How does the story end?
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on Sunday the 6th May 2007 by Dr Nicola Slee
Readings: Revelation 21: 1 - 6 and John 14: 1 - 17
Sermon:
Introduction
A few weeks ago, I watched a TV drama about an ex child sex offender who had just left prison; it was a brave and moving play, in many ways, but there was a kind of inevitability about the end, when the character committed suicide, having been tempted but not succumbing to his old desires. It was as if the character, the dramatist and Channel Four couldn't imagine any other end, couldn't imagine a world in which an ex sex offender could find peace and reconciliation with himself or with society. The end of a story tells you a lot about the values of the story-teller and the kind of world they believe in. What, for Christians, is the 'end of the story'?
Revelation: the Bible's vision of the end
The Book of Revelation is the last book in the Christian Bible, and it is this book which, more than anything else, has formed the imagination of Christians down the centuries about the 'end times'. The Book of Revelation is a controversial book, and always has been. Luther had a low opinion of it because, according to him, it did not preach Christ clearly and purely. Many have found its violence and strongly dualistic demarcation of good and evil sub-Christian. Feminists have been angered by its portrayal of women. On the other hand, Christians facing persecution or oppression throughout the ages have found it a source of empowering hope many black Christians in apartheid South Africa, for example, found in Revelation a resource to steel their resistance to an unjust regime.
Certainly, it's a difficult book. If we're not to misread it, we have to understand what kind of literature Revelation is. It is a type of apocalyptic, which literally means 'uncovering' or 'unveiling'. Apocalyptic offers a coded version of reality, a kind of dream-like vision of things cloaked in symbolic form. Apocalyptic was usually written under conditions of national and religious crisis and this is true of Revelation Jerusalem lies in ruins, Christians are being persecuted and John is in exile on the island of Patmos. It's dangerous to write openly or state the truth plainly in such times, so another means must be found.
Contrary to popular belief, Revelation is not simply a tract for end times. Paradoxically, although it offers us a vision of the end times, it does so precisely to uncover truths about the time of the writer and, we may believe, our times, too. When you think about it, that's often the case with literature that purports to be about the future. Think of Orwell's '1984', Atwood's 'Handmaid's Tale', or the recent film, 'Children of Men'. By giving us a graphic portrayal of a world gone wrong, they help us to see what needs putting right now.
Revelation's vision of the end
Today's lectionary text from Revelation is part of John's great vision of the end the end of the end, if you like. After final judgement has been meted out in chapter 20, John offers us a magnificent description of the creation of a 'new heaven and a new earth' and then goes on to describe in some detail 'the new Jerusalem'. What kind of an 'end to the story' does John give us?
First of all, John offers us a city as the perfect society. It's not some remote rural idyll, not even a modest sized town like St Andrews, but a bustling and vast cosmopolitan city like the one I come from, Birmingham. It isn't a vision of individual salvation but a gloriously communal redemption that John is offering us. And it's not any old city but a particular city, Jerusalem and when we hear John's description of the 'new Jerusalem', the contrast with the real Jerusalem of today can make our hearts break.
Unlike the Jerusalem we know, John's new Jerusalem is a city without tears, death, crying or pain. It's a city where no unclean or polluted thing may come but, at the same time, it's a city in which there will be open access, day and night. Its gates will never be closed because the city requires no defence. Astonishingly, there is 'no Temple' in this city and no need of a temple because God dwells with humanity and humans worship God ceaselessly. John Lennon might have thought he was being radical when he invited his listeners to 'Imagine there's no heaven' no religion too' but John of the Apocalypse got there before him. Nor is there any sun or moon or night or day in this city. All the normal distinctions we make and live by between day and night, inside and outside, heaven and earth, 'religious' and 'secular' cease to have meaning in the city of God, for God is all in all.
Nor is this city only for some few elect, as many interpreters of Revelation would have us believe. It's a city for all nations, where God's worshippers are a multitude which no person can number. There's an extraordinary inclusivity in John's vision of the new Jerusalem. 'People will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations' (21:24,26), he tells us. The new Jerusalem is not achieved by excluding those who are not like us but by welcoming all in. That's why it is so huge: there's a long section in chapter 22 where he describes the city in detail: it is a vast symmetrical cube made of precious stones measuring twelve thousand furlongs (or 1,500 miles) cubed. It needs to be big so that there is room in it for all the peoples who are streaming to it. This is so different from versions of the end-time in which the only concern seems to be how many kinds of people can be ruled out: people of other faiths, people of dubious sexuality, even Christians who don't hold the right doctrine of atonement or the Bible.
Now I know John's new Jerusalem sounds like a complete fantasy and in some ways it is but the amazing thing is, it isn't described as existing in heaven but as coming down from heaven to earth. Jamie pointed out to me the large monument in this chapel showing the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven - you might want to take a look after the service. The vision is of God 'dwelling with mortals', not that the redeemed are whisked away from earth to live in heaven with God, but precisely the opposite that God comes down from heaven and makes God's dwelling with mortals. This is heaven come on earth what Christians pray for every day in the Lord's prayer ('Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven').
A fantasy or ?
A vast city without pain, death or suffering, with gates open to all, where the nations live in perfect harmony, where all the mosques, temples and churches have disappeared, and everyone worships God ceaselessly. Is this a fantasy or what? Well yes, of course it is a fantasy it isn't like any city we know. And yet, it is a fantasy which is intended to inform how we think about the cities we actually do live in and how we live in them whether that's Jerusalem, Baghdad, Birmingham or Glasgow. Not that Revelation will tell you precisely how to vote in local elections or what policy to adopt on asylum seekers. Yet surely the vision of a city with open gates must have something to say to Israel's massive wall or to Britain's immigration policies? Surely the vision of a city without any Temple in it must have something to say to Christians about the way we regard our buildings and how we relate to people of other faiths? And surely the vision of a city in which the tears and wounds of people and nations are healed must make a difference to the way we run our national health service or offer support to ex prisoners?
Conclusion
The new Jerusalem may seem an impossibly unreal dream. But we need the dream to inspire us to act to change the way things are now, to help us refuse to put up with reality as we experience it in the present. This is the gift of all dreamers, artists and visionaries to enlarge our little worldview, to inspire us to dream of something better, to keep alive in us the hope of a new earth and heaven.
So I'm going to leave you with another version of the dream: this time from our own time, from an American artist, Judy Chicago, whose words can perhaps act as a kind of commentary on Revelation's picture of the new world order. It's from her magnificent art installation, 'The dinner party' which, in itself is a bold dream she imagined women from across time and history meeting at a huge dinner party, and created, with a community of other women artists, the room, table and place settings for the women: from Joan of Ark and Hildegard of Bingen to Sojouner Truth and Virginia Wolf - a vision of heaven in itself. This poem won't tell you how to get there, any more than Revelation does, but it might stir in you the longing for the world it describes and that in turn may spur you, may spur us, to act to create it:
And then all that has divided us will merge
And then compassion will be wedded to power
And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind
And then both men and women will be gentle
And then both women and men will be strong
And then no person will be subject to another's will
And then all will be rich and free and varied
And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many
And then all will share equally in the Earth's abundance
And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old
And then all with nourish the young
And then all will cherish life's creatures.
And then all will live in harmony with each other and the Earth
And then everywhere will be called Eden once again.
Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party: Symbol of our heritage
(New York: Anchor Books, 1979)
May it be so. Amen.