7th February 2010 - "The Vision of Heaven"

Stephen Fielding - St Peter's, Tewin and Ayot St Peter

This morning I would like us to take a fresh look at heaven, to picture heaven as it is given to us in the 4th chapter of the book of Revelation. A fresh look at heaven and a fresh sense of its power and its purpose.

Every day on the radio or on the television we get trailers of programmes that are coming up - so for example this morning as I was driving here I heard a trailer about Desert Island discs later this morning. Or you go to the cinema and you see a trailer of a film and you say to yourself, I'd like to see that or perhaps I don't think I'd like to see that. The trailers give us some idea of what it is we're going to see or hear, and it can be very useful. I don't know if any of you get to the cinema very often but we went to see Bright Star recently, which is a terrific film about Keats that I think we only went to see because my wife had seen a marvellous trailer from the film, and she said ‘that's one for us’. I'm sure you've all got similar experiences. Now, let me ask you a question - What is the trailer for heaven? Have you ever asked yourself that question - what is the trailer for heaven? Well the answer that the Scriptures give us is simple and straightforward. The trailer or the taster or the appetiser for heaven is the Holy Spirit. St Paul calls it an advance payment, a deposit, a first instalment of heaven, and I hope you will agree with me that it is one of the most helpful ways of thinking both of the holy spirit and of heaven - that the one is a taster of the other.

I will come in just a second to the picture of heaven but before I do I think we have to ask ourselves one other question. Heaven or the Kingdom of Heaven has its origins somewhere. Where does God's kingdom, that is heaven, start? What prompts it? What is the trigger for the advent of God's kingdom? It lies does it not, in God's act of reconciliation in Jesus Christ. The death of Jesus is the trigger for the advent of God's kingdom. It begins there but it is not yet complete. Jesus said, ‘when I ascend to my father I will ask him to send the holy spirit’, as an envoy from heaven, as a messenger from God's future world, the first instalment of heaven itself. And you and I stand between the times, in that time and space between the manifestation of God's reconciling grace in the death of Jesus and the final manifestation of God's future kingdom, that is, the coming of heaven.

So we come to the vision of heaven given to us in the wonderful picture painted by St John in the 4th chapter of his Revelation. What happens in this heaven now? It's worth looking at that 4th chapter of the book of Revelation, and I hope you'll do so when you get home as well. First of all we note that the spirit came upon John and he is told ‘what must take place hereafter’ - there is something yet to happen. At the centre of heaven is the one who sits upon the throne, and what goes on there unceasingly day and night is the offering of worship to the one who is holy: they say ‘holy, holy, holy is God, the sovereign Lord of all, who was and is and is to come’. And they all worship him who lives forever and ever. And what happens in this kingdom of heaven is that all those who are there lay their crowns before the throne -  they let their egos go, they lose themselves and they offer worship to the one who is worthy to receive glory and honour and power; and they acknowledge the one who is the author of this perfection. This is a picture of heaven now, Jesus the King of heaven at its centre with all around offering worship to the God most high.

And now what I want to say may surprise you. You may think that the picture given by St John in his Revelation is a picture of the last day with all the redeemed in heaven at last. You may picture it as the place where were all going to end up, as the place of escape from this world with all its trials and tribulations and sorrows and hurts, you may feel that this heaven is the place where we go when we die. But this is not the picture that is given at all. It's not about the place where we're going. It is a picture of present reality; it's a picture of the heavenly dimension of our present life. Heaven is not a future destiny but the ‘hidden dimension of our ordinary life’, as someone has called it, God's dimension, and God’s realm. God has made both Earth and heaven and the time will come when he will remake them and join them together for all eternity.

There is very much more to be said but I want to pick out one more point that may also surprise you. If you fast forward to the 21st chapter of Revelation you find not that the ransomed souls are making their way to a disembodied heaven but rather that the new Jerusalem is coming down from heaven to earth joining the two together in an enduring embrace. This is the scene of the greatest image of new creation in the whole of the Scriptures. It is the image of the marriage of Heaven and Earth. Jerusalem, the new Jerusalem, comes down out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband. It is not then the story of ourselves as Christians going off to heaven to meet our maker in fear and trembling. It is not we who are going to heaven, it is heaven that comes to earth, the new Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem, coming down to earth. It is not that we in our impure human state are going to escape to some better place. It is that heaven will come to earth, it is the final fulfilment of that prayer which we pray every day, ‘thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. It is the final accomplishment of God's great design that the two realms should meet and that heaven is the goal and the sum of it. So heaven and earth are made for one another and when they finally come together it will be a cause of great rejoicing, just as a wedding is, a sign that God’s great plan and purpose is going forward, that love will have the last word in the universe. There will be a new heaven and a new earth replacing the old earth.

What does it call for? I think we must be deeply aware that when we worship here we are trying to capture something of the worship of heaven now, such as we see in the picture of heaven in the 4th chapter of the book of Revelation. We are trying to capture the sense of God in our midst, the Spirit surrounding us, Jesus at the heart of this service, with hearts and minds are lifted to the One who ‘ever lives to make intercession for us’ in the presence of his Father. We are trying, are we not, to create something of the reality of heaven, offering all that we have - our wills, our hearts, our minds, our anxieties, our fears, our sins - to the one who makes all things new. And meanwhile in our private prayer when we pray ‘thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’, we are trying to put ourselves alongside the Spirit who carrying the imprint and trailer of heaven enables us to live as citizens of heaven - enables us to live according to its ways - in which we say ‘less of me and more of you, Lord’.

Amen