I had a friend in college who was visited one night by a couple of evangelical Christians. I think many of us were visited one night in college by a couple of evangelical Christians. They kept pestering him to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. They kept badgering him, “Don’t you want to get to heaven? Don’t you want to get to heaven? Don’t you want to get to heaven?” Finally he said, “Will you guys be there?” They said, “Well, yes, we will.” He said, “Then, well no,” he didn’t want to get to heaven.
Does heaven exist? If heaven exists, what is heaven like? Is heaven somewhere over the rainbow? Does God exist? If God exists, is God a white-bearded man sitting on a cloud someplace in heaven? Where is heaven? Is it out among the stars? Is it on Neptune? Where is heaven? What will heaven be like for us?
I heard a preacher say once that in heaven we’ll have the body we had when we were eighteen. But I’ve heard others say, “No, we won’t have that, we’ll be disembodied spirits.” I guess we’ll kind of be like Casper the friendly ghost in heaven.
I like to watch the Oscars, and the Emmys and the Grammies, all the awards shows really, and you always hear about the after party. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going to this after party and Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes will go to that after party. Is heaven the after party of life?
I’ve heard Christians say that heaven will be one eternal worship service, where we’ll all sing praise hymns to God. But I know people who don’t even like to go to church for one hour a week. To have heaven be an eternal church service with praise hymns to God, that wouldn’t be heaven for those folks; that would be hell. Now I don’t know anybody in this congregation who believes in hell. Except me. I believe in hell whenever I’m opening a CD. I believe that there’s got to be a special place in hell for whoever created packaging for CDs.
Steve Jobs died a few months ago. Steve Jobs was a genius, of course. Brilliant! Created Apple Computers. If it wasn’t for Steve Jobs, I don’t think I’d ever use a computer. I can’t really use a PC; I’d rather type on my grandmother’s old Royal black typewriter. But I can use an Apple, my Macbook Pro. He created ipads and ipods and iphones. He’s been called the Thomas Edison of his day. But I think people have that backwards. I think that Thomas Edison was the Steve Jobs of his day. I think if Steve Jobs had lived, ten years from now he would have created a flying car.
Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few years ago. His doctors wanted to immediately operate, to cut out the cancer. But he wanted to try to cure himself, so he ate lots of fruits and vegetables, and whole foods. And then he went back to the doctors nine months later. The cancer had grown and spread. They got rid of it then. Some say that if the doctors had operated when they had originally wanted to, Steve Jobs might be alive today. We don’t know.
A few years ago, after he knew he had cancer, he gave the commencement address at Stanford University. He said these fine words, “Your time is limited; so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve tried to do that over my life. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be Bret Maverick, the James Garner character in the old Maverick series. Then when I was a little older, I wanted to grow up to be Jim Rockford, the James Garner character in the old Rockford Files series. (I think there’s a pattern here.) But now I humbly submit, I kind of like being…me. I hope you like being you. I just want to be the best me that I can be. I hope you want to be the best you that you can be. I think Steve Jobs was the best Steve Jobs that he could be.
At his memorial service, his sister, Mona Simpson, an author, described Steve Jobs last moments. She said he looked at his loved ones. Then he looked past his loved ones in the distance and said, “OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.” What was that? What did he see, if anything? Did he see heaven?
I sometimes get the feeling that if I could reach out just beyond my grasp I could kind of split open the real world and see the spiritual world. If I could just reach a little farther. That sounds a little crazy, I know, but is that what Steve Jobs saw? Did he see beyond the real world into the spiritual world? Did he see what the Nicene Creed calls (and I don’t usually quote the Nicene Creed), but did he see what the Nicene Creed calls “the seen and the unseen.” Did he see the unseen that none of us can see? I don’t know. It’s a mystery.
A couple years ago, one of my parishioners asked me if I’d read “90 Minutes in Heaven.” I said I hadn’t. So the next week he gave me a copy and I read it. It was written by Don Piper. Don Piper is a Southern Baptist preacher. About ten years ago or so he was at a Southern Baptist Conference. When he left the conference, he was driving along and a semi-truck crossed the center line and drove right over his car and right over him. Paramedics showed up, but there really wasn’t anything they could do. They pronounced him dead at the scene.
Then a little while later another Southern Baptist preacher came from that conference. He didn’t know the man in the car was a Southern Baptist minister who had come from the conference. He just stopped because he saw the accident and he thought he’d see if he could pray for the man. So he asked the paramedics, “Could I go pray for the man in that car?” They said, “Sure, but it won’t do any good. He’s been dead for about 90 minutes now.” The minister said, “That’s OK. I just want to pray for him.” Now when the semi drove over his car, it flattened the car, but opened up the back end of it somehow. So the minister crawled in through the back of the car and touched Don Piper and prayed for him. Then he sang a hymn. As he was singing the hymn, Don Piper started singing along with him!
