The thin space between heaven and earth is the framework of our mission

Up until the last year or two I had never preached on the Book of Revelation – I think that my avoiding it had been because I found the book to be so strange and also because of the way it has been turned into something quite sinister by some narrow interpreters.

I wonder what you have made of it over the years. It strikes me that those who make a lot of it and those who totally avoid it suffer from the same problem. They both approach it in similar reductionist way. Both groups read it literally: one group takes it very seriously indeed and they build a whole end-of-the-world/apocalyptic worldview on their interpretations, and the other group dismisses it just as seriously because they cannot subscribe to the worldview that they think it offers. I want to suggest that both these approaches limit the possibilities of interpretation. I think that those who want to take apocalyptic imagery as fact are laying onto the text something more than they should. In thinking that they are meant to read everything in the Bible literally, they are projecting that philosophy onto the scriptures and demanding that the Bible fit those expectations. But equally, those who dismiss parts of the Bible because it doesn’t fit their philosophies are doing the same. Both approaches are a form of fundamentalism. Both approaches insist that the Bible should not have ambiguity and paradox. One group handles such vagueness and confusion by presenting a series of dominating and conclusive proof-texts and the other simply dismisses things as simplistic and no longer relevant.

I like the way that the Bible doesn’t conform to our worldviews or philosophies! I like it that it offers something alternative to our culture which has been heavily infected by a rationalist mindset that thinks that everything is explainable. I like the way that the Bible offers ambiguity to those who think everything can be narrowed down into a clear set of principles. I like it that the lasting impression of the kingdom of God that Jesus leaves us with is that the only way we are going to ‘get it’ is by dying to ourselves – our presumptions and our limits – and that we might need to become like a child to see things for what they are. I like it that those who think they are first with their knowledge and power are made last. I like it that Paul insists that what we can see of God is like a cloudy picture in a mirror and that we don’t know everything [1 Cor 13:12]. I like the freedom that is offered us when we are released from having to have everything ring-fenced by our worldviews. And I like it that when you shake the whole Christian thing down, it presents us with the paradoxical premise that Jesus is both human and divine and that we are invited to have to find a way to sit with the miracle of that. Don’t let anyone away with taking the colour out of the Bible because they want to make it conform to their ideas of black and white!

Thus we have the imagery of the new Jerusalem in the passage from Revelation 21 & 22.

I found the image on your sheets after reading the Revelation passage. The image reminded me of times when I have sensed that the separation of earth and sky is nothing – with the clouds so low and heavy that there hardly seems to be room in between for me to breathe – or a vista that somehow holds the full majesty of plains and hills and clouds in one beautiful harmony – all is one… and I’m drawn into it.

Can you remember such experiences?

In the vision outlined in Revelation 21, the writer presents an image of being carried away to a great, high mountain and being showed the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It is as if this is happening right before his eyes and the gap between this world and the next is all broken down, and a mysterious unity between heaven and earth is unfolding in his life. What will be is all mixed up with what is, as if there is no separation. The Celtics describe this sense of there hardly being a gap between heaven and earth as a ‘thin space’ where there is a drawing together of the natural and the spiritual. In these thin spaces what is normally separated: dawn and dusk, sea and shore, earth and sky, Creator and Creation, is all blended into one.

I remember spending a week on a silent retreat where I spent hours walking the land and reveling in the landscape’s beauty, and sensing in quite a profound way the deep presence of God in my life. It was an intense yet peaceful experience. I remember the drive away at the end of the week – and the bubbling well of joy in my heart, and with it the sense of the connectedness of who I was with what and who God was, and how everything around me looked to be in harmony. It had a beauty about it that I usually missed because of the rush and bustle of my disconnected life.

Now I’m no strange mystic offering a vision to the seven churches like St John the Divine, the writer of Revelation, did. However, reading his vision in chapter 21 took me back to that week of silence and the experiences I had then. But the reading also served to remind me that the sense of there being next to no gap between heaven and earth, and that there is only a thin space between God and us, is not such a rare thing at all. Let me explain. In his vision, St John the Divine sees that there is no temple in the new city, that there is nothing that stands in for God, there is no fence, for the temple was the Lord God. And he sees that there is no need of sun or moon to shine in this new city, for the glory of God is the light, and its lamp is the Lamb. Now while I wouldn’t necessarily use such images to describe my experience of God, nevertheless this is something that I have a regular sense of in my everyday, and I suspect that you have it as well!

Can you remember times when God has seemed especially close? Perhaps it has been a moment when deep love has welled up in your heart, a time when nothing has seemed impossible, a time when your cup has run over. Perhaps it has been when it has felt like a veil has been lifted just for a moment and your heart has been strangely warmed? I think it was one of those experiences of being in a thin space that Luke recounts in chapter 24, when the two disciples walked with the stranger on the road to Emmaus and had the Scriptures explained to them and they realised that it was Jesus who had walked with them and broken the bread. ‘Didn’t it warm our hearts?’ they exclaimed. That experience was so profound for them that they immediately proceeded to go all the way back to Jerusalem to tell the others!

Those ‘thin space’ times in life are like the new city with no temple. They are the times when it seems that we are standing on holy ground. They aren’t necessarily all that frequent and maybe don’t need to be – perhaps even shouldn’t be. But they happen. I recall some times during a sermon, or a prayer, or a hymn, when there seemed to be a stillness about the place – there might have been noise, a voice, or voices, but that noise didn’t seem to be at all intrusive. That stillness seemed to be deeply connected to the rhythms of God – a stillness that seemed to occur despite what was being said or sung – as if we were all connected. Can you recall such moments? These times in church together have been my more common experiences of thin spaces.

Experiencing thin spaces is kind of what we should expect. A sense of God’s profound nearness shouldn’t surprise us, for if there is any truth to what Jesus has told us, and what the Bible as a whole bears witness to, then God is present with us, and through God’s Spirit at work in us we should expect to receive the occasional glimpse of God’s holding everything as one.

I wonder also whether we as a church should be more attentive to living into the picture of the division between heaven and earth being nothing more than a thin line. I think of the times when we struggle as a church – when we get despondent about things not working, our numbers falling, and our influence lessening. It is easy in those struggles to lose heart and to lose perspective. It is easy to revert to thinking that the church is our work and not God’s work. It is easy to lose heart and lose faith as if the framework we operate in is that this show is ours – our club, our society, and our problem alone.

The early church articulated a simple way of describing their sense of who they were and what they were about: at worship they stood and confessed: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. In that declaration they were insisting that whatever people were experiencing in their everyday had to be understood within a wider picture of reality – the coming of Christ, the ongoing life of Christ, and the day when all will come to completion in Christ. They were articulating their belief that the line between heaven and earth was paper thin, and that their lives were to only ever be understood as being within the framework of God’s saving grace. This sense of what has been, what is, and what will be became the framework of their mission. Can it be that for us as well? Isn’t it our calling to hold before the world an alternative view of reality – the kingdom of God breaking into the world – the kingdom of God within us – the kingdom of God here and yet to come in its fullness? The stone rolled away. The victory of Christ over the powers that think they can oppress us. The New Jerusalem where all the barriers and fences and lines between God and humanity are broken down – where the river of life flows from the throne of God into the middle of the city’s main street – and people will see God face to face and there is no longer night and day – no lines – only a space so thin that it really isn’t a space at all. That is the framework that we are to live in as the church… and we are lifted into that reality, in our worship, in our service, in our faithfulness. Amen.