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A GLIMPSE OF HEAVEN
Revelation 7:7-17; Acts 9:36-43
A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on
April 21, 2013
What a week this has been – I do not remember a week quite like it. Not only have we witnessed the terror in Boston, where one of the great iconic events in America, a normally festive celebration of running, family, community, and patriotic history, was disrupted by a horrific bombing, only to be followed by a massive manhunt that led to an unprecedented closing down of a major city. But also we saw a series of tragic events this week that any other week would have monopolized the 24-hour news stations.
For example, there was the arrest in Texas in connection with the brutal murder of two prosecutors and a prosecutor’s spouse. Not only did the perpetrators not turn out to be white supremacists or Mexican drug cartels, as widely suspected. Instead, they turned out to be a Texas-born justice of the peace – and his wife – who were taking revenge for his firing as a justice of the peace because he got caught stealing four computer monitors from the office.
Then there was the online ranter and former Elvis impersonator who was arrested near Memphis for sending poisonous letters to President Obama and a Mississippi Senator. And finally, there was the devastating fire and explosion in a fertilizer plant that injured over 200 and killed 14 and left a small Texas town looking like an earthquake had hit.
This week it may have seemed to many we got a glimpse of hell. A week like this one makes you want to hug loved ones who are close at hand and talk to those living away from home just to hear their voice. And it makes you want to find something else to think and talk about.
Which may make reading today’s passage in Revelation an unexpected gift, since it gives us a glimpse of heaven. I have found, however, that many people would prefer to keep at arm’s length because it seems so odd and scary and so unlike any other book in the Bible and unlike anything we are used to reading.
But actually, the book of Revelation would not have been as strange to its first readers because then it was only one of a number of apocalyptic books that were circulating at the time – books which described visions or revelations of heaven usingall kinds of images and symbolism. Here, beginning with verse 9,John pulls back the curtain to show his readers in the early church a vision of a joyful celebration of God’s people surrounding the throne of God. There “is a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” They are clothed in white, a symbol of their righteousness and faithfulness, and they hold palm branches, a symbol of victory that shows that they have persisted in their faith despite the persecution they have faced in “the great ordeal.” And at the center of this heavenly celebration is the Lord, depicted not as a lion or some other fierce or majestic creature, but as a Lamb.
Revelation talks about heaven – and we may find ourselves grateful for the picture it gives us of life after death. But reading this passage – or any other passage in the Bible that speaks about heaven – we may well wonder, What good does it do us now, living in the present? When the Bible speaks about heaven is it anything more than the ultimate life insurance policy? And for the early church, was reading Revelation then what movies and sports are often for us now – welcome diversions when the news seems all bad?
The answers to those questions lie in our understanding of time and our understanding of what Easter means. You see, as Ted Wardlaw has observed, “the church looks “at the time we are living in now, and asserts that – because we have glimpsed the future through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ...because God through Jesus Christ has begun the ongoing redemption of the ages – all our time, therefore, is charged with new possibility. All our time is permeated, from start to finish with heavenly intervention.”[1]
What that means is that when the Bible speaks about heaven, as it does in Revelation, it is not just concerned about the future. It is also concerned about the present because our understanding of the future affects how we live in the present. And thanks to God, we do not have to wait until death to see all of the good things we see in visions of heaven. We can get partial and incomplete glimpses even now, because even now, God is at work. God’s future is already invading our present if we have the eyes to see.
Revelation offers us a good example of this Biblical way of speaking about heaven. John’s vision of heaven has a purpose for his readers. He shares this vision of heaven so that those who are reading Revelation might find the will and power to endure the struggles and persecution they are facing in those days of the Roman empire. As a coach might do for a runner, John is coaxing the early church on by painting a picture of what awaits them when they finish running a race of faithfulness and perseverance. And John is also telling his readers that the Lamb on the throne in their future is also their Good Shepherd in the present.
Revelation also gives a blueprint for the church. Following the lead of Revelation and Acts and the rest of the Bible, the church at its best helps us to envision that future – and to live now in light of heaven. And nowhere is that more true than in worship.
