Minister: Marv Vose
Luke 16:19-31
This is a true story! Some of you have actually asked if my stories are true. And the answer is that all of my stories are true. Some have happened and some haven't happened, but they are always true. This one happens to be true and happened, too. It's from a friend, Brian Bauknight.
There was a man in his church who did lots of volunteer work. One day this fellow was asked by the pastor if he would repair some bad wiring up in the ceiling of the church's sanctuary. And the man said he would, but his wife was very concerned about him doing it because the ceiling was way up there in the air, so she decided that she would go along with him to make sure nothing happened. She sat down in one of the pews as he made his way up to the top. And then when he got up there, he had to lie down on his belly and scoot along in the tiny crawl space in order to get over to where the bad wiring was. All the while his wife just sat there and kept looking up.
Well, unknown to her, as she sat there in the sanctuary, some people gathered in the rear of the church. As they looked in, they saw the woman there all by herself looking up to the ceiling. And so they didn't say a word because they presumed that she was in the middle of a prayer. But then a funny thing happened.
As they were standing there quietly and as the woman was looking up, all of a sudden they heard her say in a rather loud voice, "Are you all right up there?' and can't you imagine how spooky it was when, they heard a voice from above say, "Yes, dear, I made I up here just fine!"
We like to joke about those things, don't we? Did you see the comic in last Sunday's magazine? There is a person standing before St. Peter at the Pearly Gates and St. Peter is saying, "Sure, all doctors get in...eventually. Have a seat, and I'll call you." Did you hear the one about the HMO executive who went to heaven? St. Peter asked why he should be allowed into heaven. And the executive replied, "I helped reduce the cost of health care." So St. Peter said, "OK. ... You get to stay three days!" We like to joke about those things that make us nervous. We end up joking about the things that are most serious and ultimately important. So it's good that we joke about heaven and the next life. It's important!
Last week we talked about eternity. Do we really get eternity? If you missed that, you can go to the website and read or listen to that message. It really forms the basis for what we are talking about today. We ended last week by asking, "Will we really like eternity?" Good question isn't it. Eternity is going to last a long time. We really want to like it! But will we?
That was the question put to Dr. Norman Vincent Peale by Lord Thompson of Fleet. After he was assured that there was another life after this one, he wanted to know if he would like it. Dr. Peale replied without hesitation. "Of course, for it will be exciting." Lord Thomson asked with a grin, "What will I do there?" Peale replied, "Perhaps buy and sell newspapers!" And everyone laughed. We like that answer, don't we? But it is only for Lord Thompson. That may or may not be the answer for each of us.
In fact, if you were listening to the scripture I read today, it was clear that not everyone will like the next life. The crippled beggar was having an absolutely grand time, but the rich guy was positively miserable! So we have two options. One option we are going to like. The other option we aren't going to like a bit!
I'm not really very good at imaging the next life. Most of us aren't! It is just too hard. How do we get outside this world we know and try to comprehend a whole new existence? It is hard!
We know it can be unspeakably grand. The apostle Paul quotes from Isaiah when he says, "What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived-these things God has prepared for those who love him." (I Cor. 2:9, Isaiah 64:4). We get a few Biblical hints, but these only serve to confuse rather than clarify. Last week we heard Jesus say that we would be like angels and that we would not marry in Heaven. Paul talks about us having a "spiritual body," whatever that is. Remember on Easter morning Mary didn't recognize Jesus. She looked at him, but she didn't know who it was until after he had spoken her name. And those two who walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus didn't recognize him until he broke the bread. Then they knew who it was. But Thomas was able to touch Jesus' wounds. And he cooked fish and ate it! Life like that simply doesn't fit with our understanding of this world. I actually wonder if our next life is life in different dimensions. Or life in lots of different dimensions. We are so limited. We have three, maybe 4,dimensions. We all recognize up and down. We know what it is to go sideways and there is depth. Time might well be that fourth dimension. But what would another one look like? What would another dimension be? How would we fit it in? What if we moved into a situation with 27 different dimensions? What would that be like? Some scientists suggest that there are an infinite number of dimensions. How is that for expanding your mind? All of that is simply a way of saying that whatever we say about the next life is so basic and rudimentary; it doesn't get us very far. And maybe that is OK. But we still know there are two options. One is really good and the other one isn't! I'm not very good at imagining how grand heaven must be. Most of us aren't. We use terrible images! We talk about angels and clouds and harps. How dull! We talk about the crippled beggar ascending to the bosom of Abraham. Who is Abraham and is that a good place to be or not? We don't understand it, but to be with Abraham was to be in the place of greatest joy! It was a place of incredible bliss. But we don't understand that. And the clouds and harps are meant to convey this sense of peace and contentment but for most of us we don't connect well with harps!
