Heaven Can’t Wait

"Since you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above…." It’s easy for this morning’s second reading to slip by almost unnoticed. It’s tucked in between Peter’s powerful sermon from Acts and the awesome Easter story in the Gospel. The reading from Colossians is short. It comes to us out of context, just passing words. But listen to those words again: "Since you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is."

I gather that there have been several movies issued under the title Heaven Can Wait. The one I vaguely remember came out in the late 70’s and starred Warren Beatty. I never actually saw it, but I remember the advertisements featuring a picture of Beatty wearing athletic sweats and sprouting big feathered angel wings. An earlier movie from the 40’s, was also titled Heaven Can Wait. While Googling, I was reminded that the well-known recording artist Meatloaf (who will forever be associated in my mind with one of my college roommates) also issued an album and title track entitled Heaven Can Wait.

Heaven can wait. In all of these examples, whether or not you are familiar with them, you can imagine what the basic story line is. Heaven can wait because we are not ready for heaven yet. It isn’t our time. Heaven will wait because we plan to stay right here on earth. Not there, but here. We still have things to do. We have living still to do before we are ready for heaven. Heaven can wait.

I have some vague idea that Warren Beatty’s character had to make it to the Super Bowl before he would be ready for heaven. Or the Final Four. First things first.

But, seriously, all of us have unfulfilled dreams, unresolved issues, unfinished business… things to which we are committed here in this life, on this earth. Heaven can wait until we get the last child through college, until a conflicted family relationship is resolved, or (heaven help us) until a sister or brother or son or mother comes home from Iraq. Heaven can wait until we actually take that long-planned trip to the Grand Canyon.  Heaven can wait until I’ve answered that nagging desire to really somehow find myself, to figure out what it really is I’m supposed to be doing with this life on earth, or at least until I’ve had the opportunity to make peace with everyone I have wronged in my life. The list could go on and on. Each of you could make your own list. Heaven can wait. There is so much here on earth, so much important, valuable stuff, here on earth that I still need to do. Oh, I hope heaven can wait.

But heaven can’t wait. We may think we want to wait before we experience heaven, before we go to heaven, but heaven can’t wait to come to us. Like a young child who just can’t keep a wonderful secret, but blurts it out too soon, heaven just can’t wait until we’re ready to come to it. God is too eager. Heaven can’t wait. Heaven comes to us today. In the midst of life on this earth, heaven comes to us.

Last night at the Easter Vigil, we heard the Exsultet, an ancient and glorious Easter hymn sung as the light of the Christ candle is brought into our midst. "This is the night when you [God] brought our ancestors, the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt… This is the night when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin… This is the night when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell… How holy is this night when wickedness is put to flight… How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined." How blessed is this night when earth and heaven are joined. Heaven just couldn’t wait. Last night heaven and earth were joined.

Or if you weren’t there and don’t want to take my word for it, remember the words of one the classic Easter morning hymns, "Welcome happy morning, age to age shall say: hell today is vanquished, heaven is won today!" Heaven is won today.  Not that we won it, of course, but Christ won heaven for us today, and just couldn’t wait to pass it on. Now, in the very middle of this earthly life. "Since we have been raised with Christ, we may seek the things that are above, where Christ is." We may seek the things of heaven. Today, on this day of resurrection.

Last night I quoted John Donne. Some people would say he wrote some of the richest, purest love poetry in English. Those weren’t the bits I quoted last night, but it reminds me of a definition of true love that I learned, not from Donne or Shakespeare or Lord Byron, but in a theology textbook. True love is love that always seeks the best for the other person. True love, God’s love, is the "spontaneous, outgoing, total concern for the well-being of…" us. True love finds its joy, its fulfillment, in the well being of the other. To be the recipients of such love from God is to be in heaven.

God's true love.  Spontaneous, out-going, totally concerned with our well being. God’s love for us. God’s love for us is spontaneous. Instantaneous. In any and every instant of our lives God’s love is there before we even have time to think about it. Out-going. Going out from God to us. We do not have to look for God’s love or ask for it or wait for it or journey to heaven to experience it. God’s love comes to us. And it is total. God’s love for us seeks our well being in all the cares and joys of our daily lives. To be loved in such a way changes the color of every activity in our human, earthly lives. Such love is an anchor in times of confusion or tumult; it is a source of peace and strength in the face of hardship and evil; and perhaps most wondrously, it brings to the good places of our lives an added richness of joy and blessing that is beyond human imagining. God’s true love. All of the fullness of heaven continually poured out for our well being.

We do not have to wait until we get to heaven to be surrounded by this love. Heaven can’t wait, and in the midst of our lives on earth, heaven comes to us. The fullness of God’s love comes to us on this glorious day of resurrection. Alleluia.

Sermon Index
Comments are welcome.  Send to krisorr@att.net