Sermon manuscript:
A book called The
Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis has an impossible plot, but it is interesting
nonetheless. The story is about a bus-trip from hell to the edge of heaven. The
author admits that no such thing could possibly happen. There is an impassible chasm
between the two places. But I enjoy reading this book from time to time because
in it the author does what he does best. C. S. Lewis, a Christian author, is
very good at depicting temptation and sin, how these things so easily get ahold
of us, and what it is like to repent. With characters both from hell and from
heaven, he is allowed ample opportunity to put his talents to work.
So what are the people in hell like, and what are the people
in heaven like? Generally speaking, we could say that the people in hell are
unloving, whereas the people in heaven are loving. Although this book is
imaginary, this is something that actually is true. Heaven is a place of love.
God is love. The most outstanding feature in heaven is that God is there. No
flesh has seen God. Sinful flesh cannot see God and live. But in heaven that
bright, shining, burning fire of love sheds his light upon all the inhabitants,
who have been strengthened so as to bear it.
What about hell, then? Jesus calls it a burning place of
weeping and gnashing of teeth. I think it’s safe to say that it must be about
the opposite of heaven. Thus maybe its
most outstanding feature is that there is no love there.
So in this book a busload of sinners makes a journey to the
edge of heaven. These folks are not the kind of people that most people think
of when they think of people who are in hell. That is to say, these people in
hell are like us. They are vain, petty, mean, impatient, selfish, and so on. Such
things can become second nature to us. This is what makes so-called “ordinary
people” go to hell. We don’t have to sacrifice cats on a homemade altar or do
other extraordinary, extravagant sins to go to hell. The ordinary, everyday
lovelessness is sufficient for any and all of us.
What are the people of heaven like in this book? C. S.
Lewis, in his own special, masterful way, makes it clear that the people of
heaven, just like the people in hell, are also just like us. There isn’t a
single person in heaven who was not a sinner while he or she lived on this
earth. But somehow these sinners were saved. They were turned away from their
selfish, unloving lives. The Word of God hit home. They repented of their sins,
and were forgiven, and were thereby brought into the kingdom of love.
This can create some strange scenarios. There is one
exchange in the book, for example, between a murderer and a hard-nosed,
hard-working man. You’d think that the murderer should be in hell and the
hard-working man should be in heaven. But the murderer was blessed by hearing
the Word of God. He repents and believes in Jesus. The hard, proud man worked
his tail off. Nobody ever gave him anything. He earned it all for himself. But
he was also mean. So in the exchange between them the forgiven murderer tries
to get the proud man to see that he wasn’t as righteous as he imagined himself
to be and the proud man is indignant, to say the least. How could a murderer
end up in heaven while he, being far more “decent,” was passed over?
There are a lot of other interesting things in this book,
and you might profit from reading it, so long as you keep in mind that it is a
work of fiction. It is fiction, but it has very serious truths in it too. One
of those truths is that greatness is being like God. Greatness is loving.
Here’s another truth: In a way each person is being prepared for their eternal
dwellings. If we cultivate and nourish our vanity, our manipulating, the
feathering of our own nests, then we are preparing ourselves for living in hell
where there is no love. On the other hand, if we love, serve, sacrifice, and
suffer for the goodness and happiness of others, then we are getting ready for
that place where love is in all and through all and over all.
With this in mind, then, I’d like to turn to what we heard
about in our Old Testament reading. The way that some people look at the world,
this isn’t much of a story. A woman’s husband dies. She’s got two sons who are
married. Then those two sons die. Three widows. The mother-in-law tells her
daughters-in-law that they should go and find husbands for themselves. One of
them takes her mother-in-law’s advice. Ruth, however, does not. She stays with her
mother-in-law, Naomi.
The story of Ruth goes on in the following chapters to
describe how Ruth remains faithful to Naomi. She’s the bread-winner because
Naomi is too old and frail. Eventually a man named Boaz notices that Ruth is a
very fine woman. Ruth wasn’t necessarily extraordinarily beautiful. She
wouldn’t have been able to afford any spa treatments. Ruth and Naomi were
extremely poor. But what Ruth did have was love. Her love caused her to suffer,
sacrifice, and serve for her mother-in-law. She would continue to live in love
with her eventual husband Boaz.
