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Marsh Hudson-Knapp
FCC Fair Haven UCC
May 12, 2002 Easter – Ascension Sunday
Text: Acts 1:1-14
The Landscape of Heaven and Earth
One opening to the eternal... St. John's holy well, Dingle Peninsula, Ireland
Over the past few months or weeks, many of us in this community have been struck by losses and grief. Dear friends or family members have become ill or died, personal and international tragedies have upset us, and many of us are still processing these losses. How do we deal with death and loss? What sense do we make of our friends dying, of our own death or losses? What is our relationship once our beloved are gone from this world? As I have been watching friends die and caring for others and myself, some diverse experiences and stories have been speaking to me about the Landscape of Heaven and Earth.
It was during World War II while London was being bombed by the Nazis. A young family sent their four children out to the country to stay with their elderly uncle where they hoped the young ones would be safe. One rainy day the children began exploring the old man’s house, playing hide and seek. Lucy, spying a large wardrobe, quietly swung open the doors, pried apart the coats stored within, and pressed toward the back, closing the doors behind her. It became very dark - like the dead of night. Inward she pressed, further and further through the coats... until it began to feel cold! She noticed the sound of crunchy snow beneath her feet and suddenly she found herself standing in a cluster of trees, heading toward open ground where a lamp post stood holding its glowing lamp.
Where was she? Young Lucy had unintentionally entered an completely different world! ...a realm called Narnia… that spiritual world which is right beside us, but which we usually fail to notice.
Have you ever traveled to the spiritual world? Have you wished you could step out of the pressures and pains of this world and into the next? Is there really a spiritual world? If so, how does a person get there?
In Ireland, people talk about thin places. Ever hear of them? At these locations the separation between the physical realm and the spiritual world seem very THIN. At a holy well, for example, or an ancient portal tomb, people who have gone before us, and God himself seem to be only a breath away.
Other times, it seems like some people bring the thin place with them. A long time ago my wife Cindy went to Massachusetts to hear a presentation by Dr. Ken McAll. Dr. McAll was a Christian psychiatrist from Britain. People brought him patients who were suffering from terrible emotional illnesses and no one knew how to help them. Somehow Dr. McAll got an idea that the root of their problem might be within their family tree. It’s a very biblical idea, by the way! So Dr. McAll started talking with family members. He discovered that most of these families had encountered unresolved emotional or spiritual pain, crisises, or losses somewhere in the past: a violent death, a miscarriage, an abortion, an unresolved conflict. McAll got the unique notion that if the family held a communion service and brought the deceased family members to Jesus - then the living might find health as well.
So McAll tried it... and to everyone’s amazement about 20% of the people with INCURABLE illnesses suddenly became remarkably better - even though most of them never even KNEW anyone was doing anything for them! Dr. McAll came to America to tell people this good news and Cindy went there to learn.
It was an amazing event, she told me. Dr. McAll was very elderly at the time, and he had lots of wonderful experiences with families that he wanted to share. He stood at the front of a church hall speaking to the gathered folks and would start to tell one of the wonderful stories of healing. But from time to time -while he was very present physically - he seemed to float away spiritually. Cindy said she could see him there with her eyes, but spiritually his consciousness would shift to the eternal realm for a while. Then he would return and talk some more. Back and forth he went all evening long. It was like he lived partly in heaven with Jesus and the eternal family and partly here on earth.
Does this say anything to us about death and eternity, this world and the other?
After Jesus died, many of his followers encountered him alive again. On one hand they were thrilled beyond words to know that the man who had saved them, who had given their whole life meaning and a center - that he WAS WITH THEM AGAIN! WOW!
On the other hand these folks did not know what to make of this strange reality. Remember one night when the followers of Jesus were all in the Upper Room with the doors locked? Why? Jesus had told them to "Wait," so they did. Yet, they were terrified that someone would come get them and crucify them just like they had killed Jesus!
Locked in that sacred space where they had shared the last supper, they prayed day after day for God to send them the power, the wisdom, his holy presence so they could somehow make their way now that Jesus was gone. They studied God’s word, ate, laughed and cried, and shared their life stories TOGETHER. It was like our recent Deacons’ retreat. That’s what Jesus told them to do. STAY together! Then I will send the Spirit.
Jesus knew that his followers would be destroyed alone - just like a lost sheep isolated in the dark of night in the wilderness would be eaten by the wolves. The same thing happens when you and I get isolated. But together they and we grow, heal, learn, and find strength.
Was that a "thin" place, that Upper Room?
Suddenly one day Jesus appeared among them. It happened a couple of times. They wondered, "Is he a ghost?" But he asked for fish and ate it! "He is here!"
Then after forty days of visits, Jesus came to them one more time. He gave them a calling, a purpose. Remember what it is? "You are to be my witnesses, right here where you are, all around our country, and then to the ends of the earth." Those grieving men and women (like us) needed that - a clear reason to keep living without him, a focus for their life. And Jesus needed them - and us- to pass on the news of Jesus, of heaven and earth!
