10/9/2016 0 Comments The Home of God is Among MortalsPreached on October 9, 2016
by Rev. Robin Bartlett at First Church in Sterling, MA Sermons are meant to be heard. You can hear this sermon and Toly Klebanov singing Over the Rainbow here. READING FROM THE BOOK OF REVELATION (Revelation 21: 1-7) 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. 2And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home* of God is among mortals. He will dwell* with them; they will be his peoples,* and God himself will be with them;* 4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ 5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ 6Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. 7Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. Sermon You and I think of heaven as an other-worldly place that we will get to some day. A “somewhere” place. Some of us Christians, in fact, are quite fixated on what happens in this life, only insofar as how it effects the next one. Some of us think that we need to be “good” to get there. Some of us think God is so good, that we will all get there someday regardless of whether we are, come hell or high water. Excuse the pun. Perhaps that it is why it is interesting that our text from Revelation this morning does not suggest that we will go to be with God somewhere else one day. In this apocalyptic text, an old world dies and a new world is born. God comes here to earth to be among us. God makes all things new right here where we already are. A new heaven, and a new earth. ‘See, the home* of God is among mortals. He will dwell* with them; they will be his peoples,* and God himself will be with them;* 4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ I bet some of us don’t like that idea. We are always looking for a better place to go that is outside of this world—from colonies on Mars to an other-worldly heaven. And for good reason. The world we live in can look terrifying and broken, much of the time. Right now, we are watching the unraveling of the most disgusting presidential election I have seen in my lifetime, the coverage of which has overshadowed Haiti. There are 900 dead in Haiti from Hurricane Matthew, and a subsequent cholera epidemic, and tens of thousands homeless. While many Christians might pray for God to wipe every tear from their eyes in an other-worldly heaven, perhaps a faithful response in addition is to send money to help rebuild. An even more faithful response might be to urge our lawmakers to do something to save our planet. Climate change will continue to effect the most vulnerable populations of the world until the powerful do something to ease the suffering of the powerless. See the home of God is among mortals! The Wizard of Oz was my favorite movie as a kid. I bet it was a lot yours’, as well. We watched it every year when it was on TV. When I was really young, my family and I only had a black and white TV. Color TVs had been invented, but we couldn’t afford to buy one. I remember the first time I saw The Wizard of Oz on a color TV. Do you remember? It was old technology, even in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. But it was still magical. In the beginning of the film, everything is in black and white in boring old Kansas. Dorothy is listless and angry because a mean old woman takes her beloved dog, and no one seems to have time for her, and she feels powerless. She dreams of going somewhere else, somewhere beyond the moon, beyond the stars, somewhere over the rainbow. It sounds like the way some people think of heaven—somewhere over the rainbow, where dreams come true, where troubles melt like lemon drops….somewhere out of this world of pain and mourning and crying and death, out beyond even the stars. It’s a place where one dreams of going. And then she gets her wish. A tornado comes, which feels like the end of the world, and Dorothy’s house flies into the air, over the rainbow, and ends up in the merry old land of Oz. It lands on wicked witch, destroying some evil in the process. And when Dorothy walks out of her door, everything is in color. And once Dorothy arrives in this idyllic place, this place that is beautiful and in technicolor, what’s notable is that she wants only to go home. She wants to be back on the black and white farm with the people who love her, despite their imperfections. She wants to be back in Kansas, even though there are weather events there like tornadoes that scare everyone and make them feel like the world is ending. And mean women. She never wants to look any further for her heart’s desire than her own back yard again. “There’s no place like home,” she says as she clicks her heels. And when Dorothy comes back home, she sees her old world with new eyes. I am a God who makes all things new. Even the familiar, even Auntie Em and the farmhands. Perhaps revelation simply points us to a new way of seeing our home. Greg Carey says: “Revelation does not imagine the saints escaping this world for a heavenly reward. On the contrary, the saints inhabit a brand new world created right where they live. … This new world hardly represents an escape from everyone else and their troubles. When Revelation says God has come down to dwell with mortals (21:3), it means it… Revelation envisions a renewal, not an escape.” See the home of God is among mortals. Do you all remember that Belinda Carlisle song from the ‘80s, Heaven is a place on earth? OK, I know not all of you were children of the ‘80s, but would you just indulge me and sing along if you know it? “ooo, baby do you know what that’s worth? Ooo, heaven is a place on earth. The say in heaven, love comes first, we’ll make heaven a place on earth. Ooo, heaven is a place on earth.” I think that’s good theology! I sometimes sing that in my head when I recite our mission statement —which includes the words, “committed to creating heaven on earth.” People ask me a lot what that looks like, or what that means—creating heaven on earth. In fact, we are building a whole retreat around the topic in March so that we can define it for ourselves. And I’m sure it means different things to different people here. “Ah, yes, this Cape Cod vacation is like heaven on earth.” Or, “this apple scone from Clearview farm tastes like heaven on earth.” But heaven on earth is a practice, an embodiment, not a