I Saw Warsaw

 

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 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 of 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 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 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. God commands you to be holy. In the end, the church is the community of holy people or saints, and the saints in this world always struggle with the profane. So, are you holy? On your own, no way. By God’s grace, definitely.

Last week I mentioned the reading stopped at verse seven. Today, it begins with verse nine. I do not know the reason verse eight is omitted by whoever edited the lectionary, but I can tell you why John included it.

First, we all know that residents or citizens live in a particular city, town, village or township. For simplicity, we will 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 eight, 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 participating 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] If you lie to anyone, you lie to God, and God knows it even if the people to whom you are lying have not yet figured it out or are going along with your scheme. That does not exclude you from God’s Kingdom, but you do need to make a thorough and honest confession of all your sins to God in front of the Church and receive absolution from one divinely called, that is, your pastor.

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 your mind and in your 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. Like John’s early Christians, life would be easier if we just fit into a pagan society, a consumer society, a postmodern society, a woke 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 gay 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 effortless 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.

Do you listen to God’s Word daily? Do you spend 15 minutes a day reading and digesting the Scriptures? Do you apply to your life the Ten Commandments? The Creed? The Lord’s Prayer? Have you been praying for your new pastor and for the congregation or have you been selfishly and sinfully kicking against the goad to supplant God’s will with you own agenda?

My friends, I need you here as much as you need a pastor here. You need to witness how you are living as a Christian in the world so that I do the same. You help me help you. And with God’s grace and guidance in this world, we can be redeemed to live as saints in the new, holy city 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!

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[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.