Gaps in Our World
Pause your life. Freeze it. Take your remote and stop everything for a minute. Inside you is a world. A world of plans. After church, you will eat lunch. You’ll catch up on errands you didn’t have time for in the week. Inside you is a world of expectations. In fall, the leaves will change color and the temperatures will drop. As school begins, you’ll be called upon less to watch the grandkids, and you’ll get a bit of your life back. Inside you is a world of decisions to make. What kind of care do mom and dad need? Who’s going to host Thanksgiving this year?
Inside you is a world. What you think. What you anticipate. What decisions you’re deliberating.
This world inside you is closed. Finished. Whole. Complete. If you took the remote and resumed play and everything ran according to plan, then the future would really only be a foregone conclusion: a natural unfolding of the present, a foreseeable development, a potential eventually to be realized. At the beginning of the 20th century, as industrial and scientific revolutions promised a society of comfort and convenience, many people understood the world in just this way. The future, they thought, was already written. They boldly predicted and planned for a century of peace and pleasure.
After two world wars, multiple genocides, continued struggles with hunger, and an increasing gap between the rich and the poor, we’ve conceded that maybe there was more to the world than we could see or know. As the world inside us began to play out, there were shocks and surprises. Things we did not foresee. Things we could not plan for. Our world, it appeared, had gaps and cracks unaccounted for.
God on High
I must confess that I have a hard time with the traditional imagery of God on high, of heaven as God’s dwelling place. Which is exactly what we find in our scripture today, where King Solomon dedicates his newly built temple to God. Twice in our scripture, and twice more in the surrounding verses that are not included, Solomon prays to God with this address: “Hear in heaven your dwelling place” (1 Kings 8:30, 39, 43, 49).
The imagery doesn’t resonate with me because it sits at odds with my faith experience. I have only ever encountered God on the ground level. From the moment I was born, when as a helpless infant I was held close and loved in the flesh by the people around me. As I grew up, when I was given more second chances by my parents and teachers and coaches and friends than I can count. As I meet with you each Sunday, when we gather around this Table and share not only bread and cup but our trust in a life that is greater than death. In all these things, I have encountered God on my level.
Or as we’ll say around Christmas time, “Emmanuel”—God is with us. Or as Christ said, “Where two or three gather in my name, I am there with them” (Matt 18:20) or, “Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me” (Matt 25:40). Or as Paul says, “You are the body of Christ” (1 Cor 12:27).
Heaven is God’s dwelling place? My faith and my hope are that all the world is God’s dwelling place. Emmanuel. God is with us.
Heaven as the Gaps in Our World
But maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe like the expressions “lamb of God” or “bread of life,” God “in heaven” is metaphor. After all, what would it even mean that God dwells on high in the heavens? Where exactly? If everyone on earth pointed up, we’d all be pointing in different directions.
I wonder if our own expressions about the heavens don’t point us in the right direction, toward what this metaphor really means. Expressions like “Heaven knows,” which really means I don’t. Or “Heaven help me,” which really means I can’t do it myself. Or “It fell straight from heaven,” which really means it came out of nowhere, out of God-knows-where.
All these expressions suggest our inability and our ignorance. Heaven is shorthand for I don’t know everything, I can’t do this on my own, I didn’t see that happening. Heaven is the opposite of the world that is inside us, the world that we know and plan for and anticipate, the world that is closed and complete. Heaven is in the gaps and cracks in our world.
Which if we are honest, are our only real hope of salvation. I think the reason that Solomon keeps praying to God in heaven—and the reason that Jesus keeps talking about the flesh needing something else, needing spirit—is that they know that the world inside us, the world that we know and prepare for and expect and plan for, is actually small and shortsighted. Just ask the hopeful who predicted paradise at the start of the twentieth century. What we know, what already exists, what we can see coming—these things won’t save us. It’s what we don’t know, what doesn’t exist, what we can’t see coming—it’s God, in a word, or “heaven,” if you like, that will save us. It’s through the gaps and cracks of our own world.
Death…and Resurrection
If you’ve ever held onto a grudge, or hidden a lie, or simply hogged what you could have been sharing, you know just how important “heaven”—the gaps and cracks in our world—is. Because holding onto a grudge is holding onto the world inside us, the world that we know, the world where we’re right and the other person is wrong. And hiding a lie is preserving the world inside us, the world that we want, the world where we are accomplished and admired and accepted. And hogging what we could be sharing is protecting the world inside us, our world of plans and possibilities, the world where we’ve worked hard and earned it and deserve whatever we can afford.
In each case, we are clinging to the world that we know. But then there are cracks and gaps, thank God. Have you ever held onto a grudge only to have your opponent give you the nicest compliment? And it destroys your world…before opening up a new one where you have one more friend than before. Or have you ever hidden a lie only to have it exposed? And for that split second it feels unbearable…but then all of the sudden you can breathe and the weight of the lie is lifted and then in this truth it feels like you’ve been set free. Or have you ever hogged something only then to share a little bit begrudgingly? And at first maybe it feels like your world is lost…but then you enter into a new world richer and fuller and friendlier than before.
When heaven breaks through the gaps and cracks in our world, it often feels like this, doesn’t it? A little bit like death…and then resurrection.
Salvation from Outside
Emmanuel. God is with us. But we can ignore God just as easily as we can ignore our neighbor.
For this reason, I think, King Solomon prayed, “Hear us in heaven!” For this reason, we say, “Heaven knows!”, “Heaven help me!” Heaven is our way of confessing I don’t know everything, I can’t do this on my own, I didn’t see that happening. Heaven is our way of inviting what we can’t see coming, of celebrating the gaps and cracks in our world. Heaven is our way of praying for a world bigger than our grudges, freer than our fictions, rich beyond our riches. Heaven is our highest prayer—not as an escape from earth, but as redemption for earth: “On earth as it is in heaven.” It is this salvation from outside, Jesus says, that actually gives us life. “The flesh is useless”—“it is the spirit that gives life” (John 6:63). Patience, gentleness, forgiveness—these fruits of the spirit come not through our willpower and determination, not through the world we plan for and expect, but through our surrender to something beyond us, something that comes through the gaps and cracks of our world. God, in a word—or “heaven,” if you’d like.
Prayer
God of the gaps,
Who breaks into our world
In the openings
Of nonexistence,
In what we cannot see coming,
In what we do not know—
Hear us in heaven
And save us.
Lead us beyond
The world we cling to.
Lead us in the way
Of death and resurrection.
In the name of him whose spirit gives life, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
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