Orinda Community Church
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, July 8, 2007
“A New Revelation”
Kirk R. Thomas, Preaching
TEXT: Revelation 21:1-6
Many of you know I have just returned from the biannual General Synod of the United Church of Christ held in Hartford last week. Knowing my tight schedule in advance, I am preaching a sermon on the Book of Revelation that I previously delivered elsewhere. Rewritten for today this sermon topic is a continual work-in-progress because I propose that we need a new revelation for our age using contemporary myth and symbols in order to re-imagine the New Jerusalem of Revelation. This topic seems quite timely as we were envisioning the future of our church and where we believe God wants us to go during our UCC 50th Anniversary celebration in Hartford.
Revelation is best known for weird visions of end-of-time disasters, and for the people who believe that these visions are predictions of actual events to come. For a long time biblical scholars thought that John was writing to a church under siege. We now think that Christians in John’s era probably were less oppressed than ignored. As they waited for the return of Jesus, they endured the temptation to conform to the prevailing cultural norms of their Greco-Roman world. John’s vision is a powerful call for them to stand apart from the conventional world—his “Beast” of “Babylon” that God will cast aside. For those who stood apart in witness to the radical gospel of Christ, ostracism and persecution could be the expected consequence.
The subject of apocalypse seems to be present everywhere in our public and private discourse these days, and is both disturbing and somehow irresistibly compelling. Like the popular genre of apocalypse that was prevalent in John’s first century, we have our modern day versions. For example, channel surfing on TV recently, I came across a movie entitled “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004) starring Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal. This special-effects-laden epic is about a disastrous climate crisis brought on by the runaway greenhouse effect. Dennis Quaid plays paleoclimatologist Jack Hall whose research indicates that global warming could trigger an abrupt and catastrophic shift in the planet's climate. After a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island breaks off the Antarctic Ice Shelf (something that has actually happened), a series of increasingly severe weather events start to unfold around the globe—hail the size of grapefruit batters Tokyo, record-breaking hurricane winds pound Hawaii, snow falls in New Delhi, and a series of tornadoes devastates Los Angeles. A colleague in Scotland confirms that these intense weather events are symptoms of a massive global climate change. Melting polar ice has poured too much fresh water into the oceans, disrupting the currents and destabilizing the climate (which actually may be happening). During a single global super storm global warming has pushed the planet over the edge and into a new Ice Age. Gyllenhaal, playing Jack’s 17 year-old son Sam who is trapped in New York City when the chaos begins, takes refuge with friends inside the Manhattan Public Library when a tidal wave and plummeting temperatures devastate that City. Jack heads north to save his son while contending with massive evacuations toward the warmer south and an onslaught of natural catastrophes. Most people in the North America and Northern Europe die during the storm, but Jack finds Sam and both survive the storm. They are rescued by a government helicopter that flies them to Mexico where American survivors are given refuge only because the US has nullified all Latin American debt! (So much for immigration reform!)
Whew! What a story! Although exaggerated to the extreme and collapsed into an impossibly short time frame, many of the scientific issues in this film accurately reflect facts and theories currently in debate over global warming. Although a several-week climate disaster scenario is certainly fictitious, we are beginning to realize that major ecological disasters may well be upon us already and may affect us all in our own lifetimes. The entire April issue of The Nation was devoted to a series of articles about this very subject. And after years of denial, Americans are now beginning to heed the warnings that global warming indeed may be the apocalypse of our modern era.
The English word “revelation” etymologically translates from the Greek apokalypsis as “unveiling” or “revealing” that which is concealed—either the mysteries of a transcendent world, or the cosmic order, or future destiny. The Book of Revelation and the books of Daniel and Ezra are examples of the apocalyptic literary genre in the ancient world. The hallmarks of this literature are (1) the use of symbolic language to describe directly inexpressible transcendent reality, (2) constant use of dualism (good/evil, light/dark, true/false, God/Satan), and (3) the triumph of God’s realm in an imminent eschatological (or end of the world) event.
We all know that some Christians use the Book of Revelation nostalgically, to extol rather than challenge convention, and to advance a bizarre and defeatist ideology that welcomes disaster as the precursor to an elitist victory of a smug, born-again Christian elect. I am loath to relinquish this fascinating literature to such fundamentalist nonsense that claims exclusive interpretation of John’s revelation. Such zealots view the world through the lens of the dualistic language of the apocalyptic. Their obsession with deciphering prophecy by exclusive knowledge of secret code gives them a sense of power and control over others, the natural world and themselves. Having rejected scientific knowledge (while simultaneously embracing scientific technology), their only alternative is dogmatic adherence to a literal interpretation of the symbolic. In some ways, modern fundamentalists mimic the ancient Gnostic heresy that sought “secret knowledge” of God.
