Beer and Amens…or Some Thoughts on Heaven (Part III)

The wedding I went to last weekend was a Texas wedding. I know that Texas is one of those states that is rife with stereotypes. People think certain things about Texas and anything Texan. Just like people think South Dakota isn’t worth stepping into, some associate Texas with everything being bigger, overwhelming pride, or a love affair with the Dallas Cowboys. (My wife is from Texas and exudes none of these.) However, there were certain things I expected from a Texas wedding, although I was ready to be wrong since I had never met the bride and hadn’t seen the groom in four and a half years.

One thing that was striking was that at both meals (rehearsal dinner and wedding reception), alcohol was served. This was unexpected because 1) this about doubles the cost of each meal, and 2) knowing the conservative bend of the couple, I thought alcohol would be forbidden. Like those who think everyone from Texas owns a cowboy hat, I was wrong.

At the rehearsal dinner, as closer friends than I made toasts and told stories, there was one table that rang out an occasional ‘amen’ with beer in hand. I wanted to take a picture. Being from the south (where lots of people love beer) and growing up in a very conservative denomination (where lots of people hate beer), to see the two go together was like an oxymoron personified. I couldn’t believe my eyes. And I couldn’t have been happier.

While I could wax theologically about beer and its consumption, the overriding feeling that night was one of the holiness of combination. And I couldn’t help but think about how diverse heaven will be. Whatever we picture it to be, it will be a place not only where lions lay down with lambs, but also where blacks stride hand in hand with whites, where Palestinians eat with Israelis, and where Muslims play on the swing set with Jews.

If you’ve recovered from that last line, I’ll now continue. We need new pictures of heaven to help wrap our mind around the amazing peace that will be present in heaven. Personally, streets of gold and pearly gates don’t do it for me – that sounds more like a weekend in Miralago with the Donald. But to the poor and oppressed first century underground Christian, that was an eternity worth living and dying for. But to us, Christians who are in the majority and have wealth and privilege at our disposal, thoughts of more wealth and more privilege just don’t cut it. I need something deeper.

I need a place where my doubt and fear can go to die. I need a place where I don’t have to change anything about myself and won’t get any weird looks, where I can roll out of bed, put on a bathrobe and fur lined slippers and head straight for the computer and type all day. I need a place where I don’t have to shave or pluck my unibrow for weeks. I need a place where everyone smiles, not because they have to, but because they can’t not do it. I need a place where the headlines talk of charity and birth and not of selfishness and destruction. I need a place where cold beers are shared among a group discussing the goodness of the God we worship. I need a great melting pot, where every tribe and every tongue eat, drink, and be merry together. I need a place bigger than my own stereotypes, my own opinions of who’s in and who’s out, and where they have a great big surprise party when I arrive (because there will be PLENTY of people who will be surprised that I made it.)

Writing all this makes me smile and frown at the same time (try it). I have such great hope in life after this one. But I also have great regret that out current churches don’t reflect the eternal hope so many of us envision. I believe that eternal life begins now, and that the kingdom of God was meant to be an existential reality. Sadly, our churches are fragmented, broken along lines of race, economics, and petty theology.

Working to make the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven must start with our churches, the very places that claim to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. Starting here, where there is a shared identity and a common God is not as easy as we think. Like beer at the reception, anger and pride creep up to often squash genuine movements of justice and benevolence. But, I believe that also like the beer and the amens, when justice rolls down like the rivers from our houses of worship, we will see a true picture of what life (and death) with God can truly be like.