A cab driver reaches the Pearly Gates and announces his presence to St. Peter, who looks him up in his Big Book.  Upon reading the entry for the cabby, St. Peter invites him to grab a silk robe and a golden staff and to proceed into Heaven.

A preacher is next in line behind the cabby and has been watching these proceedings with interest.  He announces himself to St. Peter.  Upon scanning the preacher’s entry in the Big Book, St. Peter furrows his brow and says, "Okay, we’ll let you in, but take that cloth robe and wooden staff."

The preacher is astonished and replies, "But I am a man of the cloth.  You gave that cab driver a gold staff and a silk robe.  Surely, I rate higher than a cabby."

St. Peter responded matter-of-factly:  "Here we are interested in results.  When you preached, people slept.  When the cabby drove his taxi, people prayed."

(Did you know there is actually a website called www.jokesaboutheaven.com?)

These jokes depend for their impact on an understanding of heaven that it is, first of all, a place.  And second of all, a place to which we travel when we die, and third of all, a gated community into which admission must be granted by St. Peter, who guards the gates.

I am more inclined to understand the heaven of which Jesus speaks as a quality of relationship with one’s God and one’s neighbors than I am a literal place.  And I am more inclined to understand heaven as accessible, at least in part, while living in this world in one’s created body, and I am a little skeptical about it being a gated community when Jesus paid no effort at all to excluding anybody who sought to be near him while he was on earth.

When Jesus speaks in the gospel of John about heaven, he speaks about the place where God lives, and because Jesus, the Word of God is incarnate in the world, so is the place where God lives, and the way in which God relates, and the holiness and power of God now in the world, with Jesus, and among those who related to Jesus.  To see Jesus is to see the Father.  To be with Jesus is to be with the Father.  And the Father is in heaven. . .

The apostle Paul and our Christian tradition teach that there is life after death and that this life after death offers us full communion with God and with others who have died and are in heaven.  One “Sermon by Request” inquiry was “Who goes to heaven?”  Another asked about this passage in John where Jesus says, “My father’s house has many rooms.”  Still another asked “Do non-Christians go to heaven?”  Today’s sermon is about addressing, in at least some way, all of those inquiries.

Questions about “who goes to heaven?” are motivated, I suspect, for most of us, by something other than idle curiosity.  We are in part heir to an evangelical strand of thought that makes an exclusivist claim about Christian faith:  that is, that only those who publicly confess faith Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior go to heaven.  And this passage from John’s gospel, where the gospel writer has Jesus utter, “I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the father except through me,” has largely been used to support the exclusivist claim.

Because this exclusivist claim lingers around the edges of even the most progressive Christian culture, we sometimes find ourselves wondering about the salvation of persons for whom we care deeply.  Will our brother, who was baptized but never really participated in church, be saved, and go to heaven?  Will our best friend, who was raised Jewish but doesn’t go to synagogue, be saved?  Will the neighbor who has no religious affiliation at all, but who has saved us more than once by being a good neighbor, go to heaven?  I occasionally encounter family members who are distraught at the death of a beloved one whom they do not know to have confessed Christ.  Often the family member is worried about their own failures as an evangelist; at not having witnessed to the loved one and evoked that confession before it was too late.  The question of who goes to heaven is not just idle curiosity.

There is an interesting tension that occurs when people begin to answer this question personally.  While many of us are concerned to make sure that we get it right biblically and theologically, it is also true that we are highly unlikely to personally accept that anyone we know or love in this life has been excluded from heaven.  In terms of doctrine, we tend to be exclusivists.  In practice, we are universalists.

Exclusivism has a number of problems, theologically, and experientially.  One, of course, is that it totally discounts any value or truth to other major world religions, two of which share a common heritage with Christianity.  So any Christians who hold to an exclusionist point of view- that only Christians – or only Christians of a particular kind – can be saved, is going to have a very difficult time with ecumenical or interfaith dialogue.

Furthermore, if one plays what my theology teacher, Dr.  Tyron Inbody, calls a little “parlor game” with the question of who can be saved, one can calculate all the people who ever lived from the time of creation and the number of those persons who have been Christian and therefore presumably saved, and arrive at the conclusion that over 99% of those who’ve ever lived are not saved, but in fact, condemned to hell.  (See The Many Faces of Christology, Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2002, p. 198)

We quickly see the theological problem.  How can we claim that God is the God that wills that not even one shall be lost, and that God is infallible and sovereign, and claim a success rate of less than 1% in terms of God working God’s ultimate will for human life?  This cannot be descriptive of the outcome of the involvement of a truly loving God with God’s creation and God’s people.  If God is love, surely God’s purpose cannot be to ration out salvation in such a narrowly defined way.

