We are approaching the end of our book study on The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery. The primary author, Ian Morgan Cron, is an Episcopal priest who is fascinated by the spiritual possibilities of this system of nine personality types. At the very beginning of the book, he describes a conversation he has with his mother, who lovingly chides him over his interest in the subject, often by substituting similar words for enneagram, which means a nine-pointed figure. Words like sonagram or anagram. Cron reminds his mother, “The Enneagram is an ancient personality typing system. It helps people understand who they are and what makes them tick.” His mother responds, “Forget the angiogram. Write a book about going to heaven and coming back… Those authors make money.” “They also have to die first.” “Details.” Cron uses this story to ease the reader into the topic of the Enneagram, but I think that the mother’s joke about books about heaven is true. Heaven is a very important topic to many people. For centuries, Christians have been taught to live their lives for the rewards of heaven. But since heaven is unknowable in this life, people have been desperate for any indication of what it might be like, or even if it exists at all. Thus, stories of bright lights in tunnels or the mystic visions of the saints fire our imaginations to hope of a world beyond our own.
Our imaginations are inspired by music as well as story. There are many hymns and religious songs about heaven. Some hymns emphasize the glory of heaven. One hymn that I learned from my friend Rev. Curtis Dias down the street at the Calvary Pentecostal Church is “When We All Get to Heaven.” The refrain goes like this, “When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be! / When we all see Jesus, we’ll sing and shout the victory!” It says, “Let us then be true and faithful, / Trusting, serving ev’ry day; / Just one glimpse of Him in glory / Will the toils of life repay.” In other words, all of life’s setbacks and suffering will be worth it when we celebrate our victory with the glorious God.
Other hymns emphasize the peace of heaven. For example, there is “In Paradisum,” the antiphon sung at the end of the Latin Requiem Mass. In English it says, “May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs receive you at your arrival and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem. May choirs of angels receive you and with Lazarus, once a poor man, may you have eternal rest.” My favorite setting of this text is in the Requiem by French composer Gabriel Faure, with lilting organ triads and hovering, high soprano voices calling the listener to the peace above and beyond this world. Look it up on YouTube if you have never heard it. Our hymn of preparation today, “Jerusalem the Golden,” emphasizes the both the glory and peace of heaven. We sung, “Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest – / the sight of it refreshes the weary and oppressed. / I know not, oh, I know not what joys await us there, / what radiancy of glory, what bliss beyond compare…” Such songs inspire us to endure the troubles of the world and envision a place of peace, joy, and happiness.
However, not everyone thinks that heaven is so wonderful. In the popular imagination, heaven is thought of as boring and antithetical to enjoying the world in which we live. As Billy Joel sang in “Only the Good Die Young, “And they say there’s a heaven for those who will wait / Some say it’s better, but I say it ain’t / I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints / The sinners are much more fun / You know that only the good die young…” While the persona that Joel adopts for the song is an amorous young man trying to woo a demure Catholic girl, there is some truth that heaven is disconnected from our world in ways that can be problematic. To some heaven is not a place of peace and glory but of escape and gloating. In this way of thinking, life on Earth is terrible, and it is filled with terrible people. In Heaven we can escape all that and let the world be destroyed behind us as something that does not ultimately matter. Thus, we can exploit and pollute the planet without worrying about the future, since in God’s eyes, the Earth is disposable. We also contrast the good people that get into heaven with the bad people who go to hell. We may feel happy not so much that we are loved by God, but that God hates those that we hate, which as you know is no way to live. If life on earth is just something to escape and if the people around us do not need our love because both they and the planet are temporary and expendable, we may find ourselves living in the world where preventable human suffering is ignored, where justice is silenced, and where our planet is abused and denigrated leading not only to human suffering, but to the destruction of animals and plants which are all part of God’s good creation. Too much of an emphasis on heaven can make us insensitive to the suffering that Jesus came to relieve.
