Genesis 2: 4-9

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up?for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground?then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

2 Corinthians 12: 1-7a

It is necessary to boast; nothing is to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven?whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person?whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows?was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional character of the revelations.

1 Peter 1: 1-9

Peter, and apostle of Jesus Christ, to the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood: May grace and peace be yours in abundance. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith?being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire?may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Sermon Text

This morning's sermon is the second half of a pair of sermons about paradise. Many Christians think of paradise as the place where you go after death--if you've "been saved," that is. However, in last week's sermon I pointed out that there's another way to think of paradise. Paradise can also be a way of being in this world, or perhaps you might say, a state of consciousness that is especially joyful and wise. My sermon last week prompted one of our members to write to Hanover's online discussion group about such a state of consciousness that he had had, an out-of-body experience during which he was reunited with a beloved aunt, and beheld Jesus as a dazzling and penetrating light. I answered his note by pointing out that the Apostle Paul had a similar experience. We heard about that in this morning's reading from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. In that passage Paul referred to himself in the third person, saying that a certain person he knew was caught up in the third heaven and heard things there that no mortal should repeat.

The term, "third heaven," is intriguing. What could it mean? It implies at least two more heavens, a first and second; but I had always thought?hadn't you too??that there is just one, the one to which we go after we die, the one about which the letter of Peter speaks today, a paradise that is waiting for us, stored up for us, as a future reward for present suffering. Notice that when Paul speaks of visiting heaven, he calls it "the third heaven." What could he mean by that?

To find an answer, lets begin by trying to understand what our spiritual forebears meant by heaven, or "paradise." If you look up the word, paradise, in the Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible you will discover that it comes from an old Persian word that got assimilated into three other languages: Hebrew (the language of the Old Testament), Aramaic (the language that Jesus spoke), and Greek (the language of the New Testament). The Persian word was pairidaeza, which meant "garden," or "park." Notice that pairidaeza was a this-worldly, concept. Jews first used the word to label a place in this world, an exquisitely beautiful and orderly place, the Garden of Eden, the garden of the East. Genesis describes the location of this garden of the East rather specifically. It was somewhere in the territory we now call Iraq. The Garden of Eden was the first heaven, a perfect place of beauty in this world. Life in that garden was heavenly not only because all human needs were satisfied there, but also because human beings found their purpose for living there, which was to tend God's garden.

But alas, this earthly paradise did not last, because human beings got uppity, as the story goes. Something in them didn't want to remain innocent and ignorant. They hankered to be like God, to know the difference between good and evil. So, they disobeyed God's prohibition. They ate of the fruit of the tree in the garden which would give them the knowledge of good and evil. In anger, God banished the first man and first woman from paradise; and after that, life on the planet became insecure, difficult, and rather routinely unpleasant.

The first man and first woman couldn't go back to the first heaven because God had locked them out of there, so humans began to dream of another place that was blissful, like the first paradise, but in another world. The idea developed that people could get to this other paradise only by dieing and leaving their bodies behind. Perhaps that's why when mortals ever since have spoken of visiting paradise, they often have spoken of having an out-of-body experience. Paul himself alludes to an out-of-body experience, when he was caught up to the third heaven, that other-worldly substitute for the Garden of Eden.

So, the first heaven was the Garden of Eden. The third heaven is the other-worldly paradise stored up for righteous souls in the future. That leaves one more heaven, the second heaven. What's that?

To understand what was meant by the second heaven we have to start by noting that ancient Jews were very earthy people. Frankly, they didn't write much about an after life. They believed that when people died, they went to a shadowy place called Sheol. There the dead remained, barely existing at all, in a state of suspended animation you might say, until the day of resurrection, when they would come back to a redeemed earth, to live again in a restored paradise.

Other peoples were not so earthy as the Jews, however. The Greeks, for instance, were abstract thinkers. They loved to ponder disembodied existence. Christianity later was heavily influenced by Greek culture, so Christians eventually renovated the idea of sheol. For them, the after-world was no longer a shadowy place, where dead people just barely hung out. Instead, it became the ante-chamber of the third heaven. Sheol became a kind of spa for dead people who were taking a break from their journey to the third heaven. In the second heaven they not only got a rest; they also got protection from all the demons that inhabit this world. The dear departed resting in this second heaven eventually became a spiritual resource for their survivors down below. After all, denizens of the second heaven aren't very far away. They haven't reached the end of the line yet. They are just one station away from us, where they can watch over us earthlings with much care and concern. The book of Hebrews notes (12:1) that Christians are surrounded by "a great cloud of witnesses." Many Christians have come to believe that these saintly onlookers can be appealed to in prayer, and they will send us their special blessings. At the very least, they can make prayers to God on our behalf. They are our second-heaven cheering squad, urging us on as we run our own race.

Well, enough about the second heaven. My sermon is about samples of the first and third heavens. We can't taste of the second heaven, because we're not dead yet. So I'll say nothing more about that. And I don't wish to say that much more about tasting of the first heaven either. Lots of modern people do get brief glimpses of that third heaven. Like our friend in the Hanover egroup, they sometimes share their peak experiences of paradise, which are marvelously joyful, and often life changing. Many more people have tasted of the third heaven than tell about it. Funny, isn't it: Paul was reluctant to speak of his taste of the third heaven because he didn't want people to think he was boasting. Most folk nowadays are reluctant to tell of their tasting the third heaven because they don't want people to think they're crazy. My, how times have changed!

