“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God,
believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for
you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will
take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you
know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we
do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to
him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through me.
It was almost nine years ago that Rob Bell published his
brief, but controversial book simply titled Love Wins --- I don't know
if any of you have read it.
By the controversy you would have thought that Rob Bell had
come up with some radical new ideas, but really all he did was take ideas that
have been around for 2000 years and put them in the main stream.
And what made it even more intriguing, is Rob Bell, at the
time of the books release was the founding pastor of Mars Hill, a mega-church
on the outskirts of Grand Rapids Michigan.
What was it that set the evangelical world into a thither
--- and even made many in moderate churches uncomfortable?
Rob Bell
challenged our conventional ideas about heaven and hell.
I want to pause for a moment, and I would like you to grab
the pencil out of the pew, or your pocket and I want you to write down what you
believe about heaven and hell.
Who is in
hell?
Where
is hell?
How does one
get to heaven?
Where
is heaven?
John 14:1-6 Common English Bible
(CEB)
“Don’t be troubled. Trust in God.
Trust also in me. My Father’s house has room to spare. If that weren’t the
case, would I have told you that I’m going to prepare a place for you? When I
go to prepare a place for you, I will return and take you to be with me so that
where I am you will be too. You know the way to the place I’m going.”
Thomas asked, “Lord, we don’t know
where you are going. How can we know the way?”
Jesus answered, “I am the way, the
truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Take a moment and write down what you believe.
What did you come up with?
Heaven
Place that
Jesus prepares for us with God
Where one
goes when they die
Eternal rest
with God
Only get
there through Jesus
Hell
Place where
sinners go
Eternal
torment
Separation
from God
I would be lying if I didn't tell you that I am very
conflicted in what I understand heaven and hell to be.
I have looked at images taken of
the galaxy and no-one has as of yet found the heavenly realm like our ancestors
believed
Nor do I believe that Hell is down
there someplace
So what are heaven and hell?
Let me share with you a little parable found in Amy-Jill
Levine's book: The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the
Jewish Jesus. Amy-Jill Levine, is a
Jew, but may be the best New Testament Scholar of today. She teaches at Vanderbilt Divinity
School. She writes:
“After a long and happy life, I
(Amy-Jill) find myself at the pearly gates (a sight of great joy; the word for
“pearl” in Greek is, by the way, margarita). Standing there is St. Peter. This
truly is heaven, for finally my academic questions will receive answers. I
immediately begin the questions that have been plaguing me for half a century:
“Can you speak Greek? Where did you go when you wandered off in the middle of
Acts? How was the incident between you and Paul in Antioch resolved? What
happened to your wife?”
Peter looks at me with some
bemusement and states, “Look, lady, I’ve got a whole line of saved people to
process. Pick up your harp and slippers here, and get the wings and halo at the
next table. We’ll talk after dinner.”
As I float off, I hear, behind me,
a man trying to gain Peter’s attention. He has located a “red letter Bible,”
which is a text in which the words of Jesus are printed in red letters. This is
heaven, and all sorts of sacred art and Scriptures, from the Bhagavad Gita to
the Qur’an, are easily available (missing, however, was the Reader’s Digest
Condensed Version). The fellow has his Bible open to John 14, and he is
frenetically pointing at v. 6: “Jesus says here, in red letters, that he is the
way. I’ve seen this woman on television (actually, she’s thinner in person).
She’s not Christian; she’s not baptized - she shouldn’t be here!”
“Oy,” says Peter, “another one -
wait here.”
He returns a few minutes later with
a man about five foot three with dark hair and eyes. I notice immediately that
he has holes in his wrists, for when the empire executes an individual, the
circumstances of that death cannot be forgotten.
“What is it, my son?” he asks.
The man, obviously nonplussed,
sputters, “I don’t mean to be rude, but didn’t you say that no one comes to the
Father except through you?”
“Well,” responds Jesus, “John does
have me saying this.” (Waiting in line, a few other biblical scholars who
overhear this conversation sigh at Jesus’s phrasing; a number of them remain
convinced that Jesus said no such thing. They’ll have to make the inquiry on
their own time.) “But if you flip back to the Gospel of Matthew, which does
come first in the canon, you’ll notice in chapter 25, at the judgment of the
sheep and the goats, that I am not interested in those who say ‘Lord, Lord,’
but in those who do their best to live a righteous life: feeding the hungry,
visiting people in prison . . . ”
Becoming almost apoplectic, the man
interrupts, “But, but, that’s works righteousness. You’re saying she’s earned
her way into heaven?”
“No,” replies Jesus, “I am not
saying that at all. I am saying that I am the way, not you, not your church,
not your reading of John’s Gospel, and not the claim of any individual
Christian or any particular congregation. I am making the determination, and it
is by my grace that anyone gets in, including you. Do you want to argue?”
The last thing I recall seeing,
before picking up my heavenly accessories, is Jesus handing the poor man a
Kleenex to help get the log out of his eye.”
What I loved about Rob Bell's book is that many places he
does not give us the answers --- he just poses challenging questions that we
must wrestle with.
One example is when he is discussing atonement theory
“The point, then, isn’t to narrow
it down to one particular metaphor, image, explanation, or mechanism. To
elevate one over the others, to insist that there’s a ‘correct’ or ‘right’ one,
is to miss the brilliant, creative work these first Christians were doing when
they used these images and metaphors”
Amy-Jill Levine does the same thing.
But how we individually answer those questions is important,
because it impacts how we view so many other issues.
If we are certain that salvation is
about believing in a RIGHT set of beliefs: I imagine that you found the story
from Amy-Jill and the premise of Rob Bell's book disconcerting.
But if salvation is about relationship --- that changes
everything
Amy-Jill Levine again:
“The kingdom of heaven is not, for
the Jewish Jesus of Nazareth, a piece of real estate for the single saved soul;
it is a communal vision of what could be and what should be. It is a vision of
a time when all debts are forgiven, when we stop judging others, when we not
only wear our traditions on our sleeve, but also hold them in our hearts and
minds and enact them with all our strength. It is the good news that the Torah
can be discussed and debated, when the Sabbath is truly honored and kept holy,
when love of enemies replaces the tendency toward striking back. The vision is
Jewish, and it is worth keeping as frontlets before our eyes and teaching to
our children.”
Let us gather at the table, not because we have believed
correctly or even because we have earned it --- but let us gather together at
this table because Jesus has invited us.
