November 4, 2018 | Rev. Gary Nicolosi
Several years ago, I was giving a presentation at a stewardship conference in Colorado Springs. I noticed that one of the scheduled presenters was not on the program. I asked mycolleague, “What happened to Roger? He’s always at these conferences.”
“Oh, didn’t you hear?” he said to me. “Roger was diagnosed withpancreatic cancer. The doctors said there was very little theycould do for him. Right now, he’s in Mexico getting alternative therapy, but it doesn’t look good.”
When I heard the news, my heart sank. Roger was a genuinely decent human being. He was very conscious of his health. Hedidn’t smoke or drink, exercised regularly and watched his diet.Yet at 61 he was fighting for his life, and at 62 he would be dead.
In the airplane flying home, I thought to myself, “What happened to Roger could happen to me.” In fact, it could happen to any ofus. No matter how careful we are with our health, at some point we are going to die. We may be able to stall death with exercise, diet, and visits to the doctor, but we cannot prevent it. Like it or not, someday we will die.
Then what? That’s the question, isn’t it? Some people do notbelieve in life after death. Take Warren Buffet, for example, the financial investment genius and one of the richest persons on theplanet. He has admitted, “There is one thing I am scared of. I am afraid to die.” His biographer Roger Lowenstein wrote of Buffet: “Warren’s exploits were always based on numbers, which hetrusted above all else. In contrast, he did not subscribe to hisfamily’s religion. Even at a young age, he was too mathematical, and too logical, to make the leap of faith. He adopted his father’s ethical underpinnings, but not his belief in an unseen divinity.”And thus Warren Buffet, one of the most successful persons in the world, is stricken with one terrifying fear – the fear of dying.
Maybe you have that fear. Maybe you’ve wondered if there reallyis anything beyond the grave. And if there is a heaven, then what is it like?
I admit that heaven is not an easy concept to understand, much less describe. When the Bible speaks about heaven, it uses metaphor, symbol and poetry. It reaches for the language of greatest delight we know on earth – melody, song, banquet, shinning light, or being embraced by the beloved. I love the way Karl Barth described heaven. The great theologian loved the music of Mozart. In heaven, Barth said, the angels play Bach when God is around and Mozart at all other times.
One thing we can definitively say about heaven… it is the placewhere God is. “Our Father, who art in heaven…” Heaven is thatstate of being where God is in us and we are in God. Our ego, so anxiously seeking the fulfillment of its desires, is at last overwhelmed by having its true desire met in God. This is not the obliteration of the self, but the fullest realization of our true selves.As St. Augustine prayed, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”
We who have spent our whole lives so restlessly trying to make it with God are at last received by God, just as we are. In heaven God welcomes us home – not because we have achieved perfection but because God loves us in our imperfection. The death we had spent our whole lives dreading, fearing, fighting against, is, in the light of heaven, seen as a final purging, a final opening up of ourselves to God. Death is the ultimate letting go of our lives so that in heaven God may embrace our lives forever.
Who gets into heaven? No one really knows, but we do know thatGod “desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth,” as First Timothy puts it (2:3-4). In other words, God’spurpose in creating us is to save us, and in saving us, to enjoy his fellowship forever.
To me, the notion that in the end all shall somehow be united with God in heaven despite their lives on earth – makes sense because I am amazed that I feel at least some degree united with God, despite my life. More than that, it is difficult to imagine that God the Good Shepherd would ever stop seeking his lost sheep, or that God the father would ever stop waiting for his lost son, or that God the woman would ever stop looking for her lost coin. To believe that everyone will be saved is to confess that God’s gracewill be triumphant against all the destructive powers that would pull us away from God; and that God shall ultimately, despite us, have his gracious way with us.
Yes, I know… history is full of murderers, tyrants, terrorists, thugs and scoundrels, who have brought tremendous misery on this earth. Their fate, of course, is up to God, not me. However, having been overwhelmed by the persistence and determination of God to have me; I can even imagine that God is determined to have them as well. Therefore, in the end, I believe like the dyingcurate in George Bernanos’ Diary of a Country Priest, that all isgrace, everyone is in God.
