The Way to Heaven Is of Heaven – Dr. Rev. Carol Kerr – 11-22-09

Part of the Gratitude Sermon Series….

Tom died and went to heaven. When he arrived at the Pearly gates St. Peter said “Before I let you into heaven what has your life been like?” Tom said, “My life has been like the song ‘People’ that Barbara Streisand made famous.” Peter nodded and asked Tom to sing a few bars which he did. “People, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world. One person needing other persons….” Then St. Peter said, “We love all kinds of music up here.” Peter handed Tom a ticket and said, “Here is your ticket to heaven. Run this through the turnstile and the gates will open to you.” Tom scratched his head and looked puzzled. Peter winked and said, “We’ve updated things here and now the pearly gates work like the subway in Boston.”

Stranger still was what the ticket said, “The way to heaven is of heaven.”

When Tom entered and the gates closed behind Tom, he found himself on the corner of Madison and Fifth in New York City. There were hundreds of Christmas shoppers with colorful bags, and he heard the ringing of the Salvation Army bell, he smelled roasted peanuts of the vendor nearby. Although the people were unaware of his presence he suddenly felt overwhelmed with love for all of the people there. The grandmother coming out of the toy store, the peanut vendor wearing a turban, the little girl walking her white toy poodle to Central Park. He felt connected to every single one. His body became flush with gratitude for the interconnectedness of all being. And he saw what they could not see, a shinning coming from each. Each person had an inner light that was like a diamond center, with beautiful points arrayed like constellations. Walking to and fro were people unaware that they were, ablaze with this invisible star dance.

Harry died and went to heaven. When he arrived at the pearly gates Peter said “Before I let you in, what has your life been like?” Harry answered, “Well I have been a farmer all my life. On the farm you can’t dwell in the past, because what’s done is done. On the farm you can’t count on the future, because that depends on the weather. Although you hope for the best, you never really know how your crops are going to turn out. So, you ask what has my life been like? I lived one day at a time. I told myself that whatever happened that day it was going to consider it a good day.” Peter said, “We need wheat for our bread up here. Here is your ticket to heaven.”

Harry took it and read, twice the strange words: “The way to heaven is of heaven.”

When the gates closed behind Harry, he found himself riding a John Deer tractor on a farm field in Iowa reaping wheat. The sky was clear, the air was pure, the wheat blew before him in undulating waves celebrating the harvest. He watched the beauty of a hawk soaring overhead, circling and circling and circling on the lift of hundreds of miles of prairie wind.

Marcia died and went to heaven. When she arrived at the Pearly gates St. Peter said “Before I let you in heaven what has your life been like?” She replied, “My life has been wonderful because of the wonderful man I married. From the moment he passed me a note in our 9th grade Algebra class to his death I woke up every day saying, thank goodness you are here by my side, until he died that is. I know he is here in heaven and soon we will be reunited.” Peter said, “We told him that you would be here soon. He is waiting for you. Here is your ticket in.”

Marcia looked down and read, “The way to heaven is of heaven.” She didn’t know what it meant but it made sense anyway.

When the gates closed behind her she found herself sitting next to her husband’s bed at a hospital in Michigan. She was holding his hand. His breathing became calm and regular as they reminisced about their life together. The funny notes they passed to each other, the soccer games, and college. They laughed at how they came up with the nicknames of their children, Wiggy and Tadpole. They love their flower business they started together especially when they would load up their truck and deliver. There were daisies for birthdays, red roses for anniversaries, lush green plants for Mother’s day. He would ringing the bell and she would take a picture of the moment they handed over the flowers. to send back to the friend or loved one who made the order. After that spoke they sat for long intervals holding hands in silence.

Titus died and went to heaven. (Titus Brandsma, a Carmelite priest) When he arrived at the Pearly gates St. Peter said, “Before I let you in tell me about your life?” Titus said that he had been arrested and later killed by the Nazis for smuggling out Jews. Peter said, “In heaven our oxygen is courage. That is why the air smells like myrrh. Here is your ticket.”

Titus didn’t bother reading the ticket he knew what was on it.

