Sometime during the First World War (1914-18), a British newspaper, The Westminster Gazette, printed a little poem about those who had valiantly fought and died for their country. I quote:
They left the fury of the fight, And they were tired.The gates of heaven were opened quite, Unguarded and unwired.
There was no sound of any gun,
The land was still and green,
Wide hills lay silent in the sun,
Blue valleys slept between.
They saw far off a little wood
Stand up against the sky.
Knee deep in grass a great tree stood,
Some lazy cows went by.
There were some rooks sailed overhead,
And once a church bell pealed.
“God, but it’s England,” someone said,
“And there’s a cricket field.”
Which, for all of its loveliness, illustrates but two things.
Each of us visualizes a heaven to suit ourselves.
Not everybody in the world gazes upon an open pitch of green and thinks “golf.”
Stimulated, but not constrained, by Mitch Albom, we have been talking about heaven for nigh unto four weeks. As Mitch would say, there are five people you’ll meet there. Or as I have been struggling to say, there are five lessons you’ll learn there. Not that any of us can master the lessons of heaven, anymore than we can know the proximity of heaven, the geography of heaven, the population of heaven, or the daily agenda of heaven. “Don’t try to imagine it,” says Paul in one place. “It’s a mystery,” says Paul in another place. But as I said to many of you four weeks ago, that doesn’t lessen speculation or dampen conviction.
For I listen to you talk. I am your confidant in conversation. I am your audience when you speak from the lectern. And what you say gives your theology away….even when you don’t know you have a theology….have never studied theology….and wouldn’t be caught dead expounding theology. Except, that is, when you are faced with death and are called upon to say a few words at someone’s funeral.
Listening to you (as I have for lo these many years), I can tell you what you believe about heaven. You believe four things.
You believe that people who die go there immediately.
You believe that, in spite of the restrictions some preachers place upon admissions, the people you love ….your people….go there immediately.
You believe that whatever else people do there, they have the ability to observe what is going on here….at least until the funeral is over, thereby allowing them to hear all the nice things you are saying about them.
And you believe that, whatever else heaven may be, at the beginning it feels like reconnecting.
Reconnecting with whom? Well, listen to how John Henry Newman puts it in the third verse of his hymn, “Lead Kindly Light.” Which, as hymns go, easily makes my top ten, quite possibly my top five, and whose exclusion from the latest version of our Methodist hymnal I can neither fathom nor forgive. Again, let me quote:
So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still
will lead me on;
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent till
the night is gone.
And with the morn, those angel faces smile,
which I have loved, long since,
and lost a while.
Yesterday morning, at a funeral in Redford, I said for the umpteenth time in my ministerial career:
Friends, I am growing long in the tooth. Which means that I’m getting on in years and numerous in losses. But the older I get in life….and the more people I lose from my life….the less interested I am in eternal life….if, by eternal life, you simply mean endless extension….going on and on and on and on. But if, by eternal life, you are talking about blessed reunion (seeing those who, in the words of Cardinal Newman, “I have loved long since, yet lost a while”), then you have offered me something that is both precious and priceless.
Or, when I don’t say it that way, I let my Manhattan colleague Maurice Boyd say it for me. For it is often asked of him, just as it is often asked of me: “Doctor Boyd, do you think we will see our loved ones in heaven?” Which question he always answers with another: “Will it be heaven if the answer be no?”
Now my cautious conviction is that we will….see our loved ones in heaven. But while I suspect it, you sound certain of it. Like I said, I listen to you at funerals. You talk about mother being with daddy. You talk about Betty being with Freddy. You talk about loved ones coming together whom death has rendered asunder.
I believe some people actually die because the ties that lure them there are stronger than the ties that tether them here. And I will never forget the day I sat in the congregation, helping others mourn the loss of a vibrant young woman who fell to her death through an open window at the University of Michigan. And the Episcopal priest, speaking directly to her mother, said: “It was your privilege to welcome your daughter into this world. It will some day be her privilege to welcome you into the next.” Which made for a very moving moment.
I listen to you. You equate dying, not with movin’ on, but with goin’ home. And you do not expect to find the house empty when you arrive.
Eddie, an 83-year-old carnival-ride repairman on the Ruby Pier, is the hero of Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Although for most of the book’s 196 pages, Eddie neither looks nor feels very heroic. Concerning Eddie’s lifetime in the carny, Albom writes:
Many times he had longed to leave this place, find different work, build another kind of life. But the war came. His plans never worked out. In time, he found himself graying, wearing looser pants, and settling into a state of weary acceptance that this was who he was (and who he always would be)….a man with sand in his shoes in a world of mechanical laughter and grilled frankfurters.
But Eddie’s life ends suddenly….dramatically….tragically….when a carnival ride named Freddy’s Free Fall does just that.…falls, out of control, on Eddie. Who, in the act of trying to save a little girl from it, ends up under it. And the next thing he knows, he is in heaven. Which, at first glance, looks more like school than home. His first meeting is with the Blue Man who instructs him that “all life is connected.” Followed by a meeting with his old Army captain who informs him that “sacrifice is expected.” Then comes Ruby from the pier who teaches him that anger (especially anger for his father) must be reconciled.
