Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "If There's Eternal Life, Where's Heaven? "
Date: August 13, 2006
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  John 6:35 , 41-51

About thirty years ago, I was attending the calling hours for a dear sweet woman in my first church on the evening before I conducted her funeral.  She was the matriarch of a three-generation church family, and was much beloved in our community, as had been her late husband.  Her granddaughter, about my age, said, “Well, at least Grandma is now with Grandpa in heaven.”

I, just a few years out of seminary, and still feeling it was my calling to set everyone straight about theological issues, was about ready to share with her Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees when they asked him if a widow marries her husband’s brother, and then he dies and she marries the next available brother, in heaven whose wife shall she be?  Jesus responded,  “When the rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”  (Mark 12:25)

I remember having my mouth already open, ready to speak, when I closed it.  I thought to myself:  first, if it gives her comfort to believe Grandpa has welcomed Grandma into heaven, who am I to deny her that?  And second, what do I know?  I’ve never been to heaven or spoken to someone who has.  Even Jesus, after the resurrection, did not tell the disciples what it was like.

Keeping my mouth shut was the beginning of deciding that sometimes in ministry, that’s the best thing to do!

In the seven weeks since my mother died, I must confess that I have thought some about heaven.  I’ve never prayed that she would make it into heaven.  I think she deserves it, and will make it on her own merits, and not through any petitions to the Almighty on my part.  I did, however, pray that her soul would be at rest with the Lord, and that she now exists in a place where there is no more failing health or confusion of mind.

In the Gospel lesson for today, Jesus continues to develop his bread of life imagery to the point where he declares that he is “the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever…”  (John 6:51)

That got me to thinking about heaven again, and how it is portrayed in literature and the media.  Three books in particular that I enjoyed reading in the past few years came to mind.

The first, by Long Beach author Anne Sebold, is entitled The Lovely Bones.  I know that it was and is a difficult book for some to read because of the subject matter.  On the New York Times bestseller list for half of 2002, the publisher said, “I thought readers would find it too harsh, too shocking.  But the light she brings to the subject outshines the darkness.”

When we first meet Susie, a fourteen-year-old rape and murder victim, she is already in heaven.  As she looks down from this strange, new place, she watches life continue without her—her school friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her family holding out hope that she will be found, her killer trying to cover his tracks.

And she explores the place called heaven.  It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets.  There are counselors to help newcomers adjust and friends to room with.  After a few days there, she discovered everyone was in their own version of heaven.  If they entered an ice cream shop and ordered peppermint stick, they were never told it was seasonal.  Friends could go off on a road to their own heaven which Susie didn’t share, and return to her heaven later.  She encounters her grandfather and, from time to time, was with him.  Those in heaven can watch life pass on Earth, but cannot go back there. 

Over time, with compassion, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie sees her loved ones pass through grief and begin to mend.  Her father embarks on a risky quest to snare her killer.  Her sister undertakes a feat of remarkable daring.  Near the end of the novel, Susie says in the fresh and spirited voice of an eternal fourteen-year-old:  “Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand.  The word my grandfather uses is comfort.”  (p. 325)

The second book, also on the New York Times bestseller list, like his first novel, Tuesdays With Morrie, for the longest time in 2003, is Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven.  The main character is built on Albom’s memories of his own Uncle Eddie.  In the novel, Eddie is a grizzled war veteran and widower who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park.  His days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret.

Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident, trying to save a little girl falling from a defective park ride.  With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his—and then nothing.  He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it.  These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers.  Yet each of them changed your path forever.  As, one by one, Eddie’s five people illuminate the unseen connections of his earthly life, they helped him understand the turns in his life and how, in ways, obvious or subtle, they were involved.  They each play a part in the final resolution of Eddie’s journey through heaven, that moment when he saw his wife’s face, “he saw her smile and the voices [of people he saw on the boardwalk] melded into a single word from God:  Home.”  (p. 194)

The third book, published just this year, is the most light-hearted of the three.  It is Fannie Flagg’s Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven, and comes as a third installment in her saga of life in Elmwood Springs, Missouri during the last half century.  Aunt Elner, a farmer’s widow, is a minor character in the other two novels, but all of life—and death—centers around her in this one.  One moment she is up in her fig tree, and the next moment she is on an adventure she never dreamed of, meeting people she never expected to meet.  After she fell off the ladder and ended up in heaven, she took a very jerky elevator ride to the top.  There she is met by her late sister Ida, who escorts her through the celestial gates to a place that looks just like Elmwood Springs.  In fact, when she is ushered in to the presence of the Supreme Being named Raymond, her old neighbor Dorothy takes her in.

Elner always thought the greatest invention was electricity, and celebrated Thomas Edison’s birthday each year.  Raymond knew this, and invited Thomas Edison to come by to welcome Elner to heaven.  Later, while having cake with neighbor Dorothy, Elner asks why the elevator ride up was so jerky.  She’s told everyone gets to heaven their favorite way.  They knew Elner loved roller coasters, so the elevator emulated the ride.  Her sister Ida, always pretentious—she joined the Presbyterian Church back home because it was the most elegant in town—came in a first class cabin on the Queen Elizabeth.  And another neighbor came the way I’d hope to go:  in a red Cadillac convertible!

The book takes a twist when Elner is suddenly sent back to Earth before seeing her late husband.  Seems she was prematurely pronounced dead.  Elner is circumspect about who she tells about heaven; they might think she is crazy.  Later on, on the morning before her family is to move her out of her home to Happy Acres nursing home, she dies in her sleep in her own bed—for real, this time.  When she stepped off the jerky elevator for the second time, Dorothy and Raymond were there to greet her again, and assure her this time it was the real thing. 

“The big door swung open, and there stood a large group, including her mother and daddy, her sisters Ida and Gerta, and a lot of other relatives she had only seen in photographs.  Ginger Rogers and Thomas Edison stood behind them, waving and smiling at her.  It was at that moment she found him.  There, standing right in the middle of the first row, was her husband, Will!  He stepped forward wearing a big grin, with his arms wide open, and said, ‘What took you so long, woman?’  She ran to him and knew she was home for good.”  (p. 359)

Three novels, none of them theological analyses of biblical scripture references to heaven, nor a particularly Christian treatment, embody what many people believe about heaven—that it will be a heavenly reunion with our loved ones who have gone before.  Two of the novels end with the affirmation that this is “home”.  Some Christian funeral and memorial resources and pastors refer to death as a “homecoming”.

Me, I’m not so sure if heaven is really like that.  Jesus is vague in his few descriptions of it.  But I take confidence in these words of Jesus from later in John that I have so often quoted at services over the years: 

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father’s house there are [many mansions, many rooms,] many dwelling places.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”  (John 14:1-3 NRSV)

That promise is good enough to satisfy me till I hopefully get there!

Perhaps the best final word on today’s theme comes from Mitch Albom in the preface to his book:  “Everyone has an idea of heaven, as do most religions, and they should all be respected.  The version represented here is only a guess, a wish, in some ways, that my uncle, and others like him—people who felt unimportant here on earth—realize, finally, how much they mattered and how they were loved.”

 

Books referenced in this sermon:

The Lovely Bones, by Anne Sebold  (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002)

The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom  (New York:  Hyperion, 2003)

Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven, by Fannie Flagg  (New York:  Random House, 2006)  Her earlier two books, which best set the stage for the characters in this third installment, are Standing in the Rainbow and Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!