Heaven is all around

God is at work in all of us.  Faith is a gift.  Heaven is all around.  Hard to believe?  Listen to St. Paul, on whose letter to the Philippians I preached today:

15^th Sunday after Pentecost (Year A) – Sunday, September 25, 2011

Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lancaster, PA

Text: Philippians 2:1-13

Have you ever thought about how to get to heaven? I mean, I pride myself on being able to find my way around. I'm pretty good with a map. But heaven is a little farther than just around the bend. I'm pretty sure that if you plugged “heaven” into your GPS and took off, you'd hear a whole lot of “recalculating” from the dashboard.

It's a long road to heaven, isn't it? Our world doesn't often seem too heavenly. About half the world, that's over 3 billion people, lives on less than $2.50 a day, and 80 percent lives on less than $10 a day. But we know the human face hiding behind these numbers. Whether we're in that 80 percent or not, many of us have had to choose which bills to pay or we've struggled to support a family member. We've seen the violence that rages not only in places like Afghanistan but here in our streets. Many of us have known someone whose life was taken in that violence. If we haven't ourselves, most of us have a family member who's been hit with a devastating diagnosis. We've endured when our closest relationships have become broken and our trust shattered. We've sighed to our friends and confessed that we don't know how we'll get through the problems we face.

This place doesn't seem much like heaven, does it? Heaven seems like a brilliant realm beyond our reality. It seems like a reward for a life lived in obedience to God's commands. The Christian faith so often gets boiled down to just that - a formula to get into heaven. We don't often agree on what the formula is, but most of the time we agree that there's one thing or another you HAVE to do to get past St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

In the reading from Philippians today, we hear St. Paul preaching to his sisters and brothers in Christ, giving them quite a “to do” list while he's gone. Be of the same mind and have the same love. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. In humility, regard others as better than yourselves. How we doing so far, folks? Got all those covered?

But wait just a minute, here, vicar, you might say. We're Lutherans, aren't we? We don't believe we're saved by works but by faith, right? We get into heaven because we have faith, not because we do all that!

I heard this when I was growing up too. I heard, you can't prove anything to God with your works, you've got to have faith to get into heaven. I really got this into my head. I would sit there in church as a 14 year old thinking things like, if my life ended right now, would I believe that Jesus is real? 

 

I began to wonder if I had enough faith. How much IS enough, after all? It's hard to say. Do I just have to believe in God and Jesus? What about the Holy Spirit? Do I have to make my faith active in service? Do I have to pass my confirmation exam? You know, I really liked science class and evolution seems pretty reasonable to me, does that put some red ink on my file in St. Peter's office? Do I really believe? How do I know?

Maybe you've asked yourself these questions. Have you thought, God's testing me, but I just have to have faith? How long do I have to endure this unhealthy situation before God rewards my faith? How much faith is enough?

A German monk named Martin Luther struggled with these questions too. He became so fearful about whether his faith was strong enough for him to get into heaven that he would fast, pray, and confess his sins all hours of the night. Luther's superior was so worried about his sanity that he ordered him to spend all day reading books and studying scripture, just so he would stop worrying about himself. And that's the key. 

 

All these questions we've been asking, they're all about us. How strong is MY faith? How am I doing? Do I really believe? Have I done enough? The ugly truth is that the answer to ALL these questions is NO! Our relationships with others are broken. We hardly care about the plight of billions in poverty. We can never have enough faith in God. On our own, we will never complete our desperate journey to heaven. We'll be going around in circles, our religious GPS systems screaming at us to recalculate, recalculate!

But friends, St. Paul tells a story about Jesus. He says “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human likeness, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” Paul preached good news that Jesus trusted God so much that he was obedient to the point of death on a cross.

If heaven depends on our faith, we're out of luck. But thanks be to God because all has been guaranteed by Christ who trusted God so much, who had so much faith, that he was willing to die on a cross. Here's another confirmation moment for all of you – in the Small Catechism, speaking about faith, Luther wrote “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith.” Because of Christ's faithfulness, we don't have to worry about ourselves and our faith. We can entrust ourselves to God who in Christ has claimed us forever. We can allow the Holy Spirit to move in us and create faith in our hearts. 

 

Paul put it like this: “for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” God is working in you, so you can work in the world for the sake of others. That's what Paul means when he says “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Paul invites us to go out into the world, living as if God's promises are true (because they are), living as if Christ is Lord of the universe (because he is), living as if the kingdom of heaven was breaking into our world (because it is).

Jesus emptied himself, came down in human likeness, and he brought some heaven with him. We don't need roadmaps to the Pearly Gates, just a bath in those baptismal waters. Through his obedience and death on a cross, Jesus has broken into our world with the kingdom of heaven. We trust that Christ will come again and fully conform this world to God's will, but until that time, we are here, and God is working in us so that we can work out the gospel in the world.

Heaven is all around you and within you. The world's still broken, so it takes faith to see it. But that faith is the trust in God that the Holy Spirit weaves into our hearts. We are God's advance team in this world. We are the heralds of the kingdom of heaven. We are called to shout out everywhere that all the brokenness you see on our streets – that's the real illusion. The truth is that Christ Jesus has brought heaven to us. 

 

God is inviting us to see it. Look around you. Look at the people you love, those you've held through hard times, those you've worshiped alongside. There's a bit of heaven. Remember a Sunday School teacher, or a Sunday School student, who changed your life. Remember when you fed someone who would have gone hungry otherwise, or when you wrote a card, or made a craft, or sang a song to brighten an elderly person's day. God brought an advance taste of heaven, that's for sure. 

 

Now imagine. Imagine us set free by Christ and set afire with the Holy Spirit. Imagine us trusting that God is working in the lives of our neighbors all around us. Imagine us going to listen to their stories, expecting to learn from them. Imagine us inviting them to come and offer their gifts to us here, in a new spiritual home. Imagine us being willing to be changed by these newcomers, rather than forcing them to change for us. God is at work in this world, and God is at work in you, enabling you to will and work for his good pleasure. Let us go out then, trusting that for the God who works in us, all things are indeed possible. Amen.