Life In The Big City
May 30, 2010
1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; 4he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” 5And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.
Revelation 21:1-6
I’ve got some good news for all of you this morning—I am about to preach a heavenly sermon. But before you get too excited, I should be quick to point out that it probably won’t be any better than one of my usual sermons; it just means I’m going to preaching about heaven. And whether or not it’s a brilliant sermon, I’m hoping the topic might spark some interest among us because I believe that there is a great deal of curiosity about heaven in our culture today.
According to statistics gathered by the AARP, an overwhelming majority of Americans believe in heaven, more than 85%. But what we believe about heaven is less certain. 40% of us say that heaven is a real literal place, while 49% of us say that heaven is just a state of being. Only 29% of the folks who were surveyed thought that a person must believe in Jesus Christ to enter heaven. And here is the most statistic that I found to be the most illuminating—Out of the 85% of Americans who say they believe in heaven, 9 out of 10 believe that’s where they are going when they die. But when that same 85% was asked about others, they said that only 6 out of 10 people would wind up in heaven.
It tells you a lot about how we see ourselves, doesn’t it? We may not know what heaven is, but we know that’s where we’re going. We’re just not quite as sure about everybody else. Mark Twain once said that we should go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company. I don’t know if he was right or not, but in my sermon today, I want us to try and think about some of these questions together—Does heaven exist? And if so, where is it? And what is heaven like? I’m gonna warn you right now that we’re not going to reach any definitive conclusions this morning. But I still think the questions are worth asking. Because I know that many of us in here are curious about heaven. And when we open up the Scriptures, we find that the biblical writers were also asking these kinds of questions.
That’s especially true in the book of Revelation. The last book of the Bible is not one I preach from very often because it’s just so weird. You might think that would make it even more appealing to me, but it’s weird, even by my standards. Revelation is filled with disturbing images and confusing prophecies. Timothy Luke Johnson, who is a scholar of New Testament, says that, “Few writings...have been so obsessively read with such generally disastrous results as the Book of Revelation...Its history of interpretation is largely a story of tragic misinterpretation...its arcane symbols...have nurtured delusionary systems, both private and public, to the destruction of their fashioners and to the discredit of the writing.”
In other words, many people over the years have tried to make sense of Revelation. But they haven’t succeeded. There have been groups that have stated with 100% certainty that they had broken the code, only to be embarrassed when they were proven wrong. Now, maybe back in the 1st century when John wrote this, his readers knew what he was talking about. That’s great. But today, you and I are pretty much at a loss. So, this morning, I’m telling you that it’s okay to feel stupid when we’re dealing with the book of Revelation. I feel stupid when dealing with the book of Revelation.
About the only thing I can say for certain is that Revelation talks a lot about heaven. In fact, nowhere else in Scripture deals with heaven as much as this one book of the Bible. So, it seems like the place to start if we’re going to address the questions about heaven I asked just a moment ago. But when we’re looking at Revelation, I think we need to do so with a healthy appreciation of our own stupidity.
Because an awful lot of folks over the years have read these passages and jumped to the kinds of faulty conclusions I already mentioned. For example, in Revelation Chapter 21, John offers us an extended description of heaven. I read the first few verses a moment ago, but in the next part of the passage, John goes on to mention some of the things that you and I typically associate with heaven—the streets of gold and the pearly gates.
It’s a beautiful picture, and it’s certainly tempting to take all these images at face value. It’s like the old story of the rich man who was dying and so, he ordered his staff to pack all his gold bricks into his suitcase. And upon arriving at the Pearly Gates, St. Peter asked the man, “What’s in the suitcase?” And the man replied, “Everything I valued on Earth.” And St. Peter said, “You brought pavement?”
That story is funny, but I think it reinforces how literal-minded we are about this passage of Scripture. But I’m not convinced it’s the way to go. Because I think that one of the main mistakes you and I make when talking about heaven, particularly those of us in the church, is that we turn into a kind of afterlife version of Disney World, where everything is clean and bright and happy. To steal a phrase from scholar Michael Budde, we think of heaven as the “Magic Kingdom of God.” It’s this fantasy land where everything we’ve always wanted magically comes true.
The only problem is that in this passage of Scripture, heaven is not described as a place where all our wishes come true. It is certainly a magnificent place, and I think that John chooses the images he does in order to convey that sense of grandeur. But I think we’d missing the point if we get hung up on heaven as a place that literally has streets of gold and pearly gates. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t; I can’t say for sure. But I do not think that John is using this kind of symbolic language in order to tell us about the kind of pavement they use in heaven. I think he’s using this language to tell us that heaven is awe-inspiring and glorious. And I’m afraid that when you and get caught up in these details and when we start taking these images literally, heaven winds up becoming too much like Earth. You and I would like to have a mansion now and so it makes us feel good to believe that one day, we will have a mansion in heaven.
The danger is that when you and I start designing the floor plan to our mansion on the banks of the crystal sea, we are capable of turning heaven into something far less wonderful than it actually is. Heaven becomes merely a projection of our own desires and fantasies instead of the reality that John describes here in this passage. To our minds, gold and pearls and mansions are great. So, that’s how John talks about heaven. But he only uses those words because our human imaginations are so limited. And the good news of Revelation is that the reality of heaven is a reality far greater than anything you and I can possibly imagine.
