First Friends Meeting
Matthew 8:5-13
‘Gnashing of Teeth’
Doug Gwyn

This is a new song. It’s about the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who died in 1900. Nietzsche is probably best known for his famous (or infamous) announcement that “God is dead.” Whether we agree with him or not, we have to admit, he spoke prophetically of the way the western world has become more secular, less oriented toward belief in God. But Nietzsche definitely had a grudge against Christianity. He thought the philosophy and morality of the ancient Greeks and Romans was superior to Christianity. It was superior because, well, they were superior people – the classical philosophers were part of the Greek and Roman nobility. Nietzsche thought Christianity belief and morals grew out of the sheer envy among common, lower-class folks toward the noble classes. Well, this song is about the surprise and dismay Nietzsche must have experienced when he arrived in heaven. (This may be the first song ever written on the subject!)

Nietzsche in Heaven
Doug Gwyn, August 2007

in the year 1900 Friedrich Nietzsche died and went to heaven
poor boy had lost his mind, and he was not yet fifty-seven
the Lord greeted him with a grin, and whispered in his ear
look what the cat dragged in – imagine seeing you here!
Friedrich Nietzsche, now it’s you that’s dead!
now that we’re here together, can I call you Fred?

Yeah, I’m every bit as dead as you famously believed
but then I never was alive in any sense that you conceived
when you’ve been here a while, you’ll catch on to what I’ve said
you’ve never really lived until you’re really dead
Friedrich Nietzsche, welcome to heaven, Bro!
everyone is welcome here – there’s nowhere else to go

you can stay with those ancient, noble Greeks you so much admire
but be prepared to render the service they require
or you can stay with the common folks, like my parents, Joe and Mary
but I’ll warn you in advance, they’re very ordinary
Friedrich Nietzsche, do you think you can take it?
heaven is a place that’s pretty much what you make it

well, Fred just shook his head and said, “maybe later, not just yet”
he excused himself and ran away as far as he could get
then he sipped a cup of wormwood tea mixed with a little gall
and wept and gnashed his teeth at the horror of it all
Friedrich Nietzsche, try to take the long view
heaven is a place that takes some getting used to

You may recall about five years ago Phil Gulley and Jim Mulholland published If Grace Is True. The book generated some controversy. They suggested that everybody will be redeemed. Everyone gets to go to heaven after all. But it left me wondering, will everyone be happy to be there? Or does heaven amount to hell for some? I’d like to believe that heaven will be heaven for everyone – but it may take time for some. Particularly if you haven’t learned the lessons that life teaches. Particularly if you can’t accept just how good God really is.

My song was inspired partly by a dream I had as a teenager. I dreamed I was dying. Then, the next thing I knew, I was on a bus full of people I didn’t know. We were arriving at a park out in the country. A nice place with trees and gardens. We all got off the bus and were milling around. We didn’t know where we were, or what we were doing there. All I knew was that I was hungry (a teenage boy, after all). I went into a building and found a dining room. But there it was deserted, and the chairs were up on the tables. So it didn’t look as if dinner was happening any time soon. I saw this large man (I think it may have been God) and asked him, “When do we eat?” He just laughed in a friendly, jovial way and answered, “Oh, we don’t eat here.” Well, I was disappointed by his answer – and irritated by his tone of voice! I was hungry! Well, I wandered off and started looking around. I was still among all these newcomers milling around in confusion. The dream ended as I looked out into the gardens and began to notice people further out. They weren’t milling around. They didn’t seem worried about dinner. They were just sitting peacefully, enjoying the place and its beauty. Later, as I thought about the dream, I thought, maybe “heaven is a place that takes some getting used to.”

Of course, I don’t really pretend to know anything about heaven. I’m sure it will surprise all of us. My song is a pretty mundane idea of heaven. I guess it’s really about our life here on earth. This song was partly inspired by my series on the parables of Jesus. As I looked around the gospels for parables to use, I kept running into these parables and other sayings of Jesus that end with weeping and gnashing of teeth. They’re almost all in Matthew. The parable of the wheat and the weeds, the parable of the wicked house manager, and the parable of the wedding banquet all end with somebody to be thrown “into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Well, I didn’t know what to do with those parables, so I kept avoiding them. Meanwhile, this song was forming on another track of my mind. It just shows that the left brain usually doesn’t know what the right brain is doing.

I think the heart of the matter is found in the story Bill has read for us this morning. A Roman centurion comes up to Jesus and asks him to heal his paralyzed servant. A Roman centurion! It’s like a captain in the US Army coming up to an Iraqi civilian on the streets of Baghdad. This is the occupying force. This guy might take you away and do God knows what with you. But Jesus simply and straightforwardly says “I will come and cure him.” Jesus is grounded in the goodness of God. He’s prepared to follow that goodness wherever it takes him – even to the home of a Roman centurion. But the centurion responds – oh, I’m not worthy to have you come to my house. He’s amazingly humble toward Jesus. But more than that, he recognizes Jesus as a man of authority. A military officer understands how authority works. When he orders his men to do things, he doesn’t have to go with them and supervise. Jesus can do the same in the spiritual realm. Just give your word and my servant will be healed.

Jesus is amazed. He turns to the people around him and says, more-less, how many of you believe like this man in the goodness of God? People like this centurion will have better seats at the table than you. They will sit up there in front with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And you may be out somewhere in the dark. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not great because they were the first Jews, but because they trusted in the goodness of God. As Christians, we might say that the apostles are not saints because they knew Jesus or wrote the New Testament. It’s because they trusted in the goodness of God.

Jesus speaks of the outer darkness, the weeping, and the gnashing of teeth have to do with those moments – in this life or the next – when we realize how badly we missed it. How we failed to trust in the goodness of God. It’s just that in the next life, we see more plainly just how good God is. Our lack of faith will be more painfully clear to us. Fortunately, St. Peter hands out tooth-guards at the Pearly Gates. But of course, the point really is, we can come out of the outer darkness and step into the light here and now.

Notice what Jesus says to the centurion at the end. “Go; let it be done for you according to your faith.” And the centurion’s servant was healed in that hour. Now, if Jesus were simply answering the centurion on his own terms, he would have said, “Go; let it be done for you according to my word, my command.” Or “Go; let it be done for you according to the will of God.” But as he puts it, it’s “according to your faith.” It’s the centurion’s faith that opens the situation up to the goodness of God. In so many ways, Jesus tells us, we create our own reality. We can become trapped by the reality we create. But faith opens us up to God’s reality, which is limitless, open-ended, all-embracing. God’s reality reconciles enemies, feeds the hungry, frees the captives, brings good news for anyone who will listen. All the centurion has to do now is “Go” and enter that reality he has opened himself up to – go and find the goodness of God revealed back at his house.

That’s all we have to do – go and find the goodness of God at work in our own homes, with our own families, where we work, on the streets. God is really that good – can you believe it?