As you can imagine, the man kind of freaked out and scrambled out of the car, ran to the paramedics and said, “That guy’s still alive in that car!” They replied basically, “You’re crazy. He’s been dead for 90 minutes.” “No, no, he’s alive! He’s singing a hymn! Go hear it for yourselves!” “OK, we’ll go hear it for ourselves.” They heard it! They called for the Jaws of Life! They opened up the car! They got him out of there; they took him to the hospital! The hospital he went to – Coincidentally? Providentially? – had a doctor on staff who had worked on the problems that Don Piper had. What happened when the semi drove over his car, the femurs in his legs somehow flew out of his body. He did not have thigh bones. I don’t know any more about it than that. I tell people I have an MDiv degree, not an MD degree. One of the doctors on duty that day at the hospital had been part of an experiment where they grew bone in the body. So they grew his thigh bones back. Don Piper can now walk and talk. And he wrote a book about his experience; he lectures about it.
He said that when he died, he went up to heaven and he saw his relatives, who he’d known, who had passed on. He also saw other relatives, who he’d never met, but he’d seen pictures of them. Then he kind of hovered over to a gate. He didn’t know how he got there, but he all of a sudden was at this gate. The pearly gates? (Heaven is apparently is a gated community!) He looked into the gate and that’s when he woke up.
What do you think of that? Did that really happen? Scientists would say that when our brain is dying we have hallucinations and that’s what this was, an hallucination. Maybe he made the story up. But what fascinates me is, this guy’s a Southern Baptist minister. Who didn’t he see when he went to heaven? He didn’t see Jesus! You would think that if a Southern Baptist preacher is going to make up a story about going to heaven, the first person he’d say he saw in heaven is – Jesus! But he doesn’t say he saw Jesus. For me that adds a little credibility to the story. But again, it’s a mystery.
A minister friend of mine e-mailed me when she heard what my topic was going to be. She said that she had had a life after life experience. That’s all she said, so I wrote her back and asked, “Would you tell me about it?” She wrote back and said that many years ago when her kids were little and they were off to school and her husband was at work, she was home alone. All of a sudden she had an asthma attack, a severe asthma attack, the worst asthma attack she’d ever had. She passed out. And she woke up and she said it was the classic story you always hear about near death experiences. She went through a tunnel, she saw a light, she saw a figure in front of her and the figure indicated she had to go back. Obviously she did. She said that she felt so peaceful, so calm, so serene that now she doesn’t worry about death, she doesn’t worry about life after death, she’s not anxious about it at all. What do you make of that? Did that happen or was she hallucinating or what? I have a tendency to believe her, but I don’t know. It’s all a mystery.
A few years ago, I was asked to preach in a church and I did. After the service an elderly woman came up to me and said that her husband had died a few years before. She said that in life he couldn’t move his right arm. But at the moment of his death he looked up at the ceiling? The Sky? The Heavens? Heaven? And he reached up with his right arm and then he was dead. What was that?
A couple months ago, on the tenth anniversary of 9-11, the New York Times printed a picture they’d printed ten years before, after the planes had struck the towers. They had a picture of a guy falling to the earth, to his certain death. What struck me about the picture then as when I saw it a couple months ago was how peaceful, how calm, how serene the man looked. If that had been me, I would have been flapping my arms, trying to learn how to fly. But he was just falling, with no expression on his face, nothing. I wonder, I have no idea but I wonder, was that just his body falling? Was his spirit already rising to heaven? It’s a mystery. And not a mystery like “The Rockford Files.” A mystery like we won’t know the answer on this side of the rainbow.
A couple of years ago, Los Lonely Boys recorded a hit song, “How Far Is Heaven?” Los Lonely Boys sing: “How far is heaven? Lord, can you tell me, how far is heaven? I just gotta know how far it is.” How far is heaven? Is heaven just in the hereafter or is it in the here and now?
I did a funeral for a woman a few years ago. When I prepare for a funeral, I talk to the family, like most ministers do and find out what her life was like and what her spiritual life was like. Then, during the funeral, I talk about her life and celebrate her life and mourn her loss. (I don’t use a funeral as some ministers do, as an excuse to get people to come to Jesus.) I said that I didn’t know whether heaven exists or not. Out of the corner of my eye I could see one of her daughters wince. I quickly said, “But if heaven does exist, I have no doubt that she is there.” Then I said, I didn’t get the impression that she waited until she died to get to heaven. I said that she was in heaven on earth whenever she was with her loved ones. I said that she was in heaven on earth whenever she was doing what she loved. I said that she was in heaven on earth whenever she was helping someone, whenever she was acting compassionately, whenever she was seeking justice for more than just us.
Jesus told his disciples, “As you go, proclaim the good news, the kingdom of heaven has come near.” I think I mentioned before that what I think he was saying was: the kingdom of heaven is all around us. We just have to have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. It’s not just Jesus that said that, I think many spiritual leaders say that. Ram Dass, “Be here now.” This is all that matters. This is all we have. Eckhart Tolle talks about the Power of Now. We have to be aware of it, to appreciate it, to be grateful for it. So I don’t know whether heaven exists or not. I’d like to believe it does. But we can have heaven on earth when we’re with the ones we love. We can heaven on earth whenever we do what we love. We can heaven on earth whenever we act compassionately, when we seek justice for all. We can heaven on earth if we just have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. [Looking off into the distance and reaching up with his right arm] OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
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