Love Wins!

A sermon preached at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Delray Beach.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Delray Beach, Florida

5 Pentecost - Proper 11 - -Year A - July 17, 2011

Genesis 28: 10 - 19a; Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

Preacher: The Rev. Canon William H. Stokes, Rector

The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth….Matthew 13:41

            Does the name Rob Bell mean anything to anyone?  Rob Bell is the 41 year old founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  He was inspired to name his church Mars Hills in honor of the place where Paul reportedly delivered his famous speech in Athens about “the unknown God” (see Acts 17:23). 

            Today, Mars Hills Church in Grand Rapids has between 7,000 and 10,000 worshippers at its two services per weekend.  They were up to 11,000, but I gather some have left because of Bell’s so-called “liberalism.”[1]  Some of the controversy is pretty recent.  Rob Bell is causing quite a stir, and especially in Evangelical church circles.  

            It all started earlier this year with the publication of his book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven. Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.[2] In the wake of the book’s publication, Bell received a great deal of media attention.  He was the subject of a cover story in Time Magazine this past April[3] as well as of Christian Century Magazine this past May[4].  What’s the big deal?   What’s so controversial? 

            In his book, Bell explores the several ways the Bible understands the word “heaven,” but that’s not what is provoking the conservative Evangelical backlash.  What’s provoking the backlash among theological conservatives is Bell’s questioning of traditional dogma concerning hell and punishment and God’s wrath.

            Bell was inspired to write Love Wins following an incident at his church...Here’s how Bell describes the incident.  He writes: “Several years ago we had an art show at our church.  I had been giving a series of teachings on peacemaking, and we invited artists to display their paintings, poems, and sculptures that reflected their understanding of what it means to be a peacemaker.  One woman included in her work a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, which a number of people found quite compelling.  But not everyone.   Someone attached a piece of paper to it.  On the piece of paper was written: ‘Reality check: He’s in hell.’”[5]

            “Really,” Bell writes in response to that note.  “Gandhi’s in hell?  He is?  We have confirmation of this?  Somebody knows this?  Without a doubt?   And that somebody decided to take on the responsibility of letting the rest of us know.”[6]

            This prompted him to ponder a series of questions: “Of all the billions of people who have ever lived,” he writes, “will only a select number ‘make it to a better place’ and every other single person suffer in torment and punishment forever?  Is this acceptable to God?  Has God created millions of people over tens of thousand of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish?  Can God do this, or even allow this, and still claim to be a loving God?”[7]

            This last is a critical question, and as the book plays out, it is clear that Bell’s belief in a loving God negates the possibility of God acting in hateful and heinous ways.  Bell rejects traditional views of Hell and Punishment, and most particularly any exclusivist Christian claims which declare Christians are in and everybody else is out.   This has led to the primary charge that conservative evangelicals have leveled at Rob Bell; that he is a “universalist,” someone who claims in some sense that all human beings can come to salvation, living in ultimate harmony with God as if that’s a filthy word and concept.

            Actually, Bell challenges the “universalist” label because he continues to insist in his belief in a Trinitarian God and in Jesus Christ as a part of that Trinity and he understands that “When you’ve experienced the resurrected Jesus, the mystery hidden in the fabric of creation; you can’t help but talk about him.  You’ve tapped into a joy that fills the entire universe, and so naturally you want others to meet this God.  This is a God worth telling people about.”[8]

            In a critical response to Bell’s book and teaching, R. Albert Mohler, Jr. president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary stated that Bell’s book is “theologically disastrous.”[9] He added, “Any of us should be concerned when a matter of theological importance is played with in a subversive way.”[10]   [I can’t help wondering, wasn’t that precisely what Jesus was doing during his ministry on earth?] Mohler declares, “When you adopt universalism and erase the distinction between the church and the world, then you don’t need the church, and you don’t need Christ, and you don’t need the Cross.”[11] 

            It strikes me that the primary impulse behind Mohler’s comment and thinking is fear....He is afraid that Christianity will lose its influence if it doesn’t have the coercive factor of hell and fear....I don’t agree with that conclusion and I don’t accept it. 

            I believe a Christianity based on Christ and Christ’s love for the world is compelling and exciting.  We don’t need the fearsome coerciveness of hellfire and brimstone to be transformed and transforming in the world.  I’m in total agreement with Rob Bell when he writes, “I believe that Jesus’s story is first and foremost about the love of God for every single one of us.  It is a stunning, beautiful, expansive love, and it’s for everybody, everywhere.  That’s the story.  ‘For God so loved the world...’ That’s why Jesus came.  That’s his message.  That’s where the life is found.”[12] 

            I really like Rob Bell’s book and I pretty much agree with everything he wrote in it...We will feature it in September as the last in this year’s Summer Book Discussion series.  

