2-16-2020 “Our Hope in Heaven” Sixth Sunday After Epiphany

Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

Next Sunday, we will reflect upon the Transfiguration of Jesus. Three days later, we will enter the season of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Then, we will walk the penitential path of deep spiritual reflection and formation for forty days. So, this really is the last Sunday of Epiphany. It sounds strange when you frame it this way. Christmas seemed like so long ago, not to mention the visit of the Magi! Yet here we are in a sort of in-between time. (Don’t start singing that Peggy Lee song “Ain’t We Got Fun.”)

This is one of those days when the Revised Common Lectionary’s Gospel Lesson does not quite resonate with me. I don’t want to talk about murder, adultery, divorce, or taking oaths today, which is the focus of Matthew 5:21-37. Instead, I draw your attention to a couple other readings that I selected for today: Ezekiel 28:24-26 and John 14:2-4. These passages point to something else, something that lies as the telos (that’s a Greek word meaning “end” or “goal”) something that lies as the telos of our faith: where we go when we die.

We’ve been talking about this at length in our Tuesday evening Bible Study. We’ve been reading and discussing Dr. Eben Alexander’s book Proof of Heaven for over a month. For those of you unfamiliar with his story, Dr. Alexander worked for twenty-five years as an academic neurosurgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, Duke University Medical Center, the Dana-Faber Cancer Institute, and Harvard Medical School. In other words, he’s no slouch. As a celebrated neurosurgeon, he knew what was happening with his brain. He knew all about the brain’s anatomy and physiology.

Dr. Alexander somehow contracted bacterial meningitis and was in a coma for a whole week. He experienced a profound near death experience. As a result, he has dedicated the rest of his life to trying to describe what happened to him.

A continual refrain throughout the book is Dr. Alexander’s confession that words cannot possibly capture how incredible this experience was. As a neurosurgeon, he knew that his brain was completely cut-off; in other words, his brain wasn’t playing tricks on him. He knew that what he was experiencing was real — more real, he claims, than life as we know it. He says that the colors and sounds were incredibly brilliant and were beyond description. There are no words to convey what he experienced. It is more accurate to say that he felt what we see and hear.

Furthermore, the threefold message he received over and over again was equally clear:

You are loved and cherished.
You have nothing to fear.
There is nothing you can do wrong.

Eben Alexander is not the first person to have a near death experience. His popularity is due to both the way he describes what he experienced and the fact that he is a man of science — and scientists are usually the first to reject such supernatural claims. Dr. Alexander has written a few other books, but all of them are related to the experience he catalogues in Proof of Heaven.

People are drawn to stories like this, because they want them to be true: they want there to be an afterlife — a place where we will go after we die and be reunited with our loved ones. Some say that this is wishful thinking, which is how they refute such stories. But the fact of the matter is this: there is either life after death or there isn’t. What you personally think about the possibility does not make it true or untrue. But the question remains: is there an afterlife, as many of us hope?

First of all, I find time and time again that science and religion support one another contrary to what hard-nosed scientists and religious fundamentalists claim. Science and religion ask different questions. Science asks how and is interested in the physical. Religion asks why and is interested in the spiritual. Asking how and why, and seeking to better understand the physical as well as the spiritual, do we not get a fuller picture of the God who created us out of nothing? Science and religion need to see themselves as coinvestigators, not spiteful combatants. You can be a person of faith as well as a person who reveres science. Eben Alexander proves this, giving us a glimpse beyond the physical into the metaphysical.

Second, and more important: regardless of what science says, look deep into your heart and within the pages of Scripture. The passages we read for today speak of a promise that is ours: eternal life, God’s heavenly realm. In the passage that Pam read from Ezekiel a moment ago, the prophet confirms God’s promise to Israel — that they will receive the Promised Land. Granted, the Promised Land is a physical place (an earthly home), but it represents the ethereal land that the sons and daughters of Jacob will inherit. In other words, the Promised Land reflects the Kingdom of God.

And then we have the reading from John’s Gospel. This passage is often read at funerals. Some translations (such as the New International Version of the Bible, which is in our pews) read, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms.” Others (such as the King James Version) says “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” The promise is that there is a place in Heaven reserved for each of us. If Heaven wasn’t part of what awaits us, why would Jesus make this promise? The skeptic could come up with a motive: it would give him more followers. Who wouldn’t want such a promise!

We need to remember something that C.S. Lewis once said. If Jesus wasn’t who he said he was, then he was either a liar or a madman. It’s one of the three: Lord, liar, or lunatic. If he really thought he was the Messiah and wasn’t, then he would be crazy. If he claimed he was the Messiah and knew he wasn’t, then he was the biggest bluffer that ever lived. If we dismiss these two possibilities — because neither of them seems true based on the biblical narrative — then he was who he said he was: the Son of God, God Incarnate. Furthermore, his promises are true. Heaven is real. It is the life everlasting that we will inherit when we leave this life.

The belief in Heaven lies at the heart of our faith. Yes, we believe in Jesus, that he is the Messiah, and that he rose from the dead — but all of this points to the reality of the Kingdom of God. The Apostle Paul may have put it best in 1 Corinthians 15. In that lengthy chapter, he defends the resurrection as being central to our faith. But it isn’t just believing that Christ rose from the dead. Paul writes about our eternal life as well: “if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.”

Our faith is not in vain — and either are the promises of Christ. Eben Alexander refers to Heaven as the ultra-real, where everything is far more real, far more vivid than this life. Like that hit song from Mercy Me declares (the song we’ve sung here before): “I can only imagine what it will be like.” We can imagine it. We can believe in it. And we can celebrate the hope that is surely ours. Amen.