Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, September 27, 2026
I asked in the newsletter this week: what's your vision of heaven? Jack sent me... thank you for responding to the newsletter, Jack. Wow. Jack sent me a really beautiful answer of how he perceives heaven, and I would love to read how you do as well.
What's hard about all of this being-alive business is that we're in the middle. The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, "You don't wish to live without the beginning, without the end, because being in the middle causes you anxiety." God created, and we were not front row for it. God will reconcile all things into a new heaven and a new earth, but we haven't gotten tickets to that show yet either. So we often wonder, with great awe and fear and maybe even curiosity: what happens after this? Where do we go when we die? Heaven. What does heaven look like? Who gets to go? What might it be like? These are questions that a lot of us have wrestled with. Some from a young age, and some who are older are wrestling with that as they reckon with and face their own mortality.
I started thinking about it more when my sister-in-law Tallu was diagnosed with brain cancer and died about five years ago. She wrote a beautiful book called What We Wish Were True, and it's about reckoning with life when you know you're going to die. She was actually buried out at Larkspur Conservation, wrapped in a shroud, and we buried her in the ground. It was a really beautiful moment and also very intimate with death. In this book, at the very end of it, she writes a meditation, and she calls it "Some of What It Might Be Like," where she's maybe wondering what happens after she died. This is what she writes, just a little bit of it:
"It might be that I'm a waxy leaf rushing downstream, following the curve of the water, flipping, tumbling, somersaulting down the watershed, a delight right in the water. Or maybe I will be cosmic, a ball of light, a star in the night sky, obvious and out loud. Or maybe I will be a song, golden words rolling off of someone's tongue, a tune anyone can hum. Or maybe I will be the ears that hear it."
And she continues on. She says, "Maybe I'll be a wide quilt large enough to cover a multitude. Maybe I'll be a box turtle lounging on a log to get as much of that hot sun. Maybe I'll be a forest floor, damp, sweet, constantly renewing itself through death and decomposition." She goes on and on, wondering what it might be like. And this is the last line of her book: "May we become all of this and more."
If you have been hanging out with us this month, you have persisted through quite a book. We have heard about dragons and beasts. We've heard about seven seals being broken from a scroll. We've heard about seven trumpets blasting and seven bowls of wrath being poured on God's people. We've heard about the four horsemen. There's stuff in there about the mark of the beast and the lake of fire. All this violence, all this chaos. It's not a prediction of what's to come. It's a wake-up call from a guy named John who's exiled on an island, writing to seven churches that need to be awakened to the ways in which they are complacent to empire. Y'all know anybody like that? The realities of Rome.
It's too much to wrap our heads around. And so for fifteen chapters, John is giving us a diagnosis. You want to know how broken the world is? He says, "I'll show you." You want to know how complicit we are in systems of oppression? "I'll write it out for you." It's been a hard couple of chapters to get through, and we've spent the last few weeks looking pretty unflinchingly at the pathology report. And now today, finally, we get to hear about how to heal this illness. We hear about heaven. And for a guy on an island, we hear about some of what it might be like.
And some of what it might be like actually begins with (I don't know why we love the number seven in this book) seven things it won't be like. It's an interesting way to hear nos as we try to figure out God's final yes. He says, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth. I saw a holy city, a new Jerusalem. It was actually coming down from heaven to us."
And the first thing he says of what it's not like, he says, "The sea was no more." For those of you, when you picture some of what it might be like, your toes in the sand, you looking out at the water, that's not really what he's talking about here. The sea in those times represented chaotic power. In Revelation 12 and 13, we read about a beast coming out of the sea, a metaphor for the Roman Empire, for these armies and imperial cults who would come to touch ground and rule. Chaotic power coming to threaten and intimidate the people. The sea will be no more. Maybe also for John, the sea is what's separating him from his beloved communities. There will be no more separation, and I will not be exiled on this island far away from you. The sea will be no more. That's his first vision of heaven.
Two: there will be no tears, death, sorrow, crying, or pain. The home of God is not somewhere up there or out here. God says, "I'm among mortals. I will dwell with you. You will be my people, and I will be with you." Death will be no more. Mourning will be no more. Pain will be no more. Crying and suffering will be no more. Not in this new heaven.
The third thing it won't be: there will be no cowards, no faithless, no polluted folks, no murderers, no idolaters, no liars. The people reading this would have known exactly who John was talking about. People who were bending the knee to Rome. People who would rather worship an emperor than worship a loving God. People who were so scared of the wrath, of the greed and power of a leader, that they turned away from what was inside of them to bow down to something intimidating and threatening. He said there's no more of that. There's no wealth hoarding. There's no power mongering. There's no lying. There's no fear spreading in the new heaven.
