Sermon

Sunday, September 23

Do you know that you are going to heaven?

“Father, do you know if you are going to heaven when you die?” I was asked this question recently by a non-Orthodox person who started a conversation with me in the supermarket. Wearing a clerical collar often causes total strangers to start a conversation with me. The answer, “To know something is based on complete understanding. I do not know what the rest of my life holds in store for me—I will not know that until I get to the end of my life. The one who knows whether I am going to heaven or not is God Himself. He is the judge who will make that decision, not me. Having said that, I believe that if I follow God’s commandments in my life, if I try to make God the central focus of my life, and if I develop a relationship with God, then I’d like to think I have a pretty good chance.”

The person replied, “Well, the church I go to says that once you accept Jesus into your heart as your Savior then you will go to heaven. If I KNOW that I’m going to heaven, and you, Father, only THINK you have the potential to go to heaven, does that make my faith stronger than yours?” I answered, “That’s not really a fair question; first of all, because I do not know you; secondly, I do not know what is in your heart; third, Christ will be the judge of who goes to heaven, so it is not for me to judge you, and not even for you to judge yourself. Finally, if you know you are going to go to heaven, what is the motivation to live a Christian life, or be a moral person, or go to church?

Some time this week, several major league baseball teams will clinch a spot in the baseball playoffs. That means that regardless of what the outcome of their remaining games is, they are assured of a spot in the playoffs. Let’s say that a team clinches a playoff spot with ten games left in the season—they could lose all ten, they could forfeit all ten, they could lose badly in all ten and none of it will matter—they are going to the playoffs no matter what—the rest of the season, at that point, is pretty meaningless.

Deciding to follow Christ does not clinch you a spot in heaven—once we decide we believe in the message of the Gospel, it DOES matter what we do. God is going to be the judge of our lives in their totality. The Christian life is a lot like running the 100 meter dash. The race isn’t won until all 100 meters have been run. The person who leads the entire race but who falls down on meter number 99 not only doesn’t win the race, but doesn’t even finish. So, the one who sprints for a few years in their Christianity but who coasts or drops out for the rest is like the person who falls down short of the finish line in the 100 meter dash.

Let me make another analogy. When you take a class in college, on the first day of class, the professor hands out a syllabus. The professor reviews the syllabus and tell the students his or her expectations for the students in the class. The professor will say, “If you hope to get an ‘A’ in this class, these are the expectations, and will indicate how well students have to do on papers, exams and class participation to attain the top grade. Then it is up to the student to follow the syllabus, so that even in writing the final paper or taking the final exam, the student cannot KNOW what his or her grade will be. The student can have a good feeling, can have a confident feeling about the grade if they followed the guidelines of the syllabus, but it is ultimately the professor who does the grading and who hands out the report cards.

In college, you don’t get the A just because you signed up for the class. You don’t get an A just because you attended the class. You certainly won’t get an A if you never go to class or go once in a while. In fact, when one is truant from class, oftentimes the professor will drop the student from the class or fail them, since it is expected that once a student registers for a class, that student will faithfully attend class sessions. The A comes from making not only a good effort, but an accurate effort when doing a research paper or taking a test. Again, not only an effort, not a token effort, not even a good effort, but an accurate effort. Plenty of students try to cheat on research papers by plagiarizing off the Internet. Cheaters who get caught are always failed because the whole point of research is not to copy what someone else has done but to make your own effort.

Being a Christian is a lot like being a college students. The day you choose to unite yourself to Christ is like the day you register for class. It doesn’t guarantee you a top grade—it doesn’t guarantee you the kingdom of heaven. The syllabus of Christianity is much like the syllabus in the college class—it contains research papers (learning about the faith), it contains tests (opportunities to use what we have learned combined with temptations to stray from what we’ve learned), regular participation is important and the final exam is the examination each of us will have before the awesome Judgment seat of Christ, who serves as the professor if you will. Trying to steal someone else’s Christianity won’t work either—the relationship you make with God has to be personal to you, it involves your effort.

And just like in college, you won’t get to heaven just because you decided to join the church. You certainly won’t get to heaven if you never go to church or only go once in a while. It is a good thing that God and the church don’t drop us out of church when we don’t attend for a while. And the top grade, salvation, comes from making not only a good effort, but an accurate effort in learning about the things of God and applying them to our lives. Again, not only an effort, not a token effort, not even a good effort, but an accurate effort.

