Sixth Sunday of Easter; 22 May 2022; Easter 6C (RCL); Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21:10, 22 – 22:5; John 14:23-29.
I always wonder if the author of the Book of Revelation could have had any idea that his (I presume he was male) book would end up as the last book of the Christian canon. I know that such is impossible as there was no canon for another couple of centuries after he completed his work, but this passage makes a perfect end to the overarching story of scripture.
The creation story (at least one of them) opens in a garden, from which flows a river (that divides into four) and in which there are many trees, but two especially, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. Here, at the end of the Christian canon, we have a city from which flows a river (having its source in the throne of God) and trees of life on either side of the river. In the garden, God walked with the human beings in the cool of the evening. In this city, God makes the divine home among mortals.
We often presume that salvation involves a return to the innocence of the human race, a return to the garden. Even John’s Gospel has one of its denouements with Mary and Jesus in the Garden (though Jesus sets out from there on a journey toward his God and our God, his Father and our Father). The return-to-innocence myth implies that human cultural effort is the problem, and needs to be undone.
This vision of the city, however, assumes that human cultural effort is part of God’s plan of redemption. The huge intellectual and cultural energy required for the making of a city (think of Aristotle telling us that the human being is a political animal) will be taken up in God’s plan for the restoration of humanity’s intercourse with the divine.
And what a city! The water running down the gutter is clear as crystal. Anyone who has ever seen water running in a city street knows that this is no ordinary city. And the tree of life growing on either side of the street has leaves for the healing of the nations. All the division narrated in the scriptures will be undone in that city. And, in case we missed the reference, the visionary sees the city from the top of a mountain, just as Moses saw the promised land from the top of Mount Nebo. MLK may well have had both the vision of Moses and the vision of John the Revelator when he delivered his final sermon at a meeting of trash-collectors. Nothing unclean will be in this new city.
Too often, human effort is involved in destroying cities. It is humanity’s constructive effort that participates in God’s plan of redemption, not its destructive effort. There will even be agricultural effort in this new city, keeping the trees, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, growing and fruitful beside the river down the middle of the street.
The Roman Empire saw itself as the bringer of peace — the Pax Romana. The cost of that peace however was the violence perpetrated on conquered peoples. Jesus gives his disciples peace, but not like the world gives. This is a peace from within, not enforced from without. And in the gospel reading, we have again the lovely image of God making the divine home with those who keep Jesus’ word. The Spirit, the Advocate, dwells among us in the act of treasuring Jesus’ word, in persevering in that conversation and dialog that brings real peace.