"It's .... like....."
I preached on the standard texts yesterday. I wanted to proclaim the Gospel with the voice inflection of a 'valley girl', but that would have been so off the wall, and did not.
Jesus, on various occasions, tries to help us understand things by giving us reference points... "like" a seed, a farmer, a landlord, a housewife, a servant...
In the reading, He's trying to give us a glimpse of heaven and gives us examples of what heaven is "like". In the greater scheme of things, only heaven will be "like" heaven - just as, no matter what anyone says, only chicken tastes "like" chicken.
Heaven may seem as small as a mustard seed, but when we grow into heaven it is expansive. The way yeast, a living thing, expands when it is fed and added to, so it is with heaven. Heaven's worth is such that you will be and give all that you have and all that you are to be part of it. There is enough room in heaven for us all, just as the net cast out catches all manner and size of fish - heaven will embrace them all. And then the fish will be judged by the Fisherman himself... whose criteria for 'good' and 'bad' may well be different from what our criteria is "like".
There is so much to the love of God and the assured peace of Heaven that we have a difficult time imagining how much that "much" is! We struggle for comparisons, for similarities, for relationship to something we have known or thought or experienced.... yet heaven, as God, is 'like' nothing else. God is awesome. Heaven will be our inherited home: somehow familiar - yet "like" no other home we have ever known. Amen.
Jesus, on various occasions, tries to help us understand things by giving us reference points... "like" a seed, a farmer, a landlord, a housewife, a servant...
In the reading, He's trying to give us a glimpse of heaven and gives us examples of what heaven is "like". In the greater scheme of things, only heaven will be "like" heaven - just as, no matter what anyone says, only chicken tastes "like" chicken.
Heaven may seem as small as a mustard seed, but when we grow into heaven it is expansive. The way yeast, a living thing, expands when it is fed and added to, so it is with heaven. Heaven's worth is such that you will be and give all that you have and all that you are to be part of it. There is enough room in heaven for us all, just as the net cast out catches all manner and size of fish - heaven will embrace them all. And then the fish will be judged by the Fisherman himself... whose criteria for 'good' and 'bad' may well be different from what our criteria is "like".
There is so much to the love of God and the assured peace of Heaven that we have a difficult time imagining how much that "much" is! We struggle for comparisons, for similarities, for relationship to something we have known or thought or experienced.... yet heaven, as God, is 'like' nothing else. God is awesome. Heaven will be our inherited home: somehow familiar - yet "like" no other home we have ever known. Amen.
posted by Joanna Depue | 5:26 PM
2 Comments:
Like ... YEAH ! Fer sure. Like ... you should totally have done the voice thing. Like, duh, getting offended would be, like, totally bogus, I'm sher. If you say heaven is, like, no way could you know what it is, I'm, like, YES WAY, heaven is, like, so totally out there, I mean, like, get real ... it is what it is, you know?
At least I understood Deacon J. I guess that Sue understands what she said, but does anyone else? It is enough to know that Heaven is with my God....heaven enough for me.
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