Sermon ~ May 20, 2007
Revelations 21:10, 19 - 22:9
“Hey, back up just a little, would you?”

Everybody loves a road trip. It’s different than flying on a plane or going on a train or bus. One of the key differences is that on a road trip, you can stop, back up, and check things out. Perhaps you’ve seen something intriguing, like a historic marker or a little country store, and want to check it out. Or you caught a glimpse of something beautiful and want to take it all in. In the worst cases, people who passed an accident want to back up and gawk.

Now, by this point in my sermon I’ve already realized I’ve made half of the congregation smile and relax, and the other half tense up and grip their pews. In fact, not everybody likes a road trip! There are two types of road trip people in the world. There are the “I’m here for the journey” types and then there are the “I’m all about the destination” types. If you haven’t figured it out, I’m keen on road trips for the journey. “Hey, back up just a little bit, would you?” is a comfortable and common phrase for me.

Just last month Craig and I had an experience on the road that seemed to affect both types of road-trippers. Interstate 71 was backed up coming toward Cleveland, and we decided not to take the given detour. I had a meeting in Avon Lake later that evening, and thought Craig could drop me off and go home. But as we got farther and farther off the beaten path, and country road led to yet another country road, I began to tense up since my meeting time was growing closer and closer, and I even forced us to pass up a couple of country stores. On the other hand, Craig relaxed since it wasn’t his meeting he had to get to on time. There did come a certain point, however, where we both realized it was what it was, we relaxed, and just enjoyed the ride.

I think one of the primary reasons we are enchanted with road trips, from Jack Kerouac to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, is that on road trips we can back up a little, but in life itself, we can’t back up at all. Each day is another inevitable step on the journey, and there is no turning back – ever. And since we cannot back up, this makes us look at the beginnings and endings of the trip of life. We are simply fascinated with life’s beginnings and even more obsessed with life’s endings. We search for the documents that give us information about beginnings and endings: birth certificates and cradle roll certificates, obituaries and gravestones. We absorb whatever might help us understand or at least experience beginnings and endings more fully.

It’s entirely predictable that on this journey we call life, where we mostly know how we began, we focus even more on how our lives might end. Even our projects, endeavors, life goals, become obsessions. Oh, that we could know how our search for an Associate Pastor for Youth Ministry might turn out and whether or not our youth will truly feel God’s love and grace more fully! Oh, that we could see if, when, and how our second worship service might take shape, and whether it will be successful in deepening our spirituality and growing our congregation! Like an impatient reader, we want to be able to flip to the end of the book and see how it all works out.

But we can’t, so we obsess about it. Owen Meany, the eponymous character in John Irving’s book, “A Prayer For Owen Meany” has a vision where he actually does see his date of death. Playing the character of the Ghost of Christmases Yet To Come in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” Owen gasps when the headstone that is supposed to have Ebeneezer Scrooge’s name and date of death has, instead, Owen’s own name and death date. Owen then spends the rest of his life trying to prepare himself for whatever will be expected of him before that date. (1)

But aren’t we all supposed to live life as if we were dying? Since no one of us can back up and try it again, and we are all going to die someday, aren’t we supposed to live life to the fullest as best as we can? How do we do this? – Ah, that’s the question. And so, as people of faith, we begin by looking to scripture, where we can go to the beginnings and the endings to see what’s what and how we’re supposed to live. We look to Genesis to see how we began, and read the “operating instructions” given to us at the dawn of humanity. And, we look to the Revelation given to John on the Island of Patmos, as to how it all will end.

And today’s scripture text, from Revelation 21 & 22, provides the central image for the end of life as we know it. The Holy City, come down from heaven. It is a place where there is no sadness and no cause for weeping. It is beautiful, almost beyond description, as the walls are made from precious stones and the streets are made of gold so pure, it looks like glass. And there is no need for lights in the city, since the glory of God and the Lamb provide all the light needed.

It stands through the ages as a most compelling image. I suppose, even the most humble among us, even those of us who acknowledge we’ve strayed far from the ideal in life, that all of us upon hearing the description of this incredible city hope, somewhere in our hearts, to have an address there someday. “Allen Harris, 2203 Golden Streets Lane, City of God, Heaven.” Wouldn’t God have just enough mercy to allow me a small cottage, out of the way, just to the edge of all the other mansions, in the beautiful City of God?

“But wait, back up just a little bit, would you? Sure, this beautiful city is there, and almost everyone wants to be there, but aren’t you skipping over some pretty rough stuff getting to it? Isn’t this the book of R E V E L A T I O N!!!!!” Yes, we know for a fact that there are also descriptions of pretty terrible tribulations that have to be experienced before one reaches the beautiful city of God... IF one reaches it. These are the things argued about for generations, the pre-millennialists fighting with the post-millennialists. These are the things for which the Essenes, the Oneidas, and the Branch-Dividians separated themselves apart from others; these are the things described in great details in vivid books such as “The Late Great Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsey and special-effects-saturated movies, like the “Left Behind” series.