            Actually, in some ways, I’m surprised Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived has gotten as much attention and press as it has....Bell is saying a lot of what many of us in main-line Christianity have been saying for years.....But, then again, as Jon Meacham notes in his April 25 Time Magazine article about Bell’s book and its impact, “Particularly galling to conservative Christian critics is that Love Wins is not an attack from outside the walls of the Evangelical city, but a mutiny from within...a rebellion led by a charismatic, savvy pastor with a following....”[13] Meacham adds, “it is difficult to imagine that an Episcopal priest’s eschatological musings would have provoked the volume of criticism directed at Bell which threatens prevailing Evangelical theology.”[14] [Meacham is an active Episcopalian].

            I bring up Bell’s book because today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 13 is a judgment parable.   In Matthew’s Gospel, it follows immediately after the so-called Parable of the Sower that was last week’s Gospel reading (see Matthew 13:1 ff.)  Here, sowing image is used again, but this parable has much more of an edge.  

            A man has sown good seed and gone to bed.   While he was sleeping, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the seed.  In an agrarian age, messing with a person’s crops could be life threatening and Jesus is playing upon that image.  But of course the parable is not really about crops and a harvest; it’s about the kingdom of God and judgment.

            In his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel, biblical scholar Douglas Hare offers some interesting insights.[15]  He notes that in the parable itself, “emphasis is placed upon the farmer’s patience.”[16]  Observing that separation of the weeds from the wheat is postponed until the harvest is ripe, Hare writes, “Perhaps Jesus used this parable to point out that human beings are not competent to make the kinds of judgments implied in separating the wheat from the tares; in plucking out what they think are tares, they may very well be pulling up wheat.  Only God can make such judgments,” Hare writes, “and in due course this will be done.  In the meantime, we must be more patient with one another.”[17]  “Taken this way, “Hare observes, “the story becomes a parable of grace,” adding,  “In the strange world of the parable where separation is graciously postponed, it may even be possible for weeds to become wheat.”[18]  

            There is another interpretive possibility, however.  Hare notes that this is revealed in verses 36 – 43, where Jesus goes into a house and explains the parable to his disciples. Hare suggests that this section reflects the concerns of the evangelist Matthew and his church.[19] 

            Hare explains, “Matthew is greatly disturbed by the mixed state of the church which contains many who enthusiastically call Jesus ‘Lord, Lord’ but who refuse to follow his ethical teaching.  By means of this interpretation [that is the explanation in verses 36 - 43], Matthew assures himself and others that a day of reckoning will come to those pseudodisciples; the glorified Christ will send forth his angels to purify the church of all who disregard moral law.” [20]

            But Hare makes an important observation: “Remarkable in this [latter] interpretation,” he writes, “is the absence of any reference to the householder’s patience.  What was central to the parable is ignored in the allegorical interpretation.”  “Perhaps,” Hare writes, “Matthew was less pleased than Jesus with God’s long-suffering!”[21] And this gets us back to Love Wins and Rob Bell.

            Early in Love Wins, Bell rhetorically asks, “Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life?”[22]  He continues, “This doesn’t just raise disturbing questions about God; it raises questions about the beliefs themselves.  Why them?  Why you?  Why me?  Why not him or her?  If there are only a select few who go to heaven, which is more terrifying to fathom; the billions who burn forever or the few who escape this fate?  How does a person end up being one of the few?  Chance?  Luck?  Random selection?  Being born in the right place, family or country?  Having a youth pastor who ‘relates better to kids”?  God choosing you instead of others.  What kind of faith is that?” Bells asks, “Or more important, What kind of God is that?”[23] 

            Furthermore. as he asks quite provocatively, “Whenever people claim that one group is in, saved, accepted by God, forgiven, enlightened,  redeemed – and everybody else isn’t – why is it that those who make this claim are almost always part of the group that is in?”[24]

            In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus seems to tell a parable about a patient and long-suffering God....It appears that Matthew couldn’t leave it at that; he needed to “explain” the parable and give it a harder and more judgmental edge; a pretty common failing which Matthew falls into several times in his Gospel.[25]  The phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth” appears 6 times in Matthew’s Gospel, but only once in Luke and never in Mark, the oldest Gospel and the one which served as a source for Matthew.   What’s that tell you?  Whose phrase is “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” Jesus’ or Matthews?

            I prefer to think that Jesus left the parable more open ended...That he didn’t go into the house to explain it; its meaning was pretty evident in its original form.  The 2x4 wasn’t necessary.

            I’m with Rob Bell...I believe in a God who is Love (See 1 John 4:8, 16); I believe in a patient and long-suffering God who is pulling for all of us; who wants us all to be reconciled to him or her and to each other; I believe in a God who wants us to help him, or her, bring heaven to earth, understanding that “Heaven is that realm where things are as God intends them to be.”[26]  I believe in a God who invites us into the depths of a relationship of love and into a discovery of what heaven means through Jesus Christ....

