PENTECOST SUNDAY

[cappie]

What do you believe about heaven? According to polling in recent years, about 58% of Australians believe that heaven exists – and about the same number think they have an excellent chance of getting there. At the same time, fewer than 38% of Australians say they believe in hell – and only a few percent think it is a place they are headed. Hell is real, alright, but for someone else. If most of us believe in heaven and think we’re going there, and most of us believe in some kind of hell and believe emphatically that we’re not going there, while at the same time Christians the world over are teaching their conviction that just about everybody but them is going to hell…Then someone has to be wrong.

Despite the fervent belief in our own righteousness; despite the emphatic teaching that some are in and some are out; despite an absolute conviction in our own justification before God and another’s damnation – someone is probably wrong.

Some concept of heaven is common to most human cultures: as the abode of God or gods, as an eternal haven for immortal souls, as a celestial afterlife.  Some in the Middle Ages envisioned heaven as a city, surrounded by castles: a safe fortress. Some envisioned heaven as a garden, perfect and fruitful: think of the Renaissance painters.

More often than how a people view heaven sets the tone for their  understanding about God.  One’s understanding of heaven will determine one’s understanding, one’s idea, of God.

Which circles back to the earlier question: What do you believe about heaven?

In Old Testament scripture, heaven was the dwelling place of God.   Hebrew texts make no direct reference to an afterlife in heaven for the righteous. It was not until after the exile of the Jewish people to Babylon that the Jews, under the influence of their Persian neighbours, began to develop a concept of heaven and hell.

The Christian understanding of heaven grew out of these early Jewish understandings,  it took the New Testament, especially the visions related in Revelation, to fully develop an image of heaven as the abode of God and the resting place of the faithful.

The early Christian heaven was open to all people, based on their understanding from scripture and on the conviction that when Jesus died to save people, he died to save all people. This is what the early centuries of Christians believed and taught, and this is central to what today's Pentecost event celebrates.

Pentecost tells of when the Holy Spirit filled all those gathered – people whose homelands challenge the pronunciation skills of the best of readers. They spoke in their own voices and languages while hearing with one ear. The central message of Pentecost was the conviction of the earliest Christians that all people are beloved of God, all people are redeemed in Jesus, and all people, are welcome in God’s Kingdom.

Can we learn from this? Can we hold up a hope of heaven that welcomes everyone? Can we believe in a God that big? 

Considering human nature – considering Church history – the simple moment of Pentecost is a remarkable and radical eruption of God’s healing into human brokenness. We need the memory of Pentecost to inspire confidence in God’s welcome for all people, an enlarged understanding of the Body of Christ, to believe that God is good enough, big enough, generous enough, to make a place for each and every person in the Kingdom of God.

  Pentecost is that time when the Holy Spirit of God rested on people from many nations and backgrounds, a division between peoples was brought back into wholeness by the Spirit of God.

If the Pentecost event can teach us anything, may it open our hearts to the very enormity of God. May it help us to know that we are all children of a mighty and loving Creator.

And again, we circle back to the original question: What do you believe about heaven? The answer to that question will tell you much of what you believe about God.

[Lea]

I've once heard the theory of a brother, that hell sure exists, but most likely was empty, because it was the place for people who decided against community with God after seeing Him post-mortem. But it had to exist, because God gave us our free will. All the others would enter into His glory - mostly of course after purgatory. 

So hell is a place of maximal distance from God. 

I find this quite convincing.