Good Heavens

May 3, 2026, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

If you know you have just a few more days to live, the last thing you want to hear is “don’t let your hearts be troubled.” Fuggetaboudit. Don’t worry. Be happy.

Samuel Johnson’s response was more realistic:  “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

In fact, imminent death is probably all we’ll be able to think about. it’s not the sort of news we can quickly accept and be at peace with. 

According to the model of the five stages of grief, or the Elizabeth Kübler-Ross model, those experiencing sudden grief following an abrupt realization go through five emotions: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, finally,  acceptance. 

Most people have difficulty imagining what happens after death. We assure ourselves we are going to a “better place,” but what if it’s just – nothing? Mark Twain said, “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

Fear of death is a very human response. Even Jesus was deeply troubled in spirit as he faced death and asked God if it could be avoided.

But Jesus also trusted God, and he urged his disciples to do likewise.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going." (John 14:1-4)

But do we? Do we know the place where he – and we – are going? And what does he mean by “dwelling places”?

What do you imagine that eternal life to be? What is your idea of heaven?

Some time ago I tried my hand at cartooning heaven and it occurred to me that a place made entirely of gold and pearls, somewhat like the refurbished Oval Office, would be fiscally improbable. I drew our two little dogs into the panel and visualized them saying, “When everything is made of gold, gold is worth dog doodoo.” 

What is your concept of heaven?

Jesus’ description of heaven is also translated as  “many mansions,” a concrete enough image. And he promised to prepare a place for us.

C.S. Lewis, one of the great promoters of Christian faith, spent most of his life imagining heaven. He wrote a seven-volume series of children’s books called The Chronicles of Narnia, about a magical fantasy realm that includes a Lion named Aslan, a maned Jesus metaphor who sacrifices himself for others.

My concept of heaven, then and now, is that it will be the place where all our earthly dreams are fulfilled. There, as we bask in God’s glory and walk with Jesus, we will be reunited with loved ones. We will be young and good looking. And we will interact with our eathly heroes.

This latter notion was inspired by the late, great historian Catherine Drinker Bowen, the author of Miracle at Philadelphia, a record of the first constitutional convention.

I interviewed Bowen in 1971 and asked her about Miracle, which is one of my favorite books.

She said she became obsessed with George Washington, who presided over the constitutional convention. Did he speak with an English accent? Did he speak with the aristocratic cadences of a Virginia planter? Did he ever raise his voice? Was he a baritone or tenor? 

“I was crazy to know how that man talked,” Bowen said.

When she died two years later my first thought was, now she knows how that man talked.

I have clung to this rather improbable concept of heaven. I like to think that, on the other side, I will join a press conference with my idol John F. Kennedy and ask him penetrating questions: Did you feel misled by the CIA when you authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion? Do you commiserate with Lee Harvey Oswald in heaven or was your assassination a CIA plot? Do you still hang with Marilyn? How did your father get so rich? And how come we never see him up here?

In Paradiso, written in the early 14th century, Dante imagines heaven as nine spheres corresponding to the nine known planets. The first sphere is earthly paradise and the ninth is the Primum Mobile, the sphere of the angels.

But long before writers and poets put ideas of heaven on paper, humans faced their mortality by imagining the life to come.

Pueblo Indians saw the afterlife as traveling to a new village where they would join friends and relatives who died before them.

In commenting about Pueblo Indian resistance to Christianity, anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons, in her book Pueblo Indian Religion, writes: “The Pueblo idea of life after death as merely a continuation of this life is incompatible with dogmas of hell and heaven. In this life the Spirits do not reward or punish; why should they after death?” 

Buddhists believe in reincarnation, a cycle of death and rebirth called samsara. Through karma and eventual enlightenment, they hope to escape samsara and achieve nirvana, an end to suffering. .

Wikipedia reports that In the late 1970s, Kübler-Ross, after interviewing thousands of patients who had died and been resuscitated, became interested in out-of-body experiences, mediumship, spiritualism, and other ways of attempting to contact the dead. 

Kübler-Ross also dealt with the phenomenon of near-death experiences. She was also an advocate for spiritual guides and afterlife, serving on the Advisory Board of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) Kübler-Ross reported her interviews with the dying for the first time in her book, On Death and Dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy, and their own families (1969).

Peter Panagore, who I know through gatherings of church communicators, has written two books about his near-death experiences, that is, times he has died, glimpsed heaven, and came back to write about it. 

In his first book, Heaven is Beautiful, How Dying Taught Me That Death is Just the Beginning, Peter describes his death from hypothermia while hiking along the Ice Fields Parkway of Alberta, Canada. As he lay dead he experienced heaven and he found it beautiful.

Peter has had a second near death experience and today he encourages people to calmly face their own death:

“Be prepared to be loved and to be welcomed: you are going Home. Death is only a doorway. When your time comes, as it must, walk through that doorway and love God. Trust God. Believe. That’s all you have to do—simply believe. You can believe in God, because God is Real. This life is simply one bridge in between.”

But here’s the thing: near death experiences are very personal and you can’t take anyone else’s word for it. The heaven Peter Panagore saw may not be the same heaven you or I would see under similar circumstances.

Peter is a preacher, not a scientist, and most scientists are skeptical about near death experiences. They blame them on the brain’s synaptic defense mechanisms when the body begins to die.

So what is your concept of heaven?

John of Patmos had visions of a gleaming crystal city gilded with gold and garnished by living trees and flowing waters.

Jesus talks of a place with many mansions or dwellings.

I imagine a place in which I rejoin an interrupted feast with Jesus and departed loved ones and, if I so wish, interview John F. Kennedy.

As to what heaven actually looks like, I try to be at peace about it. My old boss Bob Edgar, a United Methodist clergyman, six-time congressman, and general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said many Methodists didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about heaven.

“We focus on doing God’s will on earth, proclaiming love, seeking justice, serving the poor,” Bob would say. “We’ll come to heaven soon enough.”

I remembered that when Bob died suddenly ten years ago, a month short of his 60th birthday.

What did he find when he crossed that portal that waits for us all?

We shall find out soon enough.

For now we remember this: God has sent Jesus to conquer death. 

God grant us the grace to accept God’s promises in faith, for the apocalyptic future is bright.

We will be going to the home Jesus has prepared for us.

And whatever it looks like, it will be the most beautiful place we have ever seen.

Come, Lord Jesus.