5 Easter
15 May
2022
The last few years have been, to put it mildly, rough on everyone. When hasn’t there been a “rough time” for humanity somewhere? Death, misery, hatred, and the impartial brutality of nature are with us now and in times past. Someone is always trying to get ahead at someone else’s expense.
So we look for a word of hope. It is the nature of most religions to offer hope; ours is no exception. In the time the Jesus lived and its aftermath, the Roman Empire was at its zenith. For those in the Mediterranean basin, Rome symbolized the empire; the emperor was considered a god. The young Christian community was persecuted in almost every place it established a foothold. Torture and death might be the price you paid for your faith. Even if you were not Christian, life was perilous. It was in the setting of Roman persecution that this book of hope we call Revelation was written. This is NOT an end of the world prediction, despite what so many people have tried to make of it. This is about the great thing that God is doing with God’s people. And just what is that great thing that God is doing? God is making heaven and earth one place! Yes, one place. There is no rapture, no left behind stories. The sea was the mythological source of chaos, of monsters and evil, for those who first heard these words. That it was destroyed meant that evil and chaos would not roam the world anymore, looking for victims. Earth is changed and made one with heaven!! It is not destroyed. Evil and chaos will no longer be. Heaven is coming to earth!! And guess who’s coming to dinner? God’s own self!! God is moving.
I don’t think we grasp the full repercussions of that sentence; let me repeat. God is moving Jerusalem, the city of God, lock stock and barrel, to earth. In the Gospel of John, the Word dwells with us, or pitches his tent with us. God moves into the neighborhood. That is what we have awaiting us; not the destruction of earth, or as the book The Late Great Planet Earth hypothesized, the end of the world was near and believers would be raptured up, up, and away.
Jesus says today, right now, that we are to love one another; this is the sole ethic of the kingdom of God. We are to love one another in the way Jesus loved his followers, with the kind of love that offers care and concern for the well being and dignity of each and every person. This is the ethic upon which the New Jerusalem is founded the ethic of the Savior who washed the feet of his friends, the ethic of the Good Samaritan, the ethic of the early Christians as they shared what they had with one another. It is not the ethic of those who believe salvation is for the few with certain beliefs, nor for those who care not for the earth itself or for those who dwell in it. This vision celebrates all of creation and promises that, if only we love one another as Jesus instructed us, God will be here; the New Jerusalem means all things are made new and that death is gone from the world. There will be no mourning or pain!!
How do we find this New Jerusalem? Where is the City of God? We take our first clues from Jesus, from the heart of the Gospel. I believe, if I squeeze everything to its core, he taught us to resist societal evil, that is resist “the world” or the empire and treat each other with self-giving love. Martin Luther King labels the things we must resist as “the triplets of evil”: racism, militarism, and economic justice. The Poor People’s Campaign labeled five evils: systemic racism, poverty and inequality, war and economic militarism, ecological devastation, and a distorted moral narrative of Christian Nationalism. (The Souls of Poor Folk Audit, 2020)
So as you go in search of this New Jerusalem, start with the great commandment. Love and nurture those with whom you live. Look outside and see how you can bring God’s agape love to your neighborhood and community. Feed the birds; have a shared meal with your neighbors; pick up litter, plant a garden. And then look farther. Figure out how you can make the community better. Where you see injustice figure out what you can do. Everything matters.
The new heaven and the new earth are one and the same. Good news!! The New Jerusalem is the city where men and women dwell in peace and prosperity, where the waters flow, where death is no more. It began with the life and work of Jesus Christ and it is still ongoing. Good news!!
There is a painting of Jesus knocking at the door, waiting for one of us to open it. Sometimes I have a vision of God, waiting in the wings or standing at the door, and we all say, “You go answer the door.” So no one does. And God just keeps waiting.
What would happen if we decided to open the door and let God in? God would say, “All is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will freely give water from the life-giving spring.”
Don’t be afraid to open the door!!
The Souls of Poor Folk Audit. (2020, June 14). Retrieved from Poor People's Campaign: https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/resource/the-souls-of-poor-folk-audit/?utm_campaign=Resisting%20Empire%2C%20Remixing%20Faith&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter
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