“Living into the
Promises”
Rev. 21-22; John 14:23-29
The book of Revelation is strange. Even
people who are lifelong New Testament scholars don’t pretend to understand all
of it.
I remember
some years ago—I think it was in the time leading up to the new millennium—the
Littlefield Sunday morning Bible study group spent months studying the book of Revelation. Each week, we read the scripture passages, we
read what New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger wrote in the textbook we were
studying, we watched a video of Metzger explaining the Revelation, and we discussed it. Week after week, we struggled with
it. When we came to the end of the book
and the video segments, there were some in the group who thought we ought to
spend a few more months, so we’d understand it better, and others who thought
it would take a lot more than that to comprehend it…and some who were simply
ready to move on to studying another part of the Bible.
Parts of
the Revelation are difficult to
translate. Much of the language and
images are symbolic, and we have to try to figure out what they were meant to
represent to the Christians of the late first century. In this cryptic book, there are several
themes that come through continually.
One theme is that of judgment. But
woven together with judgment are themes of hope and challenge.
The passage
we heard from the Revelation today is fairly straightforward, and it is filled
with hope. It’s a vision of God’s
intention for creation. The Christians
of the late first century were being brutalized and persecuted. The rulers of the world they lived in were
corrupt and abusive. Immorality and exploitation went hand in hand
with injustice. Things were not the way
they should be. John’s Revelation
challenged this world with the vision of God’s intention. God’s world was supposed to be
different.
The
temptation could be to merely to wait.
Wait for God to bring about the new creation. But at the heart of the
message of Revelation is the conviction that human beings not only need to
endure in faith—they are to practice the ethics of God’s new creation. They—and we-- are to be witnesses to others
of what God intended. Christians are
charged with the responsibility of ushering in the new creation.
In the
vision received by John the Divine, the New Jerusalem is a perfect society,
where there are no more tears, no more death.
Mourning and pain are no more.
What human beings couldn’t create with our best ingenuity and technical
strength—God has brought to pass. The
kingdom of God has come. God has wiped
every tear from their eyes.
What an
astonishing promise! What an amazing
and glorious vision! A time when night
never comes, and innocent blood is never spilled. An era of healing and renewal and
reconciliation.
This is a
vision that can give us hope for the future.
But it’s a vision that reminds us
how far from that vision our world is today.
I think
that all of us would agree that there is something wrong with the world we live
in. There are times when we’re tempted
not to check the news, because one story after another keeps reminding us that
things are not right with the world.
The final
weeks of Eastertide mark the time of transition between Christ’s physical
presence with his disciples and the “last days” following his ascension, which
is the time of the church. So today’s scripture passages can focus us on
Jesus’ promise to the disciples that the Father will send the Holy Spirit. Jesus gives his blessing: “Peace
I leave with you. My peace I give
you. I do not give to you as the world gives.
Do not let your hearts be troubled; and do not let them be afraid.”
This gift
of peace accompanies the gift of the Holy Spirit. Christ will be present in and through the
church, by the indwelling of the Spirit. The Advocate will teach us everything and
keep reminding us of what Christ has taught us.
Jesus says,
“I do not give to you as the world
gives.”
The world
gives us the beauty of spring flowers and beautiful children, the love of
family and friends.
But so often,
the world give us trouble, disappointments, and pain. Sometimes people hurt us or leave us.
We live in
a world where there is famine and war... earthquakes and floods. We live in a country with a painful history
of genocide and slavery and white supremacy, mixed with greatness and
goodness. The world gives us trauma, the
grief of losing loved ones, violence, and fear. We may live with a sense that
however we try to mend our broken world, it will never be enough and we won’t
make a difference.
Jesus knows
this, and he knows the fear that fills us as we face the world. In the face of the trouble this world give
us, Jesus offers us peace so that we can have courage to live fully and boldly
as his disciples, keeping his commandment to love our neighbors as
ourselves.
When we’re
afraid--and act out of our fear-- we close off possibilities. We make it hard for God to work through us,
because we’re too busy trying to protect ourselves to focus on doing God’s
work. Jesus teaches his disciples to be
courageous, which is to do the right thing, in spite of whatever fear we may be
feeling, so that we can live more fully into God’s dream for creation.
We are
Easter People—people of the resurrection.
So, in the light of the resurrection, in the peace the Holy Spirit
brings, how shall we live? What does the courage of Easter people look like?
