Revelation 21 – Relationalrealities

I am struck by the fugue-like nature of the themes in the readings for the fifth Sunday after Easter. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines a fugue as a musical composition characterized by systematically imitating a main theme, called the subject, across multiple voices or parts. It typically includes an exposition where the subject is introduced, followed by development sections that explore variations and interactions of the theme.

Working with the fugue metaphor, we hear the central melody in Luke’s account of Peter’s dream—a rich melody introducing a new vision for human community based on radical inclusion. The central theme is further developed in the second reading from the book of Revelation, where it is expanded into the cosmic key of God’s announcement that heaven is to be found on earth. The gospel reading then restates the central melody in the tone of Jesus’ teaching on love as action.

Staying with the musical metaphor, there is a brilliant summation of the melodic interplay I’ve just described in Belinda Carlisle’s legendary 1987 hit single Heaven on Earth:

Ooo, baby, do you know what that’s worth? Heaven is a place on Earth.
They say in heaven, love comes first. We’ll make heaven a place on earth. Ooo, heaven is a place on earth. Lyrics by Rick Nowells and Ellen Shipley

In Surprised by Hope, N.T. (Tom) Wright describes Jesus’ resurrection as the beginning of God’s new project—not to snatch people away from earth into heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. It’s somewhat amusing to find the great Tom Wright channeling Belinda Carlisle.

Christians today, in the main, think that resurrection means spiritual life after death, as in we all will go to heaven to live with God when we die. While liberal Christians have a straightforward inclusive notion of who gets into heaven, basically everyone, conservative Christians still cling to the idea that entry to heaven is conditional on right believing and ritual formulas such as Jesus died for my sins – Jesus as my savior, etc. But both agree on the point of Jesus’ resurrection as a promise of life after death – an announcement of future life with God somewhere else after biological death.

The notion that we leave our bodies behind to ascend as souls to some other place is a deeply anti-Christian idea firmly rooted in Classical Greek thought. The NT does not talk of the separation of body and soul; it speaks of the integration of body and spirit as dual aspects of human experience in the material dimension of time, space, and matter. Belinda croons, “Ooo, baby, do you know what that’s worth?” Heaven is a place on Earth. They say in heaven love comes first. We’ll make heaven a place on earth. Ooo, heaven is a place on earth.

Christians need to understand Jesus’ resurrection, not as an individual event, something that happened only to him, but as the first fruits, the inauguration of a project of changing the world, redirecting our attention away from pie in the sky when we die back to the current state of life on earth.

The concept of our souls’ future fulfilment requiring the jettisoning of our bodies invites us to care more about the life to come than the life to be lived now. Christians who are most focused on their destination in heaven are likely to neglect the duty to leave the world in a better state than the one they came into.

Resurrection as an internal, individualized, spiritual experience of future fulfilment breaks the continuity linking the resurrection of Jesus to the ultimate resurrection of the whole of creation.

Through the Hebrew prophets, God continually affirmed the goal of the resurrection project, as nothing short of the remaking of heaven on earth. It’s only within the continuity of this promise for the whole creation that the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Day makes any sense.

Revelation’s melodic expansion – See! the home of God is among mortals … see I am making all things new – is a further development of Luke’s central theme of radical inclusion before the gospel’s final restatement in Jesus’ teaching on love as the engine for transformation.

Tom Wright speaks of Jesus’ resurrection as a foretaste of the future brought into real time, God’s promise of the kind of future we should anticipate in the present. Anticipating the future—now, there’s a challenge. Because the shape of the future does not arrive preformed of its own accord. Our anticipation today shapes the kind of future that will arrive through the actions we take or fail to take now.

The radical vision of an inclusive community is where the home of God is to be found. The struggle within human communities to translate love into justice is where the power of remaking a new heaven on earth can be seen. As Christians, we do not look forward to a future heaven for the righting of all wrongs and the wiping away of every tear. We grasp the challenges of working towards these goals today by

loving as we are loved
behaving towards others as we expect to be treated
agitating for human dignity as a foundational right for everyone, and not something to be dictated or denied by the exercise of power.

The radical vision of the home of God at the heart of the human community is centered on the cherishing and protection of human dignity. In Dignitas Infinita, the late Pope Francis laid out the four aspects of human dignity.

Ontological dignity – the dignity of being made in the image of God, loved and cherished by God as a reflection of the divine nature.
Moral dignity – the exercise of freedom and fidelity to the dictate of conscience – not only a requirement for right action but also for right motivation and intention
Social dignity—the means to prosper in a society that affords the social, economic, and environmental protections necessary for sustainable living with dignity.
Existential dignity involves combating serious illnesses, domestic violence, gender and racial scapegoating, pathological addictions and their social causes, and other hardships that debase a person’s ontological dignity. Existential dignity also affects those who may enjoy the material prosperity considered essential for a dignified life, yet struggle to live with hope and the experience of joy in their hearts.

What God has made clean, who are we to call profane? Who are we to reject and exclude those whom God has included through the Holy Spirit’s outpouring? For see the home of God is to be found not in heaven but here among us, where through loving action we support God’s reign of justice. When love is realized through action, justice becomes its name.