If the college student is regularly attending class, paying attention, doing the required reading, giving a good effort on a research paper and studying hard for the final, he will probably do well in the class. Well, I guess that depends on how one defines a good effort. Because the way the professor evaluates a good effort and the way the student evaluates his or her effort may differ somewhat. One piece of advice my mother gave me when I was growing up was, if I wanted the top grade, there were two ways to get it—outsmart everyone or outwork them, and because there was always someone smarter than me around, I just learned to work hard and got good grades. The same advice doesn’t work exactly the same when it comes to your salvation because we aren’t in competition for a limited number of spots in heaven, the way that students compete for the top grade. But it does work in the sense that we have to work hard and work accurately. I remember my mother telling me, if the teacher tells you to write a 5 page paper, then write a 10 page paper—do double what is required, just to make sure you score well. And so when it comes to your pursuit of God’s kingdom, don’t do what you perceive is the minimum, or even what you perceive everyone else is doing, do double or triple that.

And as for the question, do you know you are going to heaven—that question can be answered by God alone. What I do know is that I want to go to heaven. I know that God became a man so that man can become like God, and I know that because of the death and Resurrection of Christ, that I have the POTENTIAL to go to heaven. What I do not know is how much longer I will be alive and all the things that will take place between now and the time I die. I’d like to believe that I will continue to grow in my faith, but the only way to know is to live the rest of my life as a person of faith each and every day, and then let God be the judge.

The Gospel lesson of this morning supports this notion that being a Christian is much more complex than a one time confession of faith. When the Lord told Simon Peter, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch,” it symbolized that in order to follow Jesus, Peter needed a radical change in his life. Peter told Jesus that he and his fellow fishermen had been working all night and were catching nothing, but that they would put out into the deep because Jesus instructed them to do so. And when they obeyed the word of God, the net was filled with fish. The lessons here are two—it is not enough to accept the words of Jesus in your heart, to be a Christian requires action. And putting out in the deep is a metaphorical way of saying that we must put our nets out not only in the shallow water where we are comfortable, but into the deeper water where we are challenged. It is not enough for your spirituality to make you feel good—it has to challenge you, because it is in challenging ourselves that we grow, and it is growing that we succeed. The stagnant Christian becomes the apathetic Christian whose faith eventually weakens then falls apart.

Jesus tells his new disciples, Peter, James and John that they would from now on be catching men. This is critical in our Christian life. Jesus never tells His followers to “preserve His teachings,” or to “safeguard them.” He constantly tells them to spread His teachings. And so our lives as Orthodox Christians MUST include some sense of evangelism to others, whether through quiet example or more overt encouragement. Because how good can a message be if we share it with no one. We always share good news, and most of the time we run to share bad news also. And if we merely safeguard the teachings of the church without spreading them, then the church dies with us. And just as Christ expected a return on the talents He entrusted His servants in Matthew 25, He expects a return from us, that He has blessed us with a congregation of talented people, how many more can we bring into our midst?

There is an icon that many of you are familiar with called Christ the Merciful Judge. It shows an icon that has a face of Christ where each side is painted differently. The right side of the face shows a face of peace, the left side shows a face of austerity. This icon reminds us that Christ is both merciful and judging. We can’t just do what we wish and appeal to God’s mercies. There will be a judgment for all of us. And it is only through His love and mercies that anyone will survive that judgment. As for knowing how He will judge me or anyone else, I cannot say. That is not a sign of weak faith but a sign of understanding the scriptures and the goal of the Christian life. I accept the message of Christ. I confess that each time I recite the Creed. And because I believe in the message of Christ, I must work and prepare for that judgment, the same way a student prepares for a final exam—by attending class, by absorbing knowledge, by preparing as best he can, and going to the final exam not with knowledge that he will do well, but with confidence that he can do well. We can’t know the outcome of the Last Judgment, we’ll know it when we get there. What we can do now is pray, worship, learn, spread the word, live right, and put in a good effort, and then we can live with confidence and hope that God will accept us into His heavenly Kingdom. Choosing Christ is not a one time experience. It is a choice we must make every day. And God will ultimately judge us on a lifetime of making the choice to follow.