With One Another – Forever!!! (1)

 

 

A few months ago a dear friend asked me if I was looking forward to being with my brothers and sisters in Christ in heaven, and I said, “O yes! O yes! I am looking forward to family and friends who know Him.” Then he asked me why we, the Church, don’t talk about this, and I said that I didn’t know.

 

If we don’t talk about this glorious hope, then I think it must be a recent phenomenon, because I think it has been a "given” throughout the ages. If we don’t talk about being with one another with Jesus and the Father for eternity and of enjoying one another as we enjoy the Father and the Son, perhaps it mirrors our individualism and failure to appreciate one another in the Body of Christ.

 

I look forward to being with others in eternity throughout every day, for in one sense I am with them right now and they are with me – this is what we experience in the communion of the saints, it is a natural way of life in Jesus Christ; for the Church of Christ, the Body of Christ, transcends time and space and we are connected, in Christ, to one another – we are all members of the organism of the Body of Christ.

 

A few years ago I explored Geerhardus Vos’s beautiful sermon, Heavenly Mindedness, preached at Princeton Seminary in the early 20^th century. I spent well over a year on my Mind on Fire blog traveling with Vos through Hebrews Chapter 11. One of the many things that struck me was Vos’s deep sense that the fathers and mothers of faith lived in the communion of the saints, that their fellowship transcended time and space, that they were looking for that City whose “builder and maker is God”, a City God has prepared for them (Heb. 11:8 – 16). If our fathers and mothers of faith lived in this fellowship, we ought to also live in this blessed communion and glorious hope.

 

Of course the idea of a city carries with it the idea of community, of communion, of sharing a common life, and in Revelation chapters 21 and 22 we see that our future is a future in that City where the Father and Son are ever our Light – we are that City even as we live in that City.

 

Jesus tells us that, “…many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven…” (Mt. 8:11). What is a feast without fellowship? What is a feast without knowing our table companions? Is not the joy of a feast the joy of sharing bounty with others? Is not this Eucharistic joy? Eucharistic pleasure? Eucharistic delight? The Table, now and forever, is not for just one, it is not just “Jesus and me,” it is also gloriously “Jesus and we.”

To be continued…