This story can be very easily despised by the world because Ruth
was very far from being a queen. She didn’t lead armies to victory. She didn’t
have an advanced degree. She didn’t have photo albums full of pictures from
exotic places. If we were to put it into today’s terms she worked at [Dollar
General] for minimum wage. This story is easy to despise if the standard
measurements of greatness are applied to Ruth. One of the reasons why this
story has been included in the Bible, though, is because she is an example of the
only true greatness, which the Bible teaches us.
Paul says, “Love is long-suffering and friendly. It is
not ambitious. It does not boast. Love is not puffed up or rude. It does not
seek its own advantage. It does not respond sharply. It does not think evil.
Love does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices together with the
truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures
all things. Love never ends.”
The reason why love never ends is because God is love. Since
God is love there is nothing higher or better than love. Genghis Khan and Napoleon
Bonaparte almost succeeded in conquering the world. Now they have their own
rival territories in hell that they can never enjoy. Ruth, on the other hand,
this slave-worker almost, is one of the great ones in heaven. She hungered and
thirsted after righteousness. Now she has been filled.
So we make a great mistake when measure our life according
to the standard earthly measures. Money, power, fame—these are hard to attain
because everybody wants them. You can’t hardly get them without stepping on
others. Plus when they are attained they are notoriously difficult to keep.
Somebody else always wants to bump you off, just as you wanted to bump off
others and your way to the top.
It also isn’t sufficient to have as your goal in life to be enjoyment
or relaxation. Even the goal of making memories isn’t good enough. Folks
suppose that our memories are eternal. They’re not. A lifetime or two after the
funeral and all the rememberers will be gone too. And so very often the act of
making the memories can be vain and selfish.
Practicing loving kindness is the way of God. Being loving
and kind is open and available to absolutely everyone. Rich, poor, it doesn’t
matter who you are. You might have a blue collar job, a pink collar job, or a
white collar job. You might not have any job at all—at least not in the usual
sense of that word. You can still love the people whom God has placed into your
life for you to love. You can make other people’s lives better and happier by
the way you conduct yourself.
It seems to me that in order to do this you probably need to
think of life as something of an adventure. This especially seems true to me if
you have been in something of a rut. We poor sinners so easily fall into ruts.
These are ruts of mutual abuse. We get abused and taken advantage of, so when
it’s our turn to do the abusing, well, why not indulge? There’s so much abuse
that we depressingly think that that is how it was in the beginning, is now,
and ever shall be. Cycles of abuse are eternal and can never be broken. I suspect
that this is one of the sad thoughts that people think in hell, and,
unfortunately, there it is actually true.
But what if, while there is still time, we took up our sword
to slay the dragon within us? If we think of love being how Paul described it,
if we think of love being long-suffering, kind, and so on—neverending. If we
think of love as an adventure, then we will be better prepared for some hard
knocks. That’s what happens on adventures!
When we love and are rewarded by ungratefulness or even
outright meanness, we shouldn’t let that make us give up. We have an adventure
in front of us. As Paul says in another place, we will reap what we have sown
if we do not give up. Therefore it is very important that we not sow to our
flesh, from which we will reap eternal death, but sow to the Spirit, from whom
we will reap eternal life.
The reason why the Son of God came down to earth was, as
Jesus said, “So that we may have life and that we may have it more
abundantly.” Everyone recognizes that those who are privileged enough to
engage in adventures are living life more abundantly. That’s why folks envy
people who can afford to travel the world, buy amusements, and eat luxuriously.
But living the adventure of love doesn’t cost anything.
Well, in a way at least. It doesn’t cost you money. In another way it costs
everything. Jesus said, “Whoever would be my disciple must take up his cross
and follow me.” Again, he said, “Whoever wants to save his life will
lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake, this is the one who will save
it.”
From the moment each of us was baptized we have been put on
an adventure that continues on even into heaven. Death cannot stop it. In a
way, when we die, that’s when the adventure begins in earnest. Which one of us,
though, has lived up to the high and holy calling given to us in baptism? When
we were baptized, we were baptized into Jesus’s death, so that the life of
Jesus, the life of love, may be manifest in us also. Thus we ask God to forgive
us. We have fallen. May Jesus raise us. May we be cured of false and silly and
futile ambitions for our life so that we may chase after true greatness.
[And so we pray especially for Charlotte today, who was
baptized. She has been put on an adventure. We do not know where this adventure
will go, nor do we know how long it will last. It is an adventure that is begun
in love, God’s love for her. May she be like Ruth. May her life be full of
love.]
And so may we all live the adventures God gives to us. May
those adventures continue on into heaven, where love never ends. Amen.
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