Christ Among the Scraps, by Jan Richardson, used by permission.
What is heaven?
This question is definitely as important as the question, “Is there such thing as a heaven?” In fact I think it’s more important. If we are going to spend time and energy wondering about an incredible thing we cannot see, I’d like us to determine what exactly that thing is. So —
What is heaven?
First, the negative definitions. Heaven is not a literal golden city above the clouds. We knew this centuries before airplanes and spacecraft, but they confirmed it, of course. Earth is a speck of sand orbiting an average G-type star on a minor arm of an ordinary galaxy. Heaven as a city above Earth’s clouds? Yes to the vivid metaphor; no to the naïve literalism.
Heaven is also not an endless afterlife Disney vacation for everyone who earns enough moral points to gain admission. This is empty theology and can’t possibly make sense in our world, where innocent and guilty people alike meet similar fates, and righteousness is not rewarded as if God is little more than a corporate rewards program. This version of heaven is the kind of thing dreamed up by those who preach a so-called “prosperity gospel,” the idea that good people will get to enjoy seaside homes and robust health, and evil people will suffer the punishment of illness and poverty. This is base heresy and it has nothing in common with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. In fact it is the very thing he rails against – in this very story of the rich man and Lazarus!
Which brings us to a positive answer to the question, “What is heaven?”. This is the answer we get from Jesus. He draws a picture of heaven for us today, and he is so determined to make his point that the characters and circumstances of the picture are almost cartoonish. They are caricatures, and what happens to them is a fantastical encounter, almost comic in its sharp contrasts and melodramatic gestures.
There’s a Good Guy and a Bad Guy, the Good Guy all good, the Bad Guy all bad. There’s a serene heavenly figure — Abraham, the father of many nations, the archetype of a righteous person. And there’s a chasm separating good from evil, a barrier you’d expect to see in a sci-fi movie. I imagine Indiana Jones throwing pebbles into the chasm to see if they will reveal an invisible bridge.
Jesus is being almost absurd in his illustration, so determined is he to get the point across to us. He wants to make it plain. Heaven, says Jesus, is this: it is the place where everyone is equal, everyone shares, and everyone has enough. There is no gluttony and no starvation; there are no gentrified neighborhoods and no slums, there is definitely no racialized redlining of real estate, no usury, no debt prisons, no economic injustice of any kind.
One funeral prayer in the Roman Catholic tradition draws on the image of Lazarus and the rich man to describe heaven. Here’s how this funeral prayer goes:
May the angels lead you into paradise;
may the martyrs come to welcome you
and take you to the holy city,
the new and eternal Jerusalem.
May choirs of angels welcome you
and lead you to the bosom of Abraham;
and where Lazarus is poor no longer
may you find eternal rest.
In this prayer we hope our beloved dead will rest in that place where Lazarus is poor no longer. That’s good: there are plenty of prayers for the dead that fall short of this great hope. (Again, the afterlife is not, for Christians, an uncomplicated Disneyworld. Even after we die, God in Jesus calls us into ethical relationship with our neighbor.) So this is a good prayer!
But it’s not the whole story.
Jesus means to create his vision of heaven here, on Earth. What’s good for those who have died is good for us: heaven begins here.
Now, here at Grace Church, we hope for lots of good things. We are rebuilding this place as a home for children, youth, and families – and this rebuilding is already working! We have long cultivated faith formation here, with a realized vision of Grace Church as a school for the faithful – and that continues as we plan book studies and other events in the coming weeks and months. For every day of its life, Grace Church has been a center for social action, for outreach to our neighbors in need. And we continue to provide pastoral care to countless people, each act of kindness a prayer to God, the Great Physician, to lay God’s healing hand upon us all. We have the Grace Gallery, Mom’s Morning Retreat, Men’s Group, spiritual discernment, financial leadership, music, Home Groups, newcomer ministries, parish life, and more. And we now are turning toward a new budget year, confident that our next rector is drawing ever closer to their time with us.
But maybe there is a better way to say it, a better frame to describe what we are doing here: With God’s help, we are building a corner of God’s heaven, right here. God is transforming Grace Church into heaven. Remember, Jesus insists that heaven is the place where everyone is equal, everyone shares, and everyone has enough.
The poet John Donne says it better. We prayed his prayer earlier this morning as our Collect, that is, the prayer that collects all our other prayers into one. Here is what we prayed:
Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity; in the habitation of thy glory and dominion, world without end. Amen.
Equal light, equal music, equal possession, equal eternity: that is heaven.
This is day one of our stewardship season, and you will be instantly forgiven if you don’t really know what that means. “Stewardship,” the term, is a little antiquated. It has the ring of old-time church. It’s related to the noun steward, as in wine steward – someone who takes care of the wine collection down in the cellar. The wine steward monitors temperature and humidity, organizes and selects wines appropriate for each event, and generally ensures that the manor lord is never embarrassed or inconvenienced by the wine. When we “steward” Grace Church, we behave in similar ways. We don’t own the wine, let alone the fine house where it is stored. But we take care of it. We watch for possible damage, any threat to Grace Church’s health and well being. We are stewards of Grace Church, and this is the season when we re-commit to our stewardship of this fine house.
But let’s say it this way: Our stewardship of Grace Church, with God’s help, makes this a place of equal light, equal music, equal possession, and equal eternity. Our stewardship of Grace Church, with God’s help, makes this heaven.
If this prayer of John Donne rings a bell for you, then you probably watched the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Saying this prayer in that context – the funeral ceremonies for a fabulously wealthy monarch – deepens the power of the prayer. It makes this vision of heaven all the more striking. In heaven, Queen Elizabeth II is – in God’s eyes – simply Elizabeth Mountbatten-Windsor, because she is in that place where there is equal light, equal music, equal possession, equal eternity. No longer a potentate, she is simply our sister in Christ. No one bows or curtsies to her in that city where Lazarus is never poor.
Or maybe they do still bow to her. But she bows right back. When we altar servers entered the room today, we bowed to the altar – or to be more accurate, we bowed to the presence of Christ in the reserved sacrament down here, in this little cabinet. We bowed to the small morsel of heaven that rests here. But really we should be bowing to one another, because here in this place, God fills all us stewards with God’s own presence and power. God uses our minds, hearts, and bodies to transform this place into heaven itself.
And so I bow to you, friends in Christ, you who are filled with the Spirit and charged with the immense responsibility of stewarding this community, this church. I bow in reverence for the very presence of Christ that dwells within you.
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Preached on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 21C), September 25, 2022, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31