October 29, 2006

Revelation 21:1-6a
“Look Who’s Moving In Next Door!”

Oh my, someone’s moving in next door! I’ve got to watch what they are bringing in! One can tell so much about a neighbor by the stuff they parade in for all the other neighbors to see as they first move into a place.

It is always such a struggle when neighbors move in. I don’t know if I want them to be, well, well, there’s no better words for it: saints or sinners.

You see, if they are saints it’ll be nice because they’ll keep mostly to themselves and be helpful to the neighbors and all that, but the pressure they’ll put on the rest of us – unbearable! They’ll invite us over for coffee and tea before we’ve ever had a chance to welcome them to the neighborhood. They’ll know the names of everyone on the street before those of us who’ve been here for years! Why, they’ll probably be planning the block Christmas party at their house before I’ve even unpacked my last box from moving in twenty years ago!

But the flip side is no picnic either! Having sinners for neighbors might make me look like St. Allen, but it’s no heaven day in and day out. Dogs barking like a pack of wild wolves at all hours of the night. Weeds staring over your fence so tall you’d think they were trees. Beer cans for ash trays on the front porch sitting beside the old sofa and broken arm chair you put out on the tree lawn three years ago! Police visiting like clockwork. Yes, it’s hard to know if you want saints or sinners moving in next door.

One of the scripture texts provided for All Saints Day, which is on Wednesday of this week, is from the vision of John during his self-imposed exile on the island of Patmos. The twenty first chapter of the book of Revelation begins with incredible images of a “new heaven and a new earth” and “the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven.” I wondered how this text, as beautiful as its imagery might be, could have any meaning for All Saints Day. My own revelation came when I got to the third dramatic image in this short selection: “See, the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.”

God will dwell with them. Stunning, really when you think of it. The very God about whom we spoke last week, cowering us into remembering we weren’t there when creation was formed, prompting us to admit that we had nothing to do with setting the world in motion, now moves in next door! And in case you think I’m over-analyzing the text, look at the Greek word used for “dwell”: “skenoo.” Translated as “dwell” in most of our modern texts, it literally means “to set up tabernacle” or, if you want to use the obvious modern equivalent to that old fashioned word, “tent.” God will “tent” with us. One translations puts it even more vividly: God will share our tent! Moving in next door sounds good now, doesn’t it?

Imagine, you come home from school or work or the community center one day and this really huge moving van is in front of the house next door. Lot’s of wild things are being taken into the house, and boxes marked with “planets,” “philosophical conundrums,” “bugs,” and “kitchen supplies” are marched in. You ask one of the smiling movers (that should be a clue right away!) “who’s moving in?” and she says, “Oh, it’s God.” They are able to revive you before having to call an ambulance, but you’re already trying to figure out if this’ll make the housing values go up or down.

What does it mean in John’s Revelation that God will move in next door, God will dwell with us? Well, it’s important to check out where this word and this concept pops up in other places in the Bible. This embodied God walked with the first pair in the garden (Gen 2). God tented with Israel in the wilderness (Lev 26:11). God dwelt with Israel in Palestine (2 Kings 6:13) and was particularly present in the Jerusalem temple (Ps 68:16) when it was completed. Isaiah promised that the name of the royal prince of the coming blessed era would be “God with us” (Immanuel, 7:14). And John’s Gospel asserts that this tenting of God on earth came to a climax when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:14). (1)

I believe that the very same God who wants to remind us, in the most loving way, that the Divine is transcendent, beyond us, more than us, also passionately wants us to understand that this does not prevent the Divine from also being immanent, near to us, one of us. Joan Osbourne sings in her delightful song, “If God Was One Of Us”

If God had a name, what would it be

And would you call it to his face

If you were faced with him in all his glory

What would you ask if you had just one question
And God is great
God is good

What if God was one of us

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on the bus

Trying to make his way home (2)

Home next door to you?

The same God who separated the earth from the seas also walked in the garden looking for Eve and Adam. The same God who would lead the Israelites from their lives of bondage would pass by Moses allowing him only to see God’s back. The very same God who offers salvation to a recalcitrant world comes in a baby, teaches from a hillside, heals in a mud hut, hangs on a cross, walks out of a tomb, and eats fish with his stunned disciples.

