"So [the people] said, ‘This man is Jesus, son of Joseph, isn’t he? We know his father and mother. How, then, does he now say he came down from heaven?’ " (v. 42, TEV)

This little story calls to mind the age-old truth that you can’t always judge a book by its cover. Most of us do that more than we’d like to admit. We draw conclusions about others on the basis of outward appearance. We neglect to take into consideration important information about people before forming an opinion about them. We allow our stereotypes and prejudices to overrule an openminded view towards certain individuals and groups of people.

That’s what happened in the Bible story here today. These Jewish religious leaders had a hard time coping with less-than-formal expressions of their traditional faith. Jesus had been a rabbi of the people more than a rabbi of the temple. He made faith in God a household occurrence as much as an experience before some temple altar.

So now, when Jesus says, "I am the bread that came down from heaven," the people could not handle his claim. They judged this "human book" - this living Word - only by its cover. In satire, with hands on hips, they asked, "This man is Jesus, son of Joseph, isn’t he? We know his father and mother. How then does he now say he came down from heaven?"

Today Jesus stands before you and me, and he says, "Don’t judge a book by its cover alone. You might be surprised to find out all the places where God is at work in the world. In fact, I want to tell you that God is just as much present and working here on earth as he ever was in heaven. Never discount the possibility that even I, the man of Nazareth, can bring you heaven on earth. Oh yes, I am the bread that came down from heaven!"

Let’s affirm this promise of Jesus now, and then let’s go on to truly believe it and act according to it.

I

Is there any heaven on earth today? Can there he? Our own nation, the United States, is now well over 200 years old. It’s fitting that you and I thank God for a kind of heaven on earth he’s blessed us with in our beloved land. There’s lots that isn’t right in America, lots that isn’t good. But in another sense we do have a kind of heaven on earth here.

Who would have believed in the mighty progression of this nation when it first began? Our mother country is England, the land of the British empire. Back in the eighteenth century, when many British people and other Europeans sailed across the sea to make a new home on this continent, the leaders of England never thought America would amount to much. After all, Britain was the center of the truly civilized world. Authentic culture and economic success derived from that historic isle. America? She was a wild wilderness, too remote, too vast ever to be tamed. Britain was the true heaven on earth.

But thank God, you can’t always judge a book by its cover. Over the past two centuries, America has become another kind of heaven on earth. She has become a land of milk and honey and has shared her milk and honey with the world - including Britain!

Our economic success, despite a nagging recession, makes us the richest nation on earth. In science and technology, Americans have uncovered the hidden blessings of an all-wise God as no nation has ever done. Talk about "modern conveniences": we are the land of conveniences; travel in most other foreign countries and you will soon miss the comforts and provisions of your homeland. In culture and the arts, we make contributions to the world scene that belie our relatively young age as a nation. America boasts more major symphony orchestras, for example, than all the countries of Europe combined. And our democratic form of government works, meeting the varied needs of every social stratum to a degree that causes envy among most of the other nations.

Who would have believed all this possible in 1776 and before? What a legacy, what a treasure, what a heavenly responsibility we hold as Americans every time we celebrate the Fourth of July! God has blessed this land. He has been working among us. He has been sharing heaven itself with America the Beautiful. Like Jesus, we may have had lowly beginnings as a nation (what nation hasn’t?). But God often brings his blessings to the world through such "sons of Joseph."

II

Now as Americans, and as individual Christians, we need to believe even more that God can bring us heaven on earth. We need to keep asking, for instance, whether we can ever arrive at a peace-filled society and world. Can there be peace on earth? Can wars and rumors of wars be overcome? Can there be this kind of heaven on earth?

If we assert that Jesus Christ walked the earth as the Son of God and Prince of Peace, then we must believe it. If we accept war and nuclear build-up as a given, expecting little change in our own habits, are we not just as well asking of Jesus, as did these folks of old, "This man is Jesus, son of Joseph, isn’t he? We know his father and mother. How, then, does he now say he came down from heaven?"

Beyond national and world peace, we need to ask whether each individual doesn’t deserve, and is not entitled to peace. In our pledge to the flag we refer to the promise of "liberty and justice for all." Can we have this kind of peace on earth too? Can we take to heart and serve all the people?

Or do we as Christians continue to judge a book by its cover? Do we discount and discard certain persons in society, just because they are sons of Joseph, just because they grew up in Nazareth?

Who are some of these people for whom we do not always have an equal vision of individual peace? There are the poor and the hungry. What generalizations we nurse in our minds about those who must struggle to obtain their daily bread! Laziness or lack of responsibility on their part always seems to be the explanation we give. And, if so, that becomes an easy way for us to say that we are not expected to lend them a hand.

Don’t we also sometimes take certain neighborhoods of our city and judge the book by its cover? What is the "ideal" neighborhood? What are the "best" sections of town? Are they just the areas where homes have a certain financial value or where the "right" kind of people live (usually people who look and act just like me!)? In most of the older sections of our large American urban centers, exciting redevelopment and new housing construction is going on. We must always remember that in every neighborhood there are real people living exciting and meaningful lives. Many people choose to live in Nazareth. They like where they live. Heaven has no boundaries!

The other day my next-door neighbor introduced me to some of his friends who were visiting from central Illinois. As I was shaking the hand of one gentleman, he told me his name and said, "I’m from just south of Peoria - you know, God’s country." I must confess that I had never imagined central Illinois as being God’s country. But evidently he did, and I am glad he did. "God’s country" is always that place where we feel at home, where our dreams and future lie, where our heart and our friends are. How dare we scorn any place where others have found meaning and fulfillment for their own daily living! Heaven on earth - for some - might just be in central Illinois, and that’s okay.

We also do a lot of generalizing about those people who are physically impaired or who are in some ways not in complete control of their lives. Lots of people are disabled in one way or another, but I wonder whether they are always "handicapped," as we say. As we typically go on judging books by their covers, we sometimes pigeonhole most disabled people as "bearing a burden" or "being a burden."

In this respect we could all do well to hear the words of Father Bruce Biever, the former vice-president for university relations at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Just barely over fifty, Father Biever held a top job at one of our nation’s prestigious universities. Everything pointed to an even higher, more influential appointment for him. But for the sake of his own sister, Beverly, who is 42 and mentally retarded, he gave it all up. He deliberately chose to resign his position so that he could devote full-time to caring for his sister and to further learn the lessons of life from her. Father Biever explained it this way:

I feel very profoundly that those of us "in the normal range" have a great deal to learn from retarded people. Their disability is often their strength in so many ways. Without getting rhapsodic, I think the mentally retarded oftentimes bring a reverence, an awe, and an absolute delight to the world around them. And they share that awe and delight so incredibly.

And we who are "more sophisticated" miss it. And there’s a richness there, a richness that I feel all of us can learn from. I know I do.

I suppose that Beverly is probably the greatest grace that God has given me. She’s a reminder day by day of the simplicity of life, of the basics of life. She’s not asking a great deal of life. She’s asking for love, she’s asking for affection, she’s asking for strength.

She is one-directional in her concerns, and that type of simplicity is rare, and every day I have the experience of it. And that’s a great gift. I don’t know why God has favored me in this way, really.

What a testimony to all of us that we dare never judge a book by its cover, that heaven on earth - all of God’s best gifts to us - is sometimes found in the least likely places!

III

But perhaps saddest of all, we sometimes write off even ourselves as ever becoming noble persons of God and cherished souls of heaven. Sometimes we do not see ourselves as candidates for God’s forgiveness, mercy, and love.

Oh, it’s true, no one knows our fears and prejudices, our hates and inner nastiness, the way we know it ourselves. But, oh yes, there is one who knows even these things better than we. God knows our hearts and our waywardness. He knows our sins!

But even more, he is stirred by his own divine mercy and love - a divine kindness that moved him to send his own dear son among us. Born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, he is a Christ who stands with us in his humanity and who forgives us in his divinity. He is the Christ of the cross, who descended into hell itself. Now he seeks to bring each and every last one of us to heaven on earth and to the new heavens of eternity. Today you are included in all of this. This is the Gospel moment in which he again ushers us into heaven on earth.

Though we are often a burden to ourselves, we are not burdens to God. Christ once bore our entire burden on the cross, and now we are God’s sons and daughters. And God gives all his children heaven. Heaven for you! Heaven right now. Heaven on earth!