The Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C, 2016 – Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
On March 24th my grandma, Annie Boldt, died. If you’re like me, the death of a grandparent or of a parent causes you to reflect not only on those memories you have of that person–in my case all good, but on just how little you really know about them. Maybe you even have regrets about not getting to know them even better. It takes a while sometimes to see your family independently from who they are to you. How much do I know about my grandma, or even my own parents, before I showed up?
The day before the funeral as we were setting up, we laid out a handful of things that briefly summed up grandma’s life: the Soviet Union passport her parents used to get their one-year-old across several borders into Canada in 1926; her quilts and recipes; some pictures; more meaningfully, her Bible with a few highlighted verses with obscure references to some moment in her life. That’s it: the outline of a history, some hobbies, and hints of a spiritual life that I’ll never know about. During the funeral we added up the fragments of our memories to paint a picture of a woman we all recognized. Yet when we went our separate ways, those memories were split up again soon to fade as grandma’s, then my parent’s, then my own generation all pass away. I know little about my great grandparents, almost nothing of my great-great grandparents, and zero about the generations before them. This no doubt will be my own fate. Jonah, my son, will have little sense of who I was for those 37 years before he was born, and his children will have even less of an idea.
It’s easy to see why this motivates some people to achieve great things in politics, art, and even religion. The Church has its “saints” who we remember for their good deeds. And yet even here, perhaps especially here in a divided Church, few of the “saints” are universally remembered. And most of the saints, that is, you and me, won’t even make that much of an impact. Our good deeds will remain hidden.
All of this is by way of introduction to what I want to talk about today, which is heaven. Why does heaven matter? What is heaven like? These are questions that we find pretty boring these days. I’m not simply talking about silly portrayals of women on clouds eating Philadelphia cream cheese, or the stereotypical light at the end of the tunnel that opens onto…what? Who knows, and frankly who cares!
Maybe some go on believing that heaven will be a wonderful family reunion. But since not everyone likes their family, this might not be the best description. Our boredom with heaven is also due, I think, to the fact that we don’t think anything is at stake in the next life. A punishing God who might send you or me to hell, we believe, clearly contradicts our notions of justice. Hitler might be there and maybe the latest politician it’s most fashionable to hate, but the rest of us are nowhere near as bad. Thus if heaven is a prize for the way we live our lives, it’s less like a gold medal and more like a participation ribbon. Big deal! If we are going to see heaven for the prize it is, we need to get more specific than a vague white light at the end of a proverbial tunnel.
So what is heaven like according to the Bible? First of all we have to get straight that in Revelation the white light is streaming from the face of “the Lamb.” For those without a biblical background this sounds weird. But let’s remind ourselves that the “Lamb” is a very specific person, Jesus Christ, who is signified under the symbol of the lamb because it was the usual sacrificial animal in the Jewish Temple.
In the biblical world of imagery, Jesus is the innocent victim whose death covers over our sins.
At the same time, though, Jesus is also the priest who is voluntarily making the offering. The book of Hebrews states that, having gone through the veil/vale of death, he enters the presence of God in order to make atonement for us.
Well, what does that mean? If you think back to the shape of the Temple in the Old Testament, you’ll know that the pillar of cloud that led Israel through the wilderness came to rest within the Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctum of the Temple. Within that cloud, which the high priest would approach once a year, was the “Angel of the Face,” and this was who appeared to Moses in the burning bush to reveal the Divine Name, YHWH (which in most of our Bible’s is just translated as “Lord” because the Name itself was considered too holy to pronounce). With that Name Moses was formally introduced to God as a person. (Have you ever called someone by name before they had introduced themselves to you? You know the person’s name, but they’re asking “how do you know me?” It’s weird, and they might think you’re creepy.)
But even though he knew God’s personal Name, God tells Moses that he couldn’t see his Face and live. The sight of God’s Face was reserved until after death. Thus Revelation states that after death the saints “will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”
What this means is that in heaven we will both see God and know him by Name–personally. This points to a friendship with Jesus that surpasses what we have in this life.
In fact, one of the most common ways that the Bible speaks of our current separation from God because of sin is to say that God is “hiding his face” from us. The hiddenness of God is one major cause of disbelief, yet it’s an experience fundamental to Christian life. If, as I’ve been saying, we can hardly claim to know our own family members in this life, how much less do we truly know God? We have fragments of a portrait in Scripture. And yet even it is often obscured as by a dark cloud, a cloud under which believer and unbeliever alike live. The difference is that where the unbeliever concludes that “The LORD does not see” him, the believer behaves more practically. She says to herself:
“The Lord does see. I can’t fully see him, but he sees me from his hiding place. And when I reach my goal I will see him face to face.”
As St Paul says, “then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” right now.
My grandma, my parents, you and me, are all fading from human memory. We know this. Yet our hope lay in the fact that our loving God does not forget us. That is why heaven matters to us in a very real way.
When we pass out of life and into the light of Christ’s Face, we are fully seen and known; Jesus remembers you.
Revelation tells us that those who are forgotten in this life are in fact written in the Lamb’s book of life. For, the only enduring memory is God’s memory. The only objective record of events, is God’s record.
I don’t know about you, but I find this very comforting; comforting, but also terrifying. Because what if there’s stuff you don’t want anyone to remember, least of all God?
God might be hidden some times to us, but many more people are trying to hide from him because Jesus has the kind of eyes that pierce your soul
“He told me everything I ever did” one woman said about Jesus.
Here again we come to a difference between those with faith and those without it. Because, by faith we trust that when God sees us, he no longer judges us since Jesus has atoned for our sin. One Apostle says “he remembers our sin no more” (Heb 8:12). This is one of those paradoxes of faith. The more that we quite covering up our sins and tell them to God, the more he forgets them and remembers us. The more we hide our sins from God, the more he remembers them and forgets us. The true test of reality is God’s memory!
I hope we all remember, then, what’s at stake in this life given what the next life is like. For those who feel forgotten now, there they will be remembered. And indeed all of us are bound to be forgotten eventually, that is, unless Jesus remembers us. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Amen.
