God Is Not What You Imagine

In Relig Odhráin

Propers: The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 15), A.D. 2018 B

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

He has made known to us the mystery of His will—according to His good pleasure, that He set forth in Christ—as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Some say the world is made of math, and there’s a certain truth to this, a philosophical elegance. But I think it truer to say that the world is made of stories. All reality as we know it is made of stories. And every story implies a Storyteller.

This is how we make sense of our lives, our communities, and our very world. There’s an introduction, complications, climax, denouement, and, God willing, a happy end. Stories are how we express meaning and purpose and value. They tell us what’s real. In the beginning was the Word, after all. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Now, one of my favorite storytellers is a man named Neil Gaiman. He’s written poems, novels, short stories, children’s books, even comics. He’s a master of weaving the old in with the new, and all his tales are haunted by divinity. There are gods and monsters aplenty in his works, though he sometimes makes it hard to tell the difference.

Gaiman is not himself a Christian, having been raised Scientologist, which is enough to put anyone off religion. But his favorite author growing up was C.S. Lewis. And it’s hard to love Lewis without having a bit of Christ within you. One of Gaiman’s poems, “In Relig Odhráin”—the Grave of St Oran—tells in verse an old Hebridean legend about Sts Columba and Oran, who together came from Ireland to the Holy Isle of Iona, there to convert the whole of Britain to Christ.

The name is probably familiar to some; I’ve preached on Columba before, also known as Columbkille. He was a big, burly brawler of a monk, and something of a scholar to boot. He was sent to Iona as penance for a fight that he started over a book. And like Christ he took twelve companions with him, one of them being St Oran.

The official story goes that St Oran died at peace, the first saint buried at Iona, and Columbkille saw a vision of angels and demons battling over his soul. The angels won, of course, and escorted Oran into Heaven. But the legend is something darker, hearkening back to a time before Christ came ashore.

The legend is that the monastery at Iona kept falling down. No matter how hard the monks worked to erect a chapel, by the following morning all was undone. And so Columba resorted to the old pagan British practice of burying someone alive within the foundation in order to hold the building up. St Oran volunteered. Here’s how Gaiman continues the tale:

Three days later they returned there, stocky monks with spades and mattocks

And they dug down to St Oran, so Columba could embrace him

Touch his face and say his farewells. Three days dead. They brushed the mud off

When Saint Oran’s eyes blinked open, Oran grinned at Saint Columba.
He had died but now was risen, and he said the words the dead know

In a voice like wind and water.

He said, Heaven is not waiting for the good and pure and gentle

There’s no punishment eternal, there’s no Hell for the ungodly

Nor is God as you imagine—Saint Columba shouted “Quiet!”

And to save the monks from error shoveled mud onto Saint Oran …
God is not what you imagine, Nor is Hell and nor is Heaven.

It is a haunting poem, well worth reading in its entirety. And that line has always stuck with me—“God is not what you imagine, Nor is Hell and nor is Heaven”—because of course it’s true. God is not what we imagine; He is infinitely greater.

Nor is Heaven a reward for the good and hell a torture chamber for the ungodly. Heaven is for sinners; were it otherwise, it would be empty, at least of mortal men. Nor is hell a place of purposeless pain. God never punishes in the Bible except for a reason, for an end beyond punishment. Perdition is in some strange sense a mercy, for hell is the place of refuge for obstinate sinners who will not love the Light.

To clarify, I do not believe for a moment that Columbkille murdered Oran. St Columba was many things, but would never have condoned human sacrifice. The Hebrideans have projected their own dark past upon monastic missionaries. But Gaiman is right—the legend is right—in that the story is still unfolding, that we have not yet experienced the end, and that God, in His mercies, as the Storyteller who forever weaves the worlds, will bring about a resolution more wondrous and astonishing than any we could possibly imagine here below!

God is not what we imagine, Nor is Hell and nor is Heaven. That doesn’t mean our faith is false. What it means is that when faith culminates in the fulfilment of all God’s promises in Christ Jesus, we will one and all be blown away by His wonders and His wisdom and His mercies. The best is yet to be! “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,” sings the Psalmist, “for He will speak peace to His people.”

This morning Paul writes that we, as Christians, are the first to set our hope on Christ, that we might live for the praise of His glory. He destined us for this adoption before the foundation of the world. We were always going to be part of His story. But the real mystery of His will—according to His good pleasure that He set forth in Christ—is His plan for the fullness of time “to gather up all things in Him.”

One of the great mystics, Julian of Norwich, put it this way: that God is going to do something at the end of time so wondrous, so astounding, that it will make all His previous works pale in comparison. And she cannot say what this will be. But she clings to the promise given to her in Christ: that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

But what of hell? What of punishment? What of Law? She denies none of these. Indeed, she explicitly affirms the Church’s teachings on justice, wrath, and judgment. And yet—and yet!—she says something more is coming, the great victory of Christ over sin and death and hell, when all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

We live in a great story, brothers and sisters, woven by the Maker and Master of all storytellers. And yes, we’ve taken on a life of our own. Great novelists will often claim that their characters do unexpected and frequently frustrating things. But the end has yet to be, and the Teller of our tale—who has entered His own work in Jesus Christ—will at the last bring all of this, all this complication, all this tragedy, all this mess, to a good and right and wondrous conclusion, without a single loose end left behind.

And there will be justice and mercy, wrath and grace, and all at the last shall be well.

God is not what you imagine, Nor is Hell and nor is Heaven. He is infinitely more: more just, more merciful, more loving, more astounding. Life is a gift, a love story between God and His children, the Greatest Story Ever Told. And I guarantee the end will be the most miraculous part of it all.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.