If you’ve ever walked for a while in the damp fog of grief that lingers low to the ground just before the sun rises to burn it away then perhaps you can appreciate what I am about to say.  For about a year after my mother died, some fourteen years ago, I found myself wondering a great deal about where she was.  I was not worried that my mother was in heaven with Jesus.  Everything my faith had led me to discover about God and everything I knew of my mother’s faith gave me peace that, wherever she was, she was with Jesus.  But, I remember wondering, for the first time in my life, about where heaven was actually located.  At thirty-one years of age, I had never known a day without my mother’s physical presence somewhere in this world.  Now that she was gone to another place, I found myself desperately wanting to know exactly where that might be. 

The church of which I was pastor at the time of my mother’s death was on the very extreme southern edge of Abilene, actually, out in the open country just past the last subdivision.  Driving away from the church in the evenings I almost always turned west into the sun that was just beginning to set beyond some rustic buttes in the distance.  One particular day, not long after my mother’s death, as I turned into the first shades of dusk, the setting sun was hiding itself behind a cumulus cloud of mountainous proportions.  The sky was gold-plated as only West Texas sunsets can paint them.  As I looked at that cloud I wondered, quite literally, if heaven was just on the other side, in the same place from which all that golden light was glowing, and, therefore, where my mother was.  Though a grown man, I found myself feeling very much like a little boy who just wanted to know where his mother was. 

So, it caught me quite off guard this week when, studying the scripture for this morning, I read words I had never seen before though I know I had read them many times.  “As they were watching, (Jesus) was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.  While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood beside them.  They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’”

I think I know, now, why the disciples were looking “toward heaven.”  Maybe they wanted to know where Jesus was now that he was gone.  I’ll bet it was a cumulus that hid him from view.  Knowing there is a heaven, a place, where those we love and who have preceded us in death have gone after they leave here, is not only one of the cornerstones of the Christian faith but also one of our greatest sources of comfort as we face the prospect of our own death.  Try to envision living, just driving a crowded freeway or taking any risks at all, without hope of what will happen to you after you die.  Try to envision living without hope of what would happen to those you love after they die.  Try to envision letting your children learn to drive someday or leave home without you under any circumstances without a faith that they will always, in Christ, find their way home to a Home they never have to leave again.  A safe and loving and eternal Home.

Several of us in this congregation have been following the sad but hopeful odyssey of an eleven year-old boy named Taylor Schrauger who lived in Nashville, Tennessee, and whose funeral was held just yesterday in that city.  In May, 1998, Taylor was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in his pelvis.  A cancer that not only eventually led to the amputation of his left leg but stubbornly refused to respond to any form of treatment and eventually spread to and began to consume his lungs.  Finally, in February of this year, all hope of curative treatment was abandoned in favor of treatments that would at least alleviate his pain.  His father, Brian, has been journaling these two years about this journey and has graciously shared that journal via the Internet with a growing list of readers absolutely awed at his skill and courage in expressing his faith as he is actually walking through the valley of the shadow.  On Wednesday of this week, after a particularly horrible struggle with Taylor’s pain, Brian wrote these words sometime just after 5:15 in the morning.

“During the last thirty-six hours I was, at the end, begging God to end the horror and bring him home.  At the time I was begging . . . it looked like the battle could easily continue another twenty-four hours.  After holding and wrestling with Taylor in his bedroom for the previous thirty-six, I, at last, told our precious home health care nurse, Carol, that I simply had to take a break for a shower and a shave.  Within a minute, however, I was summoned back across the hall.  Thankfully, thankfully Taylor was finally going Home.  Throughout this last battle, these thirty-six hours, I too was relentless, repeating to Taylor over and over and over again a litany of life . . . You are perfectly safe.  You are being helped.  Because of Jesus in you, because of Easter, life and only life is all that lies ahead.  The only things you need to do are . . . Remember you are loved; and then, Go to sleep.  Just go to sleep.  After all, buddy, you’ve gotta go to sleep in order to wake up! 

“And in spite of this final messy, terrible, even horrendous battle against cancer, Taylor left his mortally wounded body with a Mona Lisa smile on his beautiful young face.  And . . . as I . . . write these few words, Taylor is in heaven learning the turf on two strong legs in a brand new body.  He is radically healed.  He is with family, friends, and unknown thousands, even millions of heavenly fans . . . his reward is immense.  But, best of all he is in the loving presence of Jesus, the Author and Finisher of his faith.  In his embrace and compared with his praise, even the glories of heaven are pale.  On May 31, 2000, in the mortal womb of darkness wicked tumors died, defeated by the hand of God while by that same awesome hand, Taylor won a victory that has only just begun.” 

