Friday 5 December 2014

The Gates of Heaven

Recently most of my posts have been the texts of sermons, which I am trying to be in the habit of sharing as a way of making them accessible to those who are unable to be in church for any reason, or want to think more about what they heard, or who just like reading sermons! This week my Lay Reader is preaching, which will be a treat for the congregation at 11am, and so I've had time to think more generally.

At the moment I'm indulging myself in reading a book by one of my favourite theologians, Paula Gooder. In her book 'Heaven', she writes about how in ancient Israel the Temple in Jerusalem was understood as the place where God dwelt, literally, in the Holy of Holies. The Temple therefore was a symbol of God's presence, of God's favour for Israel and indeed of God himself. It was where his people went to encounter Him. The veil of the sanctuary which hid God's presence was like a gateway to heaven, the veil or raqia that divides heaven from Earth, mortal life from eternity. Passing through the veil into the Holy of Holies, and into God's presence, was to enter Heaven- to be in the place where heaven and earth come together.

The New Testament speaks of Jesus as the gateway, the way to the father; cf John 14:6 'Jesus said to him: 'I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.' As Jesus died, the veil in the Temple was torn in two. The Holy of Holies was open to all, no longer reserved only for the High Priest, but flung open by the great high priest Jesus. In Jesus the presence of God is revealed, and the way to God is manifest. It was no longer necessary to go to the temple, because God's presence was to be found not in a place but in a person. Jesus. The temple had no further purpose and was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD and not replaced. God is no longer to be found there.

Jesus, ascending to heaven, sits at the right hand of the father and continues to be our way to the father's presence. Before his death Jesus spoke to his disciples of the work he would do, saying 'I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it' (Matthew 16:18). This saying was the focus of our thinking at the Peterborough Diocesan Ministers Conference last week. The church is Jesus's church, and Jesus is both architect and chief builder on the project. The church is not a building like the temple, nor an institution like the temple hierarchy, but a gathering of people who seek to follow Jesus and to live out his commands. 

Jesus replaces the temple, and so in Him we find our way to the dwelling place of God. He is the symbol of God's presence, of God's favour for all who follow him, and of God Himself. There is no longer a veil separating people from God, but rather an invitation to encounter the Father through Jesus the Son.

The church that Jesus is building is, Paul tells us, his body, of which he is the head (Ephesians 4:15). As his body, the church finds itself in the onerous and honourable position of being that place on earth where people can come to encounter Jesus, and through Jesus, God the Father. 
The church, as Christ's body, succeeds to the place of the Temple. Jesus is building in us a place where all people should be able to encounter God. No veils, no curtains, nothing to hide God or shield us from Him, or Him from us. Instead, coming to the church should be the way to meet Jesus, and it should allow Jesus to make each person who comes to be another building block in the church He is building. 

As each person becomes a building block, they become part of the active and real connection to God, the sanctuary of God's presence that Jesus is making of us. We stand at the gateway to heaven, in the place where the veil used to be, and so for those who approach us we are, in a way, the gateway to heaven. This is what Jesus surely meant when he told Peter that he was giving him the keys to the kingdom of heaven. We know the way, and we can direct people to it,  unlock the gate, usher them in, make them welcome. Or by our behaviour we can prevent people from finding a welcome and from encountering the Father and the Son. 

Jesus intention is that we will welcome people. The gates of hell- the only other place to go apart from the gates of heaven - will not prevail against Jesus' church. He told Peter that. Jesus does not want people going through the gates of hell and away from Him. He tore down the barrier between Earth and Heaven. The temple priests had to keep people out of the presence of God, worshipping from the other side of the veil. Our job as the church is to show people into the presence of God, to be a gate - the very gate of Heaven- that is open and unlocked, and to usher them through into the presence of Jesus. 


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