City Planning: Christian Style

There is a stunning image in the book of Revelation; it is the author’s depiction of the ideal Promised Land. He calls it the New Jerusalem, a vision of hope for all God’s people. There are twelve gates that stand open: no one will be shut out. There are trees that provide fruit all year round. There’s a river of living water rushing through the city with no hint of flooding. Amazingly, there is no sun or moon because there is no more night. No GE light bulbs there. No DMEA.




What do we make of such a vision?



At first glance, it’s tempting to think of this as Utopia. No more tears, no more worries, no more death. Come on, this is paradise. Every religion promises such a spot, doesn’t it? Islam has its Garden of Allah replete with endless virgins to play with. The Norse legends depict a warlike Valhalla where the gods get to show off their physical prowess and brag about past conquests. The playwright Marc Connelly provides another image - heaven seen through the eyes of the Negro slave: a non-stop fish fry in green pastures complete with cigars and fresh batches of “firmament” that get you tipsy without embarrassment or hangovers.



While such fanciful images of paradise sound ideal, others wonder. George Bernard Shaw described such an after life as being like spending an eternity in a candy shop, a sure cause for ennui and eternal boredom. I remember Frank, a banker friend, who said he had a lot of anxiety about going to heaven. While golden streets might be a novelty, if gold was that plentiful, what was the point of having it? Besides, he had no desire to spend eternity sitting on a cloud and plucking harp strings.



Then what shall we make of this vision of John? Such literal interpretations seem to create as many problems as they solve. But if we look below the surface, I think we find an intensely satisfying promise. For one, these visions are about life.



The Tree of Life



Death has always been the great insult, the implacable enemy that refuses to go away. It is not surprising that a promise of eternal life would be the ace in the hole for believers. But we must be careful with this promise. Endless life, while it seems to satisfy a deep human hunger, if it is ever granted, can be a punishment of its own. Myths and legends are filled with examples of hapless folk afflicted with eternal life. One familiar version is of the Wandering Jew. He is a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the thirteenth century. The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming. In this instance, just living forever is no blessing, it is a terrible curse.



Endless living is not enough. The true gift is being truly alive. The images in Revelation are dynamic rather than static. Fruit and fresh water, growing, flowing, movement, that is the heart of these promises. The Gospel of John sums it up succinctly when Jesus remarks, “I came that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.” At the end of the Gospel, the author strikes that note once again when he says,



Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may[a] believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)



The question we must ponder is not, how long will we live, but how alive will we be while we’re living. What keeps us from being fully, vibrantly alive? I read an obituary recently of Doris “Granny” Haddock, a campaigner for election reform who died on March 9th at the age of 100. Do you remember her? A tireless campaigner for the cause in which she believed, she set out to walk from Pasadena, California to Washington DC to capture attention to her cause. Remember? She was 90 at the time and it took her a year to complete her trek. You may say, “So what?” I say, praise God. Whether you adopt her cause, you must applaud her example of life. She was still planning more actions when she died. Another example comes to mind: a group of Senior Citizens in Mass. who have established a name for themselves singing concerts of Rock and Roll music. The results is chronicled in a delightful documentary called “Young at Heart”. Their message? It’s not how old you are, it’s how alive you are.



The New Jerusalem is that place where we are thrillingly, vibrantly alive. And people like Doris Haddock show us we don’t have to wait until we get to heaven to live there.



No Lights



Another sign of the New Jerusalem is the absence of artificial light. There isn’t even a sun. An odd distinction, don’t you think? It sounds like we might as well all be blind! Ah, be careful. That is hardly heaven. In fact, a quick survey of the Bible shows that “darkness” is the exact opposite of heaven. The book of Job strikes this note over and over again, and the Psalms continually refer to the similarity between darkness and Sheol, another word for hell.



Then what is there about heaven that is so blessed when a chief characteristic is the absence of the sun? The answer, quite simply, is God. The need for light has been satisfied by the glory of God. Frankly, here the vision of John carries me beyond my knowledge and understanding. I am at a loss how to explain this mystery. I can call upon the works of imagination that have satisfied others. For instance, Dante, at the climax of his classic “The Divine Comedy” an epic poem describing hell and heaven, completes his masterpiece by attempting to describe God himself in the center of the universe. It is not a satisfactory description. God is simply light, a blinding light, so bright, so intense that the poet falls silent. He can say no more.



Frankly, this image fails to move me. I am more attracted to a different kind of light, the kind that accompanies that wonderful “ah ha” moment when we glimpse some new insight or truth. While a flash of light may accompany this vision, it’s hardly the point, is it? It’s the seeing, not the light. It’s the understanding, not the view. It’s the amazing “ah ha” that reshapes everything we thought we knew or understood. It’s Paul saying “when I was a child I understood as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” It’s Job saying “I thought I knew, but I did not. Now I understand”.



Not that such knowing and understanding are necessarily clear. No, not at all. More often - no, I’d go even further and say - always they are course corrections that steer us away from what we thought we knew into a new unknown where our journey continues for the next glimpse of insight. John Henry Newman captures this in his beloved hymn “Lead Kindly Light”



"Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th'encircling gloom,

Lead Thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home,

Lead Thou me on!

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me."



Not the whole journey, just the single step. That is what God’s light grants us. Frankly, it is probably all we can bear. In John’s gospel, Jesus remarks to his disciples a the Last Supper, “There is much more that I would tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” (John 16:12) We walk in the light God provides as we need it and to the extent that we can comprehend it. And that is all.



No Temple



Perhaps the most remarkable omission in the New Jerusalem is the absence of a Temple. How can God permit such an oversight? Down through history, temples have been essential. We literally grade civilizations by their temples, cathedrals, altars. Show me where you worship and honor your God and you show me the true nature of your soul. I think it no accident that explorers and missionaries begin their conquests by obliterating the temples of the pagans and replacing them with their own altars



When John wrote his vision, he lived in a culture replete with Roman and Greek temples to every God under the sun. While the Jews had prohibited statues, they still revered the memory of their temple, and their most recent grief had to do with its destruction. Surely heaven would restore that temple with a grandeur the human imagination could not comprehend. Yet John sees no temple. There isn’t even a vacant lot for future construction.



And for good reason: John is told God no longer needs a temple. God is not living in an ark, or a building, God has become a living temple. The greatest promise of all is the simple assertion: God is completely with us. All separation is over.



The Gospel of John had already tried to describe this. It quotes Jesus as praying:



It is not for these alone that I pray, but for those also who through their words put their faith in me. May they all be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, so also may they be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. The glory which you gave me I have given to them, that they may be one, as we are one; I in them and you in me, may they be perfectly one. Then the world will know that you sent me, and that you loved them as you loved me.

- John 17: 20-23



This vision of oneness, unity, wholeness is the ultimate depiction of heaven and, again, need not wait until we die to be realized. We live in that promise today. But not in the static sense that now we are one big happy family, we all see alike, all prejudice is gone, good will exists among all people, the divisions amongst Christians are overcome, etc, etc, etc. No, as with our other visions, this is the promise that is being realized, and the final outcome is not only beyond our vision, it’s even beyond our comprehension.



The Lord’s Prayer



Each Sunday we pray, “They Kingdom come, thy will be done”, little thinking how these words are a reminder that the kingdom is coming and we are already a part of it. The vision in Revelation is describing this coming also. The Early Christians were blessed to have it for their encouragement and consolation. But it was no Hollywood preview of coming attractions. It was a challenge for the here and now. The distinguished psychotherapist Victor Frankel, a survivor of the holocaust, wrote an incredible book about his internment in a concentration camp called “From Death Camp to Existentialism”. In it he said that simply being told of a hope for tomorrow, or next week, or sometime in the unspecified future would not have been enough to keep him alive. His hope had to be in today, and it was grounded in an imperishable conviction that what was happening to him was known to God and mattered. Being Jewish, he did not have the vision of heaven we find in the book of Revelation, but he had the essence of it anyway. He lived where there was no need of light, no need of temple, no need indeed of longevity of life. He lived in the spirit of God.



May we live there too. Amen.