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Throughout the season of Lent, we’re taking a close look at the Apostles’ Creed – one of the earliest and most concise summaries of what followers of Jesus believe.
C.S. Lewis once imagined what it would be like to grow up in a prison.
In a sermon that was ultimately published as The Weight of Glory, the British author and theologian crafted a fable in which a woman is incarcerated. She’s expecting a child. Her son arrives and then grows up with her in that dark and limited space.
But she’s an artist, and she’s been able to secure pencils and a sketchpad.
She draws pictures of the world “out there,” doing her best to reveal to her little boy the wonders of forests, rivers, fields, and mountains. He dreams of personally experiencing those realities one day.
He “knows” something of the world beyond the prison bars, but only by means of two-dimensional sketches. He cannot comprehend the fragrance of hyacinths, the roar of breaking waves, or the icy coolness of snowflakes on his skin. He can discern only the barest outlines of such a world.
So it is with the way we tend to picture heaven.
Lewis points out that most cultures, historically, have imagined the next world to be far less real than this world.
As we noted when we considered the Creed’s declaration that Jesus “descended to the place of the dead,” the ancient Greeks pictured Hades as a shadowy realm where men and women exist as mere shadows or shades of their former selves. They are drained of energy, joy, and hope. The Hebrews of Old Testament times described Sheol (an undefined place synonymous with “the grave”) in similar terms.
Even contemporary Western civilization has managed to transform heaven into a comparatively boring place. Can you imagine floating on clouds, strumming harps, and singing Handel’s “Messiah” forever – especially if you’ve always had a fear of flying and aren’t a big fan of Baroque music?
There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible. Few of them have anything to say about heaven. Scripture is surprisingly shy about depicting Paradise.
Where does that leave us? Trying to imagine heaven by extrapolating from a handful of verses is like attempting to experience the tastes, sounds, and colors of a three-dimensional world by studying some pencil lines on a flat sheet of paper.
Here’s what we know: Heaven will not turn out to be less than our present experience. It will be infinitely more.
Where do we get that idea?
New Testament scholar N.T. Wright suggests that trying to perceive the future is like peering into a thick bank of fog. We cannot see what lies ahead.
All of a sudden, someone steps out of the fog and greets us. It’s Jesus. A real flesh-and-blood person, someone who truly died, left this world and entered the next. All of us, too, will one day make that journey. But Jesus did something no one else has yet done. He came back.
What was Jesus like when he reappeared to his disciples?
He was himself. His memories, identity, and relationships were intact. Most importantly, he was whole. He retained evidence of the wounds he had experienced on Good Friday. But instead of signifying pain, they now represented God’s victory. Christians believe these represent previews of what our own future embodied life will be like.
People may live in this world as if money, status, and beauty are supremely important. If that’s true, then all we have are a few years to attain them. And then we lose them forever.
But humanity’s deepest dreams, at least in the West, have always been related to the possibility of a next world. Can anyone survive the grave? Will we still be conscious? Will people retain the capacity to think, to work, and to experience joy? Will there be reunions with those we love? Will our wounds at last be healed?
Right now, all we have are sketches of a reality we cannot possibly comprehend.
In the apostle Paul’s poetic words, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (I Corinthians 13:12).
Followers of Jesus have every reason to believe that the fullness of life doesn’t come to a screeching halt when we take our last breath.
The Apostles’ Creed’s final assertion is “the life everlasting” – that Real, Lasting Life will go on and on and on in the presence of God and in the company of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
The Bible’s next-to-last chapter provides this peek:
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4).
That may only be a glimpse of our future. But for those who long to walk with God, it sets the heart soaring.
What else would you expect from a God who raises the dead?
As we near the end of our Lenten study, only one word remains in the Apostles’ Creed:
Amen.
Scholars agree that most people who lived in Israel during the time of Jesus were at least partially trilingual, speaking Hebrew, Aramaic (a Semitic language that is very similar to Hebrew), and some conversational Greek. While the New Testament is written in Greek – something that guaranteed its rapid dissemination around the Mediterranean world – the four Gospels feature about 18 Aramaic words and phrases, a number of which slipped through “as-is,” without translation.
They include rabbi, abba, hosanna, and Jesus’ profound cry on the cross, Eli, eli, lema sabachthani (“my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
Amen is an Aramaic word whose meaning and pronunciation have somehow stayed the same through two millennia. Whenever we say amen, we are speaking one of the very words that Jesus spoke.
What does it mean?
Amen is a way of saying, “I agree. I mean business. I’m signing off or attaching my signature to everything that I just said or prayed or declared.”
For that reason, we must be cautious about saying amen.
It may take less than 60 seconds to speak the words of the Apostles’ Creed, but there is a lifetime of responsibility and accountability associated with its last word.
Every time we say amen, we’re declaring, “This is how I want the world to be. Starting with me.”
And as our study of the Creed comes to an end, my hope and prayer is that the time we’ve spent together on this extraordinary statement has deepened your love for the Lord and helped you prepare, even in some small way, to worship our risen Savior with greater joy this Easter.