So, after forty days of visits with Jesus, right before their very eyes, what happens? Jesus is lifted up! Into a cloud he disappears and he is GONE! The disciples stand there in shock... staring. Suddenly two men in white appear with them. "Why are you staring into the sky? Jesus has been taken from you to heaven."
All of this sort of reminds me of my experiences at times in recent weeks, and what I sense from others going through their losses. From time to time we find ourselves in shock, just staring. Been there? Then it seems like God sends a message. "Wake up! They are gone!"
I came into the church one day recently and looked up to the organ expecting to see Joan Bletz, our recently deceased organist there at the bench. But she is gone! I think of calling her to talk about an anthem... and she is gone.
For me, Joan’s death was both sad, beautiful, and perplexing. From the time Joan knew death was coming, she asked God for healing because she cherished life and believed in miracles. But as she sensed death coming she leaned into the reality of dying. She focused on wrapping up loose ends and caring for her chicks: those in her family and in her church. She savored the visits and memories of friends, the unceasing companionship of family members who stayed at her side for weeks, and experiences being with family members who are already in eternity. She had a sense of continuity, being with us here and being with family there. Sitting at her side holding her hand among those moments was a precious blessing for me. It felt like we were in one of those thin places. Heaven is right HERE, and yet not quite.
In the world of art and religion there is a shape called the mandorla. It is the space formed when two circles or two spheres overlap. It has always been seen as a HOLY space. When you look at traditional depictions of saints or spiritual people like Mary or Jesus, they are often shown within a mandorla, in that space created by the overlap of two spheres - heaven and earth. I wonder if we are called to deepen our attentiveness to such spaces.
I feel like I’m in one of those places when we celebrate communion and I’m holding the communion chalice. In one sense I hold within that container the fruits of love and labor from the earth. It’s so precious to hold grape juice made from our own biblical garden by the children and nurturing adults in our church family. AND at the same time it IS the blood of Christ. Within my weak, dirty, sinful hands I am privileged to hold the cup of the blood of CHRIST. There is no doubt in my mind that he is pouring out his power and love, his life, death and resurrection power for us.
Many times when Joan would play the Lost Chord on the organ and we’d be gathered around the communion table I’d sense an invasion, an army of folks from heaven coming here to cheer for us here, to cry for us, to intercede for us, just like they did when they lived among us on earth.
What is the landscape of heaven and earth? On one hand, death for me feels very final. I held my dog Sarah Bee-Go in my arms when Dr. Icken put her to sleep fifteen years ago. I never expected to feel life leave her, but I did. I knew like never before what dead weight meant. Her body became extremely heavy, and she was gone. Each of us, at times when we lose someone we love, is HIT by this powerful reality of death.
AND yet... do heaven - eternity also remain as close to us as breathing? Is that why God speaks to us through the angels like the ones who confronted the disciple at the ascension? "HEY! Why are you standing there staring into heaven? Jesus is gone... but you will see him again!" Christians live in a HOPE that is more than wishful thinking. We’ve seen the victory of God over death in the rising of Jesus. I love those words from the Bible, "You havve sorrow now," saidJesus, "But I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and NO ONE will take that joy from you!" Through his grace Jesus continues to give us a touch, a taste, a vision of heaven right here on earth.
Sometimes it almost seems like God calls agents to keep us connected. Years ago I read an article by the pastor of a Metropolitan Community Church pastor in San Francisco. He told how many of that church’s members are gay and how the AIDS epidemic was sweeping through that community like the plague. A constant stream of church members were languishing and dying with AIDS. Beloved friends and family members of those who had died were grieving among the survivors. And the connection to the eternal family was so fresh and continually renewed by deaths that it created a powerful experience of the blending of heaven and earth, eternal and now. The church membership seemed very much in heaven and on earth.
I’ve begun to feel that way myself recently, with so many precious people going to their eternal home in the father’s house. That sense is making my experience of this world seem more and more HOLY. God IS here. Eternal life is not limited to the end of this life. It is ALREADY in us as we connect in the deepest ways we know to earth and to heaven. That sense gives me a tremendous peace in the face of death, an overwhelming joy in the knowledge of the closeness of those in heaven, and the closeness we are so privileged to experience in this church family.
When my son Moses was little we used to watch He-Man cartoon adventures. Occasionally the heroes would come to a portal and they would step through that opening and find themselves in a completely different realm, a different time and space. After their period of adventure they would return. Is heaven that close to US? ...just through the veil as the old phrase suggests?
Have you ever sensed the closeness of eternity? Is there a way to live - like Dr. McAll, like Jesus, like Joan Bletz, like that church in San Francisco, with one foot in heaven and one on earth? If there is, neither life nor death is all that frightening, is it? And... both God and the saints of our eternal family are never far away. Can you begin to sense the landscape of heaven and earth?
Story about Lucy is adapted from C.S.Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
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