This is, of course, an extreme statement of the problem, and many compromises have been offered.  Perhaps those who haven’t had a chance to be introduced to the gospel are saved.  Perhaps the other world religions provide a different but equally valid path for God.  And perhaps those things are true.

But they don’t help us with this text from John that appears exclusivist in its claim.  One place to start with this text is to treat it as a part of the whole.  No biblical text can have integrity if it is lifted out of its context and out of its place in the text as a whole.  To treat two sentences from this gospel as eternal definitive truth that condemns 99% of all those who ever lived to hell is to ignore the whole story of the Bible.  The whole story of the Bible is the story of God reaching out in love to God’s people – the lengths to which God will go to save, redeem, restore and transform God’s people are extraordinary.

There is a place, when considering this question of who is saved, for an appeal to the mystery and wonder of God.  And part of the mystery and wonder of God is that God’s way, God’s truth and God’s life have been incarnate in the world and visible and manifest in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Those who claim faith in Christ do come to the realm of God’s life – heaven – through that relationship.  We do come to encounter a path to reconciliation; truth that gives authenticity to life, and life that is transcendent when we surrender our lives to Christ.  It is our way, our truth, and our life.  But it need not be THE only way, THE only truth and THE only life for it to have meaning and power for us.

For us to insist upon our way as the only way is for us to deny the freedom and power of God to do as God chooses.  And I have to believe that God, who loves the world, intends to save more than 1% of it.  I don’t have to know how.

What I am responsible for is my own life.  My own way.  My own participation in the life of Christ.  Should I invite others to experience this way?  Of course – if it is compelling for me, and life giving for me, and allows me to participate in heaven here and now, why wouldn’t I want to invite others to experience it with me?  But do I threaten them with hell if they choose another path?  Well.  No.  The truth is, people who make seriously poor choices here on earth experience their own hell, because those choices have consequences.  They do not need my threats.  They need my love, my compassion, my patience, my example.  And I need the same when I make poor choices.

Personally, long before I studied theology, I decided that I didn’t even need to know much about the eternal heaven or hell.  All I needed to know was that my life in this world was enormously enriched by my relationship with Christ and my participation in Christian community.  I choose this way, this truth and this life because today, when I eat at this table with all of you, I know it is because Christ has brought me here…and I do not deserve it…and it is a gift of hospitality that is merciful and gracious.  And therefore, ever day, every meal is a gift of God’s hospitality that is undeserved and for which I am grateful.

When I think about the heavenly banquet, I think that it will be a pretty amazing sight.  I think we’ll all be surprised to see who is there.  I’m already surprised to see myself here today, at this foretaste of it.  I don’t think there will be an evil person anywhere – but then, I suspect God has a way of getting the evil out of us on our way there.  I think the good we did in this life will matter, will be remembered, but I don’t think we earn our way to heaven with good deeds.

Jesus says, “in my father’s house are many rooms.”  That seems to me to suggest that it’s a spacious place.  Jesus was trying to tell his disciples how he prepares a place.  And when it came time to show them, he washed their feet.  And he took bread and blessed and broke it.  And he took the cup and blessed and shared it.  And he said, “I’m doing this with my life, now you do it with your life.”

What we do in this world matters.  It matters a lot.  Because it’s God’s world and God put us here.  And I suspect the boundary between this world and that place we call heaven is a thin one – much more permeable than we think it is.

And sometimes, especially here, especially in time apart from the tasks of daily living, sharing bread and cup with you all – sometimes then, I realize, I’m already there.

I don’t know who will be at the table in heaven.  But I know that everybody’s welcome at this table.  And really, that’s enough for me to know today.

Having said all that… I still love St. Peter jokes.  As you might have heard me say before, on the last day I spent with my Dad before his death, he told St. Peter jokes for probably an hour.  So, in Dad’s memory – one last story about St. Peter.

A man dies and goes to heaven.  St. Peter meets him at the pearly gates.

St. Peter says, "Here's how it works.  You need 100 points to make it into heaven.  You tell me all the good things you've done, and I give you a certain number of points for each item, depending on how good it was.  When you reach 100 points, you get in."

"Okay" the man says, "I attended church every Sunday"

"That's good, says St. Peter, " that's worth two points"

"Two points?" he says.  "Well, I gave 10% of all my earnings to the church"

"Well, let's see," answers Peter, "that's worth another 2 points.  Did you do anything else?"

"Two points?  Golly.  How about this:  I started a soup kitchen in my city and worked in a shelter for homeless veterans."

"Fantastic, that's certainly worth a point, " he says.

"hmmm...," the man says, "I was married to the same woman for 50 years and never cheated on her, even in my heart."

"That's wonderful," says St. Peter, "that's worth three points!"

"THREE POINTS!!" the man cries, "At this rate the only way I get into heaven is by the grace of God!"

"Come on in!"