Heaven on Earth-Who Gets to Go There? by Rev. Mary McKinnon Ganz, Oct. 4, 2009

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“Heaven on Earth – Who Gets to Go There?”

        We are gathered here today to consider the question: Who gets into heaven?

        The answer, according to a large majority of Americans questioned in a poll taken a year ago by the Pew Center for Religion and Public Life, is that anyone – any good person who is an adherent of any religion – gets into heaven. Good news! You don’t have to profess belief in a personal Savior, or even be Christian. According to the poll, 70 percent of Americans believe that good people from religions other than theirs, get into heaven.

        This, according to New York Times columnist Charles Blow, “threw evangelicals into a tizzy. After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet roped VIP area reserved for Christians.” It must be they asked the question wrong! –these conservative Christians protested. So Pew asked again, asked another way. Nearly the same result, except this time Pew asked people to specify which religions qualified people for heaven, and folks said, essentially, all of them.

        All of them.

        When I read this, I was transported back to the time I lived in Tokyo, when one of my southern cousins came to visit. I took her, as I took all my visitors in those years, to the great Buddhist temple Zojoji. We passed under the temple gate and saw hundreds of people moving to and fro, lighting incense, pulling the rope to ring the great bell to summon the gods, washing their hands before entering the holy place. My cousin gasped and turned to me with a conflicted expression on her face. “Oh Mary,” she said, “I just can’t believe that all these people are going to hell.”

        There it was – the teaching of her religion colliding with a truth she sensed deep in her belly. What kind of God would send these people to eternal torment, my cousin must have been wondering, just because they happened to have been born in a land where good people practiced one religion and not another? And, to take it a step further than my cousin probably did -- what kind of people believe this? How does such a belief shape the way they live their lives? I guess if you believe that being ethical is a ticket to heaven you have a strong incentive to behave ethically. But I wonder what it does to the heart, to believe that others will, ultimately, be excluded from grace? To believe in a God that excludes? It’s an interesting question, but not nearly as interesting, in my opinion, as looking at the other side of it. How do we live our faith of Universalism? What is happening in our hearts?

        As early as the 3rd century in the Common Era, the Egyptian thinker Origen articulated a belief that Jesus came to earth to save everybody. In time this became a Christian heresy, but it was one that had deep roots in the practice of the earliest Christians, who believed that Jesus taught that love was the way to achieve heaven on earth. This view gained traction in the soil of the New World, where 19th Century Universalists like Hosea Ballou preached a love powerful enough to create paradise in the here and now – a paradise that welcomes everyone, with nobody left out.

        This is our heritage as Unitarian Universalists. Do we live it?

        Around the world, people this week marked the 140th birthday of Mohandas Gandhi, who said, "It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business." A true Universalist, Gandhi also said, “I consider myself a Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, and Confucian.”

        In the Catholic calendar, today is the Feast Day of St. Francis. In the 13th Century, Francis tried to live the message of Jesus by hanging out with poor people and lepers, by creating communities of itinerant monks who lived on faith that God would provide. He taught a hospitality so radical, so inclusive, that it transcended the bounds of the human species, and that is why we do pet blessings on the Feast of St. Francis; Rev. Linda will be doing one here at the church at 4 pm today, so bring your favorite four-leggeds. Stories have come to us that when Francis preached, people didn’t always listen, but the birds did – as if St. Francis had access to the way it might have been in Eden, before the apple and the fig leaf separated humankind from the rest of creation. What’s more, according to legend, he tamed a hungry beast and taught the people of Gubbio to welcome the wolf to their door, as we saw in our skit today.

        Francis and his brother monks also broke with the conventions of the day by meeting people in the streets and the towns where they lived, instead of cultivating a separated Christian culture inside the walls of a monastery, the way most religious orders in Europe did at that time. Like most human beings, he was a bundle of contradictions; he preached peace and yet supported the Crusades – he did, at least, until he saw the violence of the crusaders at close hand, which sickened him. His romantic foray into the Crusades was motivated by a sincere wish to convert Muslims to Christ, and though we see the cultural imperialism in that now, even in the midst of war, the Muslim sultan al-Malik al-Kamil received him warmly in his court, recognized him as a holy man, and ordered his soldiers to grant him safe passage.

        Most importantly, Francis preached a relational faith that saw God as an infinitely large and welcoming space for all. During his lifetime his order drew 5,000 followers, many of whom were utterly unequipped to practice the radical poverty that Francis and his closest brothers continued to live. Yet Francis made room for them all, even though their presence changed his movement.

        Here is another story widely told about the life of Francis. One day a band of violent robbers confronted one of the brothers at the place where they were staying. They were hungry and asked for food, but Brother Angelo, a knight who retained some of the haughtiness of his former calling, said they were murderers and sent them on their way. When Francis returned and learned what had happened, he told Brother Angelo, with uncharacteristic sternness, “you have behaved like a man with no religion at all!” He sent Angelo off to find them, with food and an apology. “Serve these unfortunate men with humility and good humor until they are satisfied,” Francis told him. “Then – and not until then – tell them to stop robbing and killing.” According to many sources of the life of Francis, the robbers were converted, joined the brotherhood, and lived the lives of saints from then on.

