John 14:1-14 – Presbydestrian

“Dwell”
John 14:1-14
May 18, 2014, First Presbyterian Church of Jesup

Today, I give you full permission to doodle during my sermon, in fact. I encourage it. What I would like you to draw is how you envision heaven. If you’re stumped then be sure to listen for how heaven is described in our scripture passages today. Following the sermon I would like whoever is willing to share their picture with all of us.This week I went to see the movie, “Heaven is For Real.” If you are unfamiliar with it, it is based on the real life story of a Nebraska minister’s family, the Burpos whose three year old son, Colton has an emergency appendectomy and then afterwards tells his family that during the surgery he floated above his body and went to heaven with Jesus. It’s a fascinating account and the book in particular gave me chills from time to time with the accuracy of how Colton’s portrayal matched up with more obscure Biblical texts. I had read the book a few years ago so I was intrigued to see how they could possibly attempt to depict some of the visions of heaven. It was interesting to see how the filmmakers interpreted Colton’s experience. Not quite as surprising was how everyone reacted in the film to this then four-year-old’s stories about his trip to heaven. Most people were fascinated on some level, but many were resistant, event hostile towards the idea that this boy could’ve possibly gone to heaven.

While we’re comfortable with the idea of heaven in the abstract, getting into the particularities can be divisive. In our passage today we hear a description of heaven given by Jesus and written down for us by the John, Jesus’ disciple.

This passage is often used at funerals to speak of the home God prepares for us in heaven. It’s a message of God’s care for us, preparing a place for each of us, for all. This is the place where God dwells and to where God invites us to come home. Here is a picture I came across this week done by a child to show what they think God’s house will look like. Each room a space of joy and celebration. One room with a giant birthday cake, another underwater, one with animals and sunshine, one with looks like what might be a ball pit, and another a person with a big drum. Looking at this picture at first I thought perhaps it was not completed since one of the rooms is empty, but the way I’d like to interpret that is that there is a room waiting just for you, for all the joys and delights of your heart.

Artists throughout time have sought to depict the glory of heaven and the majesty of God. Since we know we are made in God’s image, most interpretations show some version of God as a person, often wise looking with a beard. One of the most well known interpretations is Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. This painting shows God reaching down to humanity and humanity reaching up to God, but many will be quick to point out that they are not actually touching. There is a separation there. God in heaven and humanity on earth.

Over and over again throughout the Bible we hear stories of God being the one who lives in heaven. In Isaiah 57:15 we read, “For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”

It’s amazing to thing of God as not only dwelling in heaven, but also inhabiting eternity. It’s hard to even wrap our minds around the idea of anyone inhabiting a time that never ends, but God is so far beyond what we can know with our own human understanding and language.

In Colossians 3:1b-3 Paul implores the Colossians to, “seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”

Most of us would like to avoid thinking about death, but thinking about heaven is a different matter, as though we forget that death is something we will experience in order to experience heaven. Like the people surrounding Colton Burpo, there is a fascination with heaven, a deep desire to have confidence in the hope of something beyond what we experience on earth.

Influential Christian writer, C.S. Lewis writes of this desire for heaven in his book, Mere Christianity. He writes, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water… If I find in myself a desire, which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”[1]

How strange to think of heaven as our “true country,” when it is one we have not yet seen. Still, we yearn for the sort of contentment and simplicity that heaven offers. We long to be reunited with those that we love. Particularly when ones life holds much pain and many disappointments, it can be incredibly freeing to think of what will come afterwards.

Revelation 21:3-4 is another passage that is often offered at funerals as a message of hope. It says, “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”