When it comes to knowing exactly what heaven is like we are faced with more mystery than anything else.  When the biblical writers used phrases like streets of “gold” and gates of “pearl” (Revelation 21:21) they were doing so because they had reached the limits of human language.  There was simply no way for them to describe, in language we can comprehend, the incomprehensible glory of just being in that place.  That place, according to scripture, where Jesus is.

Which gives me a clue, quite honestly, about what, or perhaps I should say, where heaven really is.  Again, as I stared at that mountain of a cloud as I was grieving my mother’s departure, I perceived heaven as something on the other side, some place beyond the place where I was in that moment.  I drew great comfort from knowing, without any doubt that, wherever heaven was, mom was there.  This very day, on what would have been Taylor Schrauger’s twelfth birthday, his family can go on living because, though he is not with them here, they believe he is alive in the same place Jesus is living.

But, the angels (they were most certainly angels), the two men “in white robes” who suddenly appeared to the disciples the day of Jesus’ ascension asked a question that implies a phenomenal answer to the mystery of heaven.  “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven . . .?”  They went on to promise that, having departed this place, Jesus would someday return to it from the sky, from that place up there we always associate with heaven.  Jesus made the same promise in a scripture used in nearly every funeral.  “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I am going there to prepare a place for you.  And, if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”  (John 14:2-3, NIV)

Heaven, essentially, is where Jesus is.  Where Jesus is, Heaven is.  The further I get in my journey of faith, the more I tend to think of heaven in terms of simply being with Jesus, as a presence, more than a place.  Or, to put it another way, what difference does it make where heaven is, as long as, when we are there, we find ourselves in the presence of Jesus?

Which is part of what helps me think about where hell is.  Again, not as much a place, geographically distant from here, but more in terms of place, distant and cut off from God.  To be cut off from God, even if you are in the same room with him, is to be in hell.  In some ways, if you are cut off from God because of sin, you’re in hell already, whether it’s hot or cold.  And, if you are in Christ, though it’s hot, really hot now, you’ve got one foot inside the pearly gates already.  There is no greater hell than being cut off from those you know and love and those who know and love you.  And, there is no greater heaven than being with those you love and who love you.  To be in Heaven, ultimately, will to be with the One who loves you most and, ideally, the One whom you love most.  If you think about it, if you don’t love Jesus, then even heaven would be hell if you had to spend eternity with him.

This past week, as I was about to get on an elevator downtown, I heard someone call my name.  I had gone there to lead the Thursday noon Bible study.  I’ve now learned my way around enough to not feel so threatened by those monstrous towers and confusing streets that always seem to be going one way the one way I don’t want to go.  But, I remember well the first few times I went downtown.  I would hardly go without Joel Pulis as co-pilot and navigator.  And, I am still amazed at how lonely one can feel if, in a sea of faces, you don’t recognize even one.  So, when I heard my name I turned to see Marsha Huff.  She was coming to the Bible study for the first time and had gotten lost in the maze.  I didn’t know until then that she was just as unfamiliar with the territory as I had once been and she had already been up and down on the elevators trying to find her way.  I asked her how long she’d been there and all she willing to offer as an answer was, “a while.”  But, there was this look of relief on her face as she said, “I’m so glad to see you.  I was just praying that when I got here I would see someone I knew.” 

I couldn’t help but remember, as we worked our way through a glass tower where more people work every day than ever lived in the town in which I was raised, that loneliness is not the absence of crowds but the absence of meaningful relationships.  What makes hell so hellish is being isolated from anyone who knows anything about love.  And, what will makes heaven so heavenly is being with the One who is Love.  The One who said, as we studied last week, “You did not choose me but I chose you.”  (John 15:16)  The one who loved you enough to die for you.  The one who has gone to prepare a place, just for you.  The one who could never forget your name so that, your first moment there you will almost certainly hear a voice calling your name, saying, “I’m so glad to see you.”

So, why stand here looking up wondering what is on the backside of the clouds?  The same Jesus who ascended will come again, sooner, I’m sure, than any of us can imagine.  He’ll come for those who know his name and love him with all their being.  Come to take them Home to a place not far from here at all. 

I cannot imagine living even one day without the assurance that when I die, I will still be alive.  And, I’ll have a place to call Home.  A place where I will see those I love and those who love me.  A place, though crowded with millions, even billions, where someone will know my name the first moment I’m there.  I cannot imagine living even one day without that assurance and peace that, when I die, I will be where Jesus is. 

Can you?