Let not your heart be troubled

[This exhortation of Jesus, which has just been spoken among us, is one of the words that we most often read at the tomb during funerals. It is the consolation with which our Lord stands by us in the grief of mourning, at that most heart-rending moment when the body of our deceased loved one is finally swallowed up by the earth... So, when we feel the power of death most painfully, a voice more powerful than death speaks: 'Let not your hearts be troubled: believe in God and believe in me. And I have read this Word now because, according to the liturgy of the early Church, on this Sunday, the last Sunday of the ecclesiastical year, the deceased are remembered in many Christian congregations around the world. It is also known in the Church calendar as "Sunday of the Dead", or perhaps more appropriately, following Jesus' words of encouragement, as "Sunday of the Living!" For it is not "the dead" that we are thinking of when we remember our deceased loved ones, but the living! Happily and triumphantly alive! And then, sooner or later, what Jesus is saying here, that he is coming for us and will take us with him, will become relevant for us too... Yes, that's what I want to talk about now, where to? Where do we look for those who have already gone, and what is it that we ourselves are on our way to? With what hope do we look forward to the great future?First of all, let me say that there are two kinds of one-sidedness and exaggeration in the thinking of people of faith on this whole problem. The first is a piety and life of faith that looks only to heaven, the second is a life of faith that looks only to life on earth. There is a piety which escapes from the life on earth, as from a vale of tears, to the expectation of heavenly salvation. It despises earth as a place of sin and misery, and compensates itself for its sufferings with the hope of happiness in the hereafter - The other kind of piety is the opposite: it sees the whole of Christianity as a system of values governing the morality of earthly life, and thus loses sight of the heavenly perspective... What kind of piety does the Bible justify? Well: neither! The Bible talks about both, earth and heaven - much more about earth than about heaven, and heaven always in relation to earth. It links the two together.
The whole Bible begins with these words, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." And at the very end of the whole Bible, in Revelation 21, we read again, "And behold, I saw a new heaven and a new earth..." So it's about heaven in its relationship to earth. In other words, the Bible does not give the truth to anyone who says it: It is not the earth that is important, but heaven. But neither is it true for the one who thinks: It is not heaven that is important, but earth. The Bible says: heaven and earth, both are important! And just when the earth is very important to someone, he cannot do without heaven!
But what is heaven? Make no mistake, when the Bible speaks of heaven, the sky, it is saying two different things. On the one hand, there is the glorious firmament, where we see the sun, the moon, the stars, where the clouds fly... - and on the other hand, there is the higher world, the spiritual world of God, which is invisible to us. But this, if you think about it, is not so disturbing. For the firmament which is visibly above us, which surrounds the earth, this firmament is the world of the sun and power on which all life on earth depends, which blessedly falls upon us. It is the world of the light we look up to, the world of the infinite against which we feel so small. So the Bible is telling us that there is also an invisible world, of which the starry sky is only a perceptual image. There is a higher world that surrounds and carries us, on which all life on earth and all who dwell on earth depend - a world whose influences permeate the earth... Of this invisible world we have no experience, and therefore no special word for it. But think of the sensations that fill you when you look up at the bright, shining sky, and of those sensations, but much further and much richer, and quite different from the higher invisible world, the heavenly world of God... That's why the Bible calls it heaven, or heaven, heaven.
Jesus makes it more concrete when he says: "My Father's house, wherein are many mansions." Of course, this is also a capable expression, since we know that no house, not even a heavenly house unimaginable to us, could contain God. For it is not God who is in heaven, but heaven and earth, the visible and invisible universe, that is in God. The Father's house, where there are many mansions: this is only an indication that there is another reality, beyond and above the earthly world and the constellations, a higher form of life in which the presence of God is manifested in a more direct and more intimate way than in this earthly world as we know it, and which is illumined by the glory of God in a more direct and more powerful way than this earthly world. Where is this heavenly world? Well, well, it would be very wrong to think that it is somewhere in the starry heavens, up high, far away... No! - But it's a fair question, where is it? After all, all created things and beings must have some place, some habitat. Yes: in some way, in one way or another... But our human habitat is not the only one that exists in the world. A line has a different kind of space than a plane, and a plane has a different kind of space than a piece of stone. The spirit has a very different space from the body. Space is infinitely more than our space! Our space is severely limited by the finiteness of our senses. There is no doubt that with our senses: sight, hearing, touch, we can only perceive a very small part of the realities around us. The heavenly world of God is also a reality that our senses cannot grasp, that is outside our three-dimensional reality. So when Jesus speaks of the Father's house and its many dwelling places, we should not look for it somewhere in the universe, as if we could search the universe with binoculars, but as if Jesus were trying to give us a sense of the infinite riches of God - as if to say: do not measure God by the smallness of yourselves, for just as a thousand years are as many as a day before him, so a thousand worlds like the one you know are only as many as a matchbox for him: "In my Father's house are many mansions!"-and this space of God's higher world, utterly inconceivable to us, we call heaven, heaven. And it is this heaven which blessedly covers us, which surrounds and carries the earth, which permeates and permeates this world with its effects.
