Heaven Is Not a Gated Community

Following is the sermon I preached for November 4, 2012, All Saints' Sunday.

Sermon for All Saints’ Sunday

November 4, 2012, Year B

Text:  Revelation 21:1-6a

            In June, late August, September, and October of this year, I lived with my parents in their new home in Apollo Beach, Florida.  Now, there were good things and bad things about this situation.  But one thing that irritated me the entire time I was there was that my parents lived in a gated community.  This gated community was meant exclusively for people who were age 55 and over.  As family of someone who lived in this community, I was allowed to stay with my parents for a certain amount of time, but I could not live there indefinitely.  And, every time I drove my car out of the neighborhood—which, being a young and independent woman, I wanted to do quite frequently—I knew that, when I returned, I would have to announce myself at the gatehouse and get the guard to let me in.  After a while, the regular guards knew who I was and automatically let me in with a wave and a smile.  But, when there was a replacement on duty, he would scrutinize his list, make sure I was on it, sometimes ask to see my ID, and write my license plate number down.  Now, I want to be clear that I’m not faulting him for this.  He took his job seriously, and that’s a good thing.  But, as the days wore on, I really began to feel like I was merely tolerated in this community and not truly welcomed.  And that’s when I began to think about the whole concept of gated communities, and I began to realize that, no matter how beautiful the community is—and where my folks live is well-kept-up and beautiful—the purpose behind them is to keep the “undesirable” people out.  And I was one of those “undesirables”.  That had never happened to me before, and it is an unpleasant feeling.  And as I continued to think about it, I knew that one day, I wanted to preach a sermon entitled “Heaven is not a gated community.”  So, when this Revelation text came up for All Saints’ Sunday, I was very excited.  Here we see John’s vision of heaven, described in absolutely beautiful language, and we know that heaven is not a gated community, but it is a future time and place where all people are welcome, are loved, and are wanted.

            Now, you might be asking yourselves why I think this is important.  Of course, we may say to ourselves, all people are welcome in heaven, loved, and wanted.  It doesn’t matter how old we are, what color our skin is, what our sins are, etc.; as long as we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and are baptized, of course we will go to heaven.  But, wait a second, did you see what just happened there?  We put up gates to the entrance of heaven. 

Let’s tackle the baptism gate first.  Now, I’m not saying that baptism is unimportant—quite the contrary.  I believe that it is, indeed, a sacrament, one in which the Holy Spirit enters into a person, be she infant or adult, and claims that person as one of God’s own and a member of the church.  But, what happens when a person grows up in the Baptist church, as an example, and believes in adult baptism only, but dies before he is baptized?  Is his lack of baptism going to prevent him from entering heaven?  I don’t know the answer to that question, and frankly, I am afraid to make that pronouncement one way or another.  In such cases, I rely on what I know of God—that he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love—and trust that God will care for such a person according to that nature.

Now, what about the “belief in Jesus” gate?  Again, here I want to tread carefully, because I believe that trust in the Lord Jesus is essential for the forgiveness of sins.  But I want to tell you a story about a man from my childhood, whose name was George.  When I was a child, I hated having to try new shoes on in a store, and I would start screaming every time someone tried to make me try on a new pair of shoes.  I don’t know why—this was one of my many strange quirks when I was little, and my mother could tell you a whole bunch of stories about other ones!  George worked at a shoe store in New Britain, Connecticut, where my father was born and had grown up.  George helped my father and uncles stay in shoes, even when my grandparents couldn’t afford to pay for those shoes right away.  On a visit to Connecticut when I was young, my parents brought me to this shoe store for a new pair of shoes, and they warned George about my strange behavior.  He just smiled and said, “Oh, something must have frightened her.”  So, my parents told me to go pick out a new pair of shoes, which I did.  They had me sit down, and George measured my foot and got the right size for me.  When he began to put the shoe on my foot, I screwed up my face and got ready to scream, and George distracted me by pointing to a monkey hanging from the ceiling and saying, “Oh, Tonya, look at the silly monkey.”  And as I was looking, he got the shoe on my foot, and did the same thing for the other one.  He was the first person who could put shoes on my feet without me screaming, and my parents were convinced he would go to heaven simply for that miracle.  The only problem was this:  George was Jewish.  And my parents believed in John 14:6, where Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Trying to reconcile that belief with the gentle and kind person George was, all they could come up with was, “Well, maybe God can carve out a little corner of heaven for George.”

Amy-Jill Levine is Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and she is Jewish.  In her book, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, she offers up her own interpretation of John 14:6.  Since she tells it in story form, I would like to read the story to you directly from her book.     