My main purpose this morning is to help you realize that even though tastes of the third heaven are rare, tastes of the first heaven, the garden variety of heaven, are not. Last week I mentioned that a woman scholar by the name of Rita Nakashima Brock is coming out with a book about paradise. The main point of her book is that for about a thousand years Christians believed that Jesus had already brought paradise back to earth. Jesus, the Anointed One of God, was the second Adam, as the Apostle Paul explained. The first Adam got humanity banished from the garden, that is, from paradise. But Jesus Christ, the second Adam, brought humankind back into the garden. When Rita Nakashima Brock began her lecture on paradise regained, she began with a lovely, sensuous description of walking in her own garden. Her description of seeing and smelling and feeling the beauty of flowers and hearing the rustle of leaves and the chirping of birds bespeaks a sampling of the first heaven.

My wife is a gardener. When I told her the direction of this sermon she said, "Well sure! I could have told you that. When I'm in my garden, I'm in heaven!" Alice is one of the lucky ones who can taste of the first heaven with ease. Others who are not so crazy about digging in the dirt may need some help.

So, let me try to give it. I'm not a gardener either, but let me tell you about Clark Park, in Philadelphia. (Remember I said earlier ithat paradise first meant a garden, or a park.) Clark Park is the place where Alice and I take our grandchildren to swing on the swings, and climb on the jungle gym with other kids. For us, Clark Park is a paradise. And there's something very special about Clark Park besides the majestic trees and brightly hued flowers. It's the people; that's what's special. When we go to Clark Park, Alice and I feel like we've stepped into a half-redeemed world that points toward what our plantet could and should be like. We see Muslim moms there in their burkas, swinging their babies. We see Korean children, Chinese children, African American children, Caucasian children, mixed race children, climbing, running, cart wheeling and summersaulting, hop-scotching, seesawing, throwing and catching, laughing and yes, sometimes crying?together. We see grandparents, single parents, same and different sexed couples, all smiling and doting over their little ones. We hear drums and an occasional flute. We see lovers cuddling. Good Lord, we even see some people?gasp?reading! It's a taste of paradise, right here on earth.

That's one sample of the first heaven, the garden variety of paradise. I started you off with the easy stuff. It's easy to taste of paradise in idyllic circumstances. The challenge comes in tasting paradise when it's been peppered with rascally stuff. Alice and I and our granddaughter Greta were on our way to Clark Park the other day. I was still in the living room, finishing a book with her brother, and I could hear Alice and Greta's mom, Lisa, and her Dad, Matt, urging her toward the door because we were all headed for Clark Park. But Greta wanted a bagel. "Mama, can I have a bagel?" "No, not now Greta" said her mom. "We're going to Clark Park." (Greta is almost three, and she's learned that if you don't get what you want from one parent, you ask the other): "Dada, can I have a bagel?" "No, not now Greta, we're going to Clark Park." So then, Greta hollers real loud, so I can hear in the next room: "Does anybody want a bagel?" Preoccupied grandpa hollers back: "Sure! I'll take a bagel." (Which of course means that Greta must have one too.) We marveled at the ingenuity in original sin, and we all just wanted to squeeze that little girl who had given us a taste of peppery heaven.

One more sample, and then I'll leave you to your own devices. Some of you may know that every Wednesday a group of Easter Seal kids with various developmental challenges volunteer for Hanover's clothes closet. They sort clothes and hang them on hangers. They've been helping that way for a long time, and they've very good at it. Last week I was invited to lunch with them to celebrate the past year of their work. I sat at a table with them, and in half an hour I discovered things about them that I had never seen before, because I hadn't taken the time to get to know them as individuals. Before, I had just seen them as a group, a group of unfortunate, developmentally disabled persons. How shallow my perception had been!

The man sitting opposite me, Robert, is extremely polite, I discover. He uses erudite vocabulary, and seems to remember the details of travels he took long, long ago. At the end of the table is a young woman named Autumn who every week sits down at the piano to play Chopin?and divinely. I had thought she was completely blind, but I discover that she's a Harry Potter fan, and manages to read every book about him by holding it inches from her nose. Across from me there's a young man named Curtis. He seems autistic. He mutters rapidly, dropping his head after each phrase, looking at no one in particular. I can barely make out what he's saying but I notice that everyone around the table not only hears him, but understands and responds to him. These people may be developmentally challenged, I mark, but they seem to pay better attention to their peers than I do. As I'm taking all this in, I'm getting a strange glow. I'm feeling slightly ashamed of myself, too, because I hadn't realized that there is something very, very beautiful and blessed about these people, whom I had thought unfortunate. It's hard to recognize paradise when you're not in a beautiful garden, and there is so much obvious suffering about you, but my experience with the Easter Seal kids demonstrated to me that it's there, all right. The first heaven is right there under our noses. We just have to pay attention to see it. What we see is what we get.