgiven and even breaks bread and is recognized not as a ghost but as one who shares the common meal with as yet imperfect humans. Apparently forgiveness still goes on in heaven when we bring our limited perceptions and judgments there.
Frankly, that should be a great load off our minds. Will we enjoy heaven? Most assuredly. Armed with that certainty, let us move forward with joy and forgiveness in this wonderfully large and diverse world. So be it!
____________
1. As quoted by Halford E. Luccock, More Preaching Values in the Epistles of Paul (New York: Harper, 1961), p. 192.
