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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Fr. J. D. Ousley
11 November 2007Job / Lk. 20“Like Angels”
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
Most of us wonder at some time or another what Heaven will be like.
Naturally, we then might wonder what the Bible says about Heaven. The short answer would be: not a lot!
One intriguing comment from Jesus that we have about the next life is recorded in the Second Lesson we heard today. In the lesson, from the Gospel According to St. Luke, Jesus is asked a kind of trick question.
The question is about a widow. The widow had followed Hebrew custom and married her husband's six brothers, one after the other, in sequence, after each one had died. This question was based on an Old Testament law governing marriage; the law intended to provide a legal heir for a man who died childless.
That this is a artificial question designed to catch Jesus up seems pretty obvious: if, in real life, you were Brother Number Seven, and you had seen your six brothers marry a particular woman and then go on to an early grave — wouldn't you decide that this was an offer you could refuse?
In any case, Jesus is asked which of the brothers would be the woman's husband when all eight people have died. Jesus answers that none of the brothers will be singled out—because there is no marriage in heaven. Because, Jesus says, “we are like angels in heaven.”
The people challenging Jesus were a group of Hebrew scholars who didn't believe there was any life after death; so they were giving an example of why they thought the concept was unbelievable. They couldn't believe in heaven because they couldn't imagine how this life could possibly go on for ever; nor could they foresee how customs that they followed in this life would continue without end.
This is the context to understand Christ's teaching that there will be no marriages in heaven. The institution of marriage in this life is permeated with so many human traditions specific to particular cultures at particular times in history that we would expect our relationships in Heaven could never duplicate all these customs.
But Christ also implies that because Heaven is perfect, it could dispense with many of these practices that societies believed were necessary — for example, to guarantee that heirs be provided for the eldest son in a family.
Yet while we may agree that life in Heaven won't be the same as life on earth — still, it is hard to get excited at the prospect that we will be like angels!
Incarnation's famous stained-glass windows portray lots of angels; I love to look at these pictures. But however much I look at them, I have trouble seeing myself in them. I have a high opinion of myself. Yet even on my most self-satisfied days, I don't see myself as angelic!
I wouldn't mind hearing celestial music; I wouldn't mind the lack of conflict in heaven. But the garments are certainly not to my taste and the general lack of the sort of activities that made life on earth interesting and worthwhile — like marriage, for example — makes me wonder how much I really would enjoy being in Heaven.
Even if I were so transformed by God that I could fit comfortably into the perfect communion of Heaven, the prospect of spending eternity living like an angel doesn't, on first thought, excite me.
Of course, it all depends on what Jesus means by being "like" an angel. We have no record of Christ leaving a detailed philosophical explanation of life after death. If Jesus had made such comments, his disciples, who were uneducated peasants for the most part, probably wouldn't have understood what he was talking about!
But later in the history of the church, educated Christians thought about these matters. And when they reflected, they recalled a line that we heard today from the First Lesson from the Book of Job: "Then in my flesh I shall see God."
"Then in my flesh I shall see God."
This text suggests that Heaven must first and foremost be about "closeness" to God. And this closeness must, I think, somehow include the closeness human beings experience when they are able to encounter each other "in the flesh."
Compare that encounter with all the other means we have of communicating: email and snail mail, telephone calls and video-conferencing, text messaging and inter-office memos — and of course all the places advertisers find to display their messages. Even with the marvelous complexity of these means of communications, we feel closest to other human beings when we are face-to-face.
It is not surprising, then, that when Job hoped to encounter the Messiah as the Messiah came to establish the divine justice, Job expected to be able to see Christ in the tangible, visible form in which human beings perceive each other.
Although his faith was so strong it was like knowledge — "I know that my redeemer lives" — Job still wanted to see his redeemer, face-to-face.
For there is no substitute for meeting someone. If you even have had cause to interview a person — say, a candidate to do some work for you — you will know the unique value of meeting her face-to-face.
You can observe the person's body language, her age, her self-confidence, even her health — all from seeing her "in the flesh." You might pick up some of these qualities in talking with your candidate over the phone or by exchanging email but nothing can substitute for a direct encounter.
No wonder that when we have met someone face-to-face, we say that we have met him "in person." "In person" — that's the gold standard for knowing someone.
So isn't it likely that when we reach heaven, we will have something like this form of contact? Even though after death we may be in some ways like angels, we will still need to communicate like humans in the flesh.
If I'm right about this speculation, some interesting consequences follow for life, right now. First, we are justified when we want to savor the joys of material existence. Instead of worrying about our physical shape or size, for example, we should give thanks for the incarnational pleasures that God has given us.
It's not a sin to be embodied. Life "in the flesh" can even provide us with a foretaste of the life to come.
At the same time, we might be more aware of some aspects of this bodily existence that can sometimes make us miserable. For example, Jesus suggests that in Heaven, we will be free from possessiveness that naturally accompanies the marriage bond.
In the time of the Bible, wives were often regarded as possessions of their husbands — thus, the story turns on the fear that the seven brothers would be fighting in Heaven over who would get the one wife!
But even if our culture is generally free of the idea that wives are possessions of their husbands (I say "generally," because we still see evidence of the old understanding of marriage, as in today's "trophy wives") — still, we can be tempted to try to "possess" people.
We can be tempted to manipulate people to do things for us. We can even manipulate people by trying to get them to accept favors from us — with strings attached.
This is the sort of temptation parents fall into. Parents are commonly said to "have" children. So it's understandable that they sometimes behave as though their children belonged to them. And what could be a better way to reinforce this idea that you own your children than to say to yourself that you are only helping your children when you push them in a direction you approve?
Here, as in Christ's parable, what is in itself a fine principle ends up being distorted. It's a good thing in principle to protect children just as it's good to protect widows, and it's good to guarantee the bloodline of a family, which is what a man does by marrying his brother's widow.
But you can protect widows without making people marry partners whom they don't love. And you can protect children without ruling every moment of their lives. Indeed, Jesus seems to imply that you don't need to get married or have children if you don't want to. After all, our main goal is to serve God's Kingdom in this world so that we can inherit it in the next; marriage may just not be relevant to that goal.
So too we should help our children and others not for our own pleasure, but so they can be happy and fulfilled. We help others without trying to make them into the people we want them to be.
One commentator on Jesus' story says that being "like angels" is really about friendship with God. Professor George Caird writes that "all life, here and hereafter, consists in friendship with God, and nothing less is worthy of the name of life. Abraham was the friend of God, and it is incredible that such a friendship could be severed by death. Death may put an end to physical existence, but not to a relationship that is by nature eternal."
So in God all are alive. Friendship with God is eternal. If we are not angels now, still we can share with angels the free, unpossessive, in-person life of the Spirit. And as we savor this life, we gain a foretaste of Heaven.
And now unto that same God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, power, dominion and praise, now and forever, Amen.