Heaven and Hell on Earth
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John 14:1-14
A sermon by the Very Rev. Bernard J Owens on May 7, 2023 at Trinity Cathedral.
If you believe in a judgmental, exclusive, capricious God who uses eternity solely as leverage to make you behave, then you are almost certain to create some kind of hell for other people, and quite possibly yourself too.
If Jesus is our way, our truth, and our life, then we have a chance to create a little bit of heaven for those all around us, right here in the living present.
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life; he offers a path a path that winds through this life and the next, that arcs through our prayers and our relationships and our worship and our love of our neighbor and our joy and our grief and our death and our resurrection.
Jesus is life, one of integration and grace that weaves together all facets of our lived and hoped-for reality into a single tapestry of love and compassion, one that is not by any means ripped apart by death.
There is no way to God or to heaven or to nirvana or to inner peace without incarnate, sacrificial, self-emptying love.