            In this view the message of Christ is necessary and essential because the cross points to the potential for wickedness and evil in this world even as the resurrection declares that wickedness and evil can never and will never be victorious.  Why do I believe this?  Because like Rob Bell, I place my life and my convictions in this God who I believe with all my heart is Love.  For me, as with Rob Bell, this God and this Love wins!  This Love always wins!  And in this winning love, we win too!!

---

[1]    For additional biographical information, see “Bell, Rob”  on Wikipedia – The On-Line  Encyclopedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Bell

[2]   Bell, Rob Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (EPub Edition New York: HarperOne – A Division of Harper Collins Publishers, 2011)

[3]   Meacham, Jon “What If There’s No Hell?”  Time Magazine – April 25, 2011 – p. 38ff.

[4]   Marty, Peter “Betting on God’s  Love” The Christian Century – May 17, 2011 – pp. 22 ff.

[5] . Love Wins e-book edition (Kindle location 80 – 85 ff.) - Chapter 1 “What About the Flat Tire”

[6] Love Wins e-book edition (Kindle location 85 – 93 ff.) - Chapter 1 “What About the Flat Tire”

[7]   Love Wins e-book edition (Kindle location 85 – 93 ff.) - Chapter 1 “What About the Flat Tire”

[8]   Love Wins e-book edition (Kindle locations 2183 - 88) - Chapter 7 “The Good News Is Better Than That” 

[9]    See Meacham p. 40

[10]   See Meacham p.40

[11]   See Meacham p. 40

[12]   Love Wins e-book edition (Kindle locations 33 - 39) – Preface  “Millions of Us” 

[13]   Meacham p. 40

[14]   Meacham p. 40

[15]   Hare, Douglas R. A. Interpretation – A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville:  John Knox Press, 1993)

[16]   Hare, p. 155

[17]   Hare, p. 155

[18]   Hare, p. 155

[19]   Hare, p. 155

[20]   Hare, p. 155

[21]   Hare, p. 155

[22]   Love Wins e-book edition (Kindle location 93 - 98 ff.) - Chapter 1 “What About the Flat Tire”

[23]   Love Wins e-book edition (Kindle location 93 - 113 ff.) - Chapter 1 “What About the Flat Tire”

[24] Love Wins e-book edition (Kindle location 107 - 113 ff.) - Chapter 1 “What About the Flat Tire”

[25]   For examples, see Matthew 8:11 – 12; 13:47 – 50; 22: 11 – 14; 24:45 – 51; 25:14 – 30.  

[26]   Love Wins e-book edition (Kindle locations 574 - 582) - Chapter 2 “Here Is the New There ”

The Death of Marat

The Death of Marat

écrivant pour le bonheur du peuple

What was Marat thinking

as he sat in his tub

before rudely interrupted

by Charlotte Corday?

Was his mind fixed

on The Revolution - 

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

Jacobins and Montagnards    

and headless roi

c’est l’etat  no more

when virgin Caen sister

walked demurely

through his door?

Did his thoughts drift

to alpine days

and boyhood dreams

in Neuchatel;

strolls with Father

along the lake

reflecting

discussing matters

philosophical?

Were there regrets

at this late date?

Did he pause to study

soap bubbles

in refracted light,

ou nouvelles découvertes

sur la lumière;

diversion from

dermatatis

herpetiformis,

incessant itch inflamed

hiding in the sewers

of Paris

for the cause?

Was he aroused

by…other things;

tumescent rush

beneath the board;

had he misconstrued

Marie-Ann’s blush   

for passion of  

another sort

while she played games

parading names

nine inch kitchen

blade veiled  

beneath her corset?

When did le docteur

become aware

Mademoiselle’s knife

had cut the air?

Did he observe

it gore his chest

or
was he distracted

by her list

when vulnus punctum

could not be ignored

as his blood poured

out while Simonne sipped tea,

jealous in the other room

until she heard his dying plea

Aidez-moi, ma chère amie!

Could he have known

that Jaques Louis

would frame the scene,

entombing him

Pieta-like 

for posterity

a pair

with Lepeletier

gone missing?

What was Marat’s final conclusion

when he slumped in his tub

and his towel-wrapped head rolled

to the right  

and his arm dropped down

while his hand

clutched his pen,

vivid, dramatic horror,

pitiful sight?

Was his mind fixed,

intransigent?

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

or...did he curse

his mortalité,

l'ange de l'assassinat

and the God-damned

Revolution?

