Enlightened Heart-Eyes

When Nic was little, his highchair sat right in front of the kitchen speaker for the late 70’s intercom system in our house. It has since gone completely quiet, but back then, every now and again, the radio would come on – randomly – and play quietly. So quietly that if you were close to the speaker, you could hear it, but otherwise you wouldn’t haven noticed it. Well, Nic noticed. We told him it was the people in the wall – that they were little and had a band and were having a party. He wanted to believe it, but he couldn’t quite. Even though he could hear the music,…

On All Saints’ Sunday, as we remember those who have entered life eternal this year, it may seem as hard to believe the vision John shares in Revelation, “After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” 2 At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby. A rainbow that shone like an emerald encircled the throne. Day and night they never stop saying: “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’[b] who was, and is, and is to come.” 9 Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, They lay their crowns before the throne and say: 11 “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”

It seems hard to believe when we try to explain it in earthly terms…that there is a community of little people living in our kitchen wall or that there is a throne room with a jasper/ruby looking being on a throne encircled by a rainbow that shines like an emerald. What? And yet, there was something really happening that Nic heard. And there is something really happening that John saw. As adults, we knew that the radio was playing. As departed saints, our loved ones know eternal life in the presence of God. Life that John described in Revelation in the passage that Bailey read: Never again will they experience hunger or thirst or the exhaustion of working in the blazing sun, or mourning or crying or pain. God wipes away every tear from their eyes.’” Now they fully know, and fully know God. The eyes of their hearts are enlightened.

And in the passage I read from Ephesians, Paul writes that he is praying for the church, for us here on earth, to have enlightened heart-eyes as well, for us to see life in God’s presence clearly enough to live it on earth as it is in heaven. An aside here – we tend to think of heaven with the same child-like understanding as people in the wall. Heaven is not a place we can locate somewhere in the universe. It’s not “up there.” Heaven is being in God’s presence fully. Paul writes, “I pray that God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him.” He is praying for the church to see and know Jesus. For us to have the mind of Christ, a mind that chooses sacrifice over glory. For our hearts to feel as Christ feels, hearts that are moved with compassion and hands that can’t help but act when we are confronted by hunger or suffering. “So that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what the hope is to which he has called you.” So that, seeing and knowing what those who have died to eternal life know – life with no hunger or thirst or scorching work or mourning or crying or pain – we might understand that is the hope God has for us to accomplish on earth. When we pray thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven, that is what we are praying for – for God to use us to bring heaven, God’s presence, more fully on earth. For everyone living on earth to experience no more hunger or thirst or work that is oppressive or grief or pain. That is our hope, if our heart’s eyes can see it.

And that is the feast that is set for us. We come to be fed and to drink, to the joyful feast of the people of God, together with our brothers and sisters from every place and condition on earth – from cathedrals to dirt-floor lean-to’s and from war-zones to hospice houses – and from every time throughout eternity, Jesus meets us here for us to remember him, so that we come to know him better and live more like him when we leave here.

The key? Paul knew the church was at risk of nodding and going back home after they read his letter and doing exactly what they had always done. It sounds like people in the wall kind of talk. Pie in the sky stuff. Everybody has enough to eat. Nobody is without clean water. Workers aren’t exploited. Joy, deep and abiding knowledge of God’s love, overrides losses so that there is not grieving without hope or pain without comfort.

Here’s the reality. Ephesus was a center of trade and the home of the Temple of the Greek goddess Artemis. The economy was based on the silversmiths making little silver statues of Artemis to sell. People came from all over the world. Cleopatra even came. The rich in Ephesus were excessively wealthy. And Ephesus had the third largest library in the world, a hub of knowledge fostering intellectual exchange and cultural sophistication.

How could this vision of community ever be possible, even believable? Paul writes that is God’s complete and perfect power that makes it believable, and even possible – the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead and seated him at the right hand. Another aside – at the right hand of the one who reigns means in the seat of power, able to enact the will of the sovereign, and the power of God made Christ Jesus head over all things for the church, which is his body…his mind, his heart, and his hands in the world. This power is now available to us for daily use. It is through the church that God’s power works as we fill out the body and live as the body of Jesus, and as Christ fills our lives.

May the eyes of our hearts be enlightened to see, to believe, and to live into this hope we have been given. Amen.