It
is traditional to spend time in Advent reflecting on the four great themes of
Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. These may not sound especially promising,
and yet, they are precisely what we need at this time.
Heaven
is not a place, geographically-speaking. It is a positioning of the heart, an
acknowledgement of the sovereign reign of a good Lord of the universe. This is
why it is possible that prophets – those with eyes to see – can find themselves
caught up into heaven, while at the same time being rooted in space and time in
exile in the Wilderness of Sin(ai) or Babylon, or Patmos, or Rome. In the last
places you would expect to find God, the least likely places to go looking.
This is also why as soon as the archangel Lucifer, and a third of the angels
with him, disavow the goodness of God they find themselves exiled from heaven,
not as punishment but as inevitable consequence of their decision.
To
hope in heaven is to position oneself in receipt of God’s faithful
lovingkindness, in the face of a world that is not consistently faithful,
loving or kind. It is to say ‘yes!’ to God’s intervention, as Mary embraced the
‘eucatastrophe’ (JRR Tolkien’s word for the decisive, unrepeatable,
interventions of grace that transform a world we cannot transform in our own
strength or through our own wisdom) of conceiving Jesus.
There
is nothing escapist about believing in heaven. Indeed, it will cost you everything.
Yet this is what is asked of us.
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