                   © W.H. Stokes

                   June 2, 2010

Becoming the American We Dream

The following sermon was preached at St. Paul's the weekend of July 3.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church - Delray Beach, Florida

3 Pentecost - Proper 9 - Year A (RCL) - July 2/3, 2011

Romans 7:15 - 25a; Matthew 11:16 - 19, 25 - 30

Preacher: The Rev. Canon William H. Stokes, Rector

            Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest….”                                                                                                                         Matthew 11:28

            On Friday, the government of Minnesota shut down because the Democratic Governor and the Republican controlled legislature could not reach a deal on the state budget.[1]  Both sides agree that the budget needs to be reduced in a significant way.  They disagree about how this is to be accomplished.   The Governor wants to increase tax on the wealthiest Minnesotans; the legislature refuses to allow the question of increased taxes to be put on the table.  In the meantime, many state residents are experiencing what for now are inconveniences and what could well become, for many, severe hardships.

            At the federal level; the President is locked in a battle with the Congress, most specifically, the House of Representatives over the federal budget and the national debt which has soared out of control.  It is apparent to almost everyone with any sense that federal spending must be drastically reduced, but, again, there are bitter, ideological disagreements about how this is to be accomplished.[2] 

            The President and most Democrats adamantly feel that revenue, in the form of increased taxes, at least for the wealthiest Americans; must be put on the table.  The Republicans, who control the majority of the House, refuse to allow the question of increased taxes to be put on the table feeling any increase of taxes will undermine the growth of the economy at a time when the economy needs all the energy it can muster. 

            The issue of raising the national debt ceiling has been thrust into the midst of this issue as a means of leverage; the Republicans tying authorization of raising the debt ceiling to the budget debate in a way that many people of different political stripes consider a very dangerous game of chicken.  The sad and sorry truth in the Minnesota government shut-down, and the federal debt and debt ceiling controversy, as well as in many of the very serious political conflicts abounding in the nation today, is that partisanship, as well as special interests - are driving the behaviors and actions of our governing leaders and they seem unable to transcend this for the sake of the nation, the states and the people. 

            This incapacity to work it out has the potential of doing great damage to us all.  Where do we stand as Christians in all of this?  Should our Christian faith inform our understanding or posture at all?  Needless to say, I don’t think our faith can be compartmentalized.  Christianity is a way of life; therefore our faith informs every aspect of our lives, including our politics and our sense of citizenship.

            Without question, Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian, ethicist and political philosopher was one of the great thinkers of the modern age.  Early in his ministry, Niebuhr was described as a “leftist liberal.”[3]  In the 1930s, with both communism and fascism on the rise, his thinking shifted dramatically to what many described as neo-orthodoxy and theological and political pragmatism.  Niebuhr famously observed, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s capacity for injustice makes democracy necessary.”[4]  As we prepare to celebrate our Nation’s birth, it’s an opportune time to reflect on democracy and citizenship and what it means to be a Christian in our American context.

            Despite Niebuhr’s statement, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s capacity for injustice makes democracy necessary,” he was not naive about democracy and did not wear rose-colored glasses where democracy was concerned.  In a chapter titled “Man and Society: The Art of Living Together” found in his now classic 1932 book Moral Man & Immoral Society, Niebuhr analyzed power and the use of coercion in modern society and offered a sober and cautionary assessment of the western democratic situation.  His words speak as insightfully and truthfully to our own time as it did to his own.  Niebuhr wrote:

“The rise of modern democracy, beginning with the Eighteenth Century, is sometimes supposed to have substituted the consent of the governed for the power of the royal families and aristocratic classes as the cohesive force of national society.  This judgment is partly true but not nearly as true as the uncritical devotees of modern democracy assume.  The doctrine that government exists by the consent of the governed, and the democratic technique by which the suffrage of the governed determines the policy of the state may actually reduce the coercive factor in national life, and provide for peaceful and gradual methods of resolving conflicting social interests and changing political institutions.  But the creeds and institutions of democracy have never become fully divorced from the special interests of the commercial classes who conceived and developed them.  It was their interest to destroy political restraint upon economic activity, and they therefore weakened the authority of the state and made it more pliant to their needs. With the increased centralization of economic power in the period of modern industrialism, this development merely means that society does not control economic power as much as social well-being requires; and that the economic, rather than the political and military power, has become the significant coercive force of modern society.  Either it defies the authority of the state or it bends the institutions of the state to its own purposes.  Political power has been made responsible, but economic power has become irresponsible in society.  The net result is that political power has been made more responsible to economic power.  It is, in other words, again the man of power or the dominant class which binds society together, regulates its processes, always paying itself inordinate rewards for its labors.”[5]

            Niebuhr well understood a basic fact and reality of the human experience: Sin.  Human beings are sinful.  In understanding this, Niebuhr was consistent with Christian thought from the time of Christianity’s inception.  Certainly St. Paul had a deep awareness of the reality of human sin and articulated the conundrum that so often confronts us as human beings:  I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate! (Romans 7:15).