In worship, we get a glimpse of heaven because here we gather together, diverse but united. We gather from age 1 to 101, coming from different lands, learning different languages, and being a people of different colors with different gifts and burdens. As different as we are from each other, we recognize that our differences and diversity is but a pale imitation of that which will be in heaven.
In worship, we are reminded that God is at the center of things, and so we begin our worship with joyful prayers of thanksgiving and praise. Like those in Revelation 7, we sing and pray, “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever.”
And here, we are reminded that Jesus Christ, the Lamb on the throne, has given up his life to forgive our sins and wash us clean. And so we confess our sins and all that stands between us and God and between us and others. But since the Lamb of God, and not our sins, who has the final word, we hear words of assurance and offer again our prayers of thanksgiving for God’s grace.
Like the saints and angels before the throne in Revelation 7, we fall on our knees in humility before God and seek to be guided by the one who is not only our Creator and redeemer, but also, our Shepherd, who guides us to the springs of the water of life. And so it is that we listen to the Scriptures, as interpreted by sermon, and affirm our faith.
Worship is not just about receiving, it is also about giving. It may surprise you to learn, in fact, that the Greek word used for “worship” may also be used for “work.” Worship is the work of the people, and work can and should be an integral part of our worship. We “work” in worship though our gifts and prayers, and we work as we take our worship into the world, serving others as Christ has served us.
Which brings us to our second text, a wonderful small portrait of life in the early church. In Acts 9, we may first focus on Peter and the signs of power displayed in and through him. After prayer, he is able to do what Jesus did in the gospel of Luke: raise a woman into life who everyone else thought was dead. But in reading Acts 9, let us not lose sight of Tabitha or Dorcas.
It is significant that Luke, the author of Acts, gives us this woman’s name in Aramaic as well as in Greek. Apparently she was known not only in the Aramaic-speaking church community, but also in the greater Greek-speaking community beyond the church. Dorcas is the one woman in the Bible described with the very same word as the 12 who were called by Jesus: she is a “disciple.” And as Peter is able to do what Jesus did, so she is able to do what Jesus did, but in a very different way. She takes care of the poor, such as widows, and provides for others through her financial gifts and her acts of service. That she is important to her church community can be seen in the two messengers sent to bring Peter to her after she dies, and by the weeping widows who show Peter the clothes that Dorcas has made for them.
Heaven is not just a quiet place where we will go off and live in serenity alone and celebrate our personal salvation. No, it is a joyful and diverse place where we will experience community as God meant it to be experienced. And so it is that it is in giving and receiving, acts of service, and gestures of love and forgiveness, that we get glimpses of heaven here and now, just as we got glimpses of heaven this week when we saw the courage and compassion of those who did not run away from the explosion but towards those who were hurt.
Heaven is never merely about our individual salvation; it is always about God’s dreams for all of humanity, the reconciliation that God wants with his creation and which is only possible through the sacrifice and death of Jesus Christ. Heaven is never merely about the future; it is also about the present. Or as Rob Bell has put it, the goal for Jesus wasn’t to get into heaven. It was – and is – to get heaven here.[2] And what the Bible tells us is that there is nothing that can prevent Jesus from reaching his goals – not our sin, not evil, not even death.
Friends, in weeks such as this one, we may well despair over the power of evil and chaos in the world. We may well feel that the forces of darkness and hell are prevailing and the best we can do is hold on to our loved ones and wait for our escape, our ejection from this world into the world to come.
But this is the good news. God’s power is greater than the powers of darkness and evil. Despite the odds against it happening, love wins.
We will see that in heaven. But here and now, we can also get glimpses of heaven coming to earth when the people of God worship and when we love, serve, and forgive. Because, “all our time is charged with new possibility. All our time is permeated, from start to finish with heavenly intervention.”
And when we look more closely, we will see the truth of the ancient saint, Godric, who in Frederick Buechner’s novel says, “All the death there is set next to life would scarcely fill a cup.”
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
[1] The Rev. Dr. Theodore J. Wardlaw, “Living in the Middle of Time,”
[2] Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 148.