Our modern apocalyptic seeks similarly elusive goals and come in many variations. These stories we tell ourselves say much about our own fears. Perhaps it was not surprising that the Godzilla movies would emanate from Japan directly following that nation’s complete defeat in the Second World War after enduring the first and only nuclear attacks. The human psyche needs to deal with the fear of the uncontrollable, so we make up monsters we can defeat to reassure ourselves in an uncontrollable, chaotic, and terrifying world. Disaster films have been popular since filmmaking began and fall into distinct categories—natural disasters, planetary disasters, alien invasions and mutants, accidents, terrorist actions, nuclear crises, millennial fantasies, failed or perverted technology, etc. Our modern day “Beast of Babylon” is everywhere evident in our violent and uncaring actions. When we drive our cars that heat the atmosphere and deplete oil resources we are participating in the compromising apocalyptic world of Babylon.
The nightmares of our modern apocalypse are evident everywhere. But where is our modern counterpart to the second part of John’s Revelation, the beatific vision of the triumph of God in the descent of the New Jerusalem? How can we Christians participate in a new revelation that anticipates the coming realm of God in the midst of our unprecedented disasters? What is The Good News in global warming? If we are really listening to a still-speaking God, then we must be open to the new revelations that are coming upon us. Instead of a vision by a single individual, we need a communal revelation, a community vision that can become our new revelation for the entire Body of Christ.
The reading this morning from Revelation 21 is the classic articulation of John’s utopian vision of the Christian future that concludes his visions of upheaval. Here he describes a vision of a celestial city of Jerusalem descending from heaven and uniting with the earthly realm to become one, like a bride arriving at a wedding, replacing the old spiritual and material worlds with one that is no longer in separated conflict. Even the primordial sea has disappeared—the traditional ancient abode of the monster of chaos. God now dwells with humanity, sanctifying mortals by fulfilling the prophecies of Isaiah and Ezekiel. In God’s new realm death is vanquished along with mourning, crying and pain as the old order passes away and all is made new. “It is done” says God, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, the one who brings thirsty mortals free access to the waters of life.
Like John of Patmos before us, let us commence to formulate a new Revelation for our time, the 21st century. Let us be, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “a community which hears the Apocalypse” and testifies to its alien nature, resists “the false principle of inner worldliness” and serves “those who suffer violence and injustice.” What should be our modern vision of the New Jerusalem? This is our ongoing project. But let us begin by remembering some of the historic commitments that the United Church of Christ has espoused and of which we were constantly reminded in Hartford: To be a united and uniting church, bringing together all of God’s people in the Body of Christ in ecumenical, inter-religious and global relationship. To be a multiracial and multicultural church, embracing all the rich diversity of humankind and honoring the contributions of all human cultures. To be an accessible church, respecting those upon whom God has bestowed different gifts of mind and body. To be an open and affirming church, witnessing to the wholeness and holiness of loving relationships of all kinds regardless of affectional or gender identity. To be a church of peace and justice, struggling both globally and locally to minister and service as advocates for the oppressed and exploited.
But our New Jerusalem must be greater still. We must become a people who value the stewardship of God’s creation by acknowledging the imprint of our human carrying capacity on the planet. We must control our runaway human reproduction so that humans are born by intention into families that are committed to their care and nurture. We must develop a world economy that can sustain humans without reliance upon constant growth in people or material goods. We must be committed to adequate food, shelter and health for everyone. We must respect our fellow creatures by preserving their habitat and ending their extinction. We must carefully examine our “daily bread” and choose to eat adequately without waste, and without the cruelty and destruction of animals and mass scales of production that promote disease and pollute our environment. Respect for the planet means that we would encourage the greening of the land, growing plants and trees and harvesting the seas in sustained maintenance rather than in senseless destruction. We would value and conserve water, the precious liquid that is the basis for all life. We would take care of our atmosphere, the fragile and thin cocoon of gases which protects us and gives us the breath of life. But greater than all, we must envision a world where love and compassion are held in highest esteem, where violence and weaponry are banned, and where all creatures are valued for their inherent holiness.
I don’t believe that the world is about to end and the Christian elect are about to be transported by rapture into Heavenly Glory. Rather the Christian message is that God is faithful, suffering and agonizing with us, even in times of trial and tribulation. That as Christians we have a special charge to stand witness to the mighty power of a Creation that humans seem to have enough power to alter and destroy but not yet enough wisdom to respect. The ultimate Good News of our new Revelation is same as that of John of Patmos, “To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.” Let us pray that the light of our United Church of Christ will shine forth with this new Revelation of hope during our next 50 years. Thanks be to God!
Amen.