Finally comes the meeting with Marguerite, the only meeting Eddie really anticipated. Marguerite was Eddie’s first love. She was also his last love. And unfortunately, his lost love. Marguerite was the light that brightened Eddie’s day. She was also the color that tinted Eddie’s gray. Eddie and Marguerite never had much. Never did much. Never conceived a child. Missed out on their chance to adopt a child. Together, they survived the usual number of marital valleys. Until they came to the valley of the shadow called “death.” Which took Marguerite of a brain tumor….at age 47….much, much too soon.
If there is going to be any consolation in the book….any romance in the universe….any justice in the Kingdom….you know (just know) that Eddie and Marguerite will meet in heaven. Which they do. Except there is no indication they are married now. Albom doesn’t say they aren’t. But neither does he say they are.
Once upon a time, when there was no woman in my life, and when my beliefs were as wobbly as a plate of under-refrigerated Jell-O, someone enticed me into a Mormon indoctrination session. And although I didn’t buy into it….and forgot almost all of it….I can still see that portion of their training film where a couple, married in this life, walked hand and hand into eternity. If I heard them right, the Mormons told me I could be married forever.
I was later to learn that not every Mormon couple was considered wed for eternity. It depended on where you were married and under what circumstances you were married. But I remember thinking to myself: “This is one pretty cool benefit of being a Mormon.” Which represents the Book of Mormon’s improvement on the Bible. That is, if you accept the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Which I don’t. But that’s a subject for another day.
Meanwhile, back to the Bible. Where a group of Sadducean Jews approach Jesus. Their goal is to trip him up and thereby show him up. Their question, extrapolated into absurdity, was this. “You know,” they said, “we Jews have an institution known as levirate marriage” (see Deut. 25:5-10). Which means that if a man takes a wife, but dies before fathering a child with her, it is the duty of his brother to marry her and conceive a child. And when that child is born, that child shall be considered the offspring of the first husband (his deceased brother). At least for purposes of inheritance. Clearly, the point of the levirate marriage law was to ensure two things. First, that the family name would survive. Second, that the family property would pass to the offspring of the oldest brother.
“But,” said the Sadducees to Jesus, “let’s suppose that there are seven brothers in this family. And let’s suppose (ridiculous as this may seem) that one at a time,
each of them marries the first brother’s wife,
none of them gets her pregnant with child,
all of them die,
and then she dies.
In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?”
Given that Sadducees, as a group, denied any belief in resurrection, their goal was not to find out who would get the wife (later), but to show how utterly ridiculous the idea of “later” was.
To which Jesus simply said: “She isn’t going to be anybody’s wife in heaven.” “Wife” and “husband” are earthly designations. And marriage is an earthly institution. When people die…. and when people rise from the dead….they are more like angels than husbands (which should come as good news to some of you). And they are more like angels than wives. Unfortunately, Jesus never says what that looks like, feels like, or implies for the future of all previous human relationships. He simply says that marriage (under that name) will cease to be. It is not for no reason that couples say: “Till death do us part.”
But while Jesus says that marriage will cease to be, he does not say that love will cease to be. What is left unsaid in scripture, but is very much implied in scripture, is that there will be other ways of experiencing love, expressing love, giving and receiving love. Which may be bewildering (even mildly depressing) if your earthly marriage is wonderful. But which may be liberating (even mildly exhilarating) if your earthly marriage is terrible.
“You left too soon,” Eddie said to Marguerite. “You died. You were forty seven. You were the best person any of us ever knew. And you died. You lost everything. I lost everything. I lost the only woman I ever loved.”
Whereupon she took his hands and said: “No you didn’t. I was right here. And you loved me anyway. I felt it. Even here (she said, smiling). That’s how strong love can be.”
Lost love is still love, Eddie. It just takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see them smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, others heighten. Such as memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it….hold it….dance with it. Life has to end, Eddie. Love doesn’t.
I believe that. But I can’t say I really understand that. Although maybe I understand it a little. Let me explain. I loved my father. I also loved my mother. I trust that the love I had for my mother and father will survive. Better yet, given the renewed opportunity of eternity, I trust that love will heal some things that needed healing. But I do not expect that heaven will forever freeze-frame them as my parents, nor me as their child.
I fully expect to see my son. It won’t be heaven if I can’t. But I don’t expect that the words “father” and “son” will forever define our relationship.
Just like I presently have a daughter. And while she will always be my child, I am learning that there are new delights….surprising delights….as she becomes woman….as she becomes fiancé….even as she will soon become wife (someone else’s wife). The form of our relationship changes with time. Yet the heart of our relationship remains constant through time. And, I trust, beyond time.
Ditto for the lovely Kristine. I have been lucky in love. Ours has been a “good time” for a very long time. And I pray for more time. Much more time. For us, the words “love and marriage” are inseparable. At least they have become so in this life. As to what follows, I can’t begin to imagine. But, forty years ago, I was totally incapable of imagining this.
So what do I believe about the future? I believe the following. I believe that we shall not only see our loved ones in heaven, but that we shall love our loved ones in heaven.
By what name?
I don’t know.
In what form?
I don’t know.
In what arrangement?
I don’t know.
In what amount?
More!
More!
