I wish I could say that I gave him a helpful answer, but I didn’t. I could say that my brain was fried from too much time in the hot springs that afternoon. But the hard truth is that we Christians are struggling to maintain hope these days, too—myself included. I mumbled something about God being with us in times of trouble. I said that Christians know that all will be made right in the end; we just don’t know when that will be. While not wrong, my answer sounded so weak, so much like wishful thinking rather than hope. I know that I didn’t really help our new friend in his pain. He graciously changed the subject. It’s been bothering me ever since.
You know how the Holy Spirit works, though. No sooner did I sit down at the computer yesterday to study today’s lessons—I heard them all speak to Felix’s question. So here’s what I might have responded. Maybe this message can help you, or help you to do a better job than I did of sharing some strong and hopeful Good News.
Christians have for so long hung all our hope for the future on the afterlife. You know how it goes: You suffer through this world of woe, and when you go to heaven, you’ll get your reward of happiness forevermore. When the bad folks die, they’ll go to hell, and they’ll get their punishment then for sure. This kind of “carrot and stick” Christian hope allowed us to justify slavery and all kinds of oppression: Just work hard and be good and obey your masters, and heaven will be yours in the end, we promised. This totally individually-focused “pie in the sky by and by” certainly isn’t what I want to offer Felix. John of Patmos, describing heaven to his own dispirited community in our reading from Revelation, gives us a whole different image. For him, heaven, like earth, draws all of us together.
First of all, Revelation describes God’s presence in a transformed Creation, not in a heavenly realm that is totally divorced from an incomplete, suffering world. When the author of Revelation sees a “new heaven” and a “new earth,” he is not just seeing sky and land, or even future heaven and present earth, he is seeing the totality of all things “seen and unseen,” God’s total creation. What God is making new is not just the material creation and not just the realm of the afterlife. Instead, the things that we know, and the things that are beyond us, are all being changed. God is continually pouring Godself out into the Creation that God loves, creating life from death, order from chaos, over and over and over again.
Here, God’s new creation comes in the form of a city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of the heavens. Now, we do joke about the “pearly gates,” but do you honestly think about heaven as a city? Shouldn’t heaven instead be like the Garden of Eden, with crystal clear streams bubbling over glistening stones, with the fresh scent of pine needles? Eugene Peterson writes, “Many people want to go to heaven the way they want to go to Florida. They think the weather will be an improvement and the people decent.”[1] By presenting us with a city full of human beings, a mix of all that is good and bad in human civilization, God shows us that “we enter heaven not by escaping what we don’t like, but by the sanctification of the place in which God has placed us.”[2] Let that sink in for a moment. We always look for an escape in God, an escape from daily life, an escape from our troubles, but God keeps showing us that we find God wherever we are, if we let ourselves be transformed.
Listening to some Episcopalians these days, it might sound like this divine city is something that we are supposed to build with our own hands, though—or as one preacher puts it, “by hard work, non-profits, or political action committees.”[3] That idea leaves us discouraged and exhausted as soon as things start going downhill. As Bill Bigum likes to remind us, “That’s no different than the Rotary Club!” No, God’s city is an unearned gift. In what other Bible passage, besides this one from Revelation, do the heavens open up with a loud voice from God? At the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan! Mark writes, “And just as [Jesus] was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”[4] The God who conquers Death after being put to death on the Cross by the powers of the City is the God who gives us a new, divine City in which to dwell with one another. God isn’t just blandly “with us,” though, as I told Felix. It’s more than that. God makes a home among mortals. God dwells with us: as God’s Glory dwelling with the people of Israel; as Jesus of Nazareth; and with the Holy Spirit’s intimate presence among us.
The other essential thing that I failed to tell Felix is the defiant character of Christian hope. We are the people who follow a crucified Lord whose command to “love one another” is radical. It entails throwing established customs to the wind in the name of love. Preceding today’s Gospel, Jesus shows his disciples how to love one another by washing their feet, by doing an act of humility that makes no sense in their society, by doing the work of a slave. Says one commentator: “At its best, “new commandment” love is humble enough to kneel and wash … and at the same time, bold enough to protect and connect, overturn conventions, and let the surprising, beautiful glory of God shine through.”[5]
Even early Christians struggled with the disruptive character of this love. Look at St. Peter in our reading from Acts. He fought the radical character of God’s love until the Spirit showed him in a dream that God’s love in Christ will relativize even the most sacred laws commanded by God in Scripture. The Spirit demands that no one be excluded from Christ’s Body.
The ongoing gift of new creation. The radical defiance inherent in Christian hope. Perhaps I should have witnessed to Felix about how God led this cautious priest to move to Colorado in the middle of a Pandemic to join with a little parish who lives by the breath of the Holy Spirit. I should have told Felix about how St. Ambrose has been reaching out after the devastation of the Marshall Fire to people who didn’t think that they needed us at all. I should have told Felix about the Godly Play and youth teachers who faithfully prepare lessons without knowing whether students will be able to come. I should have told Felix about all the money that Episcopalians from across the country sent to us to help fire survivors, and all the money that our small denomination is now sending to Ukraine and to New Mexico. I should have told him about once-conventional Episcopalians now standing up publicly for beloved community between races, for the rights of women, and for the LBGTQIA community. Perhaps I could have read one of Wendell Berry’s poems to my friend Felix. Berry uses the image of wild geese in flight, mysteriously maintaining their path as if by faith. They fly in “abandon, as in love or sleep.” Could we be like the geese, Berry wonders, praying “to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here,” he writes.[6] As I look around today at all of you, I agree. What we need is here.
[1] Eugene H. Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), 174.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Michael Fitzpatrick, “The Home of God is Among Mortals.” Journey with Jesus, May 8, 2022. Found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3385.
[4] Mark 1:10-11.
[5] “Love is the Mark.” May 10, 2022. Found at https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2019/5/14/new-commandment-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-easter-5
[6] Wendell Berry, “What we need is here.” Found at https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2022/5/10/what-we-need-is-here-by-wendell-berry.
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