So, you will surely not think me silly when I say that, for me, the basis of my belief in heaven is my experience of God here on earth. The God I have experienced is the God of Jesus – a God of unlimited patience, infinite love and eternal faithfulness. The God of Jesus waits long through the night, with the light lit and the door open, confident his most defiant child will one day accept his love and turn toward home. The God of Jesus loves the unlovable, touches the untouchable, and redeems those thought to be beyond redemption. The God of Jesus loves people more than dogmas, mercy more than judgment, and pardon more than punishment. This is the God who never gives up on us even when we give up on God. You see: with the God of Jesus there is this unfailing commitment to never stop loving. Someone once said,“There is nothing you can do to make God love you more, for Godloves you perfectly and totally.” But more wonderfully, “There isnothing you can do to make God love you less – absolutelynothing, for God always loves you and will love you forever.”
So, will people go to heaven, regardless of what they have done,or how they have lived? Well, today I’m here in church, notbecause I have lived a sinless life but because with all my sinsGod doesn’t give up on me. You see: I simply refuse to believethat God gives up on any of us – ever.
One last question about heaven… will we know our loved onesthere? I hope so. When Jesus was resurrected, though he had mightily changed, his disciples, with just a little bit of coaxing, knew who he was. In heaven we shall truly be who God means us to be. Persons with Alzheimer’s shall be in their right mind.People with mental illness will no longer live in the dark shadows. People physically disabled will be made whole. Those who suffer depression shall finally know joy. Yes, in heaven you and I shall be the ones God means us to be.
Several years ago, I saw a play about an aristocratic but dysfunctional family struggling with many painful issues. There was a sister who was mentally ill and eventually had to be put in an institution. There was a brother who was a success in business but a failure in his personal life, struggling with alcoholism and alienated from his wife and children. There was a husband and wife who outwardly modeled the perfect marriage, but their love for each other had long since died. This family seemed to have everything, but they were really living on empty.
There is no happy ending to this story. They struggle and carry on as best they can but are never able to change their lives. The play gives us a vivid image of the weakness and frailty of human beings who hope for the best but often fall short. Most of us, to one degree or another, are like that.
And yet, the last scene of the play brought everyone in the theater to tears. Miraculously, we see the mentally ill daughter in her right mind, the brother reconciled to his wife and children, and thefather and mother in a loving embrace. And we know… we areseeing a picture of heaven where broken lives are made whole, bitterness is changed to forgiveness, hate is transformed into love, and our yearnings, hopes and dreams for a better life and a better way come to fruition.
This life can be tough, even for the best of us. Hearts are broken. Tears are shed. Aches of sorrow and disappointment can feel like burdens more than we can bear. But in the end, all life leads to heaven. It is our hope when all else fails. There we shall enjoy the presence of God. There we shall be our true selves. In heaven we shall be the ones God means us to be.
Let me leave you with my favorite story. Charles de Gaulle and his wife Yvonne had a daughter who was born with Down syndrome. Even in the the chaos of a world at war, General de Gaulle would make time every day for his family, and especially his daughter. He would often be found in the family room playing with her on the floor. Often time, however, Yvonne would askquietly and lovingly, “O Charles, why couldn’t she be like the others?”
Eventually, as predicted by the physicians, the daughter died in her youth. There was a private, graveside ceremony. After the priest had pronounced the benediction at the grave, all present began to leave – except for Yvonne. In her grief, she could not pull herself away. Charles went back to her, gently touched her onthe arm, and said, “Come, Yvonne. Did you not hear the blessingof the priest? Now she is like the others.”
Heaven is where you and I shall enjoy the presence of God, and there we shall be who God means us to be – our own true selves embraced by love forever. Amen.
Dr. Gary Nicolosi
November 4, 2018
All Saints Sunday, B
Text – Revelation 21: 1-6a; John 11:32-44