Two More People you’ll Meet in Heaven
John 14:1-14; Acts 7:55-60
I’ll admit it—it seems a little odd hearing the 14th Chapter of John read right here on a
Sunday morning... I hear it more often at a funeral. That’s probably the most favorite
selection of scripture used at funerals, and with good reason! Just as it gave comfort and
assurance to a band of sometimes dense disciples, it gives great comfort today to the rest
of us struggling and grieving, wondering about our loved ones and the afterlife. And,
even though I know it’s a metaphor, one can’t help but wonder about this mansion with
many rooms. Jesus told the disciples they could expect to have the heavenly father build
a mansion, in fact, as he prepared to leave his disciples, that’s what he was heading out to
do—prepare the place, make sure there was room, make things nice—you know, really
nice. What a nice thought. Hymns and gospel songs have taken this very notion for their
inspiration… “I’ve got a mansion, just over the hilltop in that bright land where we’ll
never grow old!” “I’ll fly away O Glory I’ll fly away.” On and on and on.
So...what about these two characters in the Book of Acts? Wonder what they said to
each other when they met for that first time in their mansion prepared “just for them?”
But first, before I explore that I realize someone else has been down this road before.
When I began to think about Stephen and Paul and what it might mean to “overhear”
their conversations as two people I might meet in heaven, I recalled that phrase had
already been taken. I couldn’t title a sermon Two People You’ll Meet in Heaven! That’s
already taken by Mitch Albom, author of NEW YORK TIMES bestseller, Tuesdays With
Morrie. Except there’s not two, there’s five people. And in Albom’s bestseller, Five
People You Meet in Heaven, the reader “meets” Eddie, a grizzled war veteran who feels
trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. As the park has
changed over the years — from the Loop-the-Loop to the Pipeline Plunge — so, too, has
Eddie changed… from optimistic youth to embittered old age. His days are a dull routine
of work, loneliness, and regret. Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic
accident, trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two
small hands in his — and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that
heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to
you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant
strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever.
One by one, Eddie's five people illuminate the unseen connections of his earthly life. As
the story builds to its stunning conclusion, Eddie desperately seeks redemption in the
still-unknown last act of his life: Was it a heroic success or a devastating failure? The
answer, which comes from the most unlikely of sources, is as inspirational as a glimpse
of heaven itself.
So, with thanks to Mitch Albom for the subliminal idea for a sermon title and thanks to
John’s Gospel for raising the notion of this mansion with many rooms, each one
prepared, just for us, I wonder what two more people, Stephen and Paul-- might have said
to each other when they bumped into each other one day, there in heaven.
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We meet both characters in the book of Acts, written by Luke. I try my best to keep my
own sermons below 15 minutes, but Stephen takes a bit longer with his preaching—in
fact his one and only sermon goes on for almost two chapters in the book of Acts,
chapters 6 and 7. Considering Luke only took 28 chapters to write the entire account of
the history of the early church then spend two of those 28 chapters recounting one
sermon must mean we ought to sit up and take notice that that’s a pretty big deal. Except,
the very odd thing about all this is preaching was not what Stephen was supposed to be
doing in the first place! I’m going to depend on you to read those two chapters this week
for yourself and you’ll see that Stephen’s real ministry in the early church was to (as
Luke called it) “wait on tables.” Not like we might think of today, but
oversee/orchestrate an orderly and fair distribution of food for the most vulnerable in the
Christian community—the widows. As widows, with no man to lean on (in those days)
there was no income, no livelihood, and no food. Luke picks up on a story where
someone notices that some widows, Greek speaking, weren’t getting as much food ration
per day as the Hebrew speaking widows. The early church’s original twelve disciples,
the same ones who followed Jesus, minus Judas (but “replaced” by Matthias by straw
vote) didn’t feel that food distribution should be their responsibility. They decided to
delegate this important responsibility to someone else—seven individuals, in fact.
