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FOR THE HEALIING OF THE NATIONS |
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Written by scott
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Sunday, 10 June 2007 |
FOR THE HEALIING OF THE NATIONS
Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:9-22:5; John 14:25-29
May 13, 2007
I was struck, when I read the full passage from the Revelation of John, by the names and varieties of rock, of stone, that were a part of his vision of the City of God. Jasper, sapphire, agate, emerald, onyx, carnelian, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth and amethyst. I went looking in my book of rocks and minerals and found that all the colors are there: reddish brown, deep blue, white and yellow and orange and clear, deep green, black, red, gray-green, green-blue, pale yellow and tawny orange, apple green, smoky brown, pink, lavender and purple. It set me to thinking. In John’s vision, the fantastic, beloved, awaited city of God would be built of materials of the earth—common stones, cut and polished and shaped to reflect the glory of God. And not just some stones—all of them, a rainbow of all of the wonderful, precious stones known to his culture.
Do you know, the ecumenical church really, really does not like the Revelation of John very much. In the three year cycle of the lectionary, passages from this book appear only ten times, five of them the passage we read today, the other five distributed among three other short passages from the book. This is not new. For centuries, the Church of England allowed only small portions of the book to be read at morning and evening prayers. In 1522, Martin Luther claimed that the Revelation is “neither apostolic nor prophetic.” If we put this general suspicion of the book together with its general capture by fundamentalist Christians who claim that it is an encoded prediction of historical events that will precede the Second Coming of Christ, we have ample understanding of why we mostly want to avoid dealing with John’s vision.
And yet, there is another point of view. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed for his active opposition to Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany, exhorted the church to be a community which hears the Apocalypse and resists the false principle of “inner-worldliness,” putting itself “at the service of those who suffer violence and injustice,” claiming that “the Church takes to itself all the sufferers, all the forsaken of every party and status.” His claim that the Church was called by this book to counter-cultural witness, to raise its voice in protest at the mistreatment of Jews, that claim has continuing resonance in our time, in this very time, as well.
What of the book then—what is it about? First of all, it is a vision, which, like dreams, is open to many interpretations. It is a vision, however that sprang from a particular historical context. In the late 90s, the Roman Emperor Domitian took actions against members of his court for the crime of “atheism”—which, in his case, meant refusing to acknowledge the divinity of the imperial line. Thus, Christians were persecuted as atheists because they would not take part in the one ‘religion’ that united the realm, the worship of the Emperor as God, as the supreme arbiter and valuer of all being. John, a pastor to seven churches in Asia Minor, the area of Turkey, was imprisoned on the island of Patmos. He knew that his people were being persecuted, and that sending word to encourage them, word that confronted Rome or the Emperor, would put his people in even greater danger of persecution, torture, or death. Moreover, he knew that some were advising Christians to accommodate themselves to Emperor worship, to go along with their bodies, doing what must needs be done, without really agreeing in their hearts, minds and souls. John saw this as the pathway to destruction of the soul and of the faith. He truly needed to counsel his troubled congregations, but not in direct and clear language.
It was in this situation, troubled, praying, searching for a way, that John had a vision, a vision of a great battle between good and evil, a vision built out of the Jewish history of Babylonian captivity and, as well, out of religious imagery that had come to Jewish people out of a religion that flourished in the area we now call Iran. Good and evil, order and chaos, light and dark, divinity and matter, these were represented in two forces, God and Satan, engaged in a great cosmic battle for dominance. The battle has raged around us, he saw, but good—God, Christ—has won, and the troubles we are in the midst of are only the death throes of the mighty dragon of evil, thrashing about as it dies. Christ has fought the battle with death and has won, John told his people, and we need only stay faithful to that conviction. We, oppressed, persecuted, we need not defeat evil. Indeed, we can’t defeat evil. But God can, and has. What we are called to do is to live our lives in faithfulness to that knowledge, to refuse, even in the midst of chaos and danger, to compromise our devotion to God. Those who turn to ways of accommodation, to cowardice, to idolatry of different kinds, they are the ones who will not enter into God’s realm, which is coming, coming very soon, even as the serpent is thrashing about in the final stages of death.
