Sermon
of September 11, 2005
Presented by Rev. Chuck Ericson
Scripture lesson: Exodus 14:19-31
“Evolving Faith: Concepts of Heaven"
Heaven has been the subject of countless sermons over the years, in churches all around the world. I’ve preached about heaven from time to time. Today I want to take a look at heaven as something that has evolved as a concept over the years, from the very early days of our faith, in the time of Moses on through the Psalms and into the time of Jesus and the disciples.
I want to begin by looking at the idea that heaven, in the early days, was often thought of as a place to find God; that God was up in the heavens. I know this because I play golf; well I haven’t played in many years with this man named John, who every once in awhile would pop the ball up on the tee, on a par 4 par 5, where you’re supposed to hit a nice, low shot that goes 200-250 yards, or more, down the fairway. And every once in awhile he’d pop the ball up in the air, maybe 50 feet, and it would go way, way up, and he would yell, “Fore, God!”, as if God is up there about to be hit by his golf ball. The concept goes back, of God being in this high place, to the early, early days of our faith. You’ve probably heard the story of the Tower of Babel, where the people in the early days put bricks together and build a tower higher and higher, hoping to reach the heavens. The belief of many Biblical scholars is that this is the people’s attempt to reach God, and to be on God’s level, and to become equal with God and take over God’s power in a way, or at least try to share it with God instead of allowing God to be their authority.
So in order to reach God in this way and to usurp God’s power, the way to do it was to go up, up, up in this tower into heaven, because that’s where God is, way up there. In many other places in the Bible, God is still conceived of being up there. Later on in the story of Exodus, the people are hungry on their way back to the Promised Land, and God rains down bread from heaven. It’s like God throwing bread; it’s not really like that but you can think of it that way if you want. Later, God comes down from Mt. Sinai to meet Moses for the Ten Commandments, and time and again, God is perceived as coming down from on high.
In the story today of the people of Israel leaving Egypt and approaching the Red Sea on their way to the Promised Land, they look up to see God. They look up to the heavens and they think that God is guiding them in a pillar of cloud, or a pillar of cloud and fire; it comes in two different places in this story. As they’re trying to make their way, they look and during the day they see this pillar of cloud, and that’s God up there guiding their way. And at night, it becomes a pillar of fire, leading them as they keep going on, even through the night sometimes. God is up there in the early days of our faith. As God is guiding them, they look up and see a pillar of cloud and think that God is leading them.
A little later, heaven takes a little bit different form, and it becomes a place to look for inspiration; to look to the heavens and be inspired. One of the Psalms that’s being used in our Sunday school this month, in the workshop rotation model, is Psalm 8 which begins: “O, Lord our Sovereign, how majestic is your name on all the earth. You’ve set your glory above the heavens, way up there, out of the mouths of babes and infants you’ve founded a bulwark because of your foes to silence the enemy and the avenger.”
“When I look to the heavens,” the psalmist writes, “the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established. What are human beings, who are we that you are mindful of us? Who are we that you care for us?” As the Psalmist is looking up towards the heavens, at night apparently seeing the moon and stars, the psalmist is inspired to reflect and wonder who am I in this great creation, who am I as a creation of God? Who am I in relation to God? Why has God chosen to put me on this earth? Why is God mindful of me? All these thoughts are rushing through the psalmist as the psalmist is looking up to heaven and beholding the grandeur of what’s up there. Heaven becomes not just a place where God is, but a place where you can look for inspiration in your life.
Yesterday there was a walk through the fields over here, led by Hans DePold, our town historian, reflecting on how Jonathan Edwards, the great preacher of the Great Awakening and called to be the first pastor of this church (although he didn’t stay as long as I did, but he did become more famous than I did), he found inspiration walking in those fields. I know the story (at least part of it) that Jonathan Edwards wrote of walking in the fields in the Rose Farm and just finding incredible inspiration, and feeling the power of God coming into his life, and leading him to what became the leading of the great awakening. And I have to believe that part of his walk wasn’t just looking at the fields or the trees, or listening to the sound of the birds or the animals rustling in the grass, but I have to believe that some of it was looking up to the heavens, and being inspired by just the glory of what’s above in the sun and the clouds – and the beauty of the heavens. I have to believe that.
