Hello,
I was chatting this week with one of my “older” members who loves to go
camping. Let me say that her
version of camping is a bit more refined than a tent with primitive toilet
facilities….camping for her is spending time in the woods in a rustic, but
modern cabin. So, when I asked her
if she enjoyed her time this past week when she was “camping”, she said to me,
“It was heaven. Out there in the
trees with my dog. It was heaven.”
So, I joked with her and said, “But I wasn’t there. Are you saying something about heaven?”
She smirked.
I asked her if I could quote her, and she said, “sure”, and the reason I
wanted to tell you about our joking is that I knew she would have been the last
one to wonder who is and who isn’t going to be in heaven, including me.
For some reason, the Christian faith for many has become a pathway to
heaven. “Are you saved?” has
become the byword of the faith, and “saved” has become equivalent with going to heaven. And many Christians spend a lot of
energy and concern on discerning who is saved, or in other words who is going
to heaven.
Although I don’t claim to be the ultimate scholar and authority on the
Christian faith, for me, the Christian faith was never meant to be primarily a
pathway to heaven and our job as Christians in this world never was to declare
who is and who isn’t going to get there.
So, what is the primary aspect of the Christian faith? In my understanding it is this: to live
in the love in God’s heart which
is beyond all human understanding that God would let nothing stand between
anything in God’s creation, including to stand between God and me, the speck in
the universe that I am, and so driven by his love for me…and all the creation of God’s hand…that God
would spare nothing, not even God’s very self, to make sure it would be so. (sorry for the run on sentence)
Therefore, every moment of this life is filled with eternity, and eternity is
filled with life.
If you come to my church, then, you will never hear me sorting out who
is and isn’t going to heaven.
Instead, you will hear from me that the grace of God is beyond our
wildest imaginations, and as that grace takes hold of our hearts our lives are
shaped by the imagination of God.
You will never hear me trying to scare you into heaven, instead you will
hear me speak of the death and resurrection of Jesus where everything that
might cause us to fear was nailed to the cross and trodden down under the feet
of Jesus on Easter Sunday morning.
If heaven is the unrestricted participation in the presence of God that
is not bounded by the limits of this creation, time and space, then as I plod
my way through this life that is so bounded and limited in such participation, I
give thanks to God promise that picks me up when I stumble and fall ; the
promise that nothing in all of creation will ever be able to separate me from
the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8)
Thanks to my “older” member for reminding me that the only one who has
the power to determine if heaven will be mine, mine in this life and mine when
this life is over, is God…..and thanks be to God for sending his Son, Jesus, to
make sure that will happen!
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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