Heaven on Earth: Are There Tears in Heaven? by Rev. Michael McGee, March 7, 2010

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"Heaven on Earth: Are There Tears in Heaven?"

        You just have to love Charlie Brown, don't you? He embodies the agonizing pain all of us felt when we were kids, the sense of isolation and incompetence and fear of being a loser. In one cartoon Charlie says, “There must be millions of people all over the world who never get any love letters . . . I could be their leader.” In another he prophesied that, “It always looks darkest just before it gets totally black.” You can't help but want to give him a big hug and tell him that some day he will be loved and respected and happy.

        If we're truthful, most of us would admit that Charlie is still trying unsuccessfully to fly that kite inside of each of us. No matter how competent and successful we may be, there are times when our shoulders slump, our gaze goes to the ground, and all we can say is, “Good grief!” -- or a variation of that.

         One thing that each and every one of us have in common is the tears we cry, if not on the outside then certainly on the inside. Now don't get me wrong; you may be feeling great this morning, and I hope you are. But no matter how good you feel at this moment, you hurt. You may feel some physical pain; most of us do. Could be a bad back, arthritis, a head ache. There are some here today who are suffering from cancer, heart disease, or another life-threatening ailment. And each of us suffers emotional and spiritual pain. The grief of losing someone you love, the depression of feeling rejected or lost, the loneliness of being left behind, the fear of illness and death.

         Perhaps the greatest pain we experience is feeling the anguish of others. Felix Adler writes that, “We stand ... on the shore, and see multitudes of our fellow beings struggling in the water, stretching forth their arms, sinking, drowning, and we are powerless to assist them.” Isn't that how you felt when you heard the news of the devastating earthquake in Haiti? And then in Chile? Don't you feel that way when you hear about the many innocent children and others who die from malnutrition and disease, from war, and natural disaster?

         Some day I would like to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem, or what is sometimes called the Wailing Wall. Biblical archaeologists believe that the Wall is all that remains of the Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70 CE. The wall has been a sacred place for Jews ever since. It has been a place for prayer, for memories, and for tears.

         The Wailing Wall is a symbol of the devastating destruction and incomprehensible pain experienced by the Jews throughout their history. Petitioners frequently put pieces of paper with prayers or notes to dead loved ones in the cracks between the stones. And they cry the tears that have been cried for more than twenty centuries beneath the shadow of the Wall.

        There are wailing walls all over the world. In our own country it's places like the Vietnam Memorial, the AIDs memorial quilt, the Holocaust Museum, and many more.

        When I was in Cologne, Germany, I visited two wailing walls. The first is the Gestapo Museum, which documents the brutal persecution and murder of Jews, communists, gypsies, Catholics, and religious and political liberals in Europe before and during World War II. It's much like our own Holocaust Museum here in DC, except that the stone structure was actually the Gestapo headquarters during the war.

        The exhibits are upstairs, but when you walk down the stairs into the basement area, it's like descending into hell. I stumbled past about ten small, cramped, windowless cells used to incarcerate anyone deemed enemies of the state, and one room used for torture. On the walls of the cells after you can still read messages written by the imprisoned, all these years, words of fear and courage carved by hand into the stone, as well as farewells to loved ones who would never see them again. Outside the cells are photos of some of the victims with their tragic stories. I can't begin to imagine the heart-wrenching despair that was experienced in that place and so many others. I couldn't help but cry as I imagined the unimaginable.

        Another wailing wall I saw in Cologne are “stumbling stones.” This is a project to memorialize individuals killed by the Nazis by embedding small plaques in sidewalks with their names and the dates of their deaths. They're called "stumbling stones" because they're intended to make people who come across them pause from their everyday lives and remember that a person killed by the Nazis once lived at that address. More then 3,500 of the plaques have been installed throughout Germany.

        As I paid homage in front of two stumbling stones, I thought how we could all use such reminders of those who have been unjustly persecuted and murdered. Can you imagine stumbling stones in our own towns and cities with the names of Native Americans, slaves, civil rights workers, immigrants, gay people, and others who died for no reason other than fear and prejudice?

        The Wailing Wall is symbolic of something we all need in our lives: a place where we can freely express the deep sorrow in our hearts, a place where we can grieve for loved ones lost or simply weep for the innocent who have been betrayed.

        Do you have such a place? Do you have a Wailing Wall where you can go to cry out the tears that come when life is too painful to bear?

        I think of our church as a Wailing Wall. From this vantage point I've seen many tears, and I'm proud that our church is a place where people feel free to cry.

        I think of each of us as a Wailing Wall as well. Aren't the people who truly love you those who are willing to hold you in their arms and let you weep as long and deep as you need? And isn't your love for them as wide as your arms when you hold them in turn? If we cannot be a Wailing Wall for each other, then our relationship will never have the nourishment of tears to grow our love.

