The New Jerusalem.

Revelation 21

November 17, 2019

I.

The Man in the High Castle is a great novel by Philip K. Dick.  Lately it has been heavily adapted into a mini-series just entering its 4th and final season (which I have not yet had time to watch).  Briefly, the premise of the story is that the Allies lost World War II.  The action takes place in 1962, when the US is divided between Japanese and German sectors.  But then evidence, or at least hope, emerges of an alternate timeline, in which the Allies really win the war.  The implication being, perhaps, that we may actually live into this other version of reality, and somehow thereby make it true.

This idea is a not insignificant stream in science fiction, that we are somehow living in a false, mistaken, badly off-the-rails world, and there is another, truer, world available to us.  As Morpheus says in The Matrix, “there is something wrong with the world.”  Or the way that Guynan, the resident psychic on the Starship Enterprise, suddenly realizes that the historical trajectory they are on, is wrong.

We have been reading through the book of Revelation now for about a year.  The main message of this book is not that different from these stories.  It is revealed to John that the world-as-we-know-it is messed up.  The truth is out there, and our job as the people of God is to witness to and live in this other version of reality revealed in Jesus, in which God, not Caesar, wins.

Here in chapter 21, we have finally arrived at the consummation of the vision.  John has been hinting at it and reassuring us all along that God wins in the end.  Here he finally sees what that victory looks like.  At long last and after much catastrophic, seismic, convulsive fireworks, we see the real world, the world as renewed and purified and reconstituted by God.  This is the world we are charged to bear witness to, anticipating, expecting, and living in it even now, by the power of the Lamb.

The nature, meaning, and purpose of a story is determined by its ending.  In the theater, it is the difference between tragedy and comedy: at the end of the play is everyone dead or laughing?  

This book, like our whole existence, has been a battle between two endings as well.  On the one hand there is Satan, the Red Dragon, who, having been expelled from heaven comes down here to wreak havoc among the humans.  His main agenda is, since he couldn’t defeat God, to destroy God’s creation, enlisting people in the project by sucking up to their fragile and fearful egos.  His victory would make the story an unspeakable tragedy, a cynical, nihilistic saga of death, pain, and ultimate universal extinction.

On the other hand we have God’s victory, which John insists is never actually in doubt.  And here, in this the last book of the Bible, the ending is wonderfully good!  Everyone is laughing with joy and delight.  Everyone has what they need and more.  We discover that all the causes of death, pain, hunger, and misery have been eliminated.  And we are left bathing in the awesome, overflowing glory and love of God.

II.

It is important to note that Revelation does not depict a restoration of some primeval, perfect world of the past.  It is a vision of the future… yet it is also somehow present, which is how John is able to see it.  He is not a time-traveler.  Rather, he is given a glimpse into a future that is already accomplished, already shaping our lives in subtle ways.  It is like skipping ahead to read the final chapter of a mystery novel.  This whole book is basically a spoiler.  It is intended to remove the suspense about the ultimate destiny of life.  

I feel I have to state this because we too often fall into a corrosive nostalgia that looks back and tries to recover some imagined former time.  In my career I have had to deal with many people who wallow in grief and anger, daydreaming about the 1950’s.  That’s when we couldn’t build churches fast enough!  That’s when Sunday Schools were full!  That’s when everybody saluted the flag!  That’s when men wore ties and women wore dresses!  That’s when smoking didn’t cause cancer!  We need to get back to that!

But the book of Revelation is not about looking back at anything.  Neither is Jesus, who says that if we put our hands to the plow and look back we are not fit for the Kingdom of God.  Looking back is a cancer that will kill you.  I am not denying the importance of tradition.  John himself is always employing images and themes from the Hebrew Scriptures.  His vision is not an innovation.

God’s future has always been breaking into our time, and the words of the Bible have always pointed ahead.  They reveal the presence of God’s future.  Our faith looks ever forward to the end of the story; and we live now in the power of that ending, as it is reflected and experienced in advance, as it begins to make itself known even today.  Because God’s eternity is always present, even if we don’t directly see it. 

