The Company of Heaven

“FOREVER”
Psalm 23
Faith United
November 2, 2008


In October of 2001, I went on a spiritual retreat
at a place called Kirkridge, in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania
I had registered for the retreat before September
because I was already going through some painful things
in my own life

And then September 11th happened

There were about 15-20 of us on that retreat
that was led by a woman named Flora Slosson Wuellner
All of us were still shaken when we gathered that weekend

Have you ever felt completely washed out?
You’ve cried so much, you’re just raw
and shaky, trembly in body and spirit
Physically you barely have the energy to walk
much less face the day
That’s how I arrived at Kirkridge that October weekend
One afternoon, the retreat leader sent us off by ourselves
she instructed us to simply walk
and pray to be open to what glimpses of heaven
God was giving us
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do
and of course I wanted to do it just right
but nonetheless, I ventured off into the woods
on the side of the mountain

In the woods of Pennsylvania,
you often find yourself engulfed in trees
you look up and there is a ceiling of trees
like a natural cathedral
I walked over rocks and logs
deep into the woods
and I came upon a little area
that someone had cleared
There was a big rock
and on the rock were small offerings
a little pile of stones
some beautiful fall leaves
a pine cone
it seemed as if someone had made that rock
an altar, and put on that altar little offerings of beauty
They’d placed a couple of larger stones near the altar
that were arranged as if someone had sat on them
to worship at their primitive altar
I was surrounded by trees
and there was just enough of a break between the branches
above me to allow the sun and blue sky
to appear and shine on me as if a spotlight
Someone had stopped here in the woods
moved by the natural beauty of God’s own cathedral
and built an altar to say thank you
There were many moments like that for me that weekend
moments that served as a balm to my soul
and to others as we all returned and shared our experiences
out there alone with God in the woods

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for thou art with me….”
All of us knew that we’d return on Monday to a harsh world
that was bent on revenge
we knew that the world was about to explode wide open
in the wake of the attacks
but for a moment, we could all find rest for our souls
a balm in Gilead, to refresh us and strengthen us
for the dark valleys we would return to

Times like that for me are times that I feel like
I’m standing on the border between heaven and earth
Times when heaven feels so close you can almost touch it
like you get just a glimpse of the glory
enough to whet your appetite and keep you searching
and believing
no matter what chaos is happening around you
We don’t talk about heaven much
and I don’t even like to use the word heaven
because it has too much baggage with it
I prefer to talk about Eternity
On the side of that mountain amidst the many colors of Pennsylvania
in the fall
the harsh images of the burning trade towers
were just a dark moment in time
and for moments at a time, some of us could see
the Bigger Picture

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
-- and we all knew that much more death was coming….
“I will fear no evil, for thou art with me…”

We don’t talk about Eternity much
except when someone dies
and it’s a matter of life and death, literally
and yet in the Church, all of our rituals point to the hope of eternity
We didn’t talk about death much when I was growing up
it was part of the culture, though,
back East, people can live comfortably in denial of death
Here, in the rural Midwest, life and death is all around you
a part of your everyday lives
in the land, in the livestock, in the crops,
in farm life, and in the unpredictability of the weather
and its impact on your lives
But still, we try not to talk about death much
and so we don’t talk about eternity
unless of course we’re figuring out who goes where in the end

Maybe we don’t talk about it
because even with the good news of eternity
it’s still a major unknown
a vast, mysterious, endless mystery
that we can’t begin to comprehend
but I think if we remembered every day
that we are standing on the border between the now and the not-yet
between earth and heaven
then that might give us some perspective
When we talk of heaven or eternity,
we think of people in white clothes, walking on clouds
with a bright light behind them
Or of course there’s the angels with harps
Maybe even a yellow brick road of pure gold
Hollywood has affected us more than we know…

Jesus didn’t tell us a whole lot about eternity
but I think that’s because he knew we couldn’t understand
how can you describe timelessness to people
bound in time?
How do you express everlasting life
to a people in live in a world haunted and bullied by death?
He told us, ‘don’t worry,’ there is a place for us in God’s eternity
a place especially prepared for you and me
a home like we’ve never known
He basically said, trust me on this
He told the thief on the cross,
“today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Paradise
Eternity
We try not to think about it too much
but when someone we love dies
it becomes imperative that we know something
that we believe
we have to know that our loved ones are ok
that we will see them again
and yet no one can give us definite answers
only glimpses, only poetry
that calls us to believe and trust in something we can’t comprehend

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord …. FOREVER.”
The Hebrew word for Follow actually means “pursue”
goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life
and then I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever….
Goodness and mercy are in pursuit of us
Look at your life
look at times when you can see now,
that love was pursuing you and you didn’t know it
Goodness and mercy in hot pursuit …
and then there are those times where you were caught off guard
and they found you, tackled you, embraced you
I believe those times are times when God
is trying to give us a glimpse of eternity
of the beauty we can know now,
that is only a shadow of what we will know and live forever
Why should we think of eternity now, when we’re healthy or young
or not planning on dying anytime soon?
I think knowing that we are children of eternity
puts perspective on our lives right now