            What a keen recognition about human behavior and instincts.  How complicated we are:  having knowledge of right and wrong and good and evil, but also psychologically and spiritually complex; marked and marred by hidden motives and a subconscious that often is at work in subtle and sometimes despicable ways inclining us to self-interest and selfishness….None of this undermines the goodness and rightness of morals and values in and of themselves....What it does, however, is make clear our vulnerability as agents of the moral right and of the moral good. Paul expresses this:

           

Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good.  But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.  For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do....Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.  So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.  For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members (Romans 7:16 – 23).

           

            Just at the point Paul seems to throw up his hands in disgust at the recognition of his own sinfulness; he acknowledges the one thing that can draw him out of the conundrum:  Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:24 – 25).

            As Christians we bring a positive resource and value to the table of the moral and of the civic life: We bring the grace and power of Jesus Christ, our Christian faith and all that comes with it....We bring a vision of the kingdom of God, of the “City upon a Hill, referred to in 1630 by Governor of Massachusetts John Winthrop[6], an image later invoked with hope and solemnity by President Ronald Reagan[7].   

            In his 1630 address, “A model of Christian Charity,”  Winthrop outlined the characteristics of this City and its inhabitants:  “We must, “he wrote, “entertain each other in brotherly affection.  We must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities.  We must uphold familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality.  We must delight in each other, make each others’ conditions our own – rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.  So shall we keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace”[8] 

            Needless to say, this is an ideal, even Utopian vision…It’s an ideal dream….And it must be acknowledged that Christians and the Christian Church are not above the same moral challenges and predicaments, the same propensity to sin,  that face all human beings and institutions.  Any serious reading of Church history makes this clear.  But this same serious reading of Church history, indeed of Scripture itself, also makes clear that the higher calling and values of which the Church and the Christian faith is a repository, are the very resources that have been used to reform us, and that have often helped to reform society throughout history.  These continue to be a tool and resource for us and for personal growth and improvement and for growth and improvement of civic life and citizenship...

            These higher calling and values are summed up in the Great Commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.[9]  The Christian faith brings us the value, the deep value of love; sacrificial love.  This does not mean that we are to disregard our own needs; after all, love of self is included in the commandment.  But, as John Winthrop’s words make clear, we are always to regard our neighbor’s needs at least as important and significant as our own.  We are always to have a deep and abiding concern for the common good.

            Perhaps this sounds obvious and trite, but in a society that has increasingly emphasized individualism at the expense of society; and selfishness at the expense of altruism; this is no easy matter; which is why the additional resource we as Christians bring to the table is equally important:  the capacity to recognize and name sin and our human propensity for it; individually and corporately.

            This country needs us, as Christians who are citizens, to be faithful, knowledgeable and strong in our convictions and also in our capacity to be rigorous in seeing ourselves honestly and clearly, with as critical an eye and understanding as that of Reinhold Niebuhr.  This country needs us to be courageous enough to name and confront sin and selfish interests at work when and where we see them, and especially when these undermine the common good and the common welfare, thereby promoting injustice.

            Reinhold Niebuhr felt strongly that the individual person has a greater capacity and potential to behave morally and altruistically than any collective of human beings....He felt that the greater the number of human beings involved in a collective; the greater the chance they would act out of selfish motives and interests, including and up to the collective of the nation and the less likely it was that individuals in that collective would have the moral strength and courage to stand up to the collective even when it was committing great evil.[10]  I find myself provoked and challenged by Niebuhr and, overall, in general agreement with him.  Certainly, the rancor and partisan behavior, and the frequent serving of greed and self interest at all levels of today’s politics underscore the truthfulness of his observation.                  On the other hand, although it may begin with an individual of conscience, I think it takes the strength and numbers of a collective, a critical mass, to stand up to the evil of a collective.  I also think our history and core values and core documents as Americans, when read in the light of our Christian values and truths support this.     

            “We the people of the United States…”our Constitution begins. It is about us as a people, as nation....It is a Constitution that had and has, as its primary intention, our life together as a community, a nation of people....The Constitution was drafted to help us “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of our liberty....”[11]  These values are consonant with the commitments of our Baptismal Covenant -“to strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being;” and “to seek and serve Christ in all persons loving our neighbors as our self.”[12] 

            Independence Day is a day to remember and celebrate what is best about us as Americans.  It is a day to revere the core principles, highest values and deepest altruism that led to the founding of this country and that have sustained us as a Republic and a people ever since and to recommit ourselves these........We are not perfect and it is likely we never will be, but that shouldn’t stop us from striving to be perfected. 

            We have been blessed with a vision, with dreams of liberty and justice  for all people....It is a wondrous vision; it is a daring dream....During this July 4^th observance, as we celebrate Independence Day and our nation’s founding, let give thanks to God for the blessings and liberty we enjoy.  Let us also remember our hope and our solemn calling to work toward becoming the America we dream.