I think it
can look different in different places and different contexts. I appreciate what Lindsay Popper wrote about
the courage of Easter people: “Here is
some of what I have seen: I have seen
Black Lives Matter protesters who dare to assert that they too are made in the
image of God. One, a woman named Netta, tweeted during the protest in Ferguson
that she had to go to church to teach Sunday school because you can’t forget
about the little ones—the courage of Easter people empowers us both to struggle
against unjust systems and to invest in those who will come after us.”[1]
Lindsay
continues, “I have seen the residents of the central Pacific Marshall
Islands—people whose whole country is almost certainly going to be submerged
due to global-warming-driven sea rise.
Rather than giving in to despair, these islanders have chosen to work
for climate justice. Loving their
ancestors and loving the future generations, these Easter people have insisted,
“We are not drowning. We are fighting.”
She goes on
to say, “I have seen a friend’s mother donate her kidney to a total
stranger. I have seen grandparents step
up to the exhausting work of raising children when their parents weren’t able
to. I have seen schoolteachers and
nurses and social workers work every day to ensure that all people have
dignity. I have seen a thousand small
acts of courage—of people taking heart and choosing to have courage in the face
of fear.”
Here at
Littlefield over the years, Easter courage has empowered the congregation to
open the doors to welcome recent immigrants to learn English and to build
bridges of understanding, to reach out in friendship to those who are different. One of the challenges as we move into the
future is to discern what Easter courage might look like for a new time.
As people
on a journey of faith, we are living in the world today. But at our baptism we begin a journey toward
the life-changing and life-giving horizons of God’s new heaven and new earth in
the future to which God is calling us.
Our Christian faith gives us a vision of how God is working to transform
all of creation.
In the
Revelation, we hear that the nations and rulers of the earth will walk in God’s
light. Imagine that. What a far cry from the way that we and all
the nations do our business now, concerned about our own security, our own advantage,
our own self-interest.
Imagine a
time to come in which nations will no longer try to build empires and bring
glory and honor to them selves, but instead will bring glory and honor to God into
the holy city. Imagine a time to come
when there are no more disputes over boundaries—because there are none.
The vision
we heard to today invites us to look forward to a new creation in which the
gates are always open. As Jill Duffield
suggests: no metal detectors, no
standing spread eagle for a TSA X-ray, no pass codes, no pat downs or security
guards…. Open gates.” [2]
In an age of fear and ever-increasing
screening, checking, and scanning-- can you imagine it? A time when there are no walls of separation…
no security walls… or gated communities, because earthly walls and borders are
no longer needed. In the New Jerusalem,
God won’t tolerate any threat to the inhabitants.
In a time
when the news brings us reports of people escorted off of airplanes because a
fellow passenger felt uncomfortable or suspicious, when people blow themselves
and others up in Kabul and Lahore and Brussels, when refugees press against
fences that pen them into camps, when mass shooters take precious lives-- imagine the sense of peace and security in
John’s vision.
Imagine a
time in Jerusalem when the various Christian groups don’t bicker over the space
in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Ethiopians aren’t stuck up on the
roof, and they don’t need to have to
have a Muslim family taking care of the key to keep the various Christian
groups from locking each other out. Imagine the land we call Holy without the Wall
of Separation, because all of God’s children have realized that God loves all
of the children in the family and not just them… and all have learned to live
together in peace and respect… and
there’s no need to shut people in or out with walls or gates.
Imagine a
time to come, when we will all sit at the table
together—not only with other Americans and Canadians and Western
Europeans, but with Iraqis, Iranians, Palestinians and Israelis, Afghanis, Russian,
South and North Koreans, Sudanese and Rwandans. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus,
Buddhists and others-- sharing fellowship and our God with those who have been
our friends and those who have been our enemies.
Living
into God’s dream challenges us to work for reconciliation between nations,
between people of different ethnicities and religions, between any groups that
are estranged from one another. It means
working for justice, beginning now.
Jesus said,
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” As people of faith, we are called to live
into God’s dream for creation, relying on God’s help and God’s promises. We are called to be agents of change, so that
those institutions that hurt and destroy and bring tears will be changed into
institutions of healing. We are called
to open ourselves to be changed, so that we are agents of healing and peace,
leaves on the tree of faith for the healing of the nations.
We aren’t
there yet. As we worship together on
Sunday mornings, as we nurture and encourage one another, study the Bible and
pray, “Thy kingdom come, Lord” and try to follow Jesus in our daily lives—we
live more and more into God’s promises.
Now we can
see only dimly the new heaven and new earth. But we have God’s promise that the
time will surely come when we see his face and his Name will be on our
foreheads.
Thanks be
to God!
Amen!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
May 1, 2016
[1] Lindsay
Popper, “The Courage of Easter People, at http://day1.org/7160-the_courage_of_easter_people
[2] Jill
Duffield, “6th Sunday of Easter-May 1, 2016” in The Presbyterian Outlook. http://pres-outlook.org/2016/04/6th-sunday-easter-may-1-2016/
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