In our communion liturgy, we say,
“And so, with your people on earth,
and all the company of heaven
we praise your name and join their unending hymn…
“Holy, Holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might…”
We’re saying in that, that we are singing God’s praise right now
not only with the people here with us
but with all the company of heaven
and we are joining their unending hymn…
We are singing with the company of heaven…
To be a Christian, is to be a part of the company of heaven
even when our feet are stuck in the mud of earth
This relationship goes on and on and on for all eternity
even now, even when we’re separated by the thin veil
that exists between heaven and earth
To live our lives on that boundary
to remember that we’ve got one foot on earth
and the other foot in eternity
reminds us that whatever we face here
whatever the world is going through
it’s just a moment in history, a small dot in the course of eternity
and that there is no time that we are without the presence of that eternal God

Moving around as much as I have
I don’t have friendships that have spanned a long history of years
except ONE
I’ve known my friend Ed, whom I consider a lifelong mentor,
I’ve known Ed for 28 years now
Ed’s letters are always a gift of grace and have been
since I was a teenager
Several years ago, he ended one of his letters
with the words, “I give thanks for the special relationship
which you, God and I have had for years, and which we will continue
to have into eternity…”
I was struck with those words
and have never forgotten them
and they gave me a new perspective
on the connections we have with one another on this earth
as live in the shadow of eternity
We can literally be friends forever,
when we’re connected through God

I believe our most treasured, beautiful moments of life
are just foretastes, samples, of eternity
foretastes of what it’s like to be blessed forever

In Christianity, heaven is often referred to as a banquet
we do like food, don’t we?
But I think, too, the image of the heavenly banquet
is more an image of the fellowship of all believers
of all God’s precious children
gathered together,
We’ll all speak the same language
whatever heaven-language is…
we’ll all be bound together in love
and grace and mercy, and won’t be broken by differences
or culture or personality
there will be peace that we can’t even begin to comprehend
There are moments, like me finding that altar in the woods
moments when we know for sure that there is MORE
more than we can see, more than we can imagine
and sometimes that more can only be expressed in poetry,
in music, and in art
because mere words are too limited

“I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever…”
is a statement of faith
And of course the details will be fuzzy until we get there
We get so bogged down by reality, but THIS reality
so filled with fear and paranoia
so angry and broken sometimes
that it’s hard to believe in something we can’t see
or understand

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross spent her life and career
studying death and grief
she worked with thousands and thousands of people
who shared their experiences with her
She tells the story of a 12 year old girl who came back
from a near-death experience
she was afraid to tell her parents what a beautiful experience
dying in a car accident was for her
She finally had to talk about it, though
and she told her father how beautiful dying was for her
and how she didn’t want to come back
In fact, she said, not only did she experience light and openheartedness
but she had met someone who said he was her brother
who told her she was going to be just fine
“He loved me so much,” she said, “and loved you and Mom, too..
“How could I have seen someone who said he was my brother
when I don’t have a brother?”
Her father began to cry and told her,
“You did have a brother, but he died before you were born,
we wanted to tell you when you got older.”

Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians,
“Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.”
Willa Cather once wrote:”
“The miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much
upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near
to us from afar,
but upon our perceptions being made finer,
so that for a moment our eyes can see
and our ears can hear what there is about us always…”

Again, I grew up in a place where you never saw death
it was reserved for hospitals
it was always somewhere else
because, really, no one wanted to see it, to face it
But I think that when you walk to the edge of this life with someone
you have the gift of getting a glimpse of eternity
“yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil, for thou art with me….”

I’ve never been so involved in the whole experience of death
as I was with my friend Karen
Usually I’m called in at the last minute
or usually not even called until it’s over
and I have the funeral
Many times it’s someone I don’t know well
Or someone who died suddenly, not knowing it was coming
But Karen and I got to talk a lot
conversations you just don’t have with most people
She wasn’t afraid, and so I was less afraid
She said she knew that God was waiting
Walking through that with her, gave me courage
gave me a whole new perspective on death and eternity
It was like she just had to go somewhere else
she didn’t want to leave any of us
but she learned to accept that she had to
One day, during the last week of her life
She was strangely enthusiastic
She looked out her window at the lake
She marveled at all the gifts that she’d been given in her life
she marveled at her family, her friends, the lake, her home,
She told me about a commercial where a little boy
just threw up his hands and said enthusiastically,
“it’s all beautiful!”
And she said to me, about her own life, “it’s all beautiful…!”
and she smiled

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for thou art with me….”
She could see then, how goodness and mercy had pursued her all her life
and she was grateful
The night she died was the least scary of all the days
I spent with her,
and it was holy
It was ok
I could know in my bones that death wasn’t so bad
and that the connections we make through love
are connections that will never end
relationships that will go on through eternity
just like Ed said
Life and death, birth, all of it is in God’s hands

The day that Abbie Miller was born,
I got to see her before her mother did
Adam and I stood in whatever room that was
where she was laying under the warming lights
and I held her little hand and stroked her arms and face
marveling again at the beauty of new life
and giving thanks that she was born at a time
when we all needed a little new life among us
and for a moment, I got an overwhelming image in my mind
of Karen talking to Abbie before she came to us
and of Karen telling Abbie what wonderful parents
she was going to have
because that’s just something Karen would do…
and because I believe that in eternity there is no time
and what seems like forever to us is just a second in eternity

Today we remember that we are part of the company of heaven
that they are not that faraway
that we stand on the boundary between heaven and earth
and we are holy
and when we sing or weep or laugh or give praise to God
we do it right along with those whom we love
who we can’t see right now
but can trust are tasting the everlasting beauty
and relentless mercy and goodness
that pursues us all
And it’s all beautiful….