When the pearly gates closed behind him Titus found himself once again in the concentration camp writing a note he would have the guards smuggle out to his friends. He wrote “I see God in the work of his hand and the marks of his love in every visible thing and it sometimes happens that I am seized by a supreme joy which is above all other joys.”

Wilma died and went to heaven. When she arrived at the Pearly gates Peter said, “Before I let you in tell me what your life was like?” Wilma said it was busy. She was very busy making money, then making sure her kids “Didn’t kill each other or become drunks.” Paul asked her about the statistic the angels had delivered to him that she only prayed about once every couple of years. She countered that it was true because she was too busy to pray. But she said that she always said that when she got to heaven she would have plenty of time to pray. She knew that now she was finally here she would make it all up. Peter said, “I’m sorry about the line and the wait, here is your ticket.”
Wilma took the ticket and read “The way to heaven is of heaven.” “Churchy!” she thought to herself.

When the gates closed behind her she found herself in heaven just like she had imagined. The streets were lined with rubies. Angels were singing softly floating in the air with downy soft detergent wings. There was a beautiful garden in the middle of the heavenly city where other people who had died were sitting. In the garden was the tree of life and one single beautiful white blossom bloomed upon the tree. The other people were mesmerized by the blossom. They gazed into it commenting on its many layered depth and that each petal was like reading a book of love. They were reminded of pedals from this flower that they had seen scattered throughout all creation. Wilma gazed at the flower for a while and got bored. How long does eternity last she wondered?

Let me stop the story here for a minute and say this is the second sermon I am offering in a series called “The Keys to Happiness.” Some people might think that a sermon series on happiness is a kind of vain and self centered pursuit. After all, aren’t we here to worship God, and not to be happy? Others think of Christianity as the opposite of happiness, its ethos a kind of a grim moralism or promoting a life of self denial. But, when I sent around a questionnaire about what people were interest in hearing for sermons, the number one checked off was “the keys to happiness.” I don’t think we are a bunch of vain and self centered people. I suspect that this was checked off because everyone thirsts for something more in our lives. The things that we are told to make us happy in this world don’t. As Thomas Merton wrote, “What I had abandoned when I left the world and came to the monastery…– my identification of what appeared to me to be its aims… the image of a society that is happy because it drinks Coca-Cola or Seagram’s or both and is protected by the bomb.”

We may be happy on the surface but under the surface we are fundamentally ill at ease with an agenda organized around the quest for power, property, pleasure and status. We know pretty much what Thoreau meant when he said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” That is hell.

Jesus says, “I came that they might have life and have it in abundance.” Abundant life, that is what we are looking for. That is true happiness. That is heaven.

But, we have to take the “hap” out of “happiness.” “Hap” as in “happenstance” or “happened along” or “haphazard.” Happiness is not a fleeting feeling that happens to you if you are lucky enough. Happiness is cultivated as an accumulation of virtues and careful exercises. It is more like the flourishing of a healthy plant than hitting the megabucks. The word for happiness used in the New Testament is makarios which means the happiness of the Gods. It is translated as “blessed.”

One of the secrets of happiness is seeing heaven on earth. That is the meaning of the ticket, “The way to heaven is the way of heaven.” The way to do this is through the practice of gratitude. Gratitude makes us look at life with fresh eyes. It anchors us into the present grace of God. Tom was grateful for people and was able to see an interconnected web of love and light. Harry the farmer was grateful for each day as it was given to him. Plowing the fields was good very good. Marcia was grateful for her husband. Abiding together she found peace. Titus, who was a real monk, was grateful for being in Dachau because he could even see God there. Heaven can be found in the most unlikely places a street corner in the city, in an ordinary day’s work, holding hands of a dying friend, even suffering. When you practice gratitude it will make no difference to you what heaven is like because gratitude is the entry to heaven anywhere on Earth. Life after death is merely and extension of the practice of gratitude you began to experience here.

Wilma, however, never practiced gratitude because she thought she was too busy, and so even when she entered the ruby laden streets and gazed upon the flower of the tree of life, she didn’t know what to do. Wilma found her self condemned in a hell as she sat in the middle of heaven.

