There will be secrets in Heaven

Nicholas Cage is about to hit the silver screen with a remake of “Left Behind”. As a teenager I just assumed that the theology of Left Behind was pretty much right, but because it felt so wrong I tried not to think about it much.

It was only in the last 10 years or so that I have discovered the work of N.T. Wright. It was such a relief to read Surprised by Hope and discover that much of Left Behind’s theology is premised on a very faulty reading of the bible.

One challenge I still had as I thought about life after death though was that it all seemed very impersonal. Heaven was going to be a crowded place full of much greater people than I, and I couldn’t imagine that God was going to give me much of a second thought.

We are just embarking on a series of sermons on heaven at the moment. As I was doing a bit of reading in preparation for preaching in a few weeks I was struck deeply by a short passage in Revelation.

I had never really noticed the pattern (I’m a bit slow) of the little statements at the end of each of the letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3. One in particular stood out:

To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it. (Revelation 2:17)

It had never occurred to me that there could possibly be secrets in heaven. I had just kind of assumed everyone would all of a sudden know everything. I realise now though that that would not be heaven. Imagine a world where there was nothing to learn or discover, where there was no point in talking to anyone because you knew what they would say before they said it. Sounds more like hell to me.

As the picture of the white stone started to become real in my imagination I realised what the implications were. In the bible a name is much more than a label, it is a summation of the essence of something or someone. In giving me a new name, there was going to be a transaction when Jesus looks into my eyes and says “Matt, this is who I’ve created you to be. No-one but you and I will ever fully understand this, and this will be a truth that is shared between you and I and no-one else”. It will be a conversation that is profoundly personal and will represent a secret that can never fully be explained to anyone else.

I’m often suspicious of Christians who want to make everything personal, effectively putting themselves at the centre of the universe. I love though that at the beginning of the next phase of our lives, we will not be some anonymous face in a massive crowd. We will be seen and understood in a way that we long to be seen and understood now, and as we enter eternity it will be with a shared secret, the nature of who we really are, that can never fully be comprehended by anyone other than the one who flung stars into space.

It was a nice moment as the penny dropped.