Heaven and the heart of Hosanna

Sermon for the third Sunday in Advent

“Our Father who art in Heaven.”

What does that mean?

If you think hard,
this becomes rather
an odd thing to say.

What do you say
when someone askes you,
“where is God?”

Do you say,
“He is everywhere”?

Or do you say,
“He is in Heaven”?

Or do you say
something else?

Where is God?

[PAUSE]

To say that
God is everywhere
is to say that
God has direct access
to every place
and every time.

But to say that
He is in a place
seems rather hard
to understand.

Is there a place
so big
it would contain
God Himself?

Well, as He walks with us
Jesus is contained in
Earth and Heaven.

So is it hard to imagine
God contained
in the vastness of Heaven?

The trouble is
God made Heaven.

Where was He before that?

[PAUSE]

The question is too big
for little mortal minds
to understand,
but there is one thing we cans say.

If the Father is in Heaven,
and we are with the Father,
then we are in Heaven.

Heaven is wherever
the Father is.

Well, more than that.

[PAUSE]

In the beginning,
Man walks with God;
he hears His footsteps in the Garden,
talks with Him face-to-face.

Man lost that through his sin.

Our understanding
of Original Sin
says that,
because of Adam,
we are all born blind
and deaf
to God.

It is a state of sin
because we are separated
from Him,
and His image that we bear
is distorted and damaged.

But, listen!

You hear the Hosannas of the crowd,
welcoming the Messiah into Jerusalem.

“Hosanna - God save us!”

This is what Jesus comes to do.

He is our advocate and mediator.

He brings us back to God.

And, if we are back with God,
and we see Him,
and we bow before His throne,
and we talk with Him,
and see His Divine Smile,
then we must be in Heaven,
wherever we are.

The saints and prophets
who are given visions,
see Heaven,
even if that vision
is only a shadow of where God is.

The Kingdom of God
is not a geographical place,
it is the heart of Man.

[PAUSE]

To be in Heaven
is to see God and to worship Him.

To be there for Eternity,
in the New Heavens and the New Earth
shown to St John,
the new creation separate from the old
which passes away,
that is truly to be in Heaven
where the light of God shines
and we need no more Sun nor Moon.

This is Heaven.

But what if you don’t want it?