Do you hear the comfort and guidance the vision could give to a community wrestling with how to respond to an emperor who demanded worship and had the power to destroy those who would not worship him? Do you hear the call to courage—he has already lost, he just doesn’t know it yet. Be faithful, stay strong in your convictions, know that you will live on with the Lord.
And, how will it be, in that realm of God? There will be no death, no night, no hunger nor thirst. God will live amongst the people, who will live directly in God’s light. All the nations will be led by God; all the kings will honor God’s will; the leaves of the tree of life will heal the nations, all of them. Do you hear the echoes of the Genesis story of human failure and exile from Eden? The tree of life will now be the source of healing and people and nations will return to a condition where God can walk among them, can live in the midst of them.
And the city of God will be built of common stones, stones made beautiful by the cutting and polishing, but stones nonetheless. Stones, the common instrument of violence and death, stones would adorn the walls of the City of God. It brings to mind another scripture, from Isaiah, which promises that swords will be molded into plowshares, spears to pruning hooks. This is a vision of a peace to come, a peace that will come because it is the will and action of God, a peace that will transform the tools of war and violence into implements of peace and plenty and safe shelter.
Today is Mother’s Day, the day when we Americans place the most phone calls of the year, a day when we buy flowers and maybe take mothers out to dinner or send a card. Do you know that this honoring of mothers is a far cry from the intention of the day, as set forth by Julia Ward Howe?
Julie Ward Howe wrote the song, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, in 1861. She was an opponent of slavery who had visited a Union camp, early in the Civil War, and took up the challenge to write a song to inspire the soldiers with “uplifting” lyrics. Her original lyrics were these:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
He is trampling out the wine press, where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He hath loosed the fateful lightnings of his terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.
I have seen him in the watchfires of an hundred circling camps
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps,
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on.
I have read a burning Gospel writ in fiery rows of steel,
As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal,
Let the hero born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Our God is marching on.
He has sounded out the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
He has waked the earth's dull sorrow with a high ecstatic beat,
Oh! be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the whiteness of the lilies he was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that shines out on you and me,
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
Our God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, he is succour to the brave,
So the world shall be his footstool, and the soul of Time his slave,
Our God is marching on.
In the next decade, Julia Ward Howe came to a different point of view. War, she determined, and fighting, were not making the world better, or safer. Sickened by the carnage of the Civil War and its aftermath, she became an activist for a peaceful and just society for all. In 1870, she issued a call for a “Mother’s Day” and issued this proclamation:
Arise then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be or water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands w 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. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
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 out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have forsaken the plough and anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest 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.
So now the question comes to us. How will we honor the energy and practice of mothering? How will we keep faith with the idea that God has not left it to us to fight the evil dragons of our time—God calls us to a more faithful witness, that we can reshape the world through love. I read an interesting statistic this week. In the past 6000 years of human history, there have been over 27,000 recorded wars. War does not bring peace, or justice, or health for growing children. It is time for a new approach.
I came across a sweet little book, The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering, a story for anyone who thinks she can’t save the world, by Sharon Mehdi. It’s a short story, perhaps foolish, but I want to share it. Call it a grandmother’s prerogative. [read story]
Today at 1pm, I will stand quietly near the bell tower for 5 minutes, thinking about how I might begin to live peacefully. I invite you to join me if you wish.
This year, I have a grandson, a sweet little boy named Drew. In 18 years, he will be old enough to be drafted or recruited to go to war. Oh, God, I hope there will be no war that wants his dear life. And so, today, I ask you, in his name and in the name of every child you love, in the name of every mother and father whose heart will be broken if we do not act, let us find a way to use our beautiful stones to build the City of God, to put an end to war.
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