Readings:
2 Kings 2:1-3, 6-14; Romans 12:1-2, 9-18; John 14: 1-12

When I last preached I took a scientific look at faith and belief in God and explained that as a scientist who could not prove the existence of God I have chosen, because it makes sense to me, to believe in the existence of a God who is love. Today I want to take a similar approach to the question of heaven and what happens when we die.

The inspiration for today’s sermon came from an article in the Weekend Australian of 15 and 16 May entitled 'Heaven can wait'. I didn’t actually see it when it came out, but John Lindsay brought it to my attention as something the Z Group might like to discuss. And boy! Did it spark some discussion! So I figured it was clearly an interesting and absorbing issue that we could think about. Here goes.

The Bible talks a lot about heaven – mainly as where God is. And of course, if God is there, we tend to want to be there too, so people throughout the ages have tended to think of Heaven as a place – usually a place in the sky, above the clouds. But with an improved understanding of how the universe is made up it seems there is no 'room' for this sort of Heaven.

So the idea of heaven has changed, to be the nice place we can’t get to yet, but we will go to when we die. A place where we meet up with all our friends and relations and, most importantly, with God.

Of course, the existence of this Heaven, like the existence of God, cannot be proved. The Gospels tell us that Jesus certainly believed in it. 'I go to prepare a place for you' he told his disciples.

And listen to this passage from Mark 12, verses 18 to 27
'Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection [That’s why they’re sad, you see!] came to him and asked him a question, saying 'Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first married and, when he died left no children; and the second married the widow and died leaving no children; and the third likewise; none of the seven left children. Last of all, the woman herself died. In the resurrection whose wife shall she be? For the seven had married her!'

Jesus said to them, 'Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story of the bush, how God said to him, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is the God not of the dead but of the living; you are quite wrong.'

I’m rather glad Jesus clarified the first bit about the brothers. For someone like me who has been married, widowed, and then married again, meeting up in heaven with both my lovely wives would be problematic!

The fact that Jesus believed in heaven and the resurrection may be enough for you, but we scientists would still say, 'That doesn’t prove it.'

Listen to a couple of excerpts from the article in the Weekend Australian. The reporter, Johann Hari is responding to a new book by Lisa Miller, Newsweek’s religion correspondent, titled Heaven: Our enduring fascination with the Afterlife. I should add that I haven’t read or even seen the book, just Hari’s comments. He says:

'In her book Miller stresses that to believe in heaven you have to make 'a leap of faith' – but in what other field of life do we abandon all need for evidence? Why do it in one so crucial to your whole sense of existence? And if you are going to 'leap' beyond proof, why leap to the Christian heaven? Why not convince yourself you are going to live after death in Narnia or Middle Earth, for which there is just as much evidence?'

Hmm! Challenging stuff. He goes on to quote from the 'Epic of Gilgamesh' written in Babylon 4000 years ago, in which Gilgamesh

'travels into the gardens of the gods in an attempt to discover the secret of eternal life. His guide tells him the secret – there is no secret. This is it. This is all we’re going to get. This life. This time. Once. 'Enjoy your life,' the goddess Siduri tells him, 'Love the child that holds you by the hand, and gives your wife pleasure in your embrace.''

Just because that was written 4000 years ago doesn’t make it right either, but it does give us food for thought.

I made the observation to my wife that we pursue with passion the question what will happen after I die, but we seem to ignore the question what happened before I was born. She, being a nurse, was quick to point out that we know what happens before birth! But putting that very practical knowledge aside, it seems reasonable to conclude that if there is some other existence awaiting us after death it is presumably the same existence we came from before we were born.

We’ve had no reports of the Afterlife and although some people speak of re-incarnation, their reported former lives seem limited to this world. There’s no reliable evidence for the ‘Beforebirth’ either!

So, if I can’t know for sure, what should I choose to believe? Again, as was the case with the existence of God it matters. It makes a difference to how I live here and now, and so I can’t choose not to make a decision. I must either live my life as if there is an afterlife, or as if there isn’t.

One of the ways people have thought of the afterlife is as a place where things are evened up. Where the poor and downtrodden have it easy and the rich do it tough. Perhaps where those whose lives were cruelly cut short or marred by disability will get a fair go.

There are numerous examples – the disciples after Jesus' death when they struck persecution spoke of their reward in heaven. But that sort of thinking can be dangerous. Think of those suicide bombers who go to their murderous death dreaming of the orgy of delights that awaits them in heaven as a reward for their deadly deed.

The idea of an afterlife where things are evened up has another danger. For those like you and me who have it rather easier than some it can be an excuse to sit back and leave it to God to make things fair for others. To be so Heavenly minded that we are no earthly use.

For these reasons, putting on my ‘love-coloured glasses’, my recommendation is to sort of 'sit on the fence'. I know that I cannot prove that there is or isn’t some existence beyond what we see and experience here and now, and it makes sense to live life – indeed to live each day – as if that was all I was going to get. Do good now – you might not get the chance tomorrow!

Another way of looking at this was suggested to me by Neville a few weeks ago when he described ‘eternal life’ as ‘a different quality of life, here and now, unaffected by death’. I approached him after the service and asked him what that phrase meant and he said, 'I don’t know!' Well, let me have a go.

The only existence we know is limited by four dimensions, three dimensions of space (up and down, left and right and forward and back) and the dimension of time. We can talk about an existence that is outside these dimensions, but we can’t imagine it because it is beyond our experience. But that is what eternity is – a different sort of existence where time doesn’t exist.

So, for me, eternal life is a life lived as though time doesn’t exist. A life that is not bound by the limitations and mistakes of the past – those are forgiven. And not lived to earn some prize in the future – that is beyond our imagining.

It is a life lived in the here and now. Putting the love of God into action to change this world to a better, fairer place, as Paul advised the Romans. Not leaving it to God to even things out in some hoped-for future existence, but being the hands of God, transforming this world each day, so that it is better than it would have been without us.

By living out the love of God we help make God present in our little corner of the world – and if this is a place where God is, isn’t that Heaven? Amen!