I remember lying in bed as a child, thinking about heaven and eternity. Strangely, the more I thought about eternity, the more terrified I became. I couldn’t imagine living forever, and in my childish mind, eternity was a blank of a place, lonely, dreadful, and endless. In the middle of the quiet night, I wanted to scream as I pondered this future existence. But as I’ve been formed more deeply in the study of theology, Scripture, and the Church’s tradition and, above all, through worship, heaven and eternity are no longer an endless stretch of blankness. They are time—however inept that word is to speak of infinity—filled to the brim with perfection, with singing, dancing, conversation, of active being in communion with God and all the saints.
Sometimes, when I try to think of what heaven is like, I picture people I’ve known and loved who have died continuing to do what they always loved to do in this life, except more perfectly. As they continue in their journey in Christ, they are being purified and refined in God’s everlasting love. Wouldn’t their irreverent earthly joking be a more perfect, reverent laughter? And wouldn’t their earthly theological seriousness be transformed into embodied dancing in their glorified bodies? The truth is that we will never know, but it doesn’t hurt to imagine.
As I’ve matured a bit beyond my childhood, I have begun to connect glimpses of heaven with the Church herself. As Rowan Williams puts it, “[h]eaven is what is laid open when the Church is truly the Church,” “when the Church is most clearly committed to the work of transforming the earth in which it lives” [Tokens of Trust, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007, p. 138]. It is in the Eucharist that we can come closest to heaven while still on earth, underscoring the importance of this sacred act of thanksgiving that we celebrate on each Lord’s Day. This is why the beauty of worship is so important. Worship deserves our very best, however flawed it may be. Worship deserves not a piece of us, but all of us, “our selves, souls, and bodies,” as the prayer book reminds us. When worship is so lovely that it makes us hold our breath or gasp with wonder, then we have, for a time, been drawn beyond and out of ourselves and into something eternal.
There is, of course, beauty outside of worship. We all know places where we can find such beauty. But all too often, this beauty is marred by hatred, anger, and injustice. In a broken, disordered world, we need a place that strives for the perfection of beauty, even as it will inevitably fall short of perfection. This is what the Church is. This is what the Church can be: a place to which we return, week after week, to catch glimpses of heaven. And then, having caught a taste of heavenly glory, we bring a piece of it back out into the world with us.
I can think of no better reason to go to church than to catch a glimpse of heaven. There is very little in catching a glimpse of heaven that can be abused. We can’t control the beauty we experience. We can’t weaponize it, or it would not be beauty at all. We don’t appreciate beauty to “get” something from God or to manipulate God. Beauty is simply beauty. And the beauty of the Eucharist is a timeless window into eternity, where all is rejoicing, all is gift, all is thankfulness, all is praise.
Rowan Williams says that “at every Eucharist the end of time has indeed come: this is what creation should be, this is what humanity should be. This is where we belong. This is creation restored to its place, where the things of this world take on the quality of transfiguring divine gift, where—instead of relations of possession and manipulation towards the things of this world and to one another—all is gift, all is offering and all is prayer. This is where we learn who we are, and in what relation we stand: what we must realize in ourselves” (“On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand,” in Christ Unabridged, Norwich, UK: SCM, 2020, p. 253). What an astounding thought! A place where all is gift and offering and prayer is as far from the dire blankness of my childhood fears of eternity. Such a place of eternal giftedness is nothing less than heaven.
As we begin a new program year this Sunday, I am looking forward to seeing people who have been traveling this summer. I am excited for the return of the full choir and children’s formation and a fuller church, where our songs of praise will resound more heartily than during the quieter summer months. We will celebrate the new program year with a parish picnic after Mass, an imperfect extension of the glimpse of perfect fellowship we encounter in the Eucharist. As we gather before God’s altar this Sunday, I hope we all might remind ourselves of the oft-neglected Christian task of searching for heaven. We should not search for heaven as something to be grasped or earned but as something that draws us into the nearer presence of God. Heaven is where we dwell close to God, which Rowan Williams likens to St. John’s image of the Logos dwelling in the bosom of the Father, just as John the Beloved Disciple rested close to Jesus’s bosom at the Last Supper (“On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand,” p. 247). When the Church is truly being the Church, as Williams reminds us, we will find heaven.
I have seen glimpses of heaven at Good Shepherd. I have seen a glimpse of heaven on quiet days when the church is illumined with the dying light of a beautiful evening. I have seen heaven peeking into earthly time when the voices of a full church of people singing hymns barrels down the nave towards me standing at the altar. I have espied some glimmer of heaven when row after row of the faithful come to the Communion rail and stretch out their hands to receive Christ, to receive—as St. Augustine of Hippo would tell us—our very selves, or at least, the selves we are called to be in Christ. We are Christ’s risen body on earth.
There is not a one of us that does not need a glimpse of heaven, especially amid so much of the hell that surrounds us each day. As my childhood terrors evidenced, we can’t find heaven if we stay only in our heads. Christian discipleship is a lived experience, not a mental exercise or a feeling. We can’t find heaven by merely thinking about it. Heaven must be experienced in the mystery of worship, in our bodies close to other bodies echoing the same praise, and particularly in the company of others who challenge and comfort us. Heaven is not a solitary experience; it is always communal. And as we await, in hope, the promise of everlasting life—of heaven unadulterated and unhindered—we travel in this earthly life, sustained by imperfect glimpses of heaven, knowing that the real thing will be far greater than we can ever imagine.
Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle