Heaven Can Wait

   If heaven is such a great destination, why are tickets so available at the depot?  There aren’t any scalpers.  Stub Hub isn’t racing into the market.  I’m not suggesting you take the next train out, but aren’t tickets cheaper in the pre-sale?

   Heaven is the destination, and if it is the great place to be for eternity, why aren’t more guys jumping on the Heaven Express?  We might blame it on the expectations for living the Christian life.  It isn’t easy doing all those good works and living a life of piety at the same time. Turning the other cheek? That’s a toughie!   Love your neighbor…, do unto others…, cast not the first stone… describe a demanding lifestyle.  Still, I don’t think it is any of these things. 

   I blame it on the angels.

   The mindset began when we were kids.  As young boys we lived in dread of some friend of our mothers saying within earshot of another kid “Isn’t he a little angel?”  The last thing we needed was to be someone’s “little angel.”  It was prelude to a fistfight or at least teasing.  No self-avowed ragamuffin wanted to be an angel.  Girls are angels, not boys. 

   Think not?

   In the Christmas pageants girls wanted to be angels; boys wanted to be wise men or at least shepherds.  All those Christmas cards with angels you receive have girl angels, and the angel figurines in the shops are all female.  I haven’t seen a bunch of macho man angels in books except the Bible.  All references to angels in the Bible are male. 

   Look at the angels portrayed in the movies.  In Heaven Can Wait, James Masson plays the angel, Mr. Jordan, as a quiet three-piece suit guy.  The original had Claude Rains in the role; he was even more benign.  In City of Angels Nicolas Cage and his fellow angels are as unemotional, detached and blah as their appearance in drab black trench coats.  They watch; they don’t participate. Their big deal is to gather at sunset by the beach listen to celestial music and to peer into eternity.   They don’t even smile much less rock to the music.  Isn’t that another enticing “I just can’t wait to get to heaven” marketing campaign?

   The one saving portrayal is John Travolta playing the archangel Michael in the movie by the same name. Depicted as an overweight, beer guzzling, hard smoking, lover of life, who women lust for, he might be the closest role model to whom the American male can aspire.  Now there’s a recommendation.

   The TV series Touched by an Angel is another case in point.  Della Reese is Tess, the angel supervisor who works with Monica, played by Roma Downey.  They get all the good parts saving souls and the like.  Toward the end of the series they introduce perky Gloria (Valerie Bertinelli) as the new miracle worker apprentice.  The one male lead in the series is John Dye’s Andrew, and get this, he is the Angel of Death.  Come on now! They cast a guy named Dye as the Angel of Death.  Wow!  There’s bandwagon appeal.

   The Christian image of heaven is some oldies but goldies glee club of celestial singers with genial smiles in white robes playing lyres and harps. Oh yeah, that’s realistic.  I can barely play the radio, and all of a sudden I’m to have a golden voice and play a harp. 

   We may not need Madison Avenue intervention, but we do need to get the message straight.  We live by Grace. We don’t have to do good works.  We get to heaven by Grace alone, not by our deeds and certainly not by our image.  God loves us and extends Grace to us simply out of love.  We don’t have to earn our wings.

   Our journey in this world is an opportunity to learn to accept Grace and live with in it. We turn the other cheek and all that comes with Christian life in response to the gift of Grace.  With Grace comes joy, and in the life everlasting with joy comes bliss and all bliss has to offer.  You don’t have to be an angel to ride the Heaven Express.  God punched your pre-paid ticket.  All you have to do is accept the offer and climb aboard.