IMAGINE!
Scripture: Psalm 148 Revelation 21:1–6
Preached by the Reverend Kathy Peters
May 1, 2010

It was a spring day about like the one we experienced yesterday. The sun was shining, life was bursting out in trees and flowers, the air even smelled new and fresh and I was miserable. I was supposed to be home caring for a new baby but instead I was driving to a meeting after a miserable day at a job I hated.  Our baby had been still born that previous fall, our dreams were in shambles and to be truthful, God and I were not even on speaking terms….or so I thought! As I drove around the corner, ready to turn into the parking lot my eyes were suddenly opened to the beauty and hope for new life that was all around me and I could almost hear God saying…….death and sorrow are not the final answer, Kathy you cannot imagine all that I have in store for you! New life is possible….unclench that heart, open your eyes and your heart to all the possibilities that are before you.  I know many of you have heard my story before. It happened thirty years ago and by the following spring our son was on the way and life has indeed been very good to me.  I will not lie to you, there are still times when I can still feel the pain of that loss deep in my being but something happened that day that opened my heart once again to be able to embrace all that God had envisioned for me.
            The words that we heard from Revelation this morning are calling us to that same kind of opening up, that same kind of visioning, that same kind of hope that all things can be made new again. Revelation is a word that calls us to imagine a world in which God will make all things new not only in our own personal lives but in the world in which we live. Revelation is not about some future pie in the sky vision of a heavenly existence for those whom God deems worthy. It is about God’s dream for this world now. It is about a new heaven and a new earth even now. Just Imagine!

Author Wes Howard- Brook writes “To live in New Jerusalem is not to ‘get busy’ but to remove the blinders from our eyes and to see life as it really is, right here and right now. For the churches, this means not simply celebrating God’s reign in worship (although it does mean that), but living as God’s people right in the midst of ‘Babylon.’ To truly be church is to be New Jerusalem in the world: to be a place where God and God’s Lamb reign in justice and abundance for all people; a place whose gates are always open and whose light always shines; a place of great joy where the darkness of violence, exploitation, and death is banished (21:8). Revelation is not a word of doom and gloom, but a vibrant and exciting call to live now in God’s reign.” (From “Living in New Jerusalem”    By Wes Howard-Brook as quoted in Seasons of the Spirit Congregational Life Lent and Easter 2010 p. 117)

This is not a call to “look busy…Jesus is coming!”  Yes there are many disturbing and difficult to understand images and metaphors in Revelation but the overall message and this passage especially is not a call to prepare for the apocalyptic or destructive end of the world. It is not even a vision of the rapture in which, if we believe one interpretation, most of us will be “left behind” to deal while the true believers are in heaven with God.  Now I know it may sound a bit disrespectful to seem to “make fun” of others belief, but I think other’s interpretations of Revelation have left us so reluctant to look at what it might be saying to us that we miss an profound call by God to embrace here and now the possibilities for new life that God is laying before us. God wants to live with us now, right here in the midst of our city, in the midst of our world, in the midst of our Babylon, which the first hearers of this passage would have known meant the hostile outside world that was oppressing them and calling them to succumb to the ways of the world. Revelation was a word of hope to “the seven churches” of early Christianity who were struggling to be in a world that was hostile to all that they hoped to be.

And has that hostile oppressive outside world changed very much…some I hope but obviously not enough:
John Lennon first asked us in 1971 to imagine a world in which there was no war, in which all would have enough to eat and that all that divides us country, culture, possessions, religion etc. might cease to exist. His words still speak to us today!
“You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one”     (Imagine by John Lennon)
In one of his last sermons, Martin Luther King Jr. expressed his sense that the New Jerusalem was both a future and a present reality, a wonderful vision of justice in which believers could participate even now in the present.
He said, “Thank God for John, (who is said to have written Revelation) who centuries ago, out on a lonely, obscure island called Patmos caught a vision of a New Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, who heard a voice saying, ‘Behold I make all things new — former things are passed away.’ God grant that we will be participants in this newness. … If we will but do it, we will bring about a new day of justice and brotherhood and peace. And that day the morning stars will sing together.” (as quoted in Homiletics May 2010  p. 12)  If we will but do it!!
So I end where I began last week……..what is the point of all this?  What does it mean to be a believer today? What difference does it make to identify ourselves as a Christian? What is keeping your heart clutched shut and afraid and how is God asking you to open your eyes and see?  What is God asking this church community to dream and embrace as our future enfolds? Who among us will be bold enough to IMAGINE and then act?
Creator of all that
has been, all that
is, and all that
shall be, come to
us today. Wipe
every tear from
our eyes, that we
might behold all
things made new
by your saving love. Amen.  (from Seasons of the Spirit Congregational Life Lent and Easter 2010 p. 112)