        But it's not easy to embrace each other's pain, is it, especially when it comes to our children. Jonathan Haidt asks this intriguing question, “Suppose that on the day your child is born, you are given two gifts: a pair of glasses that allows you to read [their destiny], and a pencil that allows you to edit it... What would you do?”

        Yes, what would you do? How much of the pain in their lives would you eliminate? It's hard for parents to realize that suffering can help their children to become more compassionate and caring, but only if we give them the freedom to feel the pain, and the tools to turn their suffering into kindness.

        Certainly the pain and despair we experience in life can be a source of great insight and compassion, but then why is all the world not wise and loving since everyone suffers? The truth is that suffering opens a door, but we must be willing to walk through that door.

        This is the door to heaven – a heaven on earth – because suffering gives us the amazing possibility of making the leap of empathy, which transports us into the soul and heart of another person. In those transparent moments we know another person's joys and sorrows, and we care about their concerns as if they were our own. Can there be a greater purpose to our lives?

        If we refuse to open that door, then the consequences can be cruel. James Baldwin writes, “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

        We always have two options when suffering comes calling: we can either hold tighter to the beliefs we have developed, or we can adapt our beliefs to the new overwhelming circumstances. My colleague, Denise Tracy, wrote these words about being diagnosed with cancer:

        “My dominant belief was to think that I live on a human plane and possess a spiritual life, which I am responsible for tending. This is a simple truth. The problem with this theory is that our spirituality can become a sometime thing, confined to Sunday mornings or a few mystical moments in a lifetime. If we are tired or under stress, our spiritual life may suffer from lack of time and commitment. We'll get back to it, we say, when we have more time, when we feel more able.

        “I no longer believe this. Instead of living on a human plane and possessing a spiritual life, I now believe that I live on a spiritual plane and possess a human life. What this means, quite simply, is that every moment I am alive I am living my spirituality. The way I comb my daughter's hair, the way we walk to the bus, the food I prepare, the sermons I write, the way I treat the grocery store attendants, the person in the car next to mine on the freeway--all this is spirituality...”

        Denise is right: we live our faith in every moment of our lives. Each of us should ask ourselves, what would I do if my doctor told me I have cancer? Some of you have heard those words. You've felt the shock that takes your breath away. You've been hit with the panic that grips you at your core. And the myriad questions have flooded your mind: How can this be? Did someone make a mistake? What can I do to survive? Will I die?

        We may lean on our religion at that point, but unfortunately organized religion doesn't always do a good job of helping us cope with pain; in fact, religion is often better at showing us how to avoid coping with pain. When a minister asked a parishioner, "Where do you think you'll go in the next life?" the parishioner replied, "Oh, I suppose to the exquisite bliss of the Lord but let's not talk about such unpleasant subjects."

        At its worse, religion denies the reality of suffering, insisting that we suffer in this life so that we will not suffer in the next. We are told that there are no tears in heaven, but then who would we be without our tears? What kind of life would it be if we were never sad, if we never grieved, if we never held each other in our arms and shared our pain?

        Religion, at its best, helps us to transform suffering into purpose and liberation. All of the great religious prophets tell us that we are saved not from pain but through pain. By facing the pain of being human, of being victims of oppression and crucifixion, of being lonely and afraid, we are able to embrace our fears, enter into the darkness, and then awaken to the blessings of forgiveness and love.

        In the words of Helen Keller, “The world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it.”

        We overcome suffering by working through our pain, by accepting our suffering as the greatest of all teachers and gurus. We overcome our suffereing by saying "yes" to the totality of life, which requires that we say "yes" to our suffering.

        We know that the joy of love always contains the seed of final separation, just as the pleasure of creation always contains the inevitability of destruction. But we cannot and should not let our joy and our love for life be diminished by the fear of the inevitable, or we will never enter into heaven on earth. We will never experience the fullness of life and be uplifted by a deeper purpose.

        Suffering can be either hell or heaven, hell if we deny it, closing our eyes to our own anguish and thus to the pain of others, or heaven if we have the courage to open our hearts so that we may learn from it and grow from it and feel our common humanity.

        Naomi Shihab Nye writes, “Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside/ you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.”

        So let your tears flow friends, because we are living in a place where our common suffering binds us together in compassion and love, a place where caring is a calling, a place where we stand together at the Wailing Wall, weeping, embracing, healing and loving each other. Welcome to heaven on earth!

Photos From The Service

Covenant Group Questions

1. When do you feel like Charlie Brown?
2. What is a wailing wall you have visited?
3. What are your wailing walls, places you go to shed your tears?
4. If you have children, and if you had the power, how would you protect them from suffering?
5. Do you see yourself as a person with a spirituality or as a spiritual person?
6. How have you overcome suffering?

Sermon Sources & Inspiriation

• "The Wise Heart" by Jack Kornfield
• "Messengers of God" by Elie Wiesel
• "The Happiness Hypothesis" by Jonathan Haidt

Video: The Western Wall