Only One Foot in Heaven

Text: Revelation 7:9-17
Other texts: Matthew 5:1-12

If you were looking for a book in the Bible that talked about the other world you might decide to turn your Bible over and open it at the back and look at Revelation.

This strange book is unloved by many, including Martin Luther, who felt it had no place in the Bible. He thought it should have been left off the list when they were choosing which books were in and which were out. The book of Revelation has been used and abused from its beginning. It is an example of apocalyptic literature. In fact, the word “apocalypse” is just the name of the book in Greek. It means “things revealed.” The word does not mean the end of the world.

Though on the face of it the book seems to be about that. It is full of weird images and symbols and creatures and violence. Revelation has been used by those who hope for the destruction of the earthly life and for the establishment of another kind of life in another kind of place. A story of escape from the sorrows of this life into a heavenly life. Or escape from its sins. They hope to be part of the elect who make it and not part of those left behind.

It is certainly likely that the community to whom this book was first addressed had plenty of sorrows to contend with. They lived in the empire of Rome under Roman rule. They were an occupied people, with little control over their own lives, powerless, and seeing no hopeful horizon ahead. In times like these, people imagine a radical change, divine destruction of their enemies, and a restoration of both peace and power to the good and the righteous.

But it is not so much the end of the world that such people long for as it is the end of the age. The end of the evil times and a restoration of the times as they were intended to be. A return to ideal and so far unachieved good times. So you might consider the story of Revelation not to be the story of ruin of the world but a restart after a seemingly failed first attempt. A re-doing, not an un-doing.

There is a tension in our lives between wishing for a better present or longing to escape the present. Do we stick with the bad or do we flee? Stay in or get out? Do we work from within or resign? Do we make do with what we have been dealt or do we re-deal, or do we leave the table altogether? When we talk about the coming kingdom of God, do we hope in our hearts most for the good life on earth or the good life in heaven? What exactly is God’s promise? To save us out of our lives someday or to strengthen and bring joy to our lives this day?

This passage from Revelation that we just heard starts with praise and worship of God seated on the throne. “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to God forever.” You are not mistaken if you think that these words resemble the Gloria that we sang at the beginning of worship today. It is not a coincidence. The words of our worship that honor and thank God and acknowledge God as the source of all things often come from the Book of Revelation. So we start, in worship as in this reading, as in perhaps our own spiritual lives, with a glance, a bow, a thank you, to God. We start with the ineffable, with a sense of mystery and grandeur, with gratitude at what we have been given, and with humility.

But the last part of this same passage turns the worshippers’ attention back to the things of this life. The Lamb who sits at the center of the throne, always interpreted as Jesus, looks after the sorrows and trials of us, his people. In the Gloria, we end with Jesus’ presence here with us. “For God has come to dwell with us,” we say. God is with us here, here where as it says in Revelation, here where there is hunger, thirst, and scorching heat. Here in this world the Lamb guides us to springs of water and wipes away our tears. At the end of Revelation the people come to a new city, the New Jerusalem. The book of Revelation ends not with all the world being taken up into some heavenly castle, but gathered instead in a new place into which God has been restored and re-seated as sovereign.

The list of blessings or beatitudes—same word—appear in both the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. But in Matthew, whose version we just heard, the earthly is qualified constantly by the heavenly. What appears in Luke as “blessed are the poor” becomes “blessed are the poor in spirit.” “Blessed are the hungry” becomes “blessed who hunger for righteousness.” And so forth. I used to disdain the Matthew version, thinking that it spiritualized the physical. But now it seems to me that together these two versions—the physical and spiritual—describe our nearly equal needs for both physical and spiritual food, peace, and companionship. You cannot bless one without the other.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, of which we are a part, has a motto. It says: God’s work. Our hands. We cannot leave the work of the world to God, sitting on our couches waiting for the dramatic end, nor can we do the work ourselves, trusting in our own abilities and goodness. Faith, this church, has a motto too. It appears on our website and in the literature we send out. It says: Spirit, Joy, Reverence, Service. There is no way to separate out the life of the spirit from the life in the world. The life of worship from the life of service. God knows, we are physical and spiritual creatures. God constantly call us back into real life from our fantastic visions of escape.

All Saints day used to honor only the Christian martyrs. Then about 1200 years ago it was changed to honor all the official Saints. And then later to honor all the Christian dead. Yet on this day we honor all who come to worship and to serve the Lord. Not to flee from the world but to serve it. Martin Luther reminded us that we are saints and sinners both. Both sinners and saints at the same time.

Here we stand. With one foot in heaven and one foot on earth. Thanks be to God.