And then no temple. No temple in heaven, no set-apart place where we encounter God, 'cause God is everywhere in heaven. No temple. No... and I'm looking at Katie... no electric bills. No gnats in the sink. No internet woes. No HVAC systems going down. There's no church tension and strife. There's no place to go to church in the heavenly city, because what John is describing is that God is the temple. The Lamb, Jesus, is the temple. We don't need to siphon off in buildings to gather, even though we know, Vine Street, that we gather in order to go out and be the church in the world. John is saying God is that, permeating everything and everywhere in this holy city.
And the fifth thing it won't be: the city has no need for sun or moon or light, because the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. There is light in the heavenly city because God is that glorious light. Isn't that a beautiful image? Its lamp is the Lamb. Say that ten times fast.
The sixth: there will be no closed gates in this city. Everyone is welcome in. There is no lock. There is no password. There is no discriminating against who is in and who is not out. The entrance of the city is open to all people.
The seventh thing John says heaven won't be: there's no curse. Nothing is accursed. The angel shows John nothing will be cursed anymore. We'll be stripped bare of all of our shame, of all of our guilt, of all of our resentment, of all of our anger, of being naked and afraid. We will walk vulnerable and open into God's loving embrace, into this new city.
What do y'all think of that?
It's easy to dream of this new Jerusalem, this new city coming down, this future that we can escape to in our minds. But did you notice that when John was writing about this, he used some past-tense verbs? He said, "I saw a new heaven and earth," like Mary and the Magnificat. God has already filled the hungry with good things, already sent the rich away empty. It's been fulfilled. The already and the not yet. And if it's been fulfilled, and it is being realized before us, maybe we have a part in making it happen. John saw it. As William Pender writes, John cracks the window shades on this room that we call reality, and we catch a glimpse of God's world surrounding us, just beyond the walls of reality.
What changes for you? What changes for me if we believe that heaven is not remote? It's not what we wait for until the rapture comes. It's not where we go when we die, or not just that. But as Eugene Peterson says, it is immediate, and it is also barely out of range of our senses, but it's brought to our senses because of this guy's vision.
So heaven begins on earth, at least for John. It's the invisible to which we are drawn now, he says. And when we are drawn to it, it will develop into a full visibility, a full completion. And the features of heaven John describes, they are what we already know. I've seen it. Have you seen it? I've seen the seven nos that John lays out. There's no chaotic power when I hold a baby. There's no tears or sorrow when I spend time out at our church camp. There's no cowards or liars when I go down to the Capitol and I see people speaking truth to corruption and greed. There's no temple, but there's church outside of church, like an AA meeting or a hike at Percy Warner or a shared meal with a bunch of misfit toys. There are no closed gates, but an open table. And there is no curse of shame. There is only abounding freedom. Imagine glimpses of heaven all around us. The invisible breaking in, desperately wanting us to see it, to experience it. But not just that.
Earth is crammed with heaven. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes, "Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries."
What happens when we look up from plucking blackberries, to see heaven all around us, to see earth? Don't you love that? That verb: earth crammed with heaven.
What John notices, though, it's not a blackberry bush. It's not even a garden. Heaven for John is urban. Heaven is a city. This is the dominant theme in his vision. It's a city where we don't just sit back and look at it, the splendor, but it's a city where we have a responsibility to renew and restore and redeem and reconcile it. Which means we play a part in bringing heaven to earth.
But the biblical track record for cities, it ain't great. Y'all remember the first city in the Bible, the one that was built by Cain? He murdered a guy. Y'all remember Babel? Y'all remember Sodom and Gomorrah? Y'all remember even Jerusalem? Jesus says in Matthew, that's the city that kills the prophets and stones whoever is sent to it. "How often I have desired," Jesus says, "to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing."
And of course, Rome. Babylon. What about Nashville? We haven't always had the best track record. These broken cities, they actually have a holy city to strive toward. Heaven is not eternal nothingness. William Pender writes, "Heaven is not eternal nothingness, because we continue to have work to do." Is that daunting, or is that encouraging?
So for John, for Tallu, this is some of what it might be like. And if we receive this letter, just like the seven churches did in Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum and so on, we're given a greeting. It's a good way to start a letter. And then we're given a wake-up call, the diagnosis that we really have to look around us at the brokenness of what we've done and come to terms with it. And then we're given an invitation. And the invitation, whether you like it or not, whether I like it or not, is not to escape, but to engage. Not to wait, but to work for heaven. To be hopeful enough to believe in the healing of the nations. To be imaginative and bold enough to believe that there is a new heaven happening, where God is making all things new, where we will see God's face, John wrote, and God will be our light, John said, and we will reign forever and ever and ever.
The beginning of that big book (and that one is particularly big): God. And the end of that big book: God. The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end. And so when we feel this messy middle of anxiety, that we didn't get a front-row seat to the beginning, that we don't have a ticket yet to the end, it means that we can both hope and work toward an earth that just might be crammed with heaven.
And this is just some of what it might be like. Or what it can be like, or what it should be like, or what it will be like.
May it be so. And as Wesley often says, may we make it so.
Amen.