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The Rev. Frank Logue
Heaven’s Entrance Exam Life is not fair. There. I said it. Life is not fair. We can agree on this, right? If not, I could give examples, illustrations, and on and on. Life is not fair is easily proved. It would seem impossible to prove its opposite. But that’s life. We know life is imperfect. The world is made up of too many imperfect people each with their own agenda. How could life end up fair? Yet, we do try to make things as fair as we can. There are a lot of things that we divide up in ways intended to be fair. Things like clean water, access to education, access to health care and jobs and so on. We may fall short. But we do try to make these things fair. That’s when you really discover how difficult it is to be fair. When it comes to clean water, we want this for everyone. In a world filled with waterborne diseases, we treat water in America as a right. We may disagree on lawn watering in a drought, but no one disputes that everyone should have access to safe drinking water. That’s only fair. When deciding who gets an organ transplant, equality is no longer fair. If we had enough donor organs available at any given time, we could be fair by giving everyone who needs a transplant the organ he or she needs. But we don’t have enough to go around. So we’ve decided that being fair means that a committee of professionals with no personal stake in the outcome gets to decide who should get which organs. Need matters as does your chances of full recovery. It’s only fair that those most likely to benefit from a transplant get the organs before those least likely to recover. That’s fair anyway until it is someone you love who keeps getting bumped lower on the list. Yet, as imperfect systems go, the transplant one is as fair as we can muster. Then there are times when effort pays off and we all enjoy it. When a radio station offers some wacky contest to give away tickets to a concert, as long as it doesn’t put anyone at risk, who cares what effort someone has to go to get the tickets. Anyone who wants them has the same task. It’s fair to let effort determine the winner. Or maybe, it just takes the effort of staying up all night in line to buy a ticket when they go on sale. The others who didn’t make the wait can’t complain. They could have gone to the effort and didn’t. Sometimes it’s more than mere effort; genetics and natural ability also come in to play. When the Jaguars need a quarterback, not one of us would think it was fair for any given person who wanted to the job to have an equal shot at getting it. Merit comes into play. It’s fair that you have to earn your place on the team. No matter how hard I apply myself, I will never be an NFL lineman. I may have gone to seminary on a football scholarship (that’s a true story), but nose guard for the Virginia Seminary Fighting Friars is not on par with being a nose guard for the Steelers and no amount of effort on my part is likely to get me that spot on the roster. I may not like it, but it is fair that the Steelers pick the person who merits the place on their defensive line. In the innocent days before performance enhancing drugs were a ready temptation, we all thought sports track and field was fair. Hard work paid off on the track and in other sports. If a runner worked hard enough in the off season to sprint to victory in an Olympic 100-yeard dash, it seemed only fair to call the runner the fastest human. We generally think the same is true for higher education, you have to earn your place at a college through good grades and test scores. It’s only fair. I could go on describing the varying ways we account fairness, in some situations it’s simple equality, in others need, in others merit, in other cases the benefit to society. Let’s suffice to say that not only is life unfair, but fairness is a hard target to reach. But heaven should be different, right? I can understand this world not being fair. But I can’t understand how God’s perfect Kingdom could be anything but perfect. Yet, Jesus tells us some things that cause some people to cry unfair. For example, he tells a parable of workers in a vineyard, some of whom arrive early in the day, some during the day and some at the close of the day. As they are going home, all are given the same pay by the master of the vineyard, to which those who worked all day cry “unfair.” It compares to a lifelong Christian looking to someone who converted on their deathbed and saying “unfair.” Those who worked harder or longer should get something more than the last minute arrival. Or so they say in claiming God is being unfair. How do you get to heaven? Is it based on equality, need, merit, effort? Sure there are lots of jokes that have various people standing outside the doors of heaven answering questions to get in, but what is the entrance exam for the pearly gates? Paul tells the Christian in Ephesus, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Entrance into heaven is a gift from god. It isn’t exactly earned. It’s not even something of your doing. The path to heaven is opened by grace, the free gift of God’s love, through faith alone. In case you were left with any ideas about earning your way to heaven the way one might work his or her way through college, Paul adds that this is “not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” Paul lets us know that getting in to heaven is nothing to brag about. In fact, it’s so easy anyone can do it. Anyone? Well, anyone who has the faith. I have preached elsewhere about those of other faiths. I don’t want to get diverted by it here. But if you are wondering, the short version is that scripture teaches everyone is responsible for what God has revealed to them. So persons around the world who do not know of Jesus, may find their way into the Kingdom, by living into the faith that is in them. Respond to God as God is revealed to them and they will be saved. This does not mean that all persons of other faiths are in no matter what. And it doesn’t mean that those of other faiths who know of and reject Jesus are not held accountable for that rejection. This teaching on what happens to people of other faiths means that God is Just, a word we use for fairness. We trust Jesus meant what he said when he told Nicodemus, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” This is how God entered into an unfair world to balance out the injustices with an offer available to all to enter into eternal life. Paul says this offer open to all is a free gift and you don’t have to earn it or deserve it, you just have to open your heart and accept Jesus. That’s it. This salvation is nothing to brag about, but it is a unique and wonderful gift of life. Heaven’s entrance exam is very short. Put you faith in Jesus and you pass the test. But then how do we understand the side of Christianity that teaches dos and don’ts. There are the things we are to avoid like murder, adultery, stealing and other things that turn us from God. Then there are the things we are to do like love one another and serve God through taking care of the needs of others. If you don’t have to do these things to get into heaven, then why bother? The biblical answer is that if you do believe in Jesus; if you have let him into your heart, then those good works will just naturally follow. The Book of James wonders aloud that if you are not doing the good works for which God created you then maybe you don’t really believe in Jesus. If you are not already living out a life of doing good for others, then maybe you haven’t actually let Jesus into your life. After all James writes, “Faith without works is dead.” James agreed with Paul that entrance into heaven was on faith alone, he was just so convinced that true faith led to a more Christ-like life, that he was sure Christians would do good things for other people even if God had not commanded it. Paul puts it to the Ephesians this way, “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” In other words, the good stuff you do for others is not some extra chore or burden. It’s what God created you to do. You will be more fulfilled when you are doing the works God created for you. Keep in mind that God knows you are not Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. or Francis of Assisi. You do not have to do the good works God prepared for them. You just have to be the person God created you to be. It’s not only a good idea, it’s only fair. None of this will make life fair. But it does mean the kingdom of God is fair and just and righteous. And when we accept the free gift of God’s love and begin to live the life God created us to live, then our loving and serving others for Jesus’ sake will help make the world of the here and now a little bit more fair. Amen.
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