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The Trinity, Worship & Heaven by Reverend Murray Spackman Sunday 18 May, 2008 In the past few weeks, people have been asking me how I feel about our forthcoming retirement, what are we going to do with ourselves, and do we have any plans. The simple answer to most of those questions is that we don’t really have anything planned or organized. For once in our lives, we will be able to take life as it comes. Some have asked will we be sad about our moving – and, yes, to a certain extent – and for a whole lot of reasons – we will be. No denying that! We will probably miss phone calls at all hours of the day and night, the door bell, the unannounced visitors, the constant activity around the church; but we will also miss the beautiful view of North Head and Mt./Victoria, the view across the harbour and the cruise ships coming and going; and we will also the spaciousness and comfort of the Vicarage. But above all, I think it is going to take quite a lot to come to terms with not being your Vicar, or in full-time ministry, which has been my life for the past 42 years. So, yes, there will undoubtedly be a fair share of sadness which we will have to cope with. But so that you don’t begin to feel that its all doom and gloom for us, there is also the brighter side to our retirement. And in particular, that for the first time in our life, we will be moving into our own home. Over the past couple of years we have been gradually making improvement and renovations to our unit and its now nearly complete and ready for us to move into. And so we are excited about that! And looking forward to it. But as I have been doing this preparation, I have also been thinking that there is a parallel and a lesson here of what we need to think about on the spiritual level. – that even the home’s we live in , in this life – are not our real homes. St. Paul , speaking about the resurrection body, says, in 2Cor 5:1, “For we know that if this earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Vs5-“ He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.” I’m told that Lord Rothschild once had a mansion in Piccadilly, and observant people who passed by were surprised to notice that the end of one of the cornices of his beautiful home was unfinished. Many thought it strange that a rich man such as he could not afford to put the final touches on this otherwise superb residence. The explanation, however, was very simple. Lord Rothschild was an orthodox Jew; and every pious Jew's house, tradition says, must have some part unfinished to bear testimony to the fact that its occupants, like Abraham of the Old Testament days, are but pilgrims and strangers on earth. The incomplete cornice on the mansion says to all who understand its meaning: "This is not Lord Rothschild's final home: he is travelling to eternity." Perhaps we (occasionally) need to be reminded of this same reality – that these our physical/material homes here on earth – even our OWN home - is not yet our final home. The seventeenth-century Puritan, Thomas Watson said, ‘The world is but a great inn, where we are to stay a night or two, and be gone; what madness is it to set our heart upon our inn, as to forget our home.’ Malcolm Muggeridge once said that from the time he was a boy he had a sense of being a stranger in this world, and that there was a world beyond this to which he felt he was moving. He wrote, ‘The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realize, is to feel ourselves to be at home here on earth. As long as we are aliens, we cannot forget our true homeland.’ The author Philip Yancey, whose book, ‘Rumours of another world’ I would strongly recommend, wrote that when he travels overseas he wears two watches; one which tells him what the time is back home, and the other, the time of the country he is traveling in. Its a reminder to him of the fact that he is a citizen of another country. So, says St. Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, 3:20 – our citizenship is in heaven. That’s our real home. That’s where we truly belong. So while Dianne and I are reflecting and wondering what it will be like to live in our own home – and looking forward to that with joyful anticipation, it also causes me to reflect on what our final home – heaven - will be like! What will our heavenly home be like? In the readings today we have two almost contrasting/ contradictory, and yet complementary views of heaven, our eternal home. The Gospel reading is also about heaven – but here, on the other hand, Jesus describes it from a very different angle. He describes heaven as ‘His Father’s House’- and within this house there are many dwelling places, many rooms, or mansions.; places of exquisite beauty. The Father’s House is the place where we His children will finally be called home and gathered together in His love and in unity with one another. It is in that Father House that we will also come to experience the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Note also – on this Trinity Sunday - that in these few verses of the gospel reading Jesus refers to the Holy Trinity – the Father who has created a home for us in the heavens, Jesus Himself who has made possible, through his own redeeming death, a place in the Father’s house, and the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, who will be with us in this life and beyond into eternity forever. So on this Trinity Sunday, as we think about our ultimate destiny, and the worship which is our worthy offering to God, I would like to end up with a personal reflection, a gut feeling if you like, on what I think heaven, our real home, might be like. 1. I don’t try to ‘locate’ heaven – and imagine it as beyond a certain star, or above the clouds; I think more of what will be the nature of heaven. Heaven will be where God is! And Revelation 4 tells me that that will be the most awe-inspiring, majestic, breath-taking, over-whelming and humbling experience we will ever have. For there- we will be in the hushed presence of a Holy God.- not a ‘man upstairs’, not a ‘buddy’ – but the Holy Awe-inspiring God of Creation before whom even the angels and archangels shield their faces and cry Holy, Holy , Holy! 2. When I’m received into that eternal home , (and when you are too!) – I think there will be a profound sense of intimate friendship and love. There I look forward to meeting, in deep gratitude, the one who found me, the One who knows my name, the One who rescued me , guarded, guided and protected me; the One who over these years has in his amazing way used even ME to do his works; who has gifted me in different ways--, and will there embrace me! It is there and then, in that context of supreme love, where I will see the nail scars on His hands, and the scars of the thorns on his brow, all suffered willingly just for you and just for me. Is it any wonder that even when we’ve been there ten thousand years that we still will not have enough days to sing God’s praise of His Amazing Grace? 3. When we reach that eternal home we will know that we truly have arrived home. There will be a peace and a satisfaction, a fulfillment which no home in this world can offer. We will have arrived! I have to confess that I have never yet carried Dianne across the threshold of any of the homes we have lived in – because none of them belonged to us. And now that I will have the opportunity to do so, as we enter our own home – Im not sure if I’ll be up to it! Such is life! But I know that when the time comes for our journey to that heavenly home, that Jesus , the Good Shepherd, true to His promise, in words which have been an encouragement and a comfort to millions before us, as he said he would, will come and take us to himself, and receive us into His eternal home. Over-awed with the love and presence of God we will find our ultimate fulfillment and completion as we offer to Him our worship and praise. In the meantime – we offer our imperfect hymns and songs of praise – until the day comes when we sing them perfectly in heaven. |