            Let us pray:

Lord God Almighty, in whose name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.[13]

---

[1]   See Davery, Monica – “Minnesota Government Shuts in Budget Fight”  - NY TImes, July 1, 2011 at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/us/01minnesota.html?scp=1&sq=minnesota%20government%20shutdown&st=cse

[2]   See Landler, Mark et al “In Defecit Plan, Taxes Must Rise, President Warns” NY Times – June 29, 2011 at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/us/politics/30obama.html?ref=federalbudgetus

[3]   See Wikipedia “Reinhold Niebuhr”  at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Niebuhr

[4]   See Wikipedia “Reinhold Niebuhr”  at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Niebuhr

[5]   Niebuhr, Reinhold Moral Man and Immoral Society:  A Study in Ethics and Politics  Introduction by Langdon B. Gilkey (Louisville:  John Knox Press, 2001 - Original copyright Reinhold Niebuhr 1932) p.  14-15.

[6]   Winthrop,  John “A Model of Christian Charity (1630) – found in A Patriot’s Handbook:  Songs, Poems, Stories and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love Editor:  Caroline Kennedy  (New York:  Hyperion Books, 2003) pp. 32 – 33.

[7]   Ronald Reagan – “Farewell Address to the Nation”  - January 11, 1989 See http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreaganfarewelladdress.html

[8]   “A Model of Christian Charity”

[9]   See Book of Common Prayer 1979 – p. 351.

[10]   See, for example, Neibuhr p. 9 beginning “”Most rational and social justifications of unequal privilege are clearly after thoughts etc...”

[11]  “Preamble” to The U.S. Constitution

[12]  See Book of Common Prayer 1979 – p. 304 – 305.

[13]  Book of Common Prayer 1979 – p. 242.

Does heaven have gravity?

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Delray Beach, Florida

7 Easter - Year A (RCL) - June 4/5, 20011

Acts 1:6- 14; Ps. 68; John 17: 1 -11

Preacher: The Reverend Canon William H. Stokes, Rector

Does heaven have gravity?

While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.  They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”   Acts 1:9 - 11

        The following conversation which took place between St. Paul’s member Gillian Lopez and her daughter Phee was reported on Gillian’s Facebook page this past Friday:

            “Phee: Mummy, do you float around in heaven, or does heaven have gravity?” 

            Gillian: “Err, what do you think, Phee?” 

           

            I suggested in a Facebook comment to Gillian’s post that she might find the wonderful book Where does God live by Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Tom Hartman, the so-called “God Squad,” helpful.[1]

            Gellman and Hartman’s book provides parents, and others, helpful answers to children’s questions about God; questions such as: “Is God real?”  “What does God look like?” and “Where does God live?”

            Gillian informed me, and anyone who was following the exchange on Facebook, that in response to Gillian’s query, “Errr....what do you think Phee?” Phee expressed her opinion “that heaven has gravity, except on Sundays when it's a free floating day, so that we may nap on clouds without falling through as we usually would!”  Well, that answers that!

            This past Thursday we observed the Feast of the Ascension, and on this, the Sunday following, the 7^th Sunday of Easter, we live in the liturgical and theological tension of the time between Christ having ascended into heaven which asserts, in some sense, his absence from us; and the giving of the promised gift of the Holy Spirit which then mediates his presence in and through us again. 

            The bestowal of the gift of the Holy Spirit is alluded to in the reading from Acts which we heard as our first reading.[2] We’ll celebrate that gift of the Holy Spirit all this week during Vacation Bible School and especially next Sunday on the Feast of Pentecost when everyone will wear red, so don’t forget: Wear Red!!

             Today, though, I thought we might be a little heavenly minded; not so heavenly minded that we’re of no earthly good; but heavenly minded enough to consider what we mean when we speak of heaven....What is it we are talking about when we use this word “heaven,” which does, heaven help us, get thrown around a lot!

            Of course the word “heaven” is used in today’s reading from Acts of the Apostles.  The book of Acts has sometimes been referred to as the Gospel of the Holy Spirit; because the work of the Holy Spirit figures so prominently in it....In Acts, the power and work of the Holy Spirit is the driving force behind the growth of the nascent apostolic Church....

            Our reading was taken from chapter 1, the very first chapter....What an appropriate story for the opening of Acts.  Here in the first chapter, we hear of the last experience of the Apostles with their resurrected Lord, their resurrected Lord and ours too....He has a last word for them...It’s a word of promise.

            Oh they’re still distracted with other concerns, as they were when they walked with Jesus during his earthly ministry....They still have their minds set on some of the wrong things...They asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”(Acts 1:6).  It appears that they want to return to something that is past, as so many people today seem to long for the good old days, when everything was hunky dory....

            It seems they want to see a return to the days when Israel was great and glorious; as it was in the days of Kings David and Solomon....And it is likely their motives for this are not the purest.  Since they are so close to Jesus, and they believe he is the new King David, they probably imagine themselves in the seats of power and glory with Jesus....They probably also yearn to throw off the Roman yoke of oppression....

