Community Church Sermons
May 6, 2007
Revelation 21:1-6
Listen to this Sermon!
Have you ever seen heaven?
Every once in awhile, we read about someone who has had a near-death experience and they describe soaring through something like a tunnel, ascending upward toward a bright light, and finally emerging into a place of indescribable beauty and peace. And quite often, they report about encounters with familiar people – family members, and friends, and Jesus – before they are told to go back to life.
Have you ever seen heaven?
Back in 1999, a music group called MercyMe recorded a song that became an instant hit not only among Christians, but also as a crossover into the mainstream market. It was called, “I Can Only Imagine” and the words go something like this:
"I can only imagine what it will be
like, when I walk by Your side...
I can only imagine, what my eyes will see, when Your Face is before me!
I can only imagine. I can only imagine.
Surrounded
by Your Glory, what will my heart feel?
Will I dance for you, Jesus? Or in awe of You, be still?
Will I stand in Your presence, or to my knees will I fall?
Will I sing 'Hallelujah!'? Will I be able to speak at all?
I can only imagine! I can only imagine!”
It
is a good thing for us to be confident of the outcome of our faith, to know
that death is not the final word on us, and that the promise of the Gospel is
eternal life. Jesus was not speaking metaphorically when he assured Martha that
he is the resurrection and the life. Rather, Jesus was speaking prophetically.
And after he spoke, he went to the tomb of Martha’s dead brother Lazarus and
called him out to life! And the dead man came out!
We
can only imagine what it is like to close our eyes to life on earth and to
awaken in one of the many rooms of our Father’s house – to be reunited with
loved ones we long to see – and to come face-to-face with Jesus.
It
is a good thing to know that God keeps his promises to us and that we can trust
God with our lives and the lives of our loved ones.
It
is a good thing.
And
yet, it is a dangerous thing – a very dangerous thing.
Let
me challenge you this morning with an idea that may be upsetting – but I hope
will become freeing - to you:
One
of the great tragedies of the past few hundred years is that we Christians have
pretty much dismantled and destroyed the biblical meaning of heaven. And the
way we have ruined heaven is by taking it and sticking it way…up…there!
Contrary
to the biblical witness, heaven has now become the place to which you go
someday when you die. That’s what the MercyMe song is about.
. "I can only imagine what it will be
like, when I walk by Your side...
I can only imagine, what my eyes will see, when Your Face is before me!
I can only imagine. I can only imagine.”
How
trivial! Heaven today has been reduced to the light at the other end of the
tunnel – a beyond-death paradise far removed from this world and all its
troubles. Heaven, in our day has been made irrelevant by pushing it UP THERE,
OUT THERE – and INTO THE FUTURE.
But
that is not the heaven Jesus came proclaiming.
“The
kingdom of heaven is at hand!” are the very first words of
Jesus’ very first sermon. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
At
hand! That’s not a futuristic kind of saying, is it? At hand! That’s not an
“out there and up there” kind of saying. At hand! At hand means in the HERE and
NOW! At hand means IN THE PRESENT!
And
Jesus, on another occasion, said that when we pray, one of the things we should
always pray for is this: “…thy kingdom come, thy will be done…on EARTH as it
is in heaven.”
Perhaps
these words of Jesus can help you see the shame of what has been done to heaven
in our day. It has been disconnected from the earth. It has been pushed
away from life. It has been relegated to someday in the future with no real
meaning in the present.
And
the great shame of it all is this: no one knows better than Jesus that what
this broken world of ours needs most is not getting people to heaven,
but rather getting heaven to people!
“The
kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
And
with those words, Jesus stepped into THIS world and brought the experience of
heaven into the lives of the people he met – healing the sick, raising the
dead, casting out demons, forgiving sinners, setting free those who were
oppressed, befriending the friendless, finding the lost – embracing human
beings with the reality of the love of God.
“The
kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
You
don’t have to imagine this heaven. This is a heaven you can SEE with your own
eyes, a heaven that is at work in the world! Have you ever seen heaven?
John
looked out at the world and saw the possibility of heaven, and in our text from
Revelation 21 he writes:
“Then I SAW a new heaven
and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and
there was no longer any sea. I SAW the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming
DOWN out of heaven from God…and I heard a voice from the throne saying, ‘Now
the dwelling place of God is with people, and God will live with them. They
will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will
wipe away every tear from their eye. There will be no more death, no mourning
or crying or pain…”
Heaven
come to earth! Heaven connected to people! Tears wiped away. No more death. No
more mourning. No more crying. No more pain. That’s the heaven John saw coming
to earth.
This
is the heaven God wants to bring into the world!