Let me add one more episode to my story. There was a bug who died and went to heaven. Peter knowing that bugs can’t talk, simply opened the gate of heaven and placed the bug upon it. As they were closing it was as if the gate turned into an old wooden table that stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty years. The bug was an egg deposited many years earlier. It had been laid in a green living tree from which the table was made. But then it was buried for ages under the rings of the wood that had dried into a well planed tomb. Until one day it broke free of its casing, Lifted one leg, lifted the other leg onto the top of the table. Waited there until its wings dried out. And flew away.

Stewardship and the End of Dead End Jobs – Dr. Rev Carol Kerr – 11.08.09

Have you ever had a dead end job? I had one when I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. I worked the 4 to midnight shift at the VA hospital. My job was filing x-rays (this was before everything was computerized). All night I would push a huge bin around two huge rooms with 10 foot high shelves all crammed with medical records. Starting with the A’s I would proceed to file all night ending with the Z’s. There was an old African American night janitor, Sam. At 10pm every night he would come down the hall with his long broom sweeping with the same slow rhythm. Every night I would say, “How’s it going Sam?” And every night he would reply, “Same old soup warmed over.” Filing I would sometimes come across funny names that I would tell Sam about as he swept.

“How’s it going Sam?”

“Same old soup warmed over.”

“Hey Sam, I found a guy named ‘Green Peppers!’ Green is his first name and Peppers is his last name!” Sam would chuckle, shake his head and keep on sweeping.

Of course, that was just a summer job for me. At the end of the summer I left the dead end job went off to Princeton Seminary. Sam stayed on sweeping night after night until retirement.

If you never had a dead end job, we all have run across people who are in them. Several years ago I was picking up my niece’s boyfriend, who was arriving at 1 am at the Greyhound bus station. Desolation is a bus station at one in the morning. It was snowing heavily. The parking lot was covered with snow obscuring any indication of where to park. There were no other cars or busses, so I parked to the side and what seemed to me pretty much out of the way. There were no other people there except the woman at the ticket booth behind double glass window. As I got out of the car, before I entered the station, an announcement came blasting through the loud speakers, “Move your vehicle or it will be towed!” I didn’t know where exactly to move it to, and I was going to go in and ask the woman when I hear, “Move your vehicle immediately!” Maybe yelling at people over the loud speakers was the only way she could feel powerful in her dead end job.

There are dead end jobs and then there are soul killing jobs. I always thought a soul killing job would be the person who works for the insurance company whose job it is to deny benefits. What about the man or woman who makes the decision to cut the benefits of the quadriplegic thereby denying the only possible way he would be able to pay for medical care that keeps him alive. The word is “rescission.” Although insurance companies deny that they do this, documents obtained by the House Committee on Energy and commerce show that company employee performance evaluation program include a review of rescission activity. The documents show, for instance, that tone Blue Cross employee earned a perfect score of “5” for “exceptional performance” on an evaluation that noted the employee’s role in dropping thousand of policy holders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.

Whoever is giving those reviews and whoever is getting those reviews I think have soul killing jobs. Now, they might not be terrible people after all they might be the sole bread winner for a family of 6. What are they going to do? Quit their job in the worse recession since the 1930’s? They might not be terrible people, but they are stuck in a terrible system. Soul killing.

I would like you all to dig into your pockets or your purse and grab a few coins. (That is if you have them…) Look at these coins. Now, I have a couple of quarters here? They have secrets and history. I got them as change from McDonalds. Where did McDonalds get them from? Maybe an exhausted Mom who is buying her kids a quick dinner. Where did she get the quarters from? Maybe from the vending machine in a VA hospital outside of Boston. Where did the machine get them from? Maybe an old African American janitor. Where did the janitor get it from, maybe from a woman selling bus tickets at one am in the morning. Where did she get if from? Maybe from an insurance man taking the bus to pick up his kids from his estranges wife in Rhode Island. These quarters cannot speak, but they have a heavy history. They have been handed from one to another throughtout our society. They symbolize the struggles and efforts of those who worked to earn them, hopefully some good jobs, but probably some the dead end jobs and some with the soul killing jobs. Passed hand to hand they can be weighed down with disillusionment and indignity, have sweat on them.