But here is where I’d like to back up a little bit myself and reclaim the original meaning of the word “Apocalypse,” and rather than mean “cataclysmic, hellfire and brimstone,” it really means, “to lift the veil.”(2) I believe too many extremists have misinterpreted and clouded Revelation, rather than “lifted the veil” of meaning to help people understand it. It is the job of progressive, rational, people of faith like Franklin Circle Christian Church folks to “lift the veil” on such misused and misunderstood texts as the book of Revelation.

The Revelation to John on the Isle of Patmos was never meant to be a source of permission for us to go to war, to execute terrible violence upon one another, nor even for personal vendettas and communal divisiveness. And especially not in the name of God! Rather, Revelation was written to help everyday people to be faithful amidst the innumerable and cunning seductions of principalities and powers. How do we do this, whether in the early Church or in the 21st century, in the face of such well-funded and enticing forces interpreting Revelation negatively?

Well, wait. “ Back up just a little, would you?” No, really. Maybe back up a LOT, all the way to the very beginning, for isn’t that where we find some of the best meaning and guidance? Let’s back up all the way to the original paradise, the Garden of Eden. For here, we are going to find some of the exact same imagery that we have in Revelation 22.

I am thankful to retired Disciples pastor and former General Minister and President C. William Nichols for pointing this out for me. In both the Garden of Eden AND the City of God, in the beginning and the end, there is a river flowing through it, and there are two trees. (3) There were most certainly more trees, but there are two trees that the Divine points out to us. In Genesis, there is the tree of life and there is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We tend to forget the first tree, the tree of life, in part because there was no prohibition against eating of its fruit, like there was the second.

Much like a child who is told by a parent or guardian, “You can eat all of the carrots you want from the bottom drawer of the refrigerator, but you cannot eat the cookies from the jar on the counter,” we go directly to the cookies and forget about the carrots. We went right for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and never thought again about that beautiful tree of life.

Like then, we have choices now. We continue to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and we continue to see the world in terms of an either/or. We see the world as black or white, good or bad, saved or damned, pure or impure. Forever eating of this tree, we forever live in a bifurcated and divided world. It is true, there are evil things in this world, just as it is true there are good things in this world, but there is so much more! The antidote to such a “yours vs. mine” world is to eat from that other tree, one of wholeness, fullness, and life.

But seeing a world of only good or evil suits us too well. It allows us to struggle less and less with the hard work of thinking and makes our tasks as humans easier, at least it seems so. If we focus on purity, trying to find out who is perfect, and damning those who aren’t, we can forget about trying to make ourselves more fully human. Who wants to be human when you can be perfect? We miss out, however, on the real richness of the fruit of the tree of life: Redemption. If we are obsessed with purity, then we have no time nor energy for redemption. Redemption is a messy and terribly human endeavor. Thus our world will forever be divided against itself.

The Revelation of John, however, puts the choice back on the table. In Revelation 22 there are still two trees, one on each side of the river, but both are the same: they are the Tree of Life. We must reinterpret our original story, the story of our beginnings, and stop, go back, and eat from the tree of life, as God first and most fully intended. We must help people see that even though we cannot back up on this journey of life and live life over again, we absolutely can learn from the documents of our beginnings and our endings, and eat from the tree of life, and reach for redemption rather than wasting our time seeking an illusion of purity.

In her Bible commentary in the current issue of Sojourners magazine, Malinda Elizabeth Berry encourages us to see the healing nature of the trees in the middle of the new city as being a call to a new way of determining purity. Purity, as it has traditionally been defined, which is underscored by John’s consistent use of the images of “bride” and “lamb” is one of attempting to return to the spotless, clean, perfect state of our original condition: Adam and Eve before that fateful bite.

She writes, “But rather than interpreting the absence of anything accursed in this new city, is it possible that the Spirit urges us to think about purity as something more than strict morality or an avoidance of sin? Purity is not so much about returning to a state of ‘original perfection’ as it is being clear about our desire for wholeness and full humanity.” (4)

And isn’t this what Jesus was all about? Jesus was about living life fully and about seeking redemption, not about purity and divisiveness. Jesus came to put an end to the entire industry of sacrifices and rebuking those who were hell bent on trying to find the purest and the perfect. He was about seeking out the lost, the broken, the unclean and bringing them into the heart of God. Even on the Cross, Jesus was busy reaching out to the criminal who was by no means pure, but whose heart was ready to receive God’s redemptive love.

How do we put this redemption into action? We must do the hard work of making our communities places of healing, wholeness, compassion, and inclusion. We must become fully an Anti-Racist and Pro-Reconciling Congregation, we must become a fully Accessible Congregation, we must become an Open & Affirming Congregation, we must dedicate ourselves to being unflinchingly interfaith and committed to real and lasting peacemaking.