            In asking the question of Jesus they are both asking for too much and imagining too little.  In casting their eyes backward, they don’t comprehend that Jesus and his proclamation of the kingdom of God are about something entirely new and beyond their imagination... Jesus responds to them, “It is not for you to know the times or the periods that the Father has set by his own authority”(Acts 1:7).  

            Jesus is telling them, “You be concerned about what God wants you to be concerned about, and let God be concerned about what God should be concerned about.”  But he doesn’t just shoot them and their question down...No, he also makes them a promise....“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses [the word in Greek is MARTYROS in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). 

            That’s what they are to be concerned about:  Christ’s mission; being his witnesses, his MARTYROS from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth....

            “When he had said this,” the text tells us, “as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9).  We’re told further, that “while he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them”(Acts 1:10).  These are now familiar figures to us.

            We first encountered them, or some beings like them, on Easter morning at the empty tomb.  We are meant to understand them as angels, God’s messengers...They said to Jesus’ followers, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you have seen him go into heaven”(1:11). 

            In short, they are saying to Jesus’ followers, stop gawking and go do what he told you.  He’ll be back; in the meantime, go wait for the promised gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and then get to the work of mission and ministry!  I’ll come back to that, but for now let’s be a little heavenly minded and gaze with them and gawk with them for a few moments, looking at heaven....What is it we mean by this word?  How do we understand heaven?

            A few weeks ago, long-time St. Paul’s member Charlie Simon gave me a book that he had read which he found both moving and provocative....It made him wonder; wonder about heaven....The book is titled Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back.[3] It’s written by Todd Burpo a pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, Nebraska (professional writer Lynn Vincent assisted him).  

            In Heaven is for Real, Todd Burpo tells about what happened after his just under four-year-old son Colton made it through and emergency appendectomy.  According to the rear book-cover states, his family was “overjoyed at his miraculous survival. What they weren’t expecting, though, was the story that emerged in the months that followed.”[4]

            Colton...told his parents “he left his body during the surgery – and authenticated that claim,” the rear book-cover states, “by describing exactly what his parents were doing in another part of the hospital while he was being operated on.  He talked of visiting heaven and relayed stories told to him by people he met there whom he had never met in life, sharing events that happened even before he was born. He…astonished his parents with descriptions and obscure details about heaven that matched the Bible exactly, though he had not yet learned to read.”[5]

            Here’s a little selection from the book which corresponds nicely with our reading from Acts this morning.  In the chapter, now 4 year old Colton is playing with some toy action figures about to go into battle.    Todd Burpo writes, “Remember when you were telling me what Jesus looks like? And about the horse?

            [Colton] nodded, eyes wide and earnest.

            You were in heaven?”

            He nodded again…

            “Well, what did you do in heaven?” I ventured.

            “Homework.”

Homework?  That wasn’t what I was expecting.  Choir practice, maybe, but homework? “What do you mean?”

            Colton smiled.  “Jesus was my teacher.”

            “Like school?”

             Colton nodded.  “Jesus gave me work to do, and that was my favorite part of heaven.  There were lots of kids, Dad.”[6]

            A few lines later, this exchange tales place. Todd Burpo asks his son, “So what did the kids look like?  What do people look like in heaven”

            “Everybody’s got wings,” Colton said.

            Wings, huh “Did you have wings?”

            “Yeah, but mine weren’t very big.”  Todd writes, “He          looked a little glum when he said this.

            “Okay....but did you walk places or did you fly?”

            “We flew. Well, all except for Jesus. He was the only one in heaven who didn’t have wings.  Jesus went up and down like an elevator.”[7]

            Todd Burpo writes: “The book of Acts flashed into my head, the scene of Jesus’ ascension when Jesus told the disciples that they would be his witnesses that they would tell people all over the world about him.  After he had said this, the Scripture says, Jesus ‘was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight...Jesus went up.  And will come down.  Without wings.  To a kid, that could look like an elevator.”[8]

            I read Heaven is for Real and I have to confess, I don’t know what to make of little Colton’s “out of body” experience...In many ways, what he described has been described by others, including adults who have gone through a similar thing.  The book is worth reading and provokes a lot of good questions.  I’ve decided we’ll use it for one of the book discussions later this summer and Barbara will order copies so that you can read it. 

            But even this little snippet begs the question, “What do we understand heaven to be?  Is it a primarily a physical place?  Is it primarily a state of existence? Is it something between the two?

            In the back of the Book of Common Prayer, on page 862 in our “Outline of the Faith” the question is asked, “What do we mean by heaven and hell?”  The answer given states, “By heaven, we mean eternal life in our enjoyment of God; by hell we mean eternal death in our rejection of God.”[9]  I like this response though it is, admittedly, vague.  It certainly leans toward the notion that heaven is more a state of existence than a physical place, I am inclined to lean that way too.