The first thing John shows us about this the vision is the whole creation being made new.  Heaven and earth are not destroyed, disposed of, and replaced, so much as renewed, resurrected, purified, and redeemed.  There remains a continuity connecting the old creation and the new, just as there is between the acorn and the oak tree, which are like the metaphors Paul uses to talk about the mortal body and the resurrected body.      

The creation is liberated from its oppression by the Red Dragon and his agents: the Beast of human Empire, oppressing people and planet with economies based on exploitation and war, and the False Prophet who kept people bamboozled and narcotized with his seductive propaganda insinuating itself into our consciousness.  Now that these destroyers of the earth have themselves been destroyed, the creation is allowed to emerge into its true nature and destiny.  Even the sea, as a symbol of chaos and disorder, is gone.  There is nothing to fear, no capricious forces that can rise up and wreck your life with a hurricane or a flood, no aquatic highway conveying the ships of pirates or conquering armies to your shores.  God removes all cosmic danger so we may live in shalom: wholeness and peace.

III.

The second part of the vision is, of course, the spectacular New Jerusalem, descending from heaven, materializing, emerging out of the place of God’s most inclusive and expansive vision.  Like the Holy of Holies in the Temple, the New Jerusalem is a perfect cube, only a lot bigger.  This indicates the presence of God in the world.  No Temple is necessary because God will be directly accessible everywhere.  

The New Jerusalem, it must be said, is a city!  So God redeems urban life from the corruption and predations of Rome.  Instead of a “Babylon,” dominated by exploitative commerce rooted in greed, a place of injustice, violence, oppression, and anxiety, the New Jerusalem is a community of astonishing abundance and wealth.  It is made of the purest gold!  It is filled with God’s light and transcendent beauty!  It is a place to which people willingly and joyfully bring their gifts to be shared for the good of all, rather than a place where the rich steal from the poor and build monuments to themselves.

The city has a nominal, decorative wall, though its gates are open, indicating that it is indeed a safe space for all.  And the wall, the boundary or parameter, is the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles of the new Israel, the church.  The membrane constituting the interface between the New Jerusalem and the new cosmos is the tradition which has Jesus Christ at the center.  

John reminds his hearers that, to be a part of this vision, they have to be thirsty for true, eternal life.  You have to want it.  The Beast has been indoctrinating us from birth to want things like money, fame, power; comfort, security, convenience, pleasure….  We have to want more than anything to share in this new life and joy that comes from standing in God’s Presence.  We have to want to lose ourselves in that oneness.

Inhabitants in this new city have to have courage.  They have to trust in God.  They have to be single-minded and compassionate, non-mercenary, humble, and dedicated to the truth.  John can’t help but inject this exhortation into his story, reminding the church that we only get into this glorious city by resonating with, and being shaped by the values and practices of Jesus Christ.  

And when we live in these values and practices, when we reflect and express the life of the Lamb in our lives, when we live together in a new kind of community, anticipating the glory and joy of this city, then we start to see the city of God emerge among and within us.

IV.

This has always been the function of Christian worship: to witness to that other world and open a space that correlates to that vision.  For here, this very  room, is supposed to be a small outpost of God’s Kingdom.  In our Baptism we are claimed by God, and separated from any allegiance to the other powers that rule in this world; we belong to God alone.  We are citizens of that New Jerusalem.  And in the Lord’s Supper we gather around the Table of God’s love, nourished and empowered to witness to how in Jesus Christ God’s life is given for us and to us. 

This witness has always been the purpose of Christian mission: to open up a space in the world that expresses the abundance, the glory, the beauty, the generosity, the forgiveness, and the welcome of the new creation of the living God.  This happens by standing with and providing for those in need, and saying to everyone: “I love the face of Christ I see in you.” +++++++