On Revelation 21:1–7a. At Immanuel Lutheran Church, Holden, MA.
The cafeteria at a prestigious research-oriented graduate school like Princeton Seminary is no different from somewhere like, say, “Public District Elementary School Number 7.” The popular kids still sit on one side while the misfits sit on the other. When I first arrived in Princeton, I was faced with the same problem I always have. Where do I sit? Who do I fit in with? This is a very important question, which requires careful thought. And standing there, just past the cash register, looking out at the room, I had to decide quickly, before my lunch got cold.
Now, I know my reputation may lead you to believe that I am “important,” and even “cool.” Cool enough to inspire some people’s Halloween costumes. But I know it will surprise you that reports of my coolness have been greatly exaggerated. So I couldn’t sit with the cool kids; they’d find me out pretty quickly. The weird kids wre were off to the side, so I thought I’d try them, but they clearly couldn’t even manage to make conversation, so that was right out. There were the black students, and the older students (which I’d actually have fit in with, but didn’t want to), and the Korean students, and the other internationals. And it struck me as very strange that even at a Christian institution, where steps were carefully taken to create what the school had branded, “Covenant Community,” we were divided up into factions.
People do that, I guess. As Tuesday’s election approaches, we are overwhelmed with evidence of it. And while this feels like an extreme moment in history, it isn’t a new thing. One tidbit I learned in Israelite history this year: In the ancient world, more than 90% of people died from either violent accidents or from murder. And the situation the early Church was stuck with?
The conservatives in Judea wanted the Jews to take up arms and restore Judea’s independence. They thought that a character called the “Messiah” would lead the people in battle against Rome. It’s worth keeping that in mind when we call Jesus the “Messiah;” the disciples clearly had a different idea about who Jesus was supposed to be than he did. Other leaders called themselves Messiahs, though, and started revolts. The first took place in the year 70, and the Romans responded by destroying the temple. By 135, they declared that Jews and Christians could no longer even enter the city of Jerusalem.
The liberals had a different idea. The best thing we can do, they said, is become like the Romans. Learn their language, take on their political system, convince them that we’re just like them, and that will keep us safe. But the strength of the Jewish people was rooted in their identity as one community. It still is today, as I found this summer at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Walking into the building is like walking into another world. And turning away from all that in the first century—from their language, their way of life, their religion, their God, was as good as death. They would lose themselves. For those that tried, it didn’t work. They lost their Jewishness, but never became Romans, and so they were nobody.
Death by rebellion or death by assimilation. This is the situation when John of Patmos writes the Revelation that ends our Bible. It’s a confusing and violent book, using wild imagery to describe this conflict. He begins with with a vision of the throne room in Heaven, and words of encouragement for the churches in Asia to keep firm in the face of adversity. Then we find that both the liberals and the conservatives perish in the great battle that follows. The evil divisiveness of the earth, the oppression of the poor and exploitation by the rich, the violence as well as the apathy, all lend their power to the great demon of anger and hate as they are destroyed. The angels take up swords against the demons, and their ultimate win is decisive. Evil is completely eradicated; even the sea, the great deep where fear lurks, is no more.
And then today’s reading. Victory can only be described by saying that heaven and earth pass away, and new take their place. Which, let me be clear: The earth and heavens are not destroyed. Destroy what God first made and called good? After Noah, never again. But their renewal is complete. In words directly from the end of Isaiah, the whole of the universe is transformed, made so new that no hint of the old can be detected. And that transformation is not brought about by great human powers. It is done completely by God. (As an aside, this Old Testament guy wants to notice that this New Testament passage relies on your knowledge of the Old Isaiah. More old becoming new, I guess.)
And it is beautiful. “Then I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Covered with gold and jewels, breathtakingly beautiful. Song of Songs gives us a sense of what the bride looks like: Hair flowing like a herd of goats dashing down a mountain, teeth (in a time before dentistry) as white as newly washed sheep and none missing, a tall neck like the tower of King David… Maybe not exactly our idea of beauty, but you get the idea.
God wipes tears from every eye and death is no more, but instead of this familiar comfort, today I want you to notice this: “The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.” {move} The God who often seems distant, especially in the midst of our conflict and division, shows himself to have been present all along, active, at work. God is not up in heaven, where we will all one day be taken. God restores us, our world, destroys evil, destroys death—and then dwells among us, as he always has.
And we are together with each other, too. “I will be their God, and they will be my people”: A promise found everywhere in our Bible. Ezekiel. Jeremiah. Hosea. Exodus. Words I have always loved, where God claims us, and we can claim God, a perfect description of what happens here, in Baptism. But there’s a little tiny difference, when Revelation says it. It’s not that we will be “his people.” It says we will be “his peoples,” plural. Not one, but many, belonging to one God. As one Roman Catholic writer* said, “He who was never the God of Israel only is not prepared to be the God of Christians only.” The whole community of humankind is gathered together in one place, a place of safety and beauty, nobody excluded. The gates of the great city are never closed, and the violent, destructive separations we create are gone. God who is the beginning of all things, God who is the end, enfolds all of humanity within.
My cafeteria solution was to join a different table at every meal. If I don’t fit in somewhere, I’ll just fit in everywhere. I sat one day early on at a table with a guy named Austin, a free-church evangelical from North Carolina, who asked for my reasons for coming to Princeton, and then told me I was the reason he came to New Jersey—in a simpler seminary down south, he’d probably never meet people like a gay Lutheran pastor. Another table gave me Jamie, older than I, who is now a Presbyterian pastor in that cultural metropolis of Yuma, Colorado, and Nicole, younger than I, who hopes to be a pioneering female Roman Catholic canon lawyer. And frequently, I had dinner with the international students group—people who became close friends, from India and Myanmar, Switzerland and Nigeria, and of course, Malaysia. Now you know how I found the adventure that starts in January.
As Christians, we have a wonderful gift we can share with our divided world. In this room, there are many different ideas and opinions on every issue our crazy society can present. Yet here we are, gathered together as one communion of saints in this one place. And we don’t leave our ideas at the door. We bring them here, and here they don’t divide us. God brings us together into one great heavenly city, renewed and transformed in such a way that we are new people. And here around this table, we are joined together with Christians in churches down the road and churches on the other side of the world. And to be sure, we are also joined together with those who have gone before us: Fred Anderson and Irma Ann Watt, Luke McDermott and Carl Engstrom, and many who have been forgotten. And at the same table, we find Timothy whom God already loves and who will become part of this universe-wide family in just a few minutes; and children are even here who have yet to be born. When we celebrate All Saints, it is not just about meeting our loved ones in heaven, lovely as that image may be. It is about them meeting us here, the effects of evil and death being undone here on earth, about God gathering us together with every saint from everywhere and every time, about letting those divisions we have out there collapse when we are in this beautiful city.
This is what Revelation wants us to know. Staunch liberalism doesn’t work. Staunch conservatism doesn’t work. Centrism doesn’t even work. The only thing that works is love, love for one another that comes from being loved by God, a holy community of saints, loving one another not just despite our differences but because of our differences, delighting in our differences, arguing joyfully in love around the glorious throne of the Lamb, the Lord of Light and Love and Life.
This is what God has done to us. And look around: We DO live that truth when we are here. What if we lived that truth when we are out there? Would we see, already here, a new heaven and a new earth?
*Wilfrid J. Harrington, O.P. Revelation. Sacra Pagina. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2008. p 210.