Heaven is Big
"...he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed people of God." John 11: 51-52
Just how big is heaven? That's what Caiaphas and the chief priests, the Pharisee and the disciples, "the Romans" and "the Jews" all wanted to know. Just how big is heaven? Who will get in? Who, being left out, will perish?
In his remarkable Requiem, Gabrial Faure bets on heaven's great size. He takes his cue from passages like this one. (above in John)
Faure's contemporaries described his setting of the Requiem as a lullaby...a description with which he did not quarrel. As parents lovingly sing their children to sleep, so does the church lovingly sing to sleep those who have departed this life. Tuneful and serene, Faure's music invites us to cradle our beloved departed in our memories as the choir sing and the orchestra play them into eternal rest.
In approaching his version of the Requiem, Gabrial Faure dared depart from convention in a number of ways. The most profound difference Faure introduced is a theological one. It concerns the omission of a single word. The omission occurs in his Offertorium.
For years the church had sung these words: libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum (deliver the souls of all the faithful dead). Faure drops the word faithful. Instead of devliver the souls of all the faithful dead, he writes: deliver the souls of the dead. Bam! The doors of paradise just flew wide open!
In his own faithful and daring reading of the scriptures, Faure was emboldened to make a stunning theological statement. By deleting a single word, Faure opened wide the doors of paradise.
Dear God, thank you for Gabrial Faure's biblical insight and courage. Make my heart even half as spacious as your heaven. Amen.
Nancy S. Taylor is Senior Minister of Old South Church in Boston, Massachusetts.
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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