2nd Sunday of Lent (C)

I’m sure we have all wondered what heaven will be like. From the time that we first heard the Gospel and came to know the promise of eternal life, we have all carried with us some conception, however faint, of what heaven, our eternal reward, will be. Up and down the centuries, theologians and poets, musicians and painters, and all the rest have sought to describe the contours of heaven, inviting us to ask who will be there, what will it look like, what will we do, and similar questions. 

Some years ago, I came across a novel that offered me less of a description of heaven than it gave me a new way of thinking about it. That book was Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. Gilead is the memoir of an old preacher named John Ames in which he reflects on his long life and ministry. John Ames is close to death and thus sets out to write a lengthy letter to his seven-year-old son to read after he passes, and his son is old enough to comprehend all the things he has wanted to tell him. 

At one point in the letter, John Ames recalls a conversation he once had with his lifelong friend, Jack Boughton, who was also a preacher, about heaven. In imagining heaven, Boughton said, “Mainly I just think about the splendors of the world and multiply by two. I’d multiply by ten or twelve if I had the energy. But two is much more than sufficient for my purposes” (147). In other words, to get an idea of the goodness and beauty of heaven, Boughton simply takes whatever goodness and beauty he is experiencing now, in this life, and multiples it by two. Obviously, the reality of heaven is far greater than merely being twice (or ten times or twelve times) as good and beautiful as earth, but––and here’s the point––infinity is simply too much for our minds to grasp. So, instead of trying to multiply some experience by infinity, he just multiples his experience by two and, in doing so, he gains a new idea about what heaven must be like. 

That Boughton can catch a glimpse of heaven by looking at the splendors of the created world around him is owing to what we call theophany, and theophany is very much the theme of the liturgy on this Second Sunday of Lent. Theophany means God’s manifestation of himself to us in a perceptible, sometimes visible, way. Both the First Reading and the Gospel recount moments of extraordinary theophany––God passing through the halves of the sacrifice made by Abram in a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch and the hidden character of Jesus’ divinity radiating forth through his humanity on Mount Tabor as he is transfigured before Peter, James, and John. In these theophanic events, that which is eternal and invisible breaks into the created and visible order and makes it possible for those witness (Abram, Peter, James, and John) to be drawn through what they see to that which they cannot see. In the splendor of what they experience, they catch a glimpse of eternity. And by no means are theophanies in the Bible limited to just these two, but they happen throughout the course of history of salvation. 

What the liturgy has to teach us today is that these moments of theophany are not withheld from any of us. In the Collect, we prayed: “O God… be pleased… to nourish us inwardly by your word, that, with spiritual sight made pure, we may rejoice to behold your glory.” And in the Prayer after Communion we will pray in thanksgiving to God “for allowing us while still on earth to be partakers even now of the things of heaven.” With spiritual sight made pure, we can see, in the things of this earth, the things of heaven. To see with spiritual sight means to see with the eyes of faith, and to see with the eyes of faith is to look upon all that is good, true, and beautiful in this world as porous, as being open toward and revealing an ever-greater reality, so that in them and through them, we catch a glimpse of heaven. 

We don’t need to be on Mount Tabor to witness a theophany. Rather, God reveals and manifests himself and our promised inheritance of heaven to us, each and every day in various ways. I’ve long thought that the best moments of friendship must be a foretaste of the Communion of the Saints. How could the true and perfect fellowship of the saints in heaven be anything other than an elevated version of time spent with the people I know and love, and who know and love me? How could the heaven and earth of the new creation not be already anticipated in this creation, in the mountains and in the forests, the fields and streams that make this earth beautiful? How could the love of God, poured into my heart of stone every day in his mercy, not be the same Love that will be for all eternity praised and adored by every creature in the new song of heaven? If I, like Jack Boughton, can take those experiences and multiply them by two, then I gain a better idea of what heaven will be like. 

In these ways, and in so many others, God reveals and manifests himself to us. And to ever make it to our heavenly home, where all that has been promised to us will be fulfilled, we need these moments of theophany to encourage us and to keep our hearts set on that place in which our true citizenship is found. The theophany made to Abram nourished him as he was called from the Ur of the Chaldeans to leave his home and to go to the place to which the Lord was leading him. The theophany made to Peter, James, and John on Mount Tabor came before the agony they would endure in watching their Lord and Messiah be rejected, condemned, and put to death. We, likewise, rely on these times when God pulls back the curtain of heaven before us, that we would not lose faith or hope, but may carry on, through the wilderness, to the land that God promises us. 

Heaven is most certainly greater that twice whatever we experience in this life. Yet we should not lose sight that this life stands in relation to the next, and the next discloses itself to us in and through the events of our daily life. To see that happening, we need the light of Christ to illumine our experience, that we may see with spiritual sight made pure the true and perfect goodness and beauty that stands behind all that is true and good in the created order. In the words of the 6thcentury theologian called Pseudo-Dionysius, “there is nothing which lacks its own share of beauty, for scripture rightly says, ‘Everything is good’. Everything, then, can be a help to contemplation” (The Celestial Hierarchy, 124a). All that is good can move us toward the land of the living, when we shall see the bounty of the Lord. 

Our citizenship is indeed in heaven, but while we are on this earth, we are not deprived of our inheritance. Rather, in faith, we can see heaven reflected in our lives, in our relationships, in the splendor of creation, and in all that is good, true, and beautiful in this world. And when, at the last day the trumpet sounds and the dead are raised, this world will not be destroyed but will be restored, recreated, transfigured into the new heaven and the new earth, which will be our eternal home. So, let us live, truly live, in this world, for, despite its brokenness, it is by divine judgement good, and therefore a foretaste of all that is to come. 

To close, let me conclude in the words of John Ames: “I can’t believe that, when we all have been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try” (57). Amen.