God’s grace, peace
and mercy be with you. … My sermon is based on Revelation (21:9-14, 21-27). Let
us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they
said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Now that our
feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may
your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus
loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
Atlanta, Berlin,
Beirut, Chicago, Warsaw, San Francisco, Lisbon, Nagasaki. What is one thing
these cities all have in common? They were all destroyed and rebuilt. If you have
visited them, you may be aware of their common history. They have been
destroyed by earthquakes, fires or bombings. Warsaw is the most interesting
city that was rebuilt because after 85% of it was destroyed by the dark, black
and red world of the Nazi occupation, Warsaw’s residents reconstructed their
city from cityscape paintings by Venetian painter Bernardo Bellotto.
Bellotto was the court
painter to the King of Poland beginning in 1768, and created beautiful and
accurate paintings of Warsaw’s buildings and squares. Almost 200 years later,
those paintings were used to help transform the historic city center from
wreckage and rubble into a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[1]
Reconstruction
began in 1950, and much of the Old Town was finished by 1955. The rest
continued through the 1980’s. When I visited Warsaw in 1983, you would not know
that the city was leveled over a span of six years beginning in 1939.
Residents working
on the reconstruction were asphyxiated by clouds of dust. Someone calculated
that they inhaled the equivalent of four bricks each year. “One must love one’s
city in order to rebuild it at the cost of one’s own breathing. It is perhaps
for this reason that, from the battlefield of rubble and ruins, Warsaw became
once more the old Warsaw, eternal Warsaw.”[2]
I mention this
because our reading from Revelation today continues to describe the holy city
Jerusalem. As you recall from last Sunday’s reading, John “saw the holy
city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”[3] In today’s passage, John
returns to what the angel showed him: “the holy city Jerusalem coming
down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most
rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.”[4] As beautiful as those
reconstructed cities I mentioned earlier are, this renewed and transformed city
is even more beautiful.
Yet, amidst all
the splendor of this holy city, something is missing from the new Jerusalem. There
is no temple. Like Ezekiel, John’s source for this vision, Revelation portrays
the new Jerusalem as a holy city. Yet, his understanding of God led him to a
different vision. There is no temple because the city as a whole is holy. God
is directly present to all throughout the city and not just in designated
areas.[5]
Beneath the
imagery of pillars, gates, walls and foundations is John’s conviction that
God’s final dwelling place is in and with his people. The new Jerusalem is a
community of believers, a body of believers such as we find in Paul’s First
Letter to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and
that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will
destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”[6]
The new city does
not abolish human activities to build a decent earthly civilization, but
fulfills them. Remember in verse five that we do not read that God is making all
new things, but making all things new. This is not a return to Eden, but an
affirmation of this world and its value that pictures eternal salvation as
salvation of the world and of history itself.[7] Salvation does not offer
escape from the tragedy of historical existence, but that all things that are
human are taken up and transformed. The new holy city redeems and makes
worthwhile every effort in our lives to have a decent city and just and
fulfilling lives.
The new Jerusalem
is no tiny village, but a vast city 1,500 miles long, wide and high. That’s the
distance from here to Denver. The best comparison is that the holy city is
almost the size of Australia. Now try to imagine Australia thousands of times
larger because the city is also 1,500 miles high. The massive size of this new
city indicates how holy it is. Not only is the city holy, but because God
dwells there, it tells us how holy our God is.
Such holiness means
that God demands of his people more than compliance with a list of pious acts. God
demands a different, distinctive life oriented to his will for them, rather
than “being conformed to this world.”[8] God demands his people to
be holy. So, in the end, the church is the community of holy people or saints,
and the saints in this world always struggle with the profane.
As I mentioned
last week, the reading stopped at verse seven. Today, it begins with verse
nine. I do not know the reason why verse eight is omitted by whoever edited the
lectionary, but I can tell you why John included it.
First of all, we
all know that residents or citizens live in a particular city, town, village or
township. For simplicity, we’ll call it a city. Citizens must live within the
rules and laws of the city. These rules and laws govern our property: government
approves and issues permits for buildings, driveways, home businesses and such.
Government also establishes laws for behavior on my property: how many animals
I can keep; how many cars on cement blocks can be in my front yard; how loud I
can play music; how early or late I can mow my lawn.
Likewise, for the
citizens of the holy city, there are rules and laws. It’s not anything goes. There
have always been rules and laws for believers, for God’s people. We find
commandments in the Old Testament, and lists of vices in the New Testament.
John’s vice list (verse
8) is no different than those we find in Paul’s Letters or Peter’s First
Letter.[9] For that matter, the
things that defile a person are also found in Jesus’ teaching.[10] In Revelation, John is
not merely handing on a traditional list. He appropriately nuances it to fit
his situation. Beginning with cowards and ending with liars is not a general
statement, but has in mind the failures of Christians under the pressure of
persecution. Cowards lacked courage before the Roman courts, and liars lacked
truthfulness in making the declaration of their Christian faith regardless of
consequences. To John, these and the other sins of verse 8, were associated
with participation in the emperor cult and pressures of the pagan society.
