The journey to heaven

Sermon 01/10/06 – Year B – Trinity 16 (Proper 21)
Preached at Solihull School 6.30pm Eucharist, Sunday 01/10/06
Readings: Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29 James 5:13-20 Mark 9:38-50


In our gospel reading today Jesus is at his most radical. He says, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; for it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell…if your foot causes you to stumble cut it off…if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell. This is violent language… extremely challenging.
Well fortunately for us, it is clear that Jesus does not literally want us to go around chopping off bits of our anatomy every time we sin. If I personally were to have taken literally these words of Jesus I would be standing before today with no hands. In fact, I don’t really think I would be standing at all because at some point I would have had to have chopped my feet off. In fact, I think it would be even worse than that; surely by now I would have chopped my own head off!
But God does not want us to respond to our own sin with self-hatred and self-mutilation. Instead we are called to admit our sins, and to trust in the saving power of Christ’s cross and passion. Admitting our sins can be a painful business. It means owning up to the pain and suffering that we have caused to God and other people through our selfishness. Fortunately God is always more ready to forgive us than we are ready to forgive ourselves. God always loves us and is full of mercy. He understands our failings better than we do ourselves. However bad we are, God always calls us to draw closer to him, leaving our selfish ways behind. Whether we are aware of it or not, each of us is on a journey towards God. We too have to love ourselves and forgive ourselves and entrust to God’s great mercy those bits of ourselves which keep going wrong.
But let’s go back to the words of Jesus. “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; for it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell.” These words should not be taken literally, but they remain very important. In fact they are repeated three times in the different parts of the gospels and we need to take them very seriously.
Jesus wants to make the point that some things are just far, far more important than others. The question of whether we are going to heaven or to hell is just far, far more important than how many hands we have, or how many feet we have. We need to keep things in their proper perspective. We need to remember that we are on a journey towards God, towards heaven. We need to adopt attitudes and behaviours that will help us on that journey. We need to leave behind the attitudes and behaviours that hinder our progress.
In the society that we live in today it is all too easy to lose that perspective; to forget that we are on a journey towards heaven. We are continually bombarded with TV adverts telling us we need to spend money on our own comfort and pleasure in this life. Modern medicine has become so effective that, compared to previous generations, we seldom have to think about the death of people who are not already old. Our lives are very busy and very pressurised. It is hard to find the time to stand back from it all and get a proper perspective. It is hard to find time to come to church, or to spend time with the family or to pray, or indeed to do any of the things that remind us of our journey towards heaven.
So let’s spend a moment thinking about heaven. What will it be like? What do we know about heaven? Of course, in many ways we don’t know very much about it. I always imagine that there will be lots of singing. Sitting in the pews in this chapel and listening to the anthems that the choirs sing is, I always think, one way of preparing myself for heaven. Jesus tells us something about heaven in the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father, who art in heaven.” One thing we know about heaven is that God will be there. We will dwell in the presence of God; God who made us and loved us and brought us to fulfilment. The Lord’s Prayer continues, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So heaven is the place where God’s will is done, where we move in perfect harmony with God’s plan for us. In heaven we will move in perfect harmony with God and with one another. Our love for one another and for God will be so perfect that we will not hurt each other any more in any way. Nothing will be hidden. There will be no secret agendas. All sins will have been forgiven, so that they no longer damage our relationship with God, or our relationships with the other citizens of heaven. There will be perfect peace.
And at this point we might become disheartened. Are we ready to dwell in the presence of God? Are we ready to live according to “Thy will be done”? Do we really want to be obedient to God’s plan for us? Is it possible for us to have perfect relationships with the people around us? Probably we are not yet ready for this. Probably there is a lot more journeying to be done before we are ready for life in heaven. But God most emphatically wants every one of us to reach heaven. Let us trust in Him, and walk the journey he has planned for us. His grace is sufficient to cover all our shortcomings.
So how do we walk the journey towards heaven? We do this by practising to live the life of heaven while we continue living here on earth. So how do we do that? Well firstly we can practise standing in the presence of God. We can do this in prayer, and by coming to church where we receive God’s presence in Word and Sacrament. Second we can practice being obedient to God’s plan for us. Our own plans can never fulfil us like God’s plan. Let’s serve God in the way that he wants to be served, not in the way that we want to serve. Thirdly let’s try to live in harmony with the people around us. Let us try to love them as God loves them. Let is try to love all the people around us, even the once we instinctively don’t like, even the ones we think of an enemies. Let’s be prepared to suffer for one another, as Christ suffered for us. Let’s pray that God will help us to live this life of love, that he will help us to forgive the things which need to be forgiven and that he will help us to start again when we get it all wrong.
When we love, we are sharing in the life of God and we get to know God. We start, while here on earth, to live the life of heaven. We start to understand heaven better and to believe in it more fully. What is more, this is the life that does not die, the life that survives our earthly death. Truly, loving as God loves is the best way to journey towards heaven.