Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Revelation 21: 1-6 - Sunday, May 18, 2025

 “I see a new heaven. I see a new earth as the old one will pass away, where the fountain of life flows and without price goes to all people who abide in the land.”

These evocative words by hymn-writer Carolyn McDade engage the imagery of the final two chapters of the Book of Revelation. While the imagery harkens to ancient conceptualizations of the earth, the waters, and a firmament, its poetic beauty transcends the mechanics of how it all fits together and has continued to bring hope to centuries of believers.

Few books in the Bible are as polarizing as the Book of Revelation.  For some, it has gained an outsized importance, somehow becoming the most important book of all, a literal roadmap of the end times and how we will be judged, with each symbol and event in Revelation analyzed and aligned with current events to calculate the end of time.  For others, Revelation is easily side-stepped and ignored because of its weirdness: too many images, too many numbers, too much like a horror movie or a fever dream. 

In between these two polar positions, is a place of curiosity.  Written by a Christian mystic named John of Patmos to seven Churches in what we now call Türkiye, the book of Revelation includes letters offering encouragement to individual Churches facing harsh challenges, but this guidance is shrouded in the secrecy of metaphor, for safety’s sake – what we might refer to in our day as “encryption” to keep the information out of the wrong hands.  John of Patmos needs for these Churches, under heavy persecution, to know that somebody out there knows what’s going on, that the everlasting God is aware of and moved by their plight, and that the power of Christ’s resurrection will eventually win the day.

After twenty chapters of rambling symbolism and heightened anxiety, we arrive at today’s reading: a vision of a new heaven and new earth.  Things were so desperately difficult for the early Christian Churches, that just tinkering with things as they were would not do.  Only a total re-set of how we relate to one another and to God would suffice: a new heaven, a new earth. And once John of Patmos named the evils of the day, in the language of beasts and dragons and the destruction of Babylon, what is said in chapter 21 contains a series of relevant, hopeful, grounded surprises.   

Starting at the end of today’s scripture and working backwards: pleasant surprise number one is what an earthy vision this is.

Verse six states, “To anyone who is thirsty I will give the right to drink from the spring of the water of life without paying for it.”  Or, in the words of Carolyn McDade, the new realm is a place “where the fountain of life flows and without price goes to all people who abide in the land.”  This new world not disconnected and dreamy; it is a place of quenched thirst, unbridled fairness, and dignity for all. A world where Shalom is the rule.  It’s a place where there is health, wholeness, opportunity and life in abundance for all, not just for the sly, the well-connected, the bombastic or the wealthy. 

The language about water is so evocative, because water is the foundation and essence of life.  Imagine with me a world where clean, drinkable water would be treated as a right for all people rather than a saleable commodity.  Imagine a world freed from drought and starvation, a world where no child dies of malnutrition or cholera or dysentery.  At present, 36 first nations communities in this land are under long-term boil water advisories; imagine what it would be like if that were fixed. These words from the book of Revelation inspire us not only to dream of a future world where all have what they need – food, water, shelter, safety, love – but to embrace those goals here and now. For what we have here is a statement of Divine intention: it is God’s ultimate intention that there be no impediments for all people to enjoy the gift of life. 

Pleasant surprise number two, is the Eternal God’s desire for new beginnings.

The unsettling part of the language of “a new heaven and a new earth” is that it seems to be saying that this earth isn’t good enough anymore, not worth fixing so we need a new one. These words may even be taken as permission to those who are destroying the earth to keep on doing so, to extract every ounce of life out of this planet without worrying about future generations because, well, God’s going to replace it with something new. 