"After a long and happy life, I find myself at the pearly gates. . .Standing there is St. Peter. This truly is heaven, for finally my academic questions will receive answers. I immediately begin the questions that have been plaguing me for half a century:  'Can you speak Greek? Where did you go when you wandered off in the middle of Acts? How was the incident between you and Paul in Antioch resolved? What happened to your wife?'

Peter looks at me with some bemusement and states, 'Look, lady, I've got a whole line of saved people to process. Pick up your harp and slippers here, and get the wings and halo at the next table. We'll talk after dinner.'

As I float off, I hear, behind me, a man trying to gain Peter's attention. He has located a 'red letter Bible,' which is a text in which the words of Jesus are printed in red letters. . . .The fellow has his Bible open to John 14, and he is frenetically pointing at v. 6: 'Jesus says here, in red letters, that he is the way. I've seen this woman on television. . . .She's not Christian; she's not baptized--she shouldn't be here!'

'Oy,' says Peter, 'another one--wait here.'

He returns a few minutes later with a man about five foot three with dark hair and eyes. I notice immediately that he has holes in his wrists, for when the empire executes an individual, the circumstances of that death cannot be forgotten.

'What is it, my son?' he asks.

The man, obviously nonplussed, sputters, 'I don't mean to be rude, but didn't you say that no one comes to the Father except through you?'

'Well,' responds Jesus, 'John does have me saying this. . . .But if you flip back to the Gospel of Matthew, which does come first in the canon, you'll notice in chapter 25, at the judgment of the sheep and the goats, that I am not interested in those who say 'Lord, Lord,' but in those who do their best to live a righteous life: feeding the hungry, visiting people in prison. . . '

Becoming almost apoplectic, the man interrupts, 'But, but, that's works righteousness. You're saying she's earned her way into heaven?'

'No,' replies Jesus, 'I am not saying that at all. I am  saying that I am the way, not you, not your church, not your reading of John's Gospel, and not the claim of any individual Christian or any particular congregation. I am making the determination, and it is by my grace that anyone gets in, including you. Do you want to argue?'

The last thing I recall seeing, before picking up my heavenly accessories, is Jesus handing the poor man a Kleenex to help get the log out of his eye."  (p. 92-93)

I think Levine’s point is a good one, and one that helps me to understand both the case of the unbaptized person and the person who doesn’t believe in Jesus.  John’s Gospel says elsewhere that Jesus is the gate, and in that sense alone, we could say that heaven is a “gated community”.  But it is not baptism and belief in Jesus that are the gates to heaven.  Jesus himself is the gate to heaven, and Jesus alone determines who is in and who is out.  

Now, if you’ve been listening to me up to this point, you’re probably a bit disturbed by all this.  I’ll be honest with you—I’m still working through the implications of all of this myself.  But one advantage to looking at heaven in this way is that it brings us some comfort.  When a beloved friend or family member dies who either was unbaptized or a nonbeliever, we may be uncertain about their fate, but we can trust in God’s good and merciful nature to take care of that person.   Another advantage to it is this:  because we do not decide who is in and who is out of heaven, but instead Jesus does, it enables us to be merciful and gracious to others who may not share our beliefs.  There was a joke I once heard where St. Peter was taking a new arrival on a tour around heaven.  They came to a closed door, and the person asked, “What’s in there?”  St. Peter said, “Shhh!  Those are the Missouri Synod Lutherans, and they think they’re the only ones up here!”  As ELCA Lutherans, we may have many more ecumenical partnerships than the LCMS, but do we still fall into the trap of thinking that ours is the only right way?  By believing that Jesus is the only one who determines who goes into heaven, we can follow and worship Him in the way in which we best understand our Christian faith, but we can do so with humility and a belief that we as Lutherans will not be the only ones in heaven.  This enables us to share our faith with others in a gentle manner, and not condemn those who do not believe as we do.

We are not heaven’s gatekeepers.  We are not in charge of keeping the “undesirable” people out.  In a society which is more and more polarized, we would do well to remember that.  The image that the lesson from Revelation gives us today is that of a time and a place where God will always be tangibly present with us, and where there will be no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain, and no more death.  All of us will dwell with God.  And, in the words of one of my seminary professors, “All means all.”  We may be surprised at who we will see and who we won’t see.  And while we wait here on earth, we can keep this hopeful vision in our mind’s eye, looking forward to the time when we will be reunited with all of the saints whom we remember today.  With this vision in our heads, and remembering that we are not heaven’s gatekeepers, we can work on showing Jesus’ love to all people, with the hope that we will all be together again with God one day.