Dead end jobs and soul killing jobs were not invented in our generation. Take widows at the time of Jesus. Being a widow meant your husband died. But it also meant that the woman had no family of men who took her in. Her husband’s family did not take her in and she did not have a family of her own (brothers or uncles) to take her in. Therefore, she had no way to make any money, except for prostitution. Many widows ended up prostitutes. This is the most dead end and soul killing job I can think of. We don’t know if the widow in Jesus’ story that we read today was a prostitute, but we do know that things were not looking good. None the less, Jesus says she gave all she had into the offering which was two “leptons.” The lepton was a tiny copper coin that was the least value of any in circulation in the time of Jesus. If a day laborer earned a denarius for a day, one lepton was one-sixty forth of that wage. If you are holding two pennies in your hand, they are worth more than the two leptons. Yet, it was all she had. And, she gave in the Temple offering.

What would cause the widow in such a dead end, soul killing situation give away her last two coins? Perhaps it is because the widow isn’t just dabbling in spare change. She is, to borrow a poker term, “all in” with God. She took what she had and placed her bet completely on God.

What does that mean for us? The point of the widow is, that our jobs don’t have to define who we are.. There is another half of the money equation. These coins that we hold in our hands, symbolize the jobs people had in order to earn the money.

But, the coins also symbolize how we spend our money. We might not be able to choose our jobs, but we can choose how we are going to spend the money we earned on our jobs. There may be dead end jobs, but we don’t have to be dead end people. There might be soul killing jobs, but we don’t have to let our souls be killed. WE can take this deeply ambiguous money, even the root of so much evil, and turn it into the source of good by putting it on the altar. We can turn around and spend our money on making the world a better place. In so doing, our daily work is redeemed no matter what our job is.

This Thursday there was a terrible shooting at Fort Hood in Texas. A psychiatrist went into the Fort Hood military processing center and opened fire killing 13 and wounding 30. This image of a destroyer of innocent people, some shot in the back, is the image of humanity at its worse. But, I in tragic times like these just when we see humanity at its worse, we also get to see humanity at its best. Commander Lr. General Rick Lynch updating the reporters said, “it has been truly overwhelming the offers of support we have had in the community and from around the nation.”

What the widow invites us to do is to focus on the currency of commitment, trusting that God will take what we give and despite humanity’s brokenness use it for the glory of God. It is that commitment that turns our small coins into a mighty powerhouse for the witness of God’s work in our communities!

The widow represents humanity at its best. Offering all that you have for God in spite of sometimes horrible circumstances. Each Sunday the church enables you to give. Once a year we consider that value of that giving and what it means for our lives and our commitment to God and this particular church, in our Stewardship drive.

The church is called to be a sign in and for the world of the new reality which God has made available to people in Jesus Christ. How does the church do this? By healing and reconciling and binding up wounds. By ministering to the needs of the poor, the sick, the lonely and the powerless… by engaging in the struggle to free people from sin, fear, oppression, hunger and injustice…. The church gives itself and its substance to the service of those who suffer. We share Christ as we work toward a peaceable and loving Kingdom of God on earth. The church is called to undertake this work. It is good work. It is open ended, glorious, meaningful work. It is work with a future and a ladder we can climb all the way to heaven. It is life giving work. It is work anybody can do, no matter what your job – sweeping floors, the night shift at a bus station, working at an insurance company, whatever… Everybody can do it, because anybody can give. You don’t have to wait to be hired into it. You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love (Martin Luther King).

The widow tossed her two coins into the Temple offering. To end this sermon and in honor of the widow, lets toss the spare change we found in our pockets or purse into this pot. Listen to the loud noise it makes. Its only spare change. On a monetary level it won’t add up to much. But, may it symbolize for us that we are “all in” with God. And then lets dedicate not our money but our lives to God and once again join together and say the prayer of St. Francis once again.

All: Lord make me an instrument of Your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And were there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

To be understood, as to understand;

To be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to

eternal life. So be it.