April 14, 2013
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church, San Francisco
We don’t talk about heaven that much. Every week, we pray that we hope that “God’s kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.” But we don’t really know what heaven is like.
The slaves in the deep South in our American history, working out in the cotton field on a hot Sunday morning would look up from their work. They saw the master and his family getting into their fine coach, in their fine clothes, preparing to go to their fine church for Sunday morning worship.
Then one of the slaves would begin singing the old spiritual, “Ev’rybody talkin’ ‘bout Heav’n ain’t going there… I got shoes, you got shoes, all God’s children got shoes. When I get to Heaven goin’ to put on my shoes, goin’ to walk all over God’s Heaven.” Heaven is that time and that place where those who had to go barefoot in this world at last get their shoes.
I think for us Asian Americans, heaven is a time and place where there’s always a bowl of rice.
In the End
The scripture for this Third Sunday of Easter is again from the book of Revelation, a vision of the end.
We use that phrase “the end” in a two-fold sense. In one sense, “end” means the last act of a play, the finale, The End. And this vision of John comes toward the end of the last book in the Bible. It is a vision of heaven.
But we also use the phrase “the end” in another sense, meaning the point of it all. The end is what justifies the means. The end is what the story stands for. And Revelation is also about that. This is the end of human life, the purpose, the point of it all. In the end, when all is said and done, says the book of Revelation, we shall be with God.
We have only glimpsed, in bits and pieces, “through a mirror dimly,” but we will now see face to face. Completely. We shall be with God. And, as our text today says, God shall be completely with us in a new heaven and a new earth. While the language of Revelation is poetic and beautiful, for our lesson for today, the point of the matter is that in the end, God shall rule, God shall at last get exactly what God wants.
I envy some of you who have started your retirement. You have reached the end of your working years and you have finally decided to be on Medicare, receive your Social Security checks, and whatever pension you might have, you can live comfortably on your retirement funds, we hope. We spend so much of our lives on earth striving earnestly to get what we want.
But heaven is where God gets what he wants. There’s a great multitude that surrounds the throne of the Lamb and they are singing and worshiping with full voice, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”
But have you noticed that at FCBC, we don’t talk about the subject of heaven that much. I’m not sure if I have ever preached a sermon about heaven before. For most mainline Protestant Christians, we say we would rather focus upon the here and now. We say that Jesus urged us not to speculate on the day and the hour and the time of the ending of this world and the beginning of a new one. I think I have thumbed down more than a couple of times when some people have claimed that they know the apocalyptic end of the world. I rarely would lead a Bible study on the visions of Revelation implying that it is less relevant for us 21st century readers.
But perhaps we are reluctant to focus on heaven for other reasons. People on top, people in power, people whose children are well-to-do, well-housed, well-futured tend to focus on the here and now because, let’s face it, the here and now has been rather good to us. We are fine people in our fine carriages going to this fine church.
In our not too distanced past, American slaves talked about heaven as the time when you finally get to have your own pair of shoes. Sometimes the conditions are so bad that one would talk about heaven, as “You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”
But what about shootings and the killings that we continue to see in our towns and cities across this nation. What about the children around the world and even in this prosperous country who go to bed hungry and wake up with no energy or attention to study hard in school if they even have a school to go to. I bet you these children have thought about a better place like heaven where there’s enough food to go around. These children think about a place where they can play outside and not worry about a strayed bullet killing them.
It’s easy for me to say that this world, as it is, is enough for me, because this world, as it is, has been very good to me. I have a house. I have a job. I even have a very good retirement fund; thanks in a large part to you. But heaven is not simply a place where we get what we want. Heaven is a name of a place, that time, that set of arrangements when God gets what God wants. Today’s scripture from Revelation says that God wants a world where there is no more weeping, no more grief, and no injustice anymore.
God’s Heaven
It’s pretty clear that God doesn’t have the world that he wants yet, not now, not here, not yet. After any major natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina or Sandy, some people would ask me, “How do you reconcile a belief in a just and loving God with a terrible natural disaster like this? When people think this way, they are assuming that everything in the world happens because God planned it that way. They think that God is behind everything that occurs.
But when we believe in heaven, we see that this world is not the world God intended when God began creating in the first book of the Bible, in Genesis. The story told there says we live in a botched up creation, a creation that does not live up to divine expectations, mainly due to human sin and rebellion. Now we see the visions in the book of Revelation are visions of a world set right, a creation finished and fulfilled, the world that God intended.