Why? Why would the eternal “Word” dwell among us, becoming flesh, allowing us to see his glory? Why would God, in the ultimate day of glory, come tenting among us, taking away our tears, our mourning, death itself? Why?

Perhaps because this place we call home, on the street we call life, in the neighborhood we call human existence isn’t such a bad place after all. I find it profound that this glorious apocalyptic text, which is to say a vision of how things ought to be, clearly says that God will be bringing a “new heaven and a new earth.” Why both? Why not just a new heaven? If we are talking about eternal bliss, the end of time itself, the fulfillment of all history, why do we need a new earth, too? Maybe, just maybe, because God likes this earth! Maybe, just maybe, because God made this earth for an eternal purpose. Maybe, just maybe, because our task as people of faith is to see the holy in the earth, and not just pine our days away for a beautiful, golden, all lights and glitz, somewhere out there heaven, but to live God’s righteousness, God’s grace, God’s justice, God’s love in the heaven we’ve already got: the earth!

And suddenly, it all starts coming together:
• All Saints Day is not about honoring those perfect people who got it all right all the time and who are relaxing in heaven drinking jamocha shakes. All Saints Day may be more about you and me, worries and warts and all, trying to be the best we can but giving God praise just the same.
• “A new heaven and a new earth” might not be about a far away place, somewhere over the rainbow. What if it is another way of saying, God really likes the earth God already made: let’s take care of it!
• What if the “holy city” coming down from heaven is God’s ultimate affirmation that cities can be holy and beautiful, just like the majestic mountains, the mysterious oceans, or the amber fields of grain? What if God looks at our masses of steel and concrete and busyness and sees people of good faith trying to bring order out of chaos, build richer and deeper community, and be good stewards of the resources God has given us. I believe God loves the cities, too!
• “An God will dwell with them” may not be a warning, telling us to shape up or ship out. Perhaps it is a reminder that God already has dwelt among us, and God liked it so much, that’s the Divine retirement plan! God will dwell with us… for eternity, get used to it! Yes, it’ll be a NEW earth, for we don’t have it all figured out yet, and we still treat each other in pretty terrible ways, and there is still more light to break forth, but our sights might need to focused more on the here and now, and less on the then and there.

Oh, Oh, Oh! The people who are moving in are showing up. If this is God’s household, then we’re gonna see lots of gold and glory! If the family moving in next door is God’s family, then the line up of Saints is gonna be eye-popping. Let’s look:
-- Yes, yes, I do see St. Paul and St. Peter, St. Julian of Norwich and St. Theresa of Avila… And, well, there’s a few newer saints… Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., ?Aunt Bea from Mayberry?
-- No, it can’t be! That’s my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Mosley. She was from Arkansas and yelled “Sooooooeeeeeeey!” down the hallway to call us to class. She can’t be part of God’s family of saints, can she?
-- Oh my! This won’t do at all! There’s the man from my last church that was my nemesis, he was on me all the time like a hen on june bug. I can’t believe he’s moving in next door.
-- And that’s the woman I saw on the corner of 58th and Lorain late last night, still wearing the very same fishnet stockings, high healed pumps, and tight little mini-skirt. It’s impossible that God would have her a part of the family?
-- Wait… Wait… Now the neighborhood is really going down! This is totally unacceptable! Call the Block Club Leader, call Councilman Joe Cimperman, call Mayor Jackson! This simply will not do. This is the worst atrocity of all! My new neighbor… IS ME!

Amen!


(1) Word & World 6/2 (1986) “TEXTS IN CONTEXT” Copyright © 1986 by Word & World, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. All rights reserved. Page 216 . God’s Song of Revelation: From Easter to Pentecost in the Apocalypse* WENDELL W. FRERICHS, Luther Northwestern Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota
(2) http://www.lyricsondemand.com/onehitwonders/ifgodwasoneofuslyrics.html

 

Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2006 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096