John does not say
that anyone who has been guilty of these failings is prohibited from
participation in the Holy City, only that no one will bring these sinful
practices with him or her into the Holy City. The list serves to characterize
life in the city of God, not a limit on who will be there.[11]
As Christians, our
lives are grounded in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It’s not only a
phrase which opens and closes our Divine Service, but also the way we live. Faith
tells us that our lives must find fulfillment in the immediate and eternal
intuition of God. To know God in the mind and in the heart means that we – as
individuals and as a community – find our fulfillment in God’s presence, and
that is reflected in our behavior, speech, attitude, and thoughts.
The trouble with
modernism and to a greater degree, postmodernism, is that we have gotten away
from the fundamental truths that once formed our lives as individuals and as
society. As Christians today, it is as difficult to remain faithful to our
beliefs and fit into this world as it was for Christians in Revelation’s seven
churches. Maybe, like John’s early Christians, life would be easier if we just
fit in to a pagan society, a consumer society, a postmodern society or whatever
you want to call it.
If we fashion God
in our image and likeness, there is no relationship with the true God. With no
relationship to worry about, sin poses no threat. This kind of “god” is exactly
what C.S. Lewis meant when he described pantheism. “The Pantheist’s God does
nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a
shelf. He will not pursue you. There is no danger that at any time heaven and
earth should flee away at His glance.”[12]
History bears out
this example year after year, century after century. Societies as a whole need
correction and warning: casting God aside only turns humanity in on itself. The
farther the world gets from God, the worse its problems become. Just as
humanity cannot figure itself out without God, it cannot solve its problems
without Him, either. We need the fullness of prophecy to assist us.[13]
My friends, if we want
not only an appreciation of John’s prophecy for Christians of the second
century, but an appropriation of that prophecy for our lives today, we need
something to assist us in accusing ourselves honestly. We need this kind of
prophecy more than knowledge of the future.
As Lutherans we
learned in our Small Catechism that there are three purposes of the Law. It
helps us to control our outbursts of sin and maintains order in the world. It
accuses us and shows us our sin. It teaches us what we should do and not do to
lead a God-pleasing life. We refer to these uses as curb, mirror and guide. But
the power to live according to the Law comes from the Gospel.[14]
Without repentance,
the Christian life is impossible. If God becomes only a book on a shelf,
repentance is a non-factor. We need to take to heart that in good times or in
bad, in persecution or in flourishing, Christ is the answer. The only modern
prophecies worth listening to are those that follow the pattern of the biblical
prophets: return to the Lord, do not do what is evil, avoid false gods, and be
faithful to the new covenant. The core of even the direst prophecy is a call to
return to the divine life. And there is always hope precisely because God is
the source of hope.
Any prophecy or
prophet calling Christians to look to the world for answers – to embrace
abortion, approve homosexual marriage, encourage transgenderism – speaks for
the ‘god on the shelf.’ Christians
should not look exactly like the world. If we do, something is wrong.
So much of getting
on in life has to do with to whom we listen. Listen to Our Lord, the Scriptures,
and speakers who are true disciples. Life will never be easy and no true prophet
would preach the easy way. That is why we look to the saints in the Scriptures
who chose not the easy way, but God’s way. That is why we look to the martyrs
of the early and current Church, who continue to choose God’s way. That is why
we come here each Sunday – to confess our sins to God before other sinners, to
receive God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s grace poured forth into our hearts
through Word, Sacrament and one another.
My friends, I need
you here as much as you want me here. I need you to witness for me how you are
living your life as a Christian in the world so that I can better live my life.
You help me to help you. And with God’s grace and guidance in this world, may we
be redeemed to live as saints in the holy city Jerusalem that our Triune God
prepares for us. Ponder that for the week, and as you do, may the peace of God
that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus the
Risen Lord. Amen. Alleluia!
[1]
Daryl Mersom, How postwar Warsaw was rebuilt using 18th century paintings, The
Guardian, April 22, 2016.
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Revelation 21:2.
[4]
Revelation 21:10-11.
[5] M.
Eugene Boring, Revelation. Louisville: John Knox Press (1989), p. 218.
[6] 1
Corinthians 3:16-17.
[7]
Boring, p. 220
[8]
Boring, p. 222. See Romans 12:1-2; 2 Corinthians 6:16-18.
[9]
Boring p. 217.
[10]
Mark 7:21-23; Matthew 15:18-20.
[11]
Boring, pp. 271f.
[12]
C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p. 149.
[13]
John Kubasak, “The Need for Prophecy,” The Catholic Stand, May 8, 2022.
[14]
Question 77.
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