But that is nonsense. Rather than hearing these words as an invitation to earth’s replacement, humanity is invited to hear these words as part of God’s gracious delight at new beginnings, second chances and reconciliation.  Throughout the Bible we see the everlasting God’s desire for new beginnings and second chances, as we encounter characters who had no right to be forgiven, people who by our standards would be beyond redemption:  Moses killed a man in anger, David had Bathsheba’s soldier husband sent to certain death at the front lines, Peter lied about his connection to Jesus no fewer than three times – yet Moses led his people from slavery to freedom, Jesus arose from the house of David, Peter was named as the rock, the foundation of the burgeoning Church.  If a by-the-book, judgmental approach had been applied to these three individuals, none of them would have had the opportunity to lead, but that’s not how God works.

Whenever the old and destructive needs to end and the new and constructive needs to begin, God is the change-agent in the midst of it.  We are called to trust the God of grace, and at the same time we are invited to put our hand to the plough. Our willingness to be the change that God intends will be a key for The United Church of Canada as we turn 100.  Can we commit to new ways of being, relative to communities of people who have typically been badly treated by the Church?  Will our commitments as a denomination and as congregations, to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, with the queer community, and with other populations whose oppression we have been complicit in, be heartfelt or performative?  Will we continue to be vocal and visible advocates for God’s children facing oppression in other lands? As a progressive Christian presence in this nation, will we be willing to receive with joy the gifts of new Canadians to our communities and our Churches, being energized by the Canada of 2025 and 2035 and 2055 rather than lamenting the way things once were? 

While a new heaven and a new earth is portrayed by the book of Revelation as a future culmination of history, the reality is that God brings renewal over and over and over again in our lives and the life of the world, even now.  Partnering with God is not something that has to wait; it is a way of being we can enter into, any time.

Which brings us to our third point, and that is the direction of God’s activity in all of this.  This is a story of God engaging with the world, not humanity exiting this world to be with God.

Nazarene pastor Danny Quarstrom has these eloquent words for us:

As we’re coming to the culmination of the book of Revelation we see that it’s not about us being pulled away from this earth, it’s about God drawing close to this earth! … In verse 3 we hear [that] God ‘will dwell’ or ‘tabernacle’ with them… this is the same description as John 1:14, ‘the Word became flesh and lived among us…’ 

“The Revelation of Jesus given to John of Patmos isn’t about the faithful avoiding difficulty or being raptured out of tribulation but is about God making God’s… dwelling place, in the heart of this earth. God will wipe away every tear. This is the new thing God is doing.”

The newness comes to us at God’s heartfelt initiative; God does not wait, dispassionately, at a distance.   God is in us, we are in God, and God is love; and in that assertion we realize that in our loving – whether the tender love of compassion, or the brave love of advocacy – God is known.  Not just in heaven, not just in future, but here, and now, with these people and in the midst of this world.  Or to put it another way that you may have heard, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

In today’s reading, we experience a God who is as close to us as our next breath, as present to us as our highest hopes.  The God you experience when enjoying the beauty of the orchards and vineyards and the God you engage in prayer when you are worried about the world around you, is the same God.  The God whose vision of equality you yearn for is the same loving presence that has been your companion since birth, your source and destination, your Alpha and Omega.  The God whose creative energy infuses the space between us, is the same God whose reconciling grace can energize our efforts to heal the environmental mess that thoughtless human greed has created.  There is most definitely work to do in our lives and in the life of the world, AND there is a Divine partner who loves us desperately, who meets us on the path and joins in our best efforts.

 “I see a new heaven. I see a new earth as the old one will pass away, Where the fountain of life flows and without price goes to all people who abide in the land.”  In our hopes, in our plans, in our lives, may this be so. Amen.

References cited:

Copeland, Adam J. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-adam-j-copeland/revelation-21-1-6-earth-day-god-and-the-apocalypse_b_3148811.html

Government of Canada, “Ending long-term drinking water advisories”. https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1506514143353/1533317130660

McDade, Carolyn.  “I See a new heaven”, #713 in Voices United, 1979.

Quanstrom, Danny. http://www.aplainaccount.org/#!Revelation-2116/bhul0/5714d7650cf2331db0f8217a

 

© Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge, 2025.

 

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