And let me say something more here about the relation of heaven and earth. It is an undoubted fact that heaven is the kind of world in which, as I have said, the presence and glory of God are more directly manifested than on earth. And earth is the world where sin, suffering and death are a constant threat to life. The earth is the great prodigal son in the created universe, who has stepped out of the great, majestic chorus of God's glory. The earth is the dissonance of uncreation. There is a great distance, a gulf between earth and heaven. The earth has become the enemy of heaven. We, the inhabitants of earth, have rebelled against heaven. But heaven will not leave earth. It wants to restore the connection. God wants to bring us back into communion with Himself and with the higher heavenly world. And that is why Jesus came to earth. He is the One in Whose person heaven and earth are reconnected, He is the One who, as a heavenly being - but at the same time an earthly, real person - bridges the gap and reconnects the two. It is He Who came from heaven to earth, and He Who went from earth back to heaven. And that is why it is so great when He says: "Let not your heart be troubled... In my Father's house are many mansions;... I will go and prepare a place for you...!"
And you see, this is our great, great consolation when we think of our departed loved ones now. Where are they? In the Father's house, in the presence of God, in the radiance of God's glory. The house means shelter, protection, home. So they are in the right place. A very good place! Not in a cemetery, under a cold mound, but in the Father's house! That is why it makes no sense for believers to have an excessive cemetery cult. Yes, we think of the place where their earthly remains rest with reverence, we try to keep their graves in order, just as we lovingly guard the small and large memories of them, we do not throw them away, they are dear to us. But the tomb should not be a place of pilgrimage where we go for an intimate spiritual meeting, because they themselves are not there, but in a much better place: in the Father's house! "In my Father's house there are many mansions; and if there were not, I would have told you. I will go and prepare a place for you. And when I have gone and prepared a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." A believer in Jesus is not snatched by death, not torn by sickness from the embrace of his loved ones: Jesus comes for him and takes him to where He is, to the Father's house! To the prepared dwelling place! To that invisible, higher heavenly world! And we ourselves can look forward to our own death with this hope and expectation... Every man lives here on this earth until he has prepared a place for himself there, in that other form of life. And once that place is ready, Jesus will come and take him there...
What do they do there who have already arrived? It's hard to say anything about it in earthly words. Most of the New Testament just says they are with Christ. Jesus says in our Word, "I take you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also." Christ today is no longer the Jesus wandering the earth, suffering and dying, but the glorified Christ, seated at the right hand of the Father, that is, in the closest proximity to God. So the essence of being in heaven is to be with Christ. For where He is, there is heaven. Therefore, we must not speculate about the nature of heavenly life, nor imagine it as some Mohammedan paradise, or Germanic Valhalla, or the eternal hunting grounds of the Indians, or the wonderland of fairy tales. God is taking His people to ever higher glory, into ever closer relationship and communion with Christ. God's end in redemption is not to save heaven and earth from this earth as from a sinking ship. And it is precisely our great hope that God will preserve His own for this great future beyond death, so that they can be present at the great victory of Jesus to come, and be part of the whole new world that is being prepared! For God has a purpose for this earth. This earth must be reconnected to heaven, far more than it ever was! God wants the partition between heaven and earth to be completely torn down, and for the earth to be drawn back into the heavenly realm. So that here too God may be in all things. That His will may be done as it is in heaven. That His Kingdom may come here too! So that heaven and earth together may receive new and new tasks from Him who created heaven and earth! Then the earth will truly become what God intended it to be.
For now we walk and live on an earth that is often drenched with blood and tears, full of suffering and threatened with death. But even here we are already walking under the opened heavens, under a kind of heaven with open doors, where a Man, our Lord Jesus Christ, has gone forth, and from where He is preparing the great and happy future of heaven and earth. That is why all good service, all struggle against sin, all striving for peace, all sacrifices of love, even suffering, have meaning, because we can live and work on this earth with a horizon broadened in the great perspective of eternity, in the knowledge that our life and work are a part of God's eternal world plan.
How right Jesus is when he exhorts us, "Let not your heart be troubled, believe in God and believe in me."
Let us respond to him with the words of the hymn:
Teach us to believe, Lord, teach us to ask!
Jesus, you will return: teach us to wait!
When you have mercy on my life:
Let me stand still. Teach me to believe!
Canto 479, verse 4
Amen!
Date: 24 November 1963.