To listen to this sermon as delivered before the
Tellico Village Community Church on 11/02/08, click here.
Revelation 7:9-17
The occasion was New Years Eve. I must have been eleven or twelve-years-old, and my friend had invited some of us over for our first ever boy/girl party. Reeking from a little too much of my mother’s Chanel No. 5, and ecstatic to be at a real party with real boys, I spotted a little hottie across the room named Bradley. I’d had a crush on him for two whole days. However, when Bradley was around, I did things like stutter and trip and drool. Brad, on the other hand, was cool . . . a real Rico Suave. He could have any girl at that party, and he didn’t even know I existed.
The party was going OK. I hadn’t done anything too goofy, but then it came time to play a game I’d never heard of . . . “Seven Minutes in Heaven.” “Seven Minutes in Heaven” is similar to “Spin the Bottle,” a game where if a boy spins a bottle on the floor, he has to kiss the girl the bottle points to when the spinning has stopped. But in “Seven Minutes in Heaven,” instead of a kiss, the boy and the girl go into a closet together for their “Seven Minutes in Heaven.”
There I sat on the brink of adolescence, heart pounding, terrified that the bottle would point my way. When Bradley spun the bottle, I remember it as if it were in slow motion . . . round and round it went until it finally slowed down and eventually stopped, pointing straight at me. I was horrified! I refused to go into the closet with Bradley, but my friends pushed and prodded me until there I stood in a closet alone with Rico Suave.
You know what he wanted to do, right? He wanted to talk! Just as nervous as I was, Bradley talked incessantly for seven minutes straight. I heard about the new Atari he had received for Christmas, about the Michael Jackson concert he saw, and about his victories on the basketball court. Pretty soon my “Seven Minutes in Heaven” were over, and I had survived.
In our scripture lesson today, we hear about a different kind of heavenly encounter. The book of Revelation recounts an incredible vision one man had ripe with angels, and dragons, and a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes. Revelation has mystified students of the Bible for centuries and continues to be the source of much theological debate.
When I was a campus minister at the University of Georgia, we had a guest speaker who declared that he wished the book of Revelation had never been included in the Bible. To visually reinforce his point, he held up his Bible before the students and dramatically ripped the pages of Revelation right out. As you might imagine, his demonstration was met with gasps and shrieks and I think a few people fainted. Needless to say, that would be his last time to speak at the Baptist Student Union.
There are lots of Christians who wish this opaque, confounding work would fade into oblivion. However, on the other end of Christendom are those who develop entire theological frameworks and prophecies about the end of days that they base on the book of Revelation. You can make a lot of money these days if you’re clever enough to capture the imagery of Revelation in a blockbuster movie or best-selling book series. That’s harmless enough I suppose. What scares me are those Christian Zionists who are so eager for Christ’s return that they engage in national politics with an agenda to hasten World War III, which they interpret as a prerequisite for Christ’s return based on their interpretation of the book of Revelation.
I think the majority of Christians live somewhere in the middle, neither rejecting Revelation, nor taking it too literally. Revelation is simply one man’s vision. Like all apocalyptic literature, it is full of symbolism and metaphor which seeks to interpret some historical crisis in order to provide hope for a better future. That’s exactly what we find in our scripture lesson today. In this vision, the author is standing in heaven where he witnesses a multitude of people from every nation and every language praising God in a place where there is no more hunger, no more thirst, and no more tears. Revelation is a message of hope, not a message of doom. It’s a message of comfort, not a message of condemnation. We can only hope that heaven is as amazing as this author’s vision.
Just this week I started reading a book called
90 Minutes in Heaven by a pastor named Don Piper in which Piper recounts the amazing story of his death. After being crushed in a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler, paramedics arrived on the scene and promptly pronounced Piper dead. Multiple people checked his pulse and did not find one. The man had no pulse for 90 minutes. Piper was dead. He introduces the book this way: “Immediately after I died, I went straight to heaven. I returned to earth. This is my story.”
