Sermons

May 13 2007

Rev. Scott Swanson

Easter 6 - Rev 21:10, 22-22:5

In the King James Version of the Bible, Proverbs 29:18 says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." It's a fascinating notion to me: where there is no vision, the people perish. It is as though vision is hard wired into us. Even as we may choose to practice the spiritual discipline of living with gratitude in the present moment (which, by the way, I am increasingly convinced is the path we ought to be following), there is something about a hoped for future that does not yet exist that draws us.

For me this is one of the non-literal ways it makes sense to say that humans are created in the image of God. Not that God has a body that looks like a human body, but that humans, like God, possess the ability to perceive things as they are, but also as they might be. And that vision becomes a precursor to creation.

The book of Revelation relates a series of visions given by God to a man named John, exiled on an island in the Mediterranean called Patmos. Like most visions God gives over the milennia, they are visions of a world different from the one the people receiving the vision inhabit.

Their purpose is not to predict the future as much as it is to give new and deeper meaning to the present and change the future in the process, or to offer a picture of God's future for us to work for. The American art critic and author Rebecca Solnit wrote: "The future is not something you predict and wait for. It is something you invent daily through your actions." As Christians we might add to that and say that it is the dream God places in us, and invites us to participate in giving birth to.

John's visions describe a world very different from the one he and his readers inhabit: a world where the domination systems of empire, militarism, avarice, and greed are replaced by systems of service and mutuality, demonstrated most fully in Christ crucified - the slain lamb on the throne. They are visions of a world where God is in charge, and the rulers and systems of this world are not.

John envisions two cities: Rome and the New Jerusalem, the city of God. Today's text gives some of the detail of that future city: a place of beauty and light and peace, where God is fully present. The story from Acts is also full of visions, where Paul is challenged to go to a place he would otherwise not go, engage people he would otherwise not engage, so that hearts and people are changed, and a new church is born - a church that one day will be listed as one of the seven churches of Asia to whom the book of Revelation will be written.

Where there is no vision, the people perish, because it is in our God-given nature to see a world with more peace, more love, more shalom than we see now and to long for that world. But do we invent that world daily through prayer and action, or do we despair of ever seeing such a day, swamped as we are in simply getting through this day? I don't know about your household, but in ours by the time we've sorted out what to do for dinner there seems precious little time for the vision. And yet it calls to us ... persistently woos us.

I had forgotten until this week what I once knew: the origins of Mothers' Day. When Julia Ward Howe issued her Mothers' Day proclamation in Boston in 1870, it had nothing to do with what we think of now. It was this vision ... this very vision we're remembering together:

It dates to a time before women had political power when some believed that all that was needed to bring peace to the world was to put women in charge. But still it speaks of the vision:

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870 -- by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. ...

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe our dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient and the earliest period consistent with its objects, To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of international questions, The great and general interests of peace.

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth ... and [I saw] the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. ... Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life ... and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations."

It's the same song! They're singing the same song! And it is our song. It is the song of the vision that God has birthed in us so that we may in turn birth it in the world. During all our visioning work a couple of years ago I heard a number of people comment on the importance of Langley United being a city church - being located in the city of Langley.

As we contemplate John's vision of the holy city, I find myself wondering what our vision of this city might be. The homeless count in Langley five years ago was 17, two years ago it was 54, and now it is close to 100. After several years of a booming economy, the national child poverty rate is the same as it was in the early 1990s when Parliament unanimously passed a resolution to end child poverty in Canada by 2000. There are many other ways in which the city - and the world - in which we live cries out for the birth of a new and healing vision.

The gospel text for this week, which we did not hear, includes Jesus' parting words to his followers from John's gospel: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you ... Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid." When I am honest with myself, I have to admit that I have not taken the peace that Jesus has offered, and my heart is troubled, and I am afraid. And I am not alone. Ours is a world marked by fear and troubled hearts - in individuals, church, nations, as a species.

Part of why we gather as Christian community is to support one another as we speak honestly about the situations in which we find ourselves, to listen for God's good news, and to respond together with and for the Creator who loves and longs for us. The good news about our fear for the church is that in Jesus Christ we have already been offered the gift of God's peace. It is already ours. All we have to do is take that gift and make it our own.

Our hearts need not be troubled or afraid, for the peaceful water of life is running freely. It does not take many draughts of that water to loosen our fear-parched tongues, so that we can sing again the song - sing again the vision - and pray and labour to bring to birth with God that new city awash in the water -- in the river -- of life. Amen.

For more information or to comment on this sermon, please email Rev. Scott Swanson.