“Who art in Heaven”

This Lent we have been following the latest York Course, an ecumenical series of Lenten explorations which was founded in 1997 and is now in use throughout the world. And this year's subject has been, of course, the Lord's Prayer. And that prayer begins ‘Our Father, who art in heaven', so we might have expected to have meditated on heaven on at least the second week of the course, after ‘Our Father', rather than at the end. Instead we have had to wait until now, the final chapter in the booklet, the last address in the series, to reach the subject of heaven. Why am I not surprised? Today's Church seems to have little time for heaven - or for hell, for that matter. For centuries the Church was criticised for keeping the masses submissive by offering them pie in the sky when they died. But we are all consumerists now: Tesco, ergo sum – I shop, therefore I am. We don't want pie in the sky. We want steak on the plate, and we want it now.

Perhaps our medieval forebears bear some responsibility for our lack of enthusiasm for the hereafter. In the Middle Ages church walls and stained glass windows flamed with vivid pictures of hell as a place of tortured limbs and cauldrons and grotesque devils complete with toasting forks. Protestantism whitewashed the paintings and smashed the windows, but hellfire preachers still attempted to frighten their congregations into goodness or faith with the threat of everlasting damnation. And if blackmail failed, bribery might be tried instead: the promise of eternal bliss. ‘Onward to the prize before us! Soon his beauty we'll behold; Soon the pearly gates will open. We shall tread the streets of gold.' And one of the worst things about life beyond the pearly gates was surely the anaemic picture we were painted of eternal boredom and perpetual inactivity. Some of you have heard me quote many times that marvellous reminiscence by John Hadham in his book Good God of the image of heaven conjured up for him as a boy whenever he had to sing the hymn ‘Holy, holy. Holy' with which we began this evening, especially verse 2 which speaks of the saints ‘Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea.' Was that all there was to do? And how did the crowns get back on to the saints' heads for further casting? Were the cherubs employed as a species of heavenly ball boy? Or did new crowns grow continuously? And then Hadham had the nasty feeling that, like his sailor's hat, the crowns were secured by elastic, and therefore always sprang back into place with a ping. At any rate, Hadham's opinion of the life hereafter was much the same as the London girl's comment: "If yer bad, yer goes to 'ell ter frizzle an' fry; and if yer good, yer sits on a clawd for ever an' ever. An' it's so dull."

And so, for all these reasons, the life that awaits us beyond the grave usually seems very far off. Victor Hugo said that death is a thoroughfare, not a blind alley. Very well, so be it. But it's a long way away, and we much prefer to live for and in the present. There's no point in getting worried about the future just yet.

Of course, Christianity has always discouraged the wrong kind of speculation about the final things. It was an extremely sensible theologian called Reinhold Niebuhr who once wrote that ‘It is unwise for Christians to claim any knowledge of either the furniture of heaven or of the temperature of hell.' In a very real sense it is not for us to speculate about these things. The gullible, the curious, those of no secure faith, may all be tempted to delve into things that are properly left in trust with God alone. But the point is that we must trust so as to be able to declare with St Paul, writing with a great burst of faith and assurance, ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered the heart of man what God has prepared for those that love him.' ( 1 Cor. 2:9 ).

So, heaven is both the final goal and also the infinite meaning of our human life. And if we try to ask what it will be like, without escaping into metaphor or fantasy, we cannot do better than Augustine's description of heaven as ‘Seeing and loving and praising'. It is having the vision of God in whom is perfect goodness and perfect beauty. And seeing him who is perfect, we should be utterly in love with him who is perfect, and we shall reflect that love of him in our love for one another, in the enjoyment of free and mutual fellowship and service in God's presence. And because we will understand that all this is not our achievement but God's gracious goodness to us, our last word will be praise, a deep and powerful gratitude overflowing from every heart and mind and consciousness. ‘Seeing and loving and praising in the presence of God.'"

And St Augustine goes on with this phrase, ‘In the end which is no end.' In the end because nothing can be more perfect. But an end which is no end because it is the perfection and completion of love and wisdom and beauty which are infinite . There will be nothing dull or repetitious or monotonous there, nothing stagnant and dead. No eternal singing of hymns ancient and mouldy . Rather, there will be in heaven - we may be certain - infinite vistas of the exciting exploration of all that is good and true and beautiful: a free, joyful, exciting adventure within that perfection for which God has designed us. When Florence Nightingale was told that a loved one had died and gone to be at rest, she quickly replied, ‘Oh no! I am sure that the next life is immense activity.' And so it is: full of "the substance of joy and the vitality of action."

And note this, that one thing which heaven is not is a selfish fantasy of our own making, a man-made compensation for the frustrations and limitations of this life here on earth. It is precisely not ‘pie in the sky when you die'. And the proof of that is that no selfish action, no selfish desire, no selfish motive, will ever get us a single step nearer to heaven. Rather, the love which leads us towards the goal of heaven is the same love which bids us love and serve our fellow men and women in the here and now. Every Christian is called to a ministry of care and compassion, and that is in no sense divorced from our hope of eternal life. It is an intrinsic part of it. Never let anyone drive a wedge between what you will sometimes hear called the ‘spiritual Gospel' and the ‘social

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Gospel'. That is an old, old heresy, and one which you must always resist. Our loving service of one another, our caring greatly for justice and peace and the happiness of humankind: this is the love which also drives us towards the goal of heaven. Wherever there is genuine, human, unselfish fellowship, there is a faint little anticipation of heaven where fellowship is perfect. Wherever there is unselfish love and compassion and generosity, there is a little anticipation of heaven where love and compassion and generosity will be all in all. Wherever there is sincere prayer to God, there too is an anticipation of heaven where lives will be utterly and wholly lifted up to God in the communion of prayer and praise and adoration. In other words, eternal life has begun for us already. As St John insists again and again in his first Letter, ‘This is eternal life, to know thee the one true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.' ‘We know that we have passed out of death into life if we love the brethren.'

Probably at much the same time as those words were written, another John - usually known as ‘The Divine' or ‘The Theologian' - had a vision of heaven whilst in prison on the Greek island of Patmos. He saw quite clearly that it is heaven which gives meaning to our present life, and that that life is a journey which has no point or purpose unless we keep our eyes firmly fixed on the ‘Holy City, new Jerusalem'. Heaven is indeed what we are made for. Heaven is where the road goes:

I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.