I apologize that I haven’t preached about heaven as much as I should. Any church that stops leaning toward that “new heaven and new earth,” any church which no longer keeps taut the tension between the world as it is and the world as God intends it to be, is a sadly compromised and accommodating church. We have somehow got to keep before us the gap between the status quo of this earthly world and the world that God intends. There is some distance between God’s will for the world and the world in which we now live. There is stress between what is and what ought to be.
In so many of our mainline Protestant churches we splash in a shallow pool. We offer instruction, advice, and encouragement, but many times it’s not much different than that which people could hear anywhere else like from Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz.
We got the world as we have made it. Heaven is the world that God wants. Heaven is not the result of earnest human striving but rather the result of God’s creation and restoration. Heaven is that time, that place where the Lamb sits on the throne, where all power, all glory, all blessing and honor is given to the Lamb, the crucified and resurrected Lamb of Jesus Christ.
Easter two weeks ago is foretaste of what God is going to do for all creation—raised, restored, finished. Easter is a prelude to that time and place when God gets what God wants.
Getting What God Wants
A few weeks ago I went to a funeral of one of the true saints of the church and the larger community. There were over 1500 people there. In the homily, her pastor praised her for all the good that she had done over the years, in her church and in her community. The pastor enumerated all of the lives that she had touched, the people who had loved her because she had loved them. The woman’s siblings praised her as an example of Christian and human virtues.
But some years ago, when I was still a seminarian, I officiated at a woman’s funeral that I didn’t really know. The pastor was on vacation in another state and told me that if anything happens, I was in charged. The family approached me about doing this woman’s funeral and they had nothing good to say about her. I got the feeling that they were more than happy to see her dead. What a difference from the funeral I attended a few weeks ago.
When I did this woman’s funeral, contrary to what little stories or memories that I could retrieve from the family, I found strength in God to say that while this woman was a rather difficult person in her life and that she may have caused trouble in her family’s life and that she pretty much made a mess of things, this is not the time to be complaining.
At the funeral, I said it was not the time to focus on this woman’s mistakes, but rather we have come to focus on the work of the God who loved this woman. God created her and saw her every day of her life. Our Savior has a particular place in his heart for the people who messed up. He promised us that he never stops seeking sinners, never stops looking for the lost. Our Savior continued reaching out to this woman when she was living and when she died. I said that she is now being embraced by the God who loved her and who would do anything for her.
The focus at the end was not on how this particular woman messed up, but on the nature and the work of God in Jesus Christ. In the end, that is our hope in life; in death, in any life beyond death—God will get what God wants. And the scriptures keep telling us that God wants us.
Many Angels Surrounding the Throne
The lesson we read this morning from chapter 5 in Revelation actually begins in Revelation 4:1, “And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” We see one who is seated on the throne where a scroll is opened. Who is worthy to open the scroll?
The answer: the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David. The surprising thing is that we see, seated on the throne, not a fierce, powerful lion, but rather a slaughtered Lamb. The Lamb is worthy. And then, from today’s scripture, all the creatures of the universe join in praise for the Lamb.
Historically, the typical royal scene involves worship of the emperor. But in heaven, the earthly emperor has been dethroned. There’s a new king—the Lamb. The Lamb is not only worthy to open the scroll but also to receive “power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” In other words, everything that the world has to offer is laid at the feet of the Lamb. The Lamb now rules over all politics and economies.
As people of faith, we are privy to the real truth about the final destination of the world. In Christ, the curtain has been pulled back and we see who is in charge, who really rules.
For the most part, we are mostly people who are not too troubled, not too messed up, not too poor, not great failures at life. We drive fine carriages. But what do we say when people come to a dead end, hit a brick wall, when there is no hope for human work or human progress?
That’s when we talk like the Revelation of John in Chapters 4-5. We talk about heaven. We talk about a God who triumphs, a God who isn’t stumped by our sin and our rebellion. We talk about who is on the throne. We talk about that time, and that place, where God at last gets what God wants.
When all is ended, and the Kingdom of God is come, then God will finally get what God wants. In heaven, all of God’s children got shoes. That’s what God wants.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, give us grace always to keep before ourselves your will for the world. Help us to pray for, to look forward to, and to work for that day when you shall be everything to everyone, when your will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. Enable us to look expectantly for that time when you shall get what you want. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.