But more than these corporate ways of living out redemption, we must make it real in our own lives. We must live lives of redemption, and eschew the clamoring for purity, every single day AS IF THE END OF TIME DEPENDS ON IT... FOR IT DOES! We must offer redemption to ourselves. We must offer redemption to our friends and families. We must offer redemption to our communities. We must offer redemption to complete strangers. And we must offer redemption even to our enemies!

What this means, then, is quite dramatic. What it means is that none of us will experience the beloved community until all of us experience the beloved community. Delores Carpenter, eminent theologian, professor, and author, recognizes this ultimate conclusion as she ponders the African American spiritual song, “When You Get To Heaven, Rub Poor Lil’ Judas’ Head.” She wonders that if Judas is in heaven, as the song implies, has God forgiven Judas? “Within the theology of the spirituals, that would be the only way Judas could get into heaven... Whatever the case, the line about rubbing Judas's head takes judgment out of the range of human response. In the song, humans express only compassion for another human.” (5)

“Wait just a moment, Preacher! Back up just a little bit, would you? Doesn’t the scripture you read today explicitly exclude some people? Doesn’t it say, ‘Nothing unclean will enter... Nothing accursed will be found there...’ In a few verses, doesn’t it even talk specifically about dogs and fornicators being kept out of heaven?” There is no doubt that the text includes some very exclusive language and is built upon many other texts that are strong in their divisiveness. There are many preachers breathless and an ample amount of ink spilled making this very point. But there is another, absolutely legitimate, way of looking at this text.

Now, I resist become literalistic, and am not enough of a biblical nor linguistic scholar to push too hard, but what if we did take this text literally, that nothing unclean will ENTER the city, that nothing accursed will be FOUND there. What if, if we take the leaves of the tree of life as truly healing, what if everyone who has gathered there, with all their wondrous faults and foibles, are considered blessed and not cursed? What if the city of God will only come down when humanity has let go of our need to divide and exclude and rebuke and condemn, and began to live as God intended us in the beginning: as true community? What if it isn’t so much about gate-keeping, as it is about community-building?

I believe that the struggle of either eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or eating from the tree of life is mighty powerful, and effects even scripture and those who wrote it. There are most certainly very divisive texts in the Bible that are completely devoted to issues of purity and sin. But there are also many texts that are just as equally devoted to redemption and compassion and fulness of life. Even in this conflicted text, there are signs of God’s complete and unequivocal redemption of the world. There are 12 gates and they are open all day AND THERE IS NO NIGHT, which is to say THEY ARE NEVER CLOSED! On the gates are the names of the 12 tribes of Israel AND the 12 apostles, and the leaves of the trees are for the healing of all the nations... a truly interfaith and inclusive vision of heaven.

But isn’t this relativism? Isn’t this universalism? No, I believe it is faithfulness! Delores Williams, in looking at the spiritual quoted above, acknowledges sin as a very real and powerful force, but it is reimagined in light of the City of God. “Sin is the terrible force that shrinks the distances and heights we try to put between ourselves and others. No one is without sin and error. Compassion is what we offer others [and ourselves I would add] in light of our own sin.” (6)

Eating from the tree of life means living lives of redemption, wholeness, compassion, and love. Living lives of redemption means worrying less and less about who should be excluded, who should be shut out of heaven, and thinking and praying and acting more and more about who is not yet into heaven. James Forbes, recently retired Sr. Pastor of The Riverside Church in New York City, is fond of quoting his mother at the Sunday dinner table, when she looked around at all the seats and asked the question, “Are all the children in?” No one would eat, until every last child is at the table. Isn’t this a vision of heaven? (7)

Wait, wait! Back up just a little, would you? I think we just passed a scenic overlook, and I just bet you that if we took that path we would see a beautiful city of God which is just over the horizon. I’ll know it when I see it, because all God’s children will be there.

May it be so.

Amen

(1) John Irving, A Prayer For Owen Meany, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989) pp. 245ff.
(2) http://www.answers.com/topic/apocalypse
(3) C. William Nichols, Day By Day Through The New Testament: Acts to Revelation (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2002) Day 171. See also Rabbi Harold Kushner’s incredible book, “How Good Do We Have To Be?” (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1996) Chapters 2 & 3.
(4) “What Is Purity?” May 13, Malinda Elizabeth Berry, Sojourners, May 2007, pp. 48-49.
(5) “Rub Poor Lil’ Judas’ Head,” by Delores S. Williams, Christian Century, October 24, 1990. p 963.b
(6) Ibid
(7) Referenced in the video “Speaking To Power: An Interview With James Forbes Jr.” by Bill Moyer on NOW, the Public Broadcasting System’s news magazine. Find a transcript at http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript248_full.html 


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


 

Copyright 2007 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096