[1] Listen to how Piper describes his 90 minutes in heaven: "Joy pulsated through me as I looked around, and at that moment I became aware of a large crowd of people. They stood in front of a brilliant, ornate gate. I have no idea how far away they were; such things as distance didn’t matter. As the crowd rushed toward me, I didn’t see Jesus, but I did see people I had known. As they surged toward me, I knew instantly that all of them had died during my lifetime. Their presence seemed absolutely natural. They rushed toward me, and every person was smiling, shouting, and praising God. Although no one said so, intuitively I knew they were my celestial welcoming committee. It was as if they had all gathered just outside heaven’s gate, waiting for me."
[2]Piper then goes on to tell about the various loved ones he encountered like his grandfather, a childhood friend, his great-grandfather, a high-school classmate, and so forth. One beloved person after another welcomed him and embraced him. He described each one as full of life, expressing radiant joy. He said that even in his happiest moments, he never felt so fully alive.
Perhaps you’re like me, a little skeptical about the stories people tell about their near-death experiences. I’m not sure exactly what to do with these “white light” tales. Do I listen to reason and science which tells me that their visions are simply physiological manifestations from a brain still functioning after a heart has stopped beating? Or do I allow myself to embrace a little mysticism and accept Piper’s story as real? Did Piper really see his loved ones in heaven? I’ll let you be the judge. Regardless, what we have in Piper’s story, and countless others who come back from the brink of death, is at the very least an amazingly beautiful vision of heaven, much like we heard from our scripture lesson from Revelation.
Some visions, like these two we’ve explored, offer hope for our future. Some visions, like the one I want to share with you next, offer hope for our now.
The next vision I want to share with you is my own. It came to me a few years ago; usually I call it a dream because it came to me while I was asleep.
It was a month or so after my father died. Dad was a good person, a hard worker, always eager to help a friend. He was consistent and loyal. However, like most of us he had some rough edges. He drank too much sometimes. He was your classic “tough guy” who felt uncomfortable expressing tenderness. He had no use for church and never spoke of his faith or lack thereof. Though my father softened with age, he remained silent about spiritual matters. Even as his death was imminent, the only thing his “minister” daughter could get out of him was an affirmation that he felt unafraid of death. To this day I have no idea if my father considered himself a Christian. I know as a younger man he was engaged in church, but that was well before I knew him. When my father died, my theological construct at that time caused me great angst concerning his eternal destiny. Was my father in heaven? Or was my father in hell?
The question lingered in my thoughts until one night a powerful dream answered the question for me and set me on a path that would eventually broaden my understanding of God. In the dream I was at a party with lots of people all having a good time when someone pulled me aside, and with a very serious look, informed me that I had a phone call. The person directed me through a door into a long hallway. My mother, my brother, and a close cousin stood opposite a phone hanging on the wall. They watched in supportive silence as I picked up the receiver. Immediately I knew it was my father on the other end of the line contacting me from his home in eternity. His voice was vivid. I asked two questions of my father in that dream. First, I asked “How are you?” My father said simply, “I’m O.K.” Then I asked him, “Where are you?” Dad said, “I was in hell, but now I’m in heaven.”
That’s it. That was my dream. It was a brief encounter, but it was a powerful vision that broke through into my conscious reality and gave me assurance that my father is not suffering in eternal hell, but he is home in heaven. Over the course of weeks and months and years, that vision shaped my understanding of God and the afterlife. I know my father is in heaven. I know your loved one is as well.
Back to our scripture lesson. I wonder if the author of Revelation . . . when he witnessed that great multitude in heaven worshiping God . . . I wonder if he saw my father there among the worshipers praising God in a place where there is no more hunger, no more thirst, and no more tears. I wonder if he saw your loved one there. I wonder if he saw me there. I wonder if he saw you there. The great “Communion of Saints” is not constrained by time or space. We’re all in that great communion together. Thanks be to God that we are counted among the saints! So rise up, saints of earth, and join the saints in heaven singing “Glory! Alleluia!” Amen.
[1] Don Piper, 90 Minutes in Heaven. Revell: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2004, p. 13.
[2] Ibid, p. 21-22.
