“Is This Heaven”
Faith Seeking Understanding: Heaven, Hell, and What Happens When We Die
August 15, 2021
1 Corinthians 15:19, 35-44a
Revelation 21:1-7, 22-27
If you’ve been paying attention to baseball this week, follow me here.
“Is this heaven?” (No, this is Iowa.)
This week, 30 years after the movie came out, we got to see Kevin Costner, along with the White Sox and Yankees, enter the Field of Dreams outside of Dyersville, IA. If you’ve never seen the movie, watch it. What I love about that quote is that the character Shoeless Joe Jackson gets what many of us miss—heaven isn’t clouds and angels. It’s right here.
This week’s question—like most of the other questions I’m addressing in this series—could rightfully take more than a month to tackle. Our Catechism students asked: Are heaven and hell real, how do we get there, and what happens when we die? And that explains why I put off writing this sermon as long as I could this week. So, bear with me if this becomes more of a theology lesson and less of a sermon.
We get a snippet today of Paul’s discussion about resurrection. The whole chapter in his letter to Corinth begins with Christ’s resurrection—putting forth a reality check that Jesus did, in fact die. And he did, in fact, rise from the dead, having shown himself to a number of people after his resurrection. And he wasn’t just a soul or a ghost. His body—though transformed—still bore the scares of the cross. Paul says that this is where we place our trust in abundant life.
He goes on to talk about our own resurrection—one that is more than a disembodied soul but bodies, recreated and transformed by God’s grace and in God’s glory. Our faith is placed in the fact that death does not have the last word; that there is more to life than the struggles and joys we experience now; that God will make of us a lasting creation without grief or loss. But he ends this particular discussion with a sentence we often miss and which I have come to appreciate: “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
What he’s saying here is that the resurrection may be the end product, but it is not where our focus should be. Our focus should be on this life, and this work. Heaven is not the point—at least the heaven we tend to think of.
What are some assumptions our culture has created about heaven?
· When you die, you become an angel.
· Heaven is a place in the clouds, guarded by St. Peter and a set of pearly gates.
· Heaven is where you go when you die.
· In heaven, you spend eternity floating in the clouds and playing harps.
Um, none of this is very inspiring, is it? I can’t think of anyone that is excited about floating in the clouds playing a harp for all eternity. But I CAN think of people for whom heaven means doing what you love to do for all eternity. For Shoeless Joe, that meant playing baseball. It makes sense that he would ask, “Is this heaven?” Because for him, that’s what heaven would look like.
What would heaven look like for you? You see, heaven isn’t just reserved for when we die. And therefore, neither is hell. As theologian Daniel Migliore describes it, heaven is joyful reconciliation between humanity, God, and all creation. Reconciliation. When we, as human beings, become our fullest, best selves—in community with others. Sometimes we get a glimpse of that. I’ve seen heaven in the video of a young basketball player helping his teammate with Down’s Syndrome make a basket—and the other team gets out of the way or even helps. I’ve seen heaven when in a race, Abel Mutai from Kenya thought he had reached the finish line but was 10 meters short. Instead of rushing past him for the win, Ivan Anaya guided Mutai to the real finish line, taking second to Mutai and impressing the world with his grace.
I’ve seen heaven when, nearly 20 years ago, firefighters ran into the collapsing Trade Centers to save lives while everyone else ran out. I’ve seen heaven when people wear their masks, sacrificing comfort for compassion. I see heaven every time humans are their best selves—gracious, generous, kind, compassionate, merciful, and just. Heaven isn’t someplace we go when we die. Heaven is here. Heaven is now. But, just as Paul points out earlier in his letter, now we can only see in the mirror dimly. But someday, we will see the fullness of heaven, face to face.
Sadly, just as heaven is real in this world, so is hell. Migliore suggests that hell is what happens when we prefer to be apart from God’s grace and in isolation from others. Hell in this world is just as much our own making as heaven. It happens when we focus on ourselves as individuals—on our rights over against the lives of others. Hell is our destructive nature coming to bear on all of humanity. And in that process, we act subhuman. “Hell is not an arbitrary divine punishment at the end of history. It is not the final retaliation of a vindictive deity. Hell is self-destructive resistance to the eternal love of God.” It is when we dehumanize ourselves and others that we find ourselves in hell.
Yes, heaven is real. Hell is real. But neither are rewards or punishments for good or bad behavior. They are not the end product of what we say we believe or don’t believe. For far too long, Christianity has boiled itself down to a transaction: “Jesus came to die as a spotless sacrifice for the world’s sins.” As if God sacrificed Christ on the cross so that believers could go to heaven. It sounds familiar because it’s the simplistic way in which we think. We have boiled Christianity down to what Rachel Held Evans calls “the gospel of sin management.” Again, there is no hope in that. It becomes a matter of saying and doing the right things so that we can appease the angry God. It becomes Santa Claus theology: “He sees you when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.”
That’s not hope. That’s not God.
N. T. Wright insists that it is on earth that things matter, not somewhere else. This is why we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” God never promised to rescue us out of this world. God promised to redeem this whole creation. Our hope isn’t that someday we can leave. Our hope is that someday heaven will enter this world in its fullness—just as John describes his vision in Revelation. On that day, the day of resurrection, the last day, all things will be made right. And in the meantime, we get to partner with God in building toward that reality. That is our hope—that our work here isn’t in vain. That our goal isn’t to escape but to begin the process of making things right.
Wright says, “Maybe what we are faced with in our own day is…to focus not on the question of which human beings God is going to take to heaven and how he is going to do it but on the question of how God is going to redeem and renew his creation through human beings.” That is the point of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. That is the point of the whole gospel story—of Jesus healing and preaching and teaching and caring and loving. Not to get Israel up in arms against Rome but to show them that as long as try they (and we) to win on our own terms—power, might, and weapons—“the Roman juggernaut would do what large, greedy, and ruthless empires have always done to smaller countries whose resources they covet or whose strategic location they are anxious to guard. Rome would turn Jerusalem into a hideous, stinking extension of its own smoldering rubbish heap.” That rubbish heap was called Gihenna—what we translate as hell. As long as we try to tackle injustice with injustice, we will create hell for everyone, including ourselves.
This is what God is saving us from—our own way of winning. And instead, God gives us a command. Love. Love God. Love neighbor. Go and baptize and teach all that Jesus was and is about. Go and BE the Body of Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven. Go and live what heaven is about—forgiveness, reconciliation, community, compassion, hope. Don’t wait for death to experience the glory of God. God is here. Heaven is breaking into this world through you.
Pastor Tobi White
Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE
