A Fourth Church Sermon by Cynthia Campbell

July 25, 1999 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Finish Then, Thy New Creation

Dr. Cynthia Campbell
President, McCormick Theological Seminary

Revelation 21:1–6, 22–27

Prayers of the People by John H. Boyle

“It was a gorgeous summer day in New England. Bright sun, puffy clouds, field and forest flush with the abundance of a wonderful growing season. I was visiting a good friend who shares my interest in historic churches and religious sites. This year, Barbara was anxious to show me the Miller Chapel and Ascension Rock. This is the setting where, in the 1830’s a group of Christians predicted that Christ would return, gather up the faithful, and ascend back to heaven. It is a founding shrine for the Seventh Day Adventists.

As we drove away, Barbara began singing an Adventist hymn which joyfully anticipates the second Advent, the second coming of Christ. After the song, I remarked that of all the phrases of the creed, I have the greatest difficulty with: “He shall come again to judge both the living and the dead.” The so-called “second coming of Christ,” I confessed, has never had much place in my everyday experience of faith.

My friend, who is a serious student of Christian faith as well as of American religious history, said to me rather sharply: “then how do you hope? If there isn’t some promise that justice and goodness and life will prevail over evil and death; if you don’t believe God is going to do something about all of that, how do you hope?” A good question: how do you hope and for what?

I cannot know how many sermons you have already heard about the new millenium. In just a few months, we will be writing dates that begin (for the first time ever in Western calendars) with the number “2.” I know that we are sick to death of Y2K jokes. I am weary of Y2K compliance surveys and even of Y2K preparations. Chicago’s O’Hare Airport spent much of the month of May installing and testing Y2K compliant equipment which resulted in days of flight cancellation and delays. The theory is that when flights are cancelled in early January, they will really be able to claim that its only the weather!

Somewhat more troubling, however, are the activities of those who believe that this turn of the calendar will bring with it social, political and economic chaos. There are magazines, newsletters and, of course, web-sites dedicated to helping people prepare. Stockpiling food, water, clothing and weapons is recommended. Some people are headed for remote areas with all of these supplies so as to be far away from society’s meltdown as possible. At least one congregation in Florida is building an entire compound for its members, complete with its own water supply and generator. The TV show I saw about them featured a debate as to whether they would take in neighbors in need or use firearms to defend themselves against the hungry and homeless.

January 1, 2000: it’s just another New Year’s Day. And yet, of course, it isn’t. It is not even just another century. It is the millenium. Aside from the fact that one thousand is a nice, big round number, the thousand year-mark has a particular significance in western and Christian culture, thanks mostly to the Revelation to John, a saga full of beasts and battles that ends triumphantly at the gates of the New Jerusalem.

Christianity has, in my opinion, wasted a great deal of time trying to take this fantastic, poetic piece literally. Various Christian groups believe that the Revelation is a puzzle in which every element describes a particular event that has happened or must happen. Many Christians believe that if we can just break the code, we will know where and when Christ will return, fight the battle, defeat death and usher in the new creation. Literal readings of the Revelation to John have led to the creation of communities like the Shakers and the Amana colonies and to denominations like the Adventists where Christian faith and practice are formed by waiting for Christ’s imminent return. It has also led to dangerous political strategies, such as the active support of armament sales to Israel by various fundamentalist Christian groups. They support these measures so that an army will be ready to fight the final battle with Satan in the Jezreel valley, not far from Jerusalem.

As Presbyterians, we come from a part of Christian tradition that has shown little interest in the Revelation to John, at least from the standpoint of reading it as a holy code which, once broken, will predict the future. Most in the Reformed tradition have argued that the future is in God’s hands and that what is important is the essence of God’s promise and not the roadmap or the timetable.

Having said that, however, it may be easy for some of us to forget the promise. By not wanting to get hung up in where this or that natural disaster fits into a sequence described in the Bible, we may lose sight of the power of the vision. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more.“ In this new creation, death is no more. The natural limit that shapes the life of every conscious being, the boundary of everything that lives, will be removed, and there will be only life. Tears and pain will be no more because the things that break our hearts and break our bodies will have come to an end. We need this vision because it reminds us that these very things—tears and pain, suffering and grief—are not God’s plan for God’s creation.

It is fascinating to compare biblical visions of this new creation with popular imagery. C. S. Lewis, for example, pictured rolling hills, lush green meadows in the full beauty of spring flowers. What the Revelation sees is a city: the new Jerusalem. It has often been remarked that the Bible begins in the garden but ends in the city. When God comes to dwell with the new humanity in the new creation, they are not back in the garden, but in the city. . . in the very place most symbolic of human ingenuity, human initiative and human creativity.

Have you ever noticed that the cartoons about people meeting Saint Peter at the “pearly gates” often show a disconnected portion of fencing with a gate set on a bed of clouds? The whole point of the gate is that it leads into the city. Go to Jerusalem today, and you enter the old city through one of its several gates. God’s promise is not a return to the creation God designed but the renewal, renovation if you will, of the human design.

In the 1960s a young theologian by the name of Harvey Cox wrote a book that has made him famous for the rest of his life. The Secular City was a stunning analysis of the challenge of urbanization and secularization for American religious life. The massive migration of population from rural to urban centers, Cox argued, would “cut the nerve of traditional religion.” City life would bring people out of religious and cultural enclaves, into contact with one another, and thus weaken the hold of traditional lifestyles and signal the demise of religion as we know it.

While many of Cox’s observations and predictions have been realized, and while life in urban America is fraught with challenge and sometimes with danger, religion has not departed from the American landscape nor has God departed from the city. As we move into the twentyfirst century, the majority of people in the United States (indeed in the world) live in cities. This ancient promise thus has new power and import: the new heaven and new earth is the home of the city. God recreates not only God’s creation but ours as well.

The branch of Christian faith where we make our home believes that the promises of God are on the one hand, convictions about what God will do and on the other, outlines for what we are to do while waiting for God’s promises to be fulfilled. The vision of a safe and beautiful city to which all peoples come and where they will live in peace and safety is a challenge to us as we live in our cities. We who share the vision must shape the city; if we sing about streets of heaven, we must work for safe streets; if we believe that God will wipe away every tear, we must make sure there are no homeless or hungry people and no abandoned children.

In 1984, Allan Boesak was the preacher/Bible study leader for the annual meeting of the Presbyterian Church. He devoted every session to the Book of Revelation. Day by day, he helped us see what these fantastic visions and extravagant images meant for people who were struggling against the powers of evil and oppression that was the system of apartheid. For the first time, I began to realize that perhaps I am not moved by those visions because for me, things are pretty much OK. Life may not be great in every way or all the time, but things are acceptable.

But are they? Is it acceptable for over twenty percent of young children in this country to live below the poverty level? Is it acceptable for this nation to have the highest percentage of our population in prison than any western democracy? Is it acceptable for death by gunfire to be a leading cause of death among children?

There is so much you and I simply do not meet on a daily basis, so much we don’t see, so much we take for granted. What we need, I think, is a little bit of holy dissatisfaction—the sense that things are not as they should be, not as God intends, and not what God has promised.

“How do you hope?” My friend’s challenge made me re-think my rash theological judgment. We hope because we have been given a vision. We hope because we believe the vision comes from God and carries with it God’s power to make it come to pass. Y2K will come all too soon. January 1, 2000 will be just another day. It will be the beginning of a new millenium. It will be an opportunity to hear again the call of the One who has promised to make everything fresh and new. It will be a day to pray: “Finish, then, thy new creation; pure and spotless let it be. Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in thee.”

Prayers of the People
By John H. Boyle, Parish Associate

God of holiness and wholeness, your Word through scripture instructs us to make our requests known to you with thanksgiving. As we bring our concerns to you this day, we would preface our petitions with our thanksgiving for the beauty and wonder of the world, for the miracle of our birth and our bodies, for the wonder of the diversity of the human family in all its many varied expressions, for the wonder of your goodness and grace manifested in countless ways, and for the marvel of your love for all made known in Jesus Christ.

Gracious God, without the blessing of whose presence not even a sparrow falls to the ground or a soul is lost at sea, we praise you that you have loved us into life and will, we dare to believe, sustain us in grief and hold us in death.

For all who by life and labor and by sacrifice of self have ministered to us and served the common good, we give you thanks. We are grateful for your Church which, at its best, flings open wide doors of welcome, and makes pathways of opportunity for growth to all who seek healing for their brokenness, rest for their souls, challenge for their minds, and the call of service for their lives.

In your mercy, loving God, befriend all who are in bondage of any sort, all whose wounds draw blood, all who shed blood and who give blood for the sake of others, and all whose wounds of the spirit draw no blood at all.

In your mercy bless the leaders and the people of those nations most torn by strife and conflict, and may your peace be both sought and realized in their lands.

Creator God, you promise to make all things new. You promise to do a new thing. You promise to make us new. But we are a suspicious lot, O God, and we want to know what the catch is, what string is attached to the promise, and what is the down side of the deal. Besides, we know that to be made new requires change and, however painful or problematic, the way we are is familiar to us. We not only wear the chains we forge in life, we’ve grown accustomed to them, and it would be difficult to give them up for something new and unfamiliar—like freedom from bondage. So, O God, we need you to help us replace the idol we have made out of our particular bondage so as to acknowledge you as our God, and to experience your power transforming us from remnants of brokenness and bondage into manifestations of your glory and saving grace.

Eternal God, in the sometimes chaotic and turbulent ferment of our lives and in your world, we feel a bit like the pilot of a plane who can no longer see the horizon where heaven and earth meet, and we become disoriented, even panic stricken, as we try to get our bearings, get back on course, and get control of our lives before we plunge into the sea of disillusionment, despair, or even that of the darkness of death. Virtues and vices have a way of getting all mixed up in our thinking, and what is right and what is wrong is not always clear to us because any decision or choice we may make seems to have particles, if not large chunks, of both good and bad, of both right and wrong.

Help us to see how our virtues have become vices, and open our eyes to the hidden virtue that may life buried in any perceived vice. If we have any inordinate appetite for acquisition, help us to hunger after your righteousness and justice. If we would be greedy, help us to be greedy for the welfare of those who are destitute. If we would be angry, help us to be outraged at the injustice suffered by others. If we would be jealous, help us to be jealous for the well being of the oppressed. If we would be covetous, help us to covet the best gifts of love and compassion toward those who hurt.

So may the good thing begun in us by your grace be brought to completion by your love.

We pray in the name of Love Incarnate, even Jesus our Lord and Savior, and with the words he taught others to pray saying:

The Lord’s Prayer. Amen.