            In the biblical world, and especially the Old Testament, heaven was clearly a place.....As Walter A. Ellwell and Philip W. Comfort state in their Tyndale Bible Dictionary, “Heaven” is “the realm (or realms) designated by the Hebrew term used to represent the sky and air and also heaven.  The form of the word in Hebrew is dual (implying two of something).  Although the dual form may only represent an ancient devise for expressing the plural, it is supposed by some to imply the existence of a lower and an upper heaven - a physical and a spiritual heaven.”[10] 

            “The [Old Testament] writers,” Ellwell and Comfort note, “viewed the physical heavens as a ‘firmament’ appearing as a great arch supported on foundations and pillars....and spread out above the earth, with rain descending through its doors....”[11] (We could sure use those doors opening in South Florida about now.)

            They continue, “In the New Testament, this notion of the vaulted expanse of the sky as the region in which the elements, clouds and tempests gather and birds fly is continued...”  A little later in their definition, they speak of the “Third Heaven” as “a place reached by the souls of the blessed as they pass through the two lower regions of the atmosphere and outer space containing the celestial bodies, and enter the uttermost reaches of the universe.”[12]

            The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church,[13] a classic reference work for Anglicans, says about “heaven” that it is “the dwelling place of God and the angels, and ultimately of all the redeemed, wherein they receive their eternal reward.”[14]  ODCC notes that “The early Christians accepted the contemporary Jewish and Hellenistic conceptions of a series of heavens together with that of angelic and demonic powers existing in the heavens over whom Christ since his resurrection and ascension reigns supreme with the Father ‘far above all heavens.”[15] 

            Later in the definition, ODCC states, “Catholic theology regards heaven as ‘a place’ but claims no knowledge of its spatial characteristics or its relation to the physical universe, stressing rather the essential quality of the life of heaven which consists in the ‘enjoyment of the Beatific Vision’[16] [that is the eternal and perfected vision of God]....ODCC concludes, “Virtually all Christians, while making greater or lesser reservations about details, would agree that heaven is essentially the fulfillment, to a degree impossible on earth, of what is the chief end of humankind....that is, to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”[17]

            Well, I don’t know if any of this is helpful to you or not; but perhaps it’s gotten you to think more deeply and seriously about the question and meaning of heaven…Now, however, we’ve been heavenly minded long enough. It’s time to hear the question of the two men dressed in white in today’s reading from Acts, “Why do you stand looking up into heaven?” (Acts 1:11)   

            It’s time to come down to planet earth again, and recognize that heaven will come to us, or we will get to heaven in God’s good time.  In the meantime, in the “in-between time,” we still have lots to do....The gift of the Holy Spirit has been promised, and it will come to us anew, with new fire, new light and new love, if we are receptive to it....And that same Spirit calls us into the world, to witness to Jesus, to witness to his love....and, perhaps even, to help bring about heaven here, right here, on this planet where we “live and move and have our being.”[18] 

            In closing, let me share some words and thoughts of contemporary poet Raymond Foss which I think are an especially appropriate ending.  It’s from his poem “Something of Heaven” which is one of 12,000 poems that can be found on his blog site, Poetry Where You Live:[19]  Foss writes,  

Something of heaven

can be here with us

out of the dialogue

the hearing of the message

the voice of God

a relationship, a way of life

emboldening us, lifting us

within the realities of earth;

something of heaven here.

---

[1]   Gellman, Marc and Hartman, Thomas Where Does God Live:  Questions and Answers for Parents and Children (Liquori Missouri: Liquori Publications, 1996).  

[2]   Acts 1:6- 14

[3]   Burpo, Todd, with Vincent, Lynette  Heaven is for Real:  A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back  (Nashville, Dallas, etc:  Thomas Neslon Publishers, 2010) 

[4]   Heaven is for Real, Rear book-jacket

[5]    Heaven is for Real, Rear book-jacket

[6]    Heaven is for Real, pp. 71 - 72

[7]    Heaven is for Real,  pp. 72 -73

[8]    Heaven is for Real,  p. 72

[9]   “Outline of the Faith” Book of Common Prayer 1979, p. 862

[10]   See ‘Heaven” in Tyndale Bible Dictionary ed.  Elwell, Walter A. and Comfort, Philip W (Wheaton, Illinois:  Tyndale House Publishers,  2001)

[11]   T.B.D.

[12]   T.B.D.

[13]   See “Heaven” in Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church  ed. F.L. Cross (Oxford and New York:           Oxford University Press, 1997)

[14]  O.D.C.C.

[15]  O.D.C.C.

[16]  O.D.C.C.

[17]  O.D.C.C.

[18]  See Acts 17:8

[19]  Foss, Raymond “Something of Heaven” June 2007 See  http://raymondafoss.blogspot.com/2007_06_10_archive.html (used with permission).