That having been said, just because we can’t imagine it doesn’t mean we should stop talking about heaven. Because I think that’s another mistake we sometimes make in the church today—We don’t talk about heaven enough. In fact, I think that the church in the year 2010 probably talks about heaven less than it has in the entire course of its 2,000 year history. It’s almost as if we’re embarrassed by these images from Revelation. We think we know better than to take all this stuff literally and so, we wind up ignoring it.
But I don’t think that approach is any better. Because believe me when I say that, more than ever, the church needs to proclaim the good news of heaven. People today are looking for hope. And it was no different in the 1st century. That’s why John writes what he does. The key for us is to step back long enough from our own fantasies of heaven to listen to what John has to say. And if we did, I think we’d be surprised at the picture of heaven that emerges here in Revelation, Chapter 21.
For starters, the heaven in this passage of Scripture is not some fantasy land way up in the clouds, but a city that descends to Earth. Did y’all catch that? In Revelation Chapter 21, John says that at the end of all things, we don’t go up to heaven; heaven comes down to us. Listen to verse 3—“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.”
So, we’ve got it all backwards. We think that one day, we’re going up to be with God. But that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says that one day, God will come down to be with us. And that will be heaven. Because when God dwells among us, there will be no more tears, and no more pain, and no more death. All those negative things we associate with life on this earth will pass away because in that time, heaven and earth will be joined. It is the realization of the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.”
That is what John is describing here in the book of Revelation. Heaven is not some remote mansion-filled kingdom way out in space somewhere, but a city right here on Earth. I really like the way that Dr. Jan Love talks about this vision of heaven. She writes that “The new, beautiful city of God is not just about pie in the sky when we die, although we certainly don't discount that promise. This vision is about that wonderfully delicious pie that we all crave on earth now, a life that basks in God's presence now, a life that keeps God's commandment to love one another and mirrors God's glory today and every day! God has moved into the neighborhood!” Don’t you like that line? God has moved into the neighborhood.
Dr. Love goes on to say that “Revelation is powerful precisely because in the midst of our anxiety, fear, and hopelessness, our dreams for a future life with God break into the present. Revelation assures us that good overcomes evil, love overcomes hate, hope overcomes despair, and life overcomes death--all here and now, as well as in eternity.”
So, this vision of heaven that John presents here in Revelation, Chapter 21 is not some abstract idea; it is an invitation to imagine a different world here on Earth. And I think that’s the other mistake you and I sometimes make when talking about heaven. In our attempt to avoid making heaven too much like Earth, we wind up making heaven not enough like Earth.
I think that’s really the big surprise of Revelation Chapter 21, at least to me. Why would John choose the metaphor of a city when describing heaven? I much prefer the imagery over in the book of Genesis, that talks about paradise as a garden. Because if it’s the place where I’m going to spend all eternity, I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be in a garden than in a city. In my mind, nature seems to be a much better place to commune with God.
But it’s the city that John chooses as his image of heaven. He calls it the new Jerusalem. This city is different in some respects than our cities today--for instance, there’s no need for electricity because the glory of God provides the illumination. But it’s still a city. Last week, I talked about how we humans have been building cities and towers since the beginning of civilization. And here at the end of the story, it is this most human activity that becomes the symbol of God’s presence on Earth. It’s not a garden. It’s not a tabernacle. It’s not even a church building. Heaven is described as a city.
It might be possible for us to take this image too far. But before we discard it, I want us to understand that by describing heaven as a city, John is making a claim about what heaven is going to be like. I think John is suggesting that heaven will be a place where the best of human creativity still exists. Verse 26 of this chapter says that the “people will bring the glory and the honor of the nations” into the new Jerusalem. Will that be different than our cities today?
Of course, because in verse 5, God says he is making all things new. But that’s not the same thing as saying that God is throwing all things out. Revelation Chapter 21 is not a picture of destruction like you and I usually imagine at the end of time; it is a picture of redemption. Because in John’s vision of heaven, God does not destroy his creation; God remakes and redeems his creation. And in the process, earth becomes as it was meant to be in the beginning. Earth and heaven are indistinguishable. They are connected. And humans have an important role to play.
In his book called Culture Making, Andy Crouch talks about this role of humanity in the new Jerusalem. And he comes up with his own list of human contributions that he thinks might survive into eternity, like Bach’s B-Minor Mass or the Mini Cooper. Crouch writes, “Of course, I don’t expect any of these things to appear without being suitably purified and redeemed, any more than I expect my own resurrected body to be just another unimproved version of my present one. But I will be very surprised if [those things] are not carried in by one or another of the representatives of human culture, for they are a part of the glorious best that humans have made.”
Crouch ends his speculation by asking—“Are we creating and cultivating things today that have a chance of furnishing the new Jerusalem?” That seems to be a good question for us to ask this morning, as we reexamine this passage from the book of Revelation. You and I may never be able to say for certain what heaven is like until we’re there. But perhaps our job in the meantime is to do the best we can with what we’ve got so that one day at the end of time, we will ready for life in the big city. This morning, there is good news—the hope of heaven is real. God has moved into our neighborhood. And for that, we can say AMEN.