A sermon by David Roquemore
The Camp Hill Presbyterian Church
May 9, 2010
Revelation 21 and 22
We have here the vision of a city, perhaps the strangest city ever described. It is a cube, 1500 miles on a side. And yes, the engineers in the room are already calculating that the walls are too thin to support that heighth. Let’s let John tell us that the city is so large, there is room for everyone: again, just as we saw with all those myriads and uncountable multitudes praising God, no one is left out; everyone is there. Jesus said in his Father’s house are many rooms; a city this size allows for LOT of rooms!
It is covered with jewels. It is beautiful. Everything about John’s description of God and God’s kingdom is beautiful. Beauty is an element that Protestants are ambivalent about, but it is central to the description of God and the way God is worshiped. In God’s presence, nothing is ugly or unworthy.
A word about those jewels. It has been suggested that here John makes a subtle reference to the signs of the zodiac and the gods of the pagan world. These jewels are the signs of the zodiac in reverse order, suggesting that God overturns and is greater than those gods.
What about life in this city? We read about what there is not: there is no temple, no sun or moon, no door on the gateway, no night, nothing bad at all.
There is no temple, because God is the temple. The temple is the place where God is worshiped. Israel believed that the temple was the place where God’s presence was localized on earth. But when God is fully present, there is no separate temple.
There is no sun or moon, because God’s glory is the light. The Lamb is the lamp – remember Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” One way to understand the very first chapter of the Bible, the creation story, is that Israel was saying to the other nations that the things they worshiped as divine, the sun and moon, for instance, were simply things created by our God. In a way, the end of Revelation is doing something similar: the sun and moon understood as “lights” that illumine our way, are no longer needed. None other than God will light our way. How? With his glory. The glory of God is frequently described in scripture as light, as a glowing aura. When God is present, there is no darkness at all.
The gates will never be shut by day, and there is no night. Why do cities shut the gates? For safety, for security. We don’t have walled cities anymore, but we have safety and security issues. Just this week we saw about five different security emergencies make the news. If you have traveled you know that every little thing you have with you is detected, selected, and inspected. We have an intense national conversation how to handle illegal immigrants, about what is fair to them and to others. How do we shut the gates of our borders, or should we?
But in the kingdom of God, in this city, there will be no such need, no such debate, no such fears. The gates do not need to be shut by day, and there is no night. Night is when robbers come, when thieves break in and steal; night is when danger is abroad. But in God’s city there is no danger.
The people who stream into the gates bring the glory of the nations. I think of the processions that open the Olympics, when each countries’ athletes march proudly in, wearing their colors and carrying their flag. Or just few weeks from now when the World Cup matches begin, and we will see much the same thing. Each nation has its own glory. And that is brought to the city – where it pales beside the glory of God. The nations are as dust before God. Even and especially those nations that have sought empire and rule and domination, where glory turns hard and cruel. Such glory is nothing.
The glory of the nations – each country brings its own way to honor God. Each brings its own heritage, culture, and songs. Each nation is there, which is a way to remind us that in Jesus Christ salvation comes not only to the Jews but to all people, to all nations. Christ Jesus becomes the glory of the nations, and that is what the people bring before the Lord God.
In the middle of the city, right down the street, flows the river of the water of life. This river waters trees that bear different fruit, which in turn bring healing and peace. These are biblical symbols every one. The water of life that flows through the street is a reference to wisdom. Wisdom, the way of life of the faithful believer, is referred to as the water of life. A tree planted by streams of water, says Psalm 1, describing the faithful one. These trees bear fruit, as we are expected to bear fruit.
I like the image as it literally stands: a river running through the city, lined by fruit trees. Doesn’t that describe a place of peace and rest? Isn’t that a…garden? What was God’s original design for creation? A garden! A place of lush beauty where the man and the woman would enjoy God’s goodness. The streets of the city will be like a garden.
The title of this sermon, Where The Streets Have No Name, is the name of a famous rock song by the Irish band, U2. They wrote the song because of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, where you are known to be a Protestant or Catholic, a Loyalist or Nationalist, by the name of the street on which you live. Tell me where you live, I will tell you all about you. And they dream of a time and a place where the streets don’t have names, where the people live in peace, where these divisions do not matter. They dream of the kingdom of God. In the song, the singer says “I long to reach out and touch the flame where the streets have no name.” Sounds as though he has been reading our scripture, doesn’t it?