One of my own stories about looking at the heavens has to do Silver Lake. I know many of you have been to Silver Lake. One time when I was in college, I was working at Silver Lake during the week, probably during school vacation, and I was left one evening as the only person in Silver Lake on a cold winter’s night. The other staff members who were there permanently were off to their church in Sharon for a church meeting, and I was left there to answer the phone and just be there. It was just an incredible feeling to be the only person; if you’ve been there in the summer, it’s just people all over the place, having fun, doing their conferences, full of joy, down at the waterfront. I was the only one in all these 52 acres, and I walked out in the middle of the ball field, which is right, sort of, in the center of the activity, and walked across the crunchy, hard-packed snow, and it was one of those nights that was just perfectly calm, and cold and crisp. And I looked up, and the sky was incredibly clear – stars all over the place, not a cloud, not overcast, and the moon was out. It was so beautiful, and I just remember feeling awestruck and feeling inspired about the peace of God and the wonder of God, and feeling God very present by looking up into the heavens. I’ve been a lot of places in my life, most of them I can’t remember, but I remember that moment. There is something about looking up into the heavens at night sometimes, or on a quiet day, or in a field somewhere in nature, where you just feel God’s presence and God’s inspiration like no other place, especially when you’re alone. So that’s sort of the next step, it moved from a place where God is to a place where we can gather inspiration from God.
The third stage of evolution of heaven is the belief that it is a place for us to go after we die, after our lives on earth here are over. That developed later on, and became very much a part of faith with Jesus and his apostles and disciples as they went forth to teach and preach Jesus’ message, that it became a place for our final destination. It wasn’t always that way. In the early days of Israel, it was common to believe that when you died, you were dead. And the belief was that some day the day of the Lord would come, and all of Israel, all the faithful, would rise up on the day of general resurrection. Everybody would rise up at once and come back to life, as a nation of Israel; all God’s faithful people. That was the belief for awhile; you died, you were dead, and someday everybody would rise back up all together on the day of the Lord. It was later on, well down the years, especially with Jesus and the disciples and the development of our Christian faith over the years that the idea came that heaven became a place to go to after you die on earth pretty immediately. Well, that was one of the two options – I’m not going to talk about the other one today. We’re just talking about heaven.
It’s a place to go, and be reunited with family and friends and be with God, and be at peace forever. The image of heaven sometimes for us, and I think when we hear heaven we think of an image, and a lot of it comes from the book of Revelation where there’s the gates with pearls in them, inlaid pearls, pearly gates, and the streets that are paved in gold, and we all wear halos, and the mansions on the hill, and angels and harps and all of that. I think Jesus in his parables particularly teaches that heaven isn’t so much about what it looks like, as the atmosphere that is there; the atmosphere and the environment of how people relate to each other. One of the other lectionary readings today was about Peter asking Jesus how often do I forgive somebody, 7 times? And Jesus says, I think many of us know, no not 7 but 70 times 7. As a reminder, if somebody sins you, does you wrong and you forgive them, you’ve got 489 more times after that to go, okay? It’s a long, long process.
But when Jesus is telling Peter about that, he goes on to say for this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wishes to settle accounts with his servants, and he tells the parable of how the servants are forgiven part of what they owe the king. So heaven becomes portrayed not so much about what the decorations look like, as to what it’s like; it’s a place of mercy and forgiveness, where people get along and don’t rise up against each other, don’t try and supplant each other, don’t try and hurt each other, don’t try and take advantage of each other, but live in respect. I was trying to think about forgiveness; if everybody respects and cares for each other, there shouldn’t be any sinning going on and nobody should be hurting each other so you don’t need forgiveness. But still the atmosphere is one where people are in true community; there’s pure love between people, pure kindness, gentleness, great feast is one of the other parables. It is just a place of absolute love and respect and kindness and goodness. So that’s what heaven becomes later on, is this place we hope to live in for all eternity someday once our jobs, our tasks on earth, are done.
The good news today is that sometimes in evolution things change and the old way is left behind, but in the evolution of heaven all of those things still remain. I think it’s okay to think God is up there, of course we know, well most of us know this, sitting on a throne this big old guy – that’s one image of God, but God’s not restricted to that. God is within us, God is among us. But it’s kind of nice to think that we can look up and can know that God is above us, watching over us; it’s a nice concept. To be able to know that heaven is a place to look when you’re trying to sort something out; just take time to look up to heaven and you might find that inspiration like the psalmist found, and Jonathan Edwards found, and I found at Silver Lake one winter night. And to know that heaven is also a place of destination, a place where we go to be with one another, and to be in communion with one another, and with those who have gone before us. God bless us, when we take in the image of heaven in all these ways.