So it is necessary for us to use our imagination, know that our imagination is going to fall short, but it begins to point us in a direction that possibly gives us a glimpse of what heaven might be like. Anthony DeStefano wrote a book entitled A Travel Guide to Heaven." He suggests that if heaven is anything, it is "fun. It's a place of unlimited pleasure, unlimited happiness and unlimited joy." DeStafano tries to imagine what a tour of heaven would be like. He imagines a private jet, a limousine to a four-star hotel and a room full of amenities. He reasons that if you will do that for a first-class family vacation, what would God do? Makes some sense, doesn't it? Peter Kreeft struggled with the subject in his book, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven...But Never Dreamed of Asking! He talks about us as people and this is what he says. "It is as if earthly squares become heavenly cubes; earthly triangles, heavenly pyramids; earthly circles, heavenly spheres. The shape into which we shape ourselves now is the shape of our eternal selves; only the dimension is changed." Does that make any sense? One time my daughter asked me about heaven. She was only about four at the time and I was having a difficult time. So I tried to think of an explanation that she would understand. Finally, I said, Heaven is where everything is delicious. You can eat anything you can touch. The houses are made out of gingerbread with icing on the roof. The fences and the trees are delicious to eat--all you can eat--everything! She seemed to understand and she liked that idea of heaven. Maybe she liked it too much, because the next day she said she was ready to go!
And that may be why the Bible doesn't tell us too much about heaven. We might want to go before we accomplish those things here that are necessary for our eternity. There are some things we need to do.
It is hard to imagine what Heaven is like. And we don't want to imagine what Hell is like! Just look at this scripture. Look at the words used to describe Hell." Torment...cool my tongue...I am in agony in this fire...agony...place of torment." Is that enough? Does that tell you more than you want to know? It is vivid enough for me!
And now amplify it. Remember what Kreeft said about adding an extra dimension? Take the agony and pain and extrapolate it to another dimension. Take the square and expand it to a cube. Or maybe it is our human personality. And if we don't like ourselves the way we are, can you imagine the pain of extrapolating ourselves to a whole new, grander dimension? It gets ugly in a hurry doesn't it?
And maybe it is more about who we are than our surroundings. Have you heard that old story about heaven and hell being so similar? A man had a dream and he was transported into the next life. First he was escorted to Hell and it was an awful place! Absolutely awful! Every one was in a foul mood, because they were starving to death. And just to make matters worse they were in this immense banquet hall, with a huge banquet table laden with food, but no one could eat it, because of this Divine trick. God had affixed a fork to the end of each of their hands and the fork was so long that they couldn't put any food in their mouth. No matter how hard they tried, the fork was simply too long. Got the picture? People were furious! And starving. And then the man was transported to heaven. Amazingly enough, the setting looked identical. It was a huge banquet room and in the center of it was a huge banquet table, laden with all kinds of delicious food. But the people were totally different. They were smiling and talking and having an absolutely grand time. All of then had the identical forks affixed to their hands, but there was one difference. In heaven, they were willing to feed each other! We may have a hard time imagining what Heaven and hell are like, butut is clear from scripture that the way we live in this life impacts the next. That's what this story of Lazarus and the rich man is all about. Our life here and now impacts the life for eternity. Did you notice that we never find out what happens to the five brothers? Lazarus becomes somewhat charitable. He wants to have Lazarus go and tell his brothers. We know that's not going to happen, but we never know if they figure it out. That's the question that is left with us. Do we figure it out? Do we begin to understand what we need to do in this life to make the key differences in the next life?
I don't think it is that hard. After all, a crippled beggar was able to do it. This scripture doesn't tell us what he did, but somehow he did it. So it can't be too tough.
My Uncle Albert was born retarded. That's what they called it in his day. Today we would say that he was mentally handicapped or challenged, but it his day, the language wasn't as charitable. And some of the people weren't so charitable either. When he was a little boy, he was often the object of other people's jokes. They would make fun of him. When he got older and could do some work, he was often cheated out of his wages. Eventually, because he couldn't take care of himself, he was placed in an institution and lived there very happily. He was always smiling. Always happy. A little church in that town kind of adopted him and they would drive him to church services and he loved it.
As he got older, he got more and more frail and weaker and weaker. Then he was bedridden. For the last couple of weeks of his life, he was so weak that he couldn't even sit up in his bed. My mother was there with him. She said that one evening, he sat bolt upright in bed and got this beautiful smile on his face and then he lay down and breathed his last. Wouldn't you love to know what he saw? I would. I tell you that story because if my Uncle can get ready for the next life, all of us can.
What did Lazarus do to ascend to the bosom of Abraham? What do we do? That's the real question now, isn't it? Would you like to know the answer to that? Good! Come back next week and we'll talk about it!