        Can you imagine how hard it was for Brother Angelo to serve those robbers in humility and good humor? Can you imagine how hard it was for the people of Gubbio to welcome a wolf into their midst, to trust that kindness would be returned for kindness?

        Can you imagine how hard it was for the wolf?

        There are many versions of the Wolf of Gubbio story. One, by Ruben Dario, the poet laureate of Nicaragua, is heartbreaking. Dario’s version begins like the one we saw here. The wolf and townspeople are reconciled, and as Francis leaves town, the wolf is sleeping at the hearth. But in time the wolf begins to notice how people in the town treat one another – cheating each other in the shops, calling each other names, even abusing one another within the embrace of the family. If they treat each other this way, the wolf thinks, it is only a matter of time before they turn on me. The wolf returns to his old ways, killing livestock and threatening people, and when Francis comes back, the wolf snarls at him to keep his distance.

        It isn’t easy, creating Heaven on Earth. Is this fear what is in the hearts of those for whom heaven is a private club?

        But our faith calls us to another kind of heaven. Starting in our own hearts, we are called to build a heaven of infinite space and radical inclusiveness, not after death, but now. We are heirs to, we aspire to a faith like that of Ibn Arabi, the formulator of Sufism, who said, “My heart has become receptive of every form. It is a meadow for gazelles, a monastery for monks, an abode for idols, the Ka’bah of the pilgrim, the tablets of the Torah, the Qur’an. My religion is Love – wherever the camels of Love’s caravan turn, Love is my belief, my faith.”

        How do we live such a faith, when difference comes to us in forms we may find threatening? How do we reach out to include our neighbors? How do we embrace those who historically have been pushed to ther margins? Unitarian Universalism has launched a new multifaith movement, “Standing on the Side of Love,” to proclaim solidarity with any whose full human worth and dignity are infringed because of who they are or where they came from. You can sign up in Fellowship Hall to join Rev. Linda and many of us on the “March for Full Equality” next Sunday on the National Mall. That’s one way. And you can stand up with VOICE on Oct. 18th. That’s another.

        And what about in our own congregation? How do we live it here? Do we have the courage to build the bridge as we’re walking on it? Are those of us who are white in this community, are we prepared to listen when the People of Color in this congregation speak their pain, and work together to create a vision of how it can be another way? Are we prepared, as our diversity consultant Paula Cole Jones challenged us a year ago, are we prepared to do the work of inclusion? How well do we understand that there is more to this work than simply saying, sure, come on in, join us, but don’t expect us to change?

        Are we prepared to make our own hearts larger, to meet our own fears with curiosity, to use our discomfort to open ourselves, to make the circle wider?

        Because it is in actually practicing this, in doing it when it’s most uncomfortable, that we grow our own souls, and that we begin to realize, to reify, the possibility of heaven on earth. These are Gandhi’s words on practice: “Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors. Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits. Keep your habits positive because ...your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.”

        It works the other way too: if we truly value inclusiveness, if we truly believe we can create Heaven on Earth starting here, in this congregation, that will affect our habits. It will affect the way we behave with one another, the words we use with one another. It will allow us to open our ears in love, even when we hear something spoken in a tone of voice that frightens us.

        People, we are not alone. We are not some marginal movement with an unrealistic belief in the possibility of utopia. We are not the only ones who believe this way. The Pew Center poll shows that Americans by a large majority value our multicultural country. But as Universalists, as members of a religious community that has inclusiveness as its centuries-old heritage, we have a special opportunity, and a particular responsibility, to make it live in the world. Right here, right now, let us claim our destiny: Heaven on earth, where All are worthy; All are welcome; together, all of us, being the change we dream about.

        May it be so.

Questions for Covenant Groups:

• Mohandas Gandhi said, “your values are your destiny.” Can you think of story about how this has been true in your own life? How about in our congregation’s life?
• Tell about a time when you were afraid of change. Did something happen to shift that for you? What was that like?
• Tell about a time when you opened your heart to something or somebody that scared you. What was that like?
• Francis prayed, “God, make me an instrument of your peace.” Tell about a time when you were an instrument of peace. What would it take for you to be an instrument of peace more consistently?

I Believe Statement

• The Journey to Heaven on Earth: Building the Bridge as We Walk on It by Amy Yamashiro

Sermon Sources and Inspirations

• Rita Nakashima Brock & Rebecca Ann Parker, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire
• Kabir Helminski, The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation
• Father Daniel Holman, OSB, & Lonni Collins Pratt, Radical Hospitality: Benedict’s Way of Love
• Donald Spoto, Reluctant Saint: The Life of Francis of Assisi
• Conversations of many years with Carmen Barsody of the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls, MN, and co-founder of the Faithful Fools Street Ministry