Someone came up to me in tears the other day. We were celebrating the life of her Dad, and she said through her tears “Father, where is he?” You can hear and see me give this Homily on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvNX_fttG9c
I hesitated for a moment, because I felt the conventional answer “I’m sure he’s now with God in heaven,” wasn’t going to help her. You see the problem with that answer is that too often, for a modern young person like her, it fails to explain what we mean by God, and what we mean by heaven. Too easily they think we mean something they find hard to accept – God rather like an all-powerful person, and heaven as some place up there somewhere. So what would you say? In a bit , I will tell you what my answer was, but first I want to explore a little more the conventional answers, to see what they can say to us, if we look behind the images and symbols that the Bible writers use.
On Thursday we will celebrate the Feast of the Ascension, and are faced with the first of these images. The people of the Bible times, and into the Middle Ages, had no idea what space and the stars were really like, and so the image of heaven being “up there” made perfect sense. This is surely why Luke in Acts uses this image to express the truth that the Risen Lord Jesus is now in heaven. (Acts 1:9-11) But even there, if you read the text carefully, you can see that he actually describes Jesus as disappearing from them into a cloud – a mist – and they then get told off by the angels for gazing up into the sky. Matthew, on the other hand, just says that they saw Jesus for the last time ,“up there” yes, but up on “the mountain” not in the sky. (Matt 28:16-20) The “up” image therefore, whether in the sky or on the mountain, is just a way of saying that heaven is beyond our reach, is something beyond our imagining, and so Jesus can no longer be seen, even though in a different sense he is still with us. Remember St Augustine’s teaching about this 400 years later? “He did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven.”
Today, in our 2nd Reading from the Apocalypse (21:10-14.22-23) we get a very different image of heaven. Here heaven is a great city, the new Jerusalem; but the author makes clear that this city is nothing like an earthly city, because “The city did not need the sun or the moon for light.” The idea of light where there is no sun or moon doesn’t seem strange to people like us who are used to electricity lighting our homes and streets, so once again for us the image needs a lot of translating. It is doubly confused by the added idea that even though “It was lit by the radiant glory of God,” we still need Jesus, the Lamb, with a lighted torch to lead us. Of course, we are meant to see this different and contradictory image as a way of showing us that in this strange and different existence Jesus will always be there to guide us; but for us, who think in a rather more down to earth way, a torch being needed when there’s already “the radiant glory of God” just seems rather odd. The point however is that heaven is NOT like anything we experience on earth, where we need the sun or the moon to light us, whereas in heaven there is only God.
The other lovely image of this city is the twelve gates. Sadly, this is an image that has been rather spoiled by later usage where there was teaching that on reaching what came to be called “the pearly gates”, there would be St Peter with his keys making sure that only those who were worthy would be let in. Of course, actually the image of the twelve gates is not about people being shut out, but about people being let in. Most ancient cities and castles had very few gates, sometimes only one, because the gate was the weak point if an enemy attacked. A city with twelve gates, made of pearls rather than stout wood and iron, is a city that has no enemies, and where the gates always stand open ready to welcome people in. This, the true heaven, the being with God through Jesus, is therefore not only very close to us, but also a place of welcome, a place beautiful beyond anything ever experienced on earth.
But twelve is symbolic too. Jesus chose twelve apostles because it symbolises completeness. In English we still express this in the old phrase “a round dozen,” but now we have gone metric the idea of twelve as complete is less easy to understand, even though twelve months in a full year might help us. So the twelve gates shows us that there isn’t one way into heaven, but that there are a fullness of ways; and this links us to the teaching of Jesus, given a little before our Gospel today, that “There are many rooms in my Father’s house.” (14:2) I often use this text at Funerals to counteract the idea in some people’s minds, the idea of the Pharisees, that only good holy and perfect people get to heaven. Jesus is opposed not only to the idea that people have to be perfect to be let into heaven, but also to the idea of stereotyping people, of making them conform to some model that God, or St Peter, expects of them.
To confirm this, Jesus says to us in today’s Gospel (John 14:23-29) that anyone who “loves” him, in other words anyone who is open to him, will not have to find God or heaven by reaching out somewhere, but that God will through our relationship with Jesus make his home in us. It’s also what St Paul teaches in his Letter to the Romans (10:8) quoting Deuteronomy (30:14) “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning the faith that we proclaim.” And Jesus gives us another image of heaven further on in our Gospel when he says, “Peace I give you, a peace the world cannot give” Again we have to take a leap into a different way of thinking, for the peace of God, as I’m sure some of you know, is not an absence of war, but is the fullness of the presence of God in all his glory, which takes us back to the city “lit by the radiant glory of God.”
So what was my answer to the person who asked where her beloved father was? I had to convey to her that he had passed into a very different existence, and yet was still close by for her; so I simply said “He’s passed into a different dimension.” I could have called it “A spiritual dimension” but didn’t want the word “spiritual” to get in the way; and then I continued, “It’s a dimension that we can sometimes sense as very close to us, and that is why we can feel that the one we love is close to us, even though we can no longer touch or see him.” That surely is what our faith, based on the Bible, teaches us about the Ascension of Jesus; for we are taught that we too will go where he has gone before, or we might say where he leads us with that lighted torch.
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