Agent of Heaven

Propers: The Second Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 11), A.D. 2020 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

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

What is Heaven, exactly? Is it pie in the sky when you die? Is it the exclusive gated community in the upscale parts of the land of the dead? I had a college professor who once opined that sitting forever up on a cloud strumming a harp would in the final reckoning be every bit as unendurable as any hell.

No, Heaven is not really a place—not in the way that we think of places—nor does it last forever, if by that we mean perpetuity, the same thing over and over again for a really long endless span of time. Rather, Heaven is infinite, beyond space, and eternal, beyond time, where everything is always new, everything is always now.

Because Heaven, insofar as we can conceive of such a thing, is none other than living in the direct, unmediated presence of God. It is to be fully suffused in the light and love and heat of God, to be permeated by Goodness, Truth, and Beauty the way that fire permeates a red-hot glowing iron. The term for this is theosis or deification whereby we are made divine by becoming one with God—no more separations, no more shadows. Only then will we become who we were always meant to be. Only then will we at last be truly individual.

In Dante’s vision of Heaven, God is an infinitely bright point of light surrounded by a vast and wondrous cloud of mirrors. Each one of these mirrors is an angel or a saint or some other glorified bit of Creation. And with the addition of each new soul to Heaven, all the other souls are able to see a reflected aspect of God that they could never have seen before. Each one of us participates in the infinite revelation of God’s love for all of His Creation.

Thus is Heaven an eternal glorification, always new, always brighter, always greater. And there is no end to this process—for God Himself is infinite and eternal. His depths can never be plumbed. His grace can never be exhausted. Salvation, in Christian understanding, is not simply some reward for good behavior or for holding the right beliefs. Salvation is none other than God welcoming all of His lost and wayward children home, giving to each of us not only everything that God has, but everything that God is: He is us and we in Him.

But there’s another wrinkle in all of this. And that’s the idea that God does not simply want to draw us into Heaven; He wants to bring Heaven down to earth. He wants the old heavens and the old earth to pass away, that together they might become one, a New Heaven and a New Earth, where God again shall dwell with Man. Salvation, ultimately, is not for the few, the proud, the strong. It is for everything and everyone—for the will of God is that not even one of His little ones be lost, and at the last God’s will shall be done. Not even hell can stand in His way.

The world as we know it was made good, and shall be remade good at the last. Yet here we live in the meantime, the in-between time. And the world we live in now is broken—broken by disaster, disease, poverty, prejudice, wealth, and war. It is a fallen world, a twisted world, ruled by fallen, twisted powers. And while we have faith that God did not will this fall—for God indeed cannot will evil—and hope that God will ultimately never allow this travesty to stand, nevertheless we are often bowed and discouraged by the challenges set before us.

When, O Lord, shall Christ return? When, O Lord, shall the Kingdom be restored? Will it be tomorrow, or 10,000 years from now? In other words, why doesn’t God get off His high holy throne and come down here to do something about it—snap His almighty fingers, force this world to be good again? Why stand by and let bad things happen to good people, even if it is just for now?

Truly God’s ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts like ours. Yet we must keep in mind that time is no obstacle to the God who is eternal, nor death any hindrance to the God who died on the Cross. Those who suffer and die unjustly in this life are all alive to Him. Their stories have not ended, nor their justice been denied. Mark me: there is a judgment at the end of each life, just as there is at the end of each world. There, no-one can escape from the light. There, justice and mercy shine out as one truth.

I cannot say for certain why God allows for evil, if only for a time. I suspect it has something to do with the nature of love and of free will. Love, after all, cannot tyrannize, cannot force. Love must offer and accept, promise and forgive. Moreover, this world was broken by the rebellion of angels and of men. I suspect a certain symmetry in God redeeming this world through the very agents who broke it in the first place.

But God is not inactive. Nor is He content to sit aloft and aloof upon His throne. Rather, God comes down—down into the mud and the blood—as Jesus Christ, to be born among us, to live and laugh and bleed and die and rise again exalted. And then He puts His Spirit in us, making us into Him: members of His Body, pieces of the God-Man. And He sends us out—to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons,” to give and to receive with neither payment nor reward. He sends us out, in His own words, as sheep amidst the wolves, bidding us be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

In the eyes of Jesus Christ, all the world is a great and bounteous harvest, the fruits of all Creation ripe and ready to be reaped. And we are sent out to gather these fruits—every single stalk and grain—into His Father’s granary, into the joy and the glory of our God. The world does not contain some measly handful of souls to be gleaned for Heaven’s bliss. No! Everyone, everything, every man, woman, and child, every bird and beast and bug, every quark and every galaxy, all of it must be claimed and harvested for Heaven. The only thing that’s lacking is the workers in the field.

Because you, my brothers and sisters, are the great secret of Heaven. You are the workers, the harvesters, God’s own hands and feet. You want to know what God’s doing? God is sending you! You already live halfway in Heaven. You died and you rose in your Baptism, given Jesus’ Holy Spirit to be your very breath. You gather as one each Sunday to hear the Word of God obliterate your sins, and to watch as Heaven itself touches down upon the Altar, down in the bread and the wine, which become for us the true Body and Blood of the Lord.

And having been fed with bread to the envy of the angels, you are sent out once again into a needy world, to proclaim the Good News, to raise up the dead, to gather the lost, feed the hungry, free the oppressed, rebuke the wicked, forgive the sinner, speak truth to power, and announce the beachhead of Heaven upon this earth! You are the ambassadors of Heaven, breaking a piece of eternity into time, bringing down the glory and the revelation of God’s own presence here among us now. You have died; now you live, with one foot in Heaven and one here on earth.

Yes, God made the world good. Yes, He will remake it in the end. But He is active and present and mighty to save, here and now, in you: you, O Christian, who bear the Name of Christ; you, O mortal, in whom the Spirit burns. Your job is to proclaim that the Kingdom of God is near—nay, to make it present in you. You are the paratroopers, the forward force, the agents provocateurs. You will call down Heaven to conquer this earth, because Jesus Christ is alive in you.

You have His Body, His Blood, and His Holy Spirit. You are the God-Man now. You are Heaven and the earth made one in Him: a foretaste of the feast to come. So for God’s sake, read your Bible, pray your prayers, come to the Sacraments, and in everything you do be Jesus for a world that needs Him now more than ever.

Heaven is not a place; it is the immediate presence of God. Heaven came down to earth in Jesus Christ. And now He sends Heaven forth in you.

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