Heaven and hell.

A Sermon for the First Sunday after Trinity

June 22, 2025 at Holy Communion

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8). In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ☩ Amen.

Over the past few weeks I have had conversations with several people about heaven and hell. And now, with one of the New Testament’s most striking images of heaven and hell in our Gospel reading, there’s no better time to discuss it.

In my pastoral ministry, conversations about heaven and hell are usually about anxiety. We worry that those who have already died didn’t “get into heaven.” We worry that we won’t “get into heaven.” We worry that if we don’t raise them right our children won’t “get into heaven.”

So the first thing to do is dispel the anxiety. Our reading today gives us all we need when it says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). In context, the reading clearly means love toward God. It says that to love is to know God, because God is love (v 7–8), and that knowing the love of God casts out fear of the judgement of God (v 17). When you know that God is your Father, you know that and your loved ones are safe in the Father’s hands.

So does everyone “get into heaven,” then? Well, not exactly that either. And for evidence we have the rich man in today’s Gospel parable, who for his indifference to the needs of poor Lazarus is condemned to burn.

The problem is not that these two passages are contradictory, but that the concept we are using to interpret them—the concept of “getting to heaven”—is wrong. We so much take “getting to heaven” for granted that we hardly notice that there are no biblical passages which talks about salvation in precisely that way.

In fact, our Gospel passage today is about as close as you get in the whole Bible to a conventional heaven-and-hell scheme. But even then, it has perplexing features; like a chasm between paradise and the inferno across which the dead can speak but not travel; or like paradise being characterized by the presence of Abraham. It has all the hallmarks of a fable, a teaching story, a parable—which was, we remember, Jesus’ favourite way to teach.

The paradigm of “getting to heaven” implies that heaven is a reward which God can give or withhold for any person. Heaven is keys to a mansion in a very good neighbourhood. We might be generous and say that God gives keys to any and all, or we might be severe and say that God only gives keys to those who meet very specific conditions outlined in a sixty-six book contract called “The Bible.” Either way, the problem is that heaven is treated as an external experience, something that can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of the condition of that person’s heart. We treat heaven like a spa day that lasts forever: a very pleasant experience, surely, and maybe an experience that only some people have earned, but in principle an experience that can be extended to anyone, good or bad, deserving or undeserving.

Once again our Epistle reading is illuminating. It doesn’t mention heaven once. But if heaven is anything, heaven is the presence of God. God is, after all, “our Father who art in heaven.” And St John tells us that God is love (1 John 4:7). He tells us in verse 12 that, if we love, then God abides in us (v 12). He says it again in verse 16: “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (v 16). But he also puts it negatively, saying that “anyone who does not love does not know God” (v 8), and that “if anyone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar” (v 20).

Enjoyment of heaven is enjoyment of God. God himself is ultimate bliss. There is no created thing, visible or invisible, deep enough to pour into it the infinite desire of the human soul, which is made in the image of its infinite creator. Down the endless ages of eternity, God must satisfy you, or nothing will.

Everyone who loves God—I mean really love him, down to their boots, from the pit of the stomach to the crown of the head, and from the shadowy recesses of unconscious thought to the ecstasies of rational knowledge—everyone who loves God has God abiding with him (v 12), and so has heaven already. God, being in no particular place but touching every heart like a plant’s root touches its stem, is available to every person who yearns. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). The door to heaven does not open in the sky when you die. It opens daily to those who knock at the innermost door. Remember that Jesus said that “the kingdom of heaven is within you” (Luke 17:21).

But conversely, everyone who does not love God is shut out, remaining in the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. All they needed to do was knock, but they didn’t love the host who was waiting for them on the other side of the door.

And so we have the rich man in Jesus’ parable. In his life he enjoyed his good things (Luke 16:25), feasting daily, and living only for the world on this side of the door. When that life is taken from him, he has no love for the God to whom his death delivers him. And the proof was that, in his life, he disdained Lazarus. Just like St John said, love of the visible neighbour is the proof of whether one loves our great invisible Neighbour (1 John 4:20). Loveless and now lifeless, there is no heaven for him; not because God withheld anything, but he withheld himself from God. Not desiring God and only desiring the world, he forgot that the world passes away but God does not. He did not cultivate love, and love is both the only criterion and whole substance of the life to come.

And now we have to be very careful. At this point, it would be all too tempting to say, “Now you’ve answered our question. Now we know who gets into heaven: it’s only those who love.” But then we would naturally ask, “And who counts as a person with love?” But then we would have missed the point. God does not reward the loving and reject the unloving. Love is itself the presence of God: it is heaven, and bliss, and reward. Every person enjoys and will enjoy heaven exactly to the extent that he loves. The heaven is in the loving. Those who love little receive little; those who love much receive much (Luke 7:47). “To the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Matthew 13:12).

What the scriptures have for us today is both unimaginably good news and sharp challenge to our religious sensibilities. There is no act of service you can perform which will merit the kingdom. There is no outward profession of faith, public or private, which can possibly save a loveless spirit. There is no prayer, be it never so carefully worded, which will compel the mercy of God to come down on a heart which insists on being hard as a rock. Love is the thing; nothing else will save. That’s the challenge to conventional religiosity.

But the good news is just the same: nothing is required of you who want to enjoy the kingdom of heaven. Nothing at all except the abandonment of everything that hurts your love—and that renunciation is all gain. There are no preconditions for entry, because love is the kingdom itself. God invites you to enjoy a banquet which costs you nothing you weren’t going to lose in the long run, and which will delight you to exactly same extent that you desire to enjoy it. The door to heaven stands open.