Stephen was at the top of the list. So, you would expect Luke to write a story or two
about how nicely that all went—how Stephen and the others went to work each day at the
Food Bank, making sure there was no more discrimination and that Greek widows got the
same sized loaf of bread that Hebrew widows got. How Stephen and the other deacons
worked hard and witnessed miracles, seeing the growing multi-ethnic and multi-cultural
Church learn how to let go of their prejudices and bigotry as they learned how to do that
very simple thing called eating together. But those aren’t the stories Luke tells about
Stephen. Instead, immediately after the decision is made to put this food distribution plan
in place with Stephen in charge, Luke records a sermon Stephen preaches that ultimately
enrages the crowd of onlookers who have gathered on the street.. In that enraged crowd
stands a man named Saul, whom we later know as Paul (yes, the apostle Paul!) who holds
the coats and jackets of those who were getting hot and sweaty because they were hurling
rocks and stones at Stephen, pelting and pummeling him outside the city until he dies a
horrible death, the early church’s very first person to die a martyr.
So, what might Stephen and Paul have to say to each other when they bump into each
other somewhere in that great “mansion” in heaven that the Lord promised he was going
to prepare for them? I have no doubt both characters made it to heaven. Saul finally put
down the sweaty coats of the persecutors, met the risen Jesus, became a believer, started
preaching and traveling around as an evangelist and got into as much trouble as
Stephen…and as legend has it, also died a martyrs death somewhere in Rome. I wonder
then, when they bumped into each other up there in their heavenly home, if they might
have had a conversation that went like this:
Stephen: Say, you sure look familiar, haven’t I seen you before?
Paul: (sheepishly) Well, I don’t really know, for sure, that is… maybe…
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Stephen: You had a clothing store, right? I seem to recall you standing around holding
lots of coats… right? What were you doing, checking your inventory?
Paul: Stephen, please. Stephen why didn’t you just stick to your assigned task? You
know… serving as a deacon, making sure everything came out equal there in the chow
line. How many was it you were overseeing—7, 70?
Stephen: (not really paying attention to what Paul was saying) Now I remember! You
were there that day! That was you, wasn’t it—off to the side, holding the coats of the
ones who murdered me?
Could two people be any more unlike each other?
By her own admission, there are two more people who couldn’t be more opposite, even
though both of them are about the same age, are both recovering alcoholics and live in
the same country. Anne Lamott and George W. Bush. One a household name and a
former President of the United States, the other a best selling author. In her book, Plan
B—Further Thoughts on Faith, Lamott discloses to her readers something that resembles
what you might expect to hear in a confessional booth. Though she agrees with fellow
Christian writer, Barbara Johnson that “we’re Easter people living in a Good Friday
world,” more often than not, Lamott claims she just doesn’t have the right personality for
Good Friday—instead, she likes to “skip ahead to the resurrection.” So, in her Lenten to
Easter spiritual exercises, she puts herself through the paces, deliberately trying to do the
difficult things that require her to go beyond a faith that is based on mere feeling. Listen
(in her own words) to her new resolution:
I am going to pray for our president to believe that all people deserve to be fed, and to try
to make that a reality. Bush believes in serving the poor, but only when they are the
“deserving” poor. What on earth does that mean? If I were more spiritually evolved, I
would mail him a friendly card, because if you want to change the way you feel about
people, you have to change the way you treat them. I know that Bush is family, and that I
am supposed to love him, but I hate this—he is a dangerous member of the family.
Maybe I can’t exactly forgive him right now, in the sense of canceling my resentment and
judgment. But maybe I can simply acknowledge what is true, spiritually—that he gets to
come to the table and eat, too; that I would not let him starve. In heaven, I may have to
sit next to him, and in heaven I know, I will love him. On earth, however, when I
consider that he is my brother, and I am to love him, I’m reminded of the old Woody
Allen line that someday the lion shall lie down wit the lamb, but the lamb is not going to
get any sleep.1
Clearly, everyone wants to go to heaven. The mansion that’s being prepared for us must
really be something. But I wonder…depending on whom you’ll meet in heaven; it just
might be that we ought to treat life here on earth as a dress-rehearsal. Because you never
really know, do you…just who you’ll meet in heaven.
1779
1
Anne Lamott, Plan B—Further Thoughts on Faith; Riverhead Books, New York—2005, p. 144.
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