“The
kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
And
the great test of faith is whether or not you and I can see both the
possibility and the reality of God’s gracious love – this kingdom of heaven –
at work in our lives and in our world TODAY!
MercyMe’s
song would have much more meaning if its lyrics said something like, “I can
only imagine what the world would be like if heaven could be brought to this
present life – the poor will be lifted, the oppressed set free, peace will be
made ‘tween my enemy and me. I can only imagine. No hungry children, no
childhood disease, no racial injustice or poor elderly. I can only imagine what
the world would be like if heaven could be brought to this present life. I can
only imagine.”
Actually,
you can do more than imagine. You can follow Jesus and learn from him what
heaven is like, and how you and he together can bring heaven into the lives of
people today
Have
you ever seen heaven?
Julia
Ward Howe saw heaven.
We
love to sing her song, don’t we? “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is
one of our favorites. You can tell we love it just by listening to how we sing
it – with power and enthusiasm!
But
do you know what it means? Do you know what the song is really about?
“Mine
eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord…”
This
is not a song of national pride, or of Federal triumphalism brought about by
the defeat of the Confederacy during the Civil War. In fact, it is not so much
a song as it is a hymn. And it is a hymn about…slavery.
Julia
Ward Howe and her husband Samuel were ardent abolitionists. They devoted their
lives to the cause of abolishing slavery as an institution, and helping slaves
claim the dignity of the image of God with which they were created, but which
they had been denied. Slaves, by law, were not even counted as men. Julia Ward
and Samuel Howe poured out their lives and their resources because they
believed slaves were people, children of Almighty God, who deserved the dignity
of humanity and especially the right to be free.
Their
daughter, Florence Howe Hall, writes that in the days following the attack on
Fort Sumter and the beginning of the War Between the States her mother saw this
conflict as the beginning of the end of slavery as an institution:
“So the prelude ended
and the greater tragedy began. The conflict of ideas, the most soul-stirring
period of our history, passed into the conflict of arms. In the midst of its
agony, the steadfast soul of a woman saw the presage of victory and gave the
message, a message never to be forgotten, to her people and her world.”[1]
And
in 1862 as Julia Ward Howe visited the federal troops encamped around
Washington, she saw the hope of the end of slavery, and later she said, “…a
moment came in which I could (truly)
say, ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”[2]
The
hymn is about God coming to rescue his slave people – men and women, boys and
girls.
Mine
eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He
is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
He
hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword
His
Truth is marching on!
Julia
Ward Howe saw heaven coming to destroy what she called the dragon of slavery.
We should never forget how the words of the final verse describe the people God
is sending to the cause and the people God is coming to save:
“In
the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea
With
a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me.
As
he died to make men holy, LET US DIE TO MAKE MEN FREE,
While
God is marching on!
The
kingdom of heaven is at hand! The blind see. The lame walk. The lost are found.
The bound are set free!
Julia
Ward Howe saw heaven connected to earth and to peoples’ lives. She saw the
possibility of God’s grace setting a people free. And like Jesus, she and her
husband Samuel poured out their lives to bring heaven to earth.
Have
you ever seen heaven?
I’ll
bet you have. I will wager there have been times in your life when you were
down and out, but God somehow came to you – through the life or words of
another person, or by some indescribable experience of the Holy Spirit where
you found strength beyond your own – and that experience of heaven picked you
up and set you on your feet and gave you another chance! And no doubt you have
seen heaven come into the life of other persons when you fed a hungry person,
or gave a cup of cold water to a thirsty child, or when you helped build a
Habitat For Humanity house and when the family accepted the keys to the house,
you broke down and wept because you KNEW you were seeing the kingdom of heaven
AT HAND!
Yes,
we’ve all seen heaven. Not the part of heaven that we cannot see until we cross
over to its shores, but that part of heaven that Jesus spoke of and taught
about and touched peoples’ lives with. It is the heaven within life that is the
path that leads to the heaven beyond life
And
you find this heaven-that-is-at-hand in the person of Jesus Christ.
He
offers the kingdom of heaven to YOU, in the struggles and realities of your
life as it really is. Jesus reaches out to love you and forgive you and to walk
with you as a friend. The power of the Holy Spirit is sent to strengthen you
for the journey you are on. So open your eyes and SEE the kingdom of heaven AT
HAND in your own life right now!
And
see the kingdom of heaven at work in the world all around. See the possibility
of enemies being made friends – of poverty and hunger being overcome – of peace
winning out over war – of justice coming into the lives of those for whom there
is no justice.
And
then go to work, proclaiming with Jesus, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand!”