Could this be heaven for everyone?

When you were at school you may have read George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm. The story is about a hostile takeover of a farm led by two pigs called Snowball and Napoleon. The animals have come to believe that their human owner is an oppressor and that they can create a much freer and equal society by throwing off his yoke and running the farm themselves.

But, of course, once they have secured control of the farm, the lofty ideas drafted by the elite porcine liberators are quickly watered down until their meanings have been changed or reversed altogether. Certain things that the pigs said were not permitted became permitted. Other things that were said to be permitted were banned. And certain slogans were produced that seemed to contradict those they went before: “Four legs good, two legs bad” became, over time, “Four legs good, two legs better”. And “All animals are equal” famously became “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.

Animal Farm is about our seemingly innate desire to build a heaven on earth. If only we could change this or that change, implement this or that philosophy, we tell ourselves, we can do it. And, yet, every time we try, we fail, and we fail with catastrophic consequences.

The reason for this is because we attempt to bring heaven to earth without the help of God as a manifestation of human pride. We attempt to use politics to do what only God can do, which is, as our passage from the Book of Revelation today tells us, to make all things new.

Joseph Ratzinger, who would become Pope Benedict XVI, said, ‘Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic.’

The Heavenly City

In Revelation 21, we see the end of the story of the whole Bible: the complete recreation of the cosmic order. Did you know that the ultimate Christian hope is not just that our souls will go to heaven when we die but that the entire universe will be recreated and that we too will be recreated? Even our bodies, which decay and die in this life, will be raised up again to live in this new world.

Revelation shows us this: the old heaven and the old earth pass away and a new heaven and a new earth are created. And then we see a very strange image: the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. This is the literal coming together of heaven and earth. The image of a bride and her husband implies a nuptial union between this world that we live in now and the heavenly realm. We cannot possibly understand this in any detail but we do know that God promises to dwell with his people. And we are told in a great promise that in this place there will be no more tears, for God will wipe them away from every eye. There will be no more mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the former things will have passed away.

It is no coincidence that this reading is chosen for the Easter season: when Jesus stood up and walked away from the tomb, he began a project of cosmic renewal. Again, not just so that we would live forever in a spiritual realm, but so that the whole of the universe might be redeemed from the curse of sin which it came under back at the beginning of the story.

And this, friends, is the answer to that human longing for heaven on earth, which is so often manifested in a prideful attempt to do it on our own. From the very beginning God has been coming down to earth: walking in the Garden of Eden and beckoning to Adam and Eve, descending to Abraham, Moses and the Prophets to call a people for his own possession, and ultimately, taking the form of man in the coming of Jesus to this world in the incarnation.

The point is that we cannot lift ourselves up to God. We need God to come down to us. And this is not just for no reason. It is so that we might be lifted up to him. Another aspect of the end of the story that is often not spoken about enough is that God does not intend just to save us, but to unite us with him, making us like him, so that we might even share something of his divine nature. The Eastern Orthodox call this “theosis” or “divinisation” and it is summarised in the great church Father, Tertullian’s statement, “God become man, that man might become God.”

The truth is that we can become God-like: but it is a gift, a salvation that is offered to us in Jesus, not something that we achieve without God and in our own strength.

Thy Kingdom Come…

You might be wondering what the practical implications of this are: Should Christians be involved in politics if we cannot really achieve our aims? Would it be better to withdraw and focus on more spiritual matters? I’ll not wade too deeply into these waters today, but one thing I will say is that, without God, our efforts are limited at best and, at worst, can be extremely destructive.

This is because the greatest need that we have in the world is not a change of a societal or political structures but a change of the human heart. Think back to those pigs in Animal Farm: they intended at first to change things for the better. But the wealth and material privileges that they were confronted with tempted them and distorted their initial good intentions. Their hearts were bad, and this was a more fundamental problem that the initial oppressive conditions of the farm. They would be become tyrants and overlords on a scale much more wicked than even the original farmer.

The same is true of all of us if we were put in charge. Friends, we don’t need a new system. We need a new heart. And this is something that we can all work on, regardless of whether or not we are politically engaged. Indeed, it is something we must all work on because this is what it means to follow Christ: it means to become like him and to be changed into his image from the inside-out.

Think of the prayer that Jesus taught us: “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done. In earth as it is in heaven.” It relates to the passage from Revelation. There we see the moment when that prayer is fully fulfilled.

How could God fulfil it now? What does it mean when we pray that prayer? I would suggest that a good way of praying it is as a prayer for oneself: God, change my heart. May heaven begin here and now in me. May I be a manifestation of something that comes from above in this world here and now to the people who are around me.

This prayer is also a prayer for the Church. For the Church at its highest is indeed a manifestation of the heavenly realm, as we join together in worship and the celebration of God’s goodness to us. It is also heaven-like when we love one another in the way that Jesus commands in our Gospel reading today: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” If we seek to fulfil that commandment, with the help of God’s grace and the power of his Holy Spirit, truly we will be manifesting something of the heavenly realm here on earth today.

“Behold, I make all things new…”

Just to finish, I’d like to mention this beautiful moment in the reading from Revelation as the one who is seated on the throne announces, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

As I have already said, this newness in all things will only fully come at the end of history. But it has also already begun now. And, in a sense, the reason that many of us are here today is because we have already tasted of that newness, that freshness, deep down things, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins said. We know that the world is weary and needs to be remade. And we know that we ourselves have a similar need.

I found faith for myself as a young adult at university. I’ve had to consider this story recently a few times because I’ve been asked about it and I’ve written about it. A very significant part of my journey was my first experience of going to church at that time. I’d been to churches before but the experience I had of the vibrancy of the community and the love of the Christians I met for one another and for God was not something I had ever experienced before. Almost instantly I fell in love with the church. And even though being involved in the church is often extremely painful and takes you to the point of despair, I have never stopped loving it, wherever I have found it in my life and in whatever manifestation.

When one has been part of the Church for a long time, it is easy to forget what a wonderful and beautiful and special thing it is. There is nothing like it out there in the world. We are gathered together not because we are like one another but because we are called to worship Jesus together and to be signs of his love in the world. And we are empowered to do this by his very Spirit which is given to us in this worship, through his Word and in the Holy Sacraments. This is truly unique. This is truly fresh. This is truly good news

This is my desire for myself and for you as individuals Christians. And it is also my desire for the Church, and for this church in particular: that you and I and we together might be a witness to this new thing that God is doing in Jesus. This new love which he has manifested to the world in Jesus, particularly in the laying down of his life upon the cross. And this hope to which he calls us: of a world that will one day be enveloped in his love, renewed, remade and restored.

May we, friends, be a sign of this hope and an outpost of the divine in this place, putting away anger, malice, slander, hatred and rivalry, and instead taking up love and charity, forgiveness and reconciliation, service and self-giving. This, indeed, is that way that heaven can be manifested upon the earth.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.