EVERYONE IS WELCOME HERE! 

10:30 am Worship

Friday, May 16, 2025

John 14: 1-3

¹“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. ²In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

What does it mean to become part of eternity?

None of us sees anything but the smallest fragment of it. Science tries to know it all, of course, but even the greatest astronomers using the most sophisticated instruments can’t see its end. Nor can physicists, looking inward at the heart of matter using electron microscopes. Those who examine the smallest parts of eternity see exactly the same thing as those hoping to comprehend its most distant secrets. In each, they see mostly empty space.

No one can see time. It exists, yet remains hidden. Back to the dimmest reaches of history and forward into an invisible future. We pass through it, barely touching its immensity. It comes and goes in the same instant.

Religion searches in yet another way. God’s creatures seek to imagine the future reaches of eternity, and we find ourselves caught in the same trap as science. We look inward for a spirit which exists in each of us, and the Spirit drives us ever outward, into expanded relationship. And truth be told, we can never find the end limit of relationship. One always faces new boundaries, new worlds to explore, new cultures to embrace. All things forever being made new. 

Men and women write stories and tell tales of heaven. Those tales inspire ever new movements and understandings. The Buddha sits silent, palms open, seeking to take it all in. The Hindu gods reach one hand toward heaven and another toward the earth. Muslims bow before a largeness beyond comprehension.

We Christians ponder the same mysteries considered in the Greek pantheons and those of ancient Egypt: the idea of gods who come to earth, who interact with us mere humans, who present themselves in human form. We all have loved the idea of a supreme being who is perfectly just and perfectly merciful in the same moment, for we find ourselves caught daily in the imperfect grasp of human justice, with its terrible condemnations.

We see what we deserve and beg for something better.

Somewhere along the way, we created the concept of heaven. What is it? No one knows. Not really. Some humans look upward; others see a city descending to earth, a place where God can live with humans, and yet others perceive a river of life pouring forth and flowing into a parched world.

I have fallen in love with the gospel of John. This might seem strange to some of my fellow Christians, most of whom probably measure it as the greatest of the gospels. For years, I have held Mark and Matthew close to my heart. I loved the humanity of Jesus so evident in Mark, and the teachings of Matthew were and are perhaps the greatest ever written. I treasured the stories in Luke. John, I felt for the longest time, existed on a different plane from these others, having some of the same attributes as vapor. It moves effortlessly through the here and now and the once was and the soon to be, an endless circle of love.

In the end, though, I have learned to appreciate its understanding of Jesus as that which existed before anything else and which will exist forever more. In him, we become part of eternity.

 It is all beautiful.

We spend so much time looking at the dark corners of existence. It is almost as if we wished to exist only in the clutches of fear and worry. John assures us, speaks the great truth. Do not be afraid. You too, Jesus tells us, are part of eternity. I have made a place for you there. It is beautiful.

Isn’t that what we all want?

A beautiful place of our own.

Hymn of the day: Breathe. Online at Rossford UMC - Media.

Rev. Lawrence Keeler