Considering this, we remind ourselves that heaven is a mystery. We never know what will happen after we die. So instead of focusing only the reward of heaven, we should live a life that brings God’s will for love and justice into the world around us, and let God take care of what happens later. I like to think of heaven as a safety net. In life, we are called to be bold as disciples of God, sacrificing some of our ease and happiness to make the world a better place. The world, however, is quite happy being a place of misery and injustice, and most of our high hopes never come to fruition. We find solace in knowing that that even when we fail, our attempts will be honored, and we will see a place of eternal peace and equality. This can give us the strength to press on in the hopeless battles before us.
Because some attitudes toward heaven may drive us away from God’s will and because heaven is considered a mystery, the blessed realm is not often talked about by many people in our tradition. However, heaven should not be completely sidelined, because heaven gives us hope in the face of uncertainty. We do not ultimately know what we happen in death and this anxiety about an uncertain future is what drives us to poisonous or sinful acts. Heaven provides a beacon of hope that we will know God despite our fears. Heaven gives a reason to have faith in the face of suffering, because it tells us that God intends more for us that just barely getting by in a world where some have everything and so, so many have nothing. What we need is an understanding of heaven that gives us hope for the future without tempting us to abandon the present.
This brings us to our reading today from the Revelation to John, the famous depiction of heaven. The voice of Jesus on the throne speaks of a place without suffering. “[God] 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.” The heaven that comes to earth is described as a perfect version of Jerusalem. There are gates and walls which celebrate the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles, the faithful of the past who bring people to believe today. The city is made of the most beautiful parts of the earth, brilliant gemstones and gold that shines “transparent as glass.” It is also a place of natural splendor, with “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God.” Beside the river are twelve trees fruits which provide for “the healing of the nations.” This heaven is a place that takes the best of human faith and art and mixes it with vegetables and minerals from the world. It perfects all that is imperfect about life to become a place of unspeakable beauty.
It seems like this city is not for everyone, especially if it is composed of walls and gates guarded by angels. In chapter 21, verses 7 and 8, Jesus says, “Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” This is a verse that many use to reject people or to scare people into obedience with the threat of hell. But I look at a verse like this and remember the popular commandment to “love the sinner and hate the sin.” I do not think that God is rejecting people as much as behaviors. Because many of us have done things of which we are not proud. We have been cowardly and faithless. We have been liars and have felt polluted. But those sins do not define us; they are the parts of us that we are called to repent from and to move beyond. Thus, by the end of chapter 21, we see this heavenly Jerusalem as a place for everyone. “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” Unclean practices are not found in this place of beauty, but it has no temple, no religious test of orthodoxy or orthopraxy, but is open to all regardless of their ritual traditions. It is a place where all nations are welcomed, where the gates are never closed and where people bring their own glory, their own gifts and talents and inherit dignity, to add to the light of God.
Everyone contributes, everyone is valued, no one is ultimately turned away. This is the vision of heaven that we have inherited through our biblical tradition. But this is not just a promise of peace and beauty to come. It is a blueprint for how we should live our lives today. It describes a world where cities and nature flow side-by-side. It shows a place where beauty is an essential part of life for everyone and not just for those who can afford it. It is a place that calls us away from destructive behavior towards justice for all. In other words, John’s vision of heaven is Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God, a hope of an impossible future but also a reality which is already among us.
There is much to endure in this life, but we know that God is with us, whether we are in heaven or on earth. In the Gospel according to John, Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. … Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” This promise allows us to be courageous and calm in a world of fear and anxiety. It is the promise of heaven. But Jesus also wants us to do the work of justice and peace in this world. He did not want us chasing after the beauty of the future when there was a mess we needed to clean up in the present. Heaven will come to us. Heaven will be that safety net that emboldens us to do the hard work of living in the world. Heaven is a place of glory and peace, but we can strive for “almost heaven” when we try to bring glory and peace and love and justice into our homes and our communities now. Imagine the peace and glory to come, ponder the mystery, and act charitably so that a everyone can enjoy a little bit of heaven today.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, let us see in hope what you have planned for us, a realm of eternal life and not death and suffering. Bless the good work we do in your name and catch us when we fall. This we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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