The streets of our cities are not like a garden. They are concrete jungles, full of weeds: strife, anger, hopelessness, despair, poverty, pain. The streets of our cities serve to separate us from one another, to group us in this neighborhood or that. The streets of our cities are thoroughfares along which we fly, rarely stopping to talk to others. Years ago we visited Detroit, and were taken by Susan’s cousins to downtown, where there was an attempt to revive the city with restaurants and things. To get there we traveled a high speed freeway, literally cut through the city, with high walls on either side, a way through the slums from the suburbs. It was fast and safe, but symbolized all that was wrong with the city, with every city.
So what do we do? What can we do? Can we do anything for our streets, to make them like that heavenly street?
A few sermons back in this series, I mentioned the dispensationalist approach to Revelation that you hear about a lot these days. Before that stuff came along, say one hundred years ago, there as a consensus among Protestants that the kingdom of God would come, that these visions would come true, as men and women worked hard with the help of God’s grace. The social gospel movement arose; we can make the world a better place! We can fix what’s wrong! That gave rise to missions and to all kinds of social movements. You want a classic example, look at hymn #420, “God of Grace and God of Glory.” All of this is of a piece with the original vision of the American experiment, to bring in the kingdom of God on earth. America was to be the place where religious freedom would bring the holy city. But as we know, even though we hear that rhetoric in our politics, it is not to be.
Of course, we are called to feed the hungry and care for widows and orphans. But the dream of bringing in a new and better world on our own died in the trenches of World War One, inEurope. In our country it lasted a lot longer, but it has slowly died here too. Human sin and corporate evil are too much for our efforts alone, or even our efforts with the “help” of God’s grace. The myth of inevitable progress, which has driven so much of the history of our country and our time, is just that, a myth. Just to give you one name, a theologican you hear about now and then who at first believed in this idea that we can bring in the kingdom of God, but who later powerfully explained how sin makes that impossible, is Reinhold Niebuhr, perhaps the greatest American theologian of his generation.
I believe these visions will come true, but they come true in the wisdom of God’s plan and God’s work, the future that God has for creation. We continue to work faithfully at the work to which we are called, but with a realistic appraisal of what we can do. Our efforts come to naught unless and until we understand that the good we do is a gift of God’s grace working through us. When we see that, then all kinds of work becomes the work of God, not simply religious work.
As we read this chapter, and all of these chapters in Revelation, we have seen that the overwhelming message is good news: it is hope. In Jesus Christ we have the hope of God’s good and perfect future, which will come to pass. Hope is not simply wishing for something. It is not simply expectation. Hope is faith leaning into the future. Hope comes from the promise of God and leads us to the mission of God.
We have before us the promises of God. When we read them, in this chapter or anywhere in scripture, we may stop and say, how can this be? These promises can be believed because of the resurrection of Christ Jesus. As we have reminded ourselves this Easter, the promises of God can be taken seriously because of the reality of the resurrection of Christ. And in the resurrection we see that the things Jesus taught are the agenda for the mission of Christ to the world. We are as Christ’s Church a part of that mission. The promise then gives rise to hope for the world in God’s future, the future that God promises he will bring.
Which is a theological way of saying, we are here to bring hope to people in the name of Jesus. When we walk the streets, rather than flying by in our SUVs, we meet people who have no hope, who are in despair (literally, the opposite of hope.) We meet people who are labelled by the street on which they live, in one way or another. We meet people who cannot get a break. We meet people who see no beauty in the street, and find no peace or healing. And to them we bring the good news of Jesus: that there is a place where the streets run with living water, where the fruit of the trees brings healing, where the streets are a garden. We bring the promises of God to people who need a drink of that living water, who long to be washed in that stream, who yearn for healing and peace.
That is the mission. This vision gives us hope, so that we can continue to work, against all odds, in spite of the ugliness, in the face of trial and terror. Live the hope, so that those who see your life may see the hope, and know Jesus Christ.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