Or as Belinda Carlisle croons: Ooo, baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooo, heaven is a place on earth. They say in heaven, love comes first. We’ll make heaven a place on earth, Ooo, heaven is a place on earth..

In 2022, we face three mammoth challenges: pandemic recovery, averting ecological catastrophe, and combating the resurgence of sacred violence – the violence of empire – that once more has raised its head in Europe. I list these not in order of importance as each is of equal urgency.

This week we publicly acknowledged one million COVID-related deaths in the US. The enormity of this fact continues to numb us into collective amnesia. Many millions more are still dying or yet to die in parts of the world where vaccine resistance and COVID denial are still major influences on public and governmental opinion.

We continue to fiddle while the earth burns and floods – turning a blind eye to a massive environmental degradation that is fueling increasingly desperate population movements. The resurgence of sacred violence- the violence of empire – is not simply a massive shock to the European nervous system, but carries profound knock-on implications for international global food and energy stability – though in reference to the latter we can only hope that this sharp shock is enough to wean us off our fossil fuel dependencies.

In these days of the Easter Season, we remember that Jesus was a victim to sacred violence at the hands of forces driven to protect the vested interest of those who imprison the holiness of God – limiting and controlling it within human structures – the boundaries of which are always ruthlessly policed.

Yet, Easter reminds us that Jesus is raised on the third day as God’s demonstration that love is stronger than death. In the cross and resurrection God-in-Jesus breaks (present tense) the grip of sacred violence as the default of the human heart.

That love is stronger than death – this is our Easter song.

The melodic themes of our Easter song sound through the Sunday readings. Alongside Luke’s historical accounts of communal transformation, the Revelation to John take the form of the recitative:

I saw a new heaven and a new earth. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven. I heard a loud voice saying, “See the home of God is among mortals … see I am making all things new”.

Or as Belinda Carlisle sang it:

Ooo, baby, do you know what that’s worth? Heaven is a place on earth
They say in heaven, love comes first. We’ll make heaven a place on earth. Ooo, heaven is a place on earth.

Our Easter Song opens with Luke’s central melody of community transformation – the words from Revelation augment the main theme with a recitative of divine expectation – before returning to restate Luke’s main theme, but this time in the tonalities of John’s Gospel teaching on love in action.

On Easter V it is Revelation’s recitative of a new heaven and a new earth that I want to focus attention.

In his book Surprised by Hope, N.T. (Tom) Wright writes about Jesus’ resurrection as the beginning of God’s new project – not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.

Many Christians today think that resurrection means spiritual life after death. They reason – we don’t need to worry too much about what did or did not happen at the resurrection of Jesus – empty tomb and all that because resurrection is an internal spiritual experience that means all of us will go to heaven to live with God when we die.

Disregarding the events at the empty tomb and the physical nature of Jesus’ post resurrection appearances is an invitation to care more about the life to come than the life to be lived. Focused on our destination in heaven we neglect the duty to leave this world in a better state than the one we came into.

Resurrection as an internal, individualized, spiritual experience is the theology of pie in the sky when you die. Pie in the sky when you die may be clever alliteration – where each succeeding word repeats the sound of the proceeding one – but it is truly, terrible theology. In fact, this is not a Christian theology at all because it severs resurrection hope from its context in God’s age-long promise. In other words, it breaks the continuity linking the resurrection of Jesus from God’s ultimate goal – which is the resurrection of the whole of creation.

Through the Hebrew prophets, God continually affirmed the goal for the resurrection project – as it were – which is nothing short of the repair and renewal of the face of the earth. It’s only within the continuity of this promise for the whole creation that the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Day makes any sense.

The melodic cadences of Revelation’s recitative boom in our ears:

See! the home of God is among mortals … see I am making all things new”.

Tom Wright speaks of the resurrection of Jesus as a foretaste of the future brought into real time as God’s promise of the kind of future we should anticipate in the present. To anticipate the future is to work tirelessly in the present to not simply prepare for the future, but to realize the promise of the future in the present.

Anticipation is fruitless without present time action!

Jesus’ resurrection is not an individualized spiritual experience but a collective and collaborative enterprise of next steps in the real time unfolding of God’s future purpose – our collective realization of God’s dream of a physical renewal of creation in a new heaven and a new earth. Future anticipation requires decisions made and actions taken, now! Our urgent need to slow and reverse the process of the escalating climate catastrophe is the primary imperative of living out in the present time the blueprint for the future hope of a new heaven and a new earth. In that project we have a vital role to play.

See the home of God is [and will always remain] among mortals!

Or as Belinda Carlisle sings it: Ooo, baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooo, heaven is a place on earth. They say in heaven, love comes first. We’ll make heaven a place on earth, Ooo, heaven is a place on earth.

Our Easter song concludes with a restatement of Luke’s main idea of the transformation of community. In the tonality and rhythm of John the Evangelist we hear Jesus’ solo voice ringing clear:

Where I am going you cannot come so I give you a new commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. By this will all know that you are my disciples.

Remember love is not a sentiment – it’s an action – and Justice is its name.

Tag: Revelation 21

Building Heaven on Earth

Making All Things New