Just Saying
Who Inhabiteth Eternity
We are still in the Easter Season, when our “proper preface” reads: “But chiefly are we bound to praise you for the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who was sacrificed for us, and has taken away the sin of the world. By his death he has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again he has won for us everlasting life.”
Standard, orthodox Christian formula.
In the 21st century and beyond, Commissions on Ministry, those bishops’ committees who screen ordination candidates like prospectors panning for gold, might do well to give second thought to aspirants who have peered into the heavens with a telescope. Amateur astronomers, G. benGalilei with a spyglass thinking outside the box of Creeds. Looking out into the universe/multiverse can make our notions of God seem quite provincial, “Your God Is Too Small” as J. B. Phillips wrote.
Some years back I knew of a “candidating pastor” as the term goes, interviewed by the Board of Deacons of a local church. Not Episcopal. Their first delve, first question, was whether he believed the first three chapters of Genesis to be literal truth. He licked that red litmus, the deacons watched it turn blue before their eyes, and he had the job. If he had hesitated in the least in his certainty, he would still be candidating. He was certain. “Certainty” is my main issue in life.
Growing up with my father, I heard him say many times over the years, “We have a religion to live by, not a religion to die by.” It was always in response to the flavor of Christianity that lived by the questions, “Are you saved? Are you as sure for heaven as if you were already there?” My father and I disagreed about many things in the 57 years we shared life on earth, but I always liked his statement, “We have a religion to live by, not a religion to die by.”
I am much challenged by certainties. Less by the certitudes of other Christians and other religions than by theological assertions in our own liturgies, always mindful of our phrase lex orandi lex credendi. The law of praying is the law of believing: whoever wants to know our theology, what we believe, what we say about God, need only come worship with us and listen to what we pray. Attend what we do and say and sing and pray when we gather and worship: our liturgy is our theology, our theology found in our liturgy --
“... By his death he has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again he has won for us everlasting life.” What does that mean, everlasting life? What do we mean by that, how do we understand that? Do you mean the same as I, and do I mean the same as the person sitting next to you? And did you ever look up at the stars of night? How far? How high did you look, how far up? Could you see beyond that cloud?
Is the Creator of all that Galileo saw actually concerned about the passing of a human life. Or is that actually our hope, our faith? Or converse to Galileo, do we need to look up at all, is everlasting life a purely spiritual realm? Or is "spiritual" a convenient rationalization of what we want to believe but cannot see?
Once I had a parishioner who was dying of a brain tumor. She asked me what I believe would happen at her death. Recalling her husband Steve who had died in a drowning accident many years earlier, when they both were young and his death left her to raise their two little girls, I said to her, "Maybe Steve will meet you." Shaking her head and with an anguished look, she said, "Oh, Father Weller, it has been so long." If our liturgical theology is correct, Steve likely was waiting for her, while her heart had long ago changed. How could both be happy in heaven, whatever heaven is, with him wanting her and her no longer wanting him?
Or do I need to re-read and reconsider Jesus' teaching at Mark 12:20 and following, about the seven brothers marrying the same woman?
There are many places to go with this, I may visit one now, perhaps another before the church concludes Easter Season, which is my parasol under which to contemplate death and resurrection without setting off alarms: I am neither terminal nor suicidal. Oh but yes, I am as terminal as the next living creature. But not sufficiently terminal, so far as I know, as to go suicidal and resume eating liverwurst sandwiches with butter every day for lunch.
Eternal life is a pillar of the Christian faith: what do we mean, what do we believe? -- mindful that believing does not make so. Expecting imminent parousia, St. Paul believed that at death we would sleep in Jesus (his metaphor) until the Second Coming opened the general resurrection, and dead and living, all would rise for judgment, etc. Those who were under the umbrella of the God of Israel, God and Father of Jesus Christ, could be saved. By saved: would participate in the new creation, a physical event. Not owning a telescope, St. Paul could not see beyond the blue dome of the heavenly firmament. That may have been our eschatology for about the first Christian millennium. Over time, we evolved to believing that at death our souls pass directly into the presence of God. Thus --
So then, my nonsensical mental browsing. Is heaven really for real as the little boy found, or is it an idea, the product of wishful thinking devolved into certainty? Assuming heaven’s reality, what about our theology (being in our liturgy, it’s incontestably part of our theology) of eternal life with those we love? In C. S. Lewis’ book The Great Divorce there’s a woman who has ridden up to heaven on the overnight bus from hell. Upon arriving in heaven, she demands to see her son, whom she loves clingingly, owningly, controllingly, selfishly, obsessively. Long dead and gone to heaven, her son is fine, has moved beyond what in life she did to his being; but she is unchanged. If/when she is reunited with him, it will only be after she is perfected such as to be with him unselfishly. I may appreciate that notion as a condition of our theology of eternal life with those we love. However, still and always mindful that believing does not make so.
Here sufficient to disclose myself once and for all a fool, I wonder: if heaven is a spiritual condition involving feelings toward those we have loved on earth, consider that people have different feelings, and those feelings change over the course of life’s time. Suppose heaven for me would be eternal life with someone who doesn’t want to be with me but with someone else? Is God “big enough” to give me a heavenly eternity with that person in one “sphere” and that person a heavenly eternity in another “sphere” with the persons she wants to be with, and never the twain spheres shall meet? Rather boggles the mind, but if God says so, I reckon so. Otherwise, I could be in heaven with someone for whom being with me would not be heaven at all; in which case, might she make my heaven a living hell? Where's that bus stop, C. S. Lewis?
Or does God have other things to worry about? Like keeping the gospel promise, “If in my Name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” John 14:14. Answering my prayers for Brannon. And for William. What is "answered prayer?"
Neither an idiot nor a troublemaker, I simply am not into meekly acquiescing to someone else’s theologizing.
Thus saith the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, "I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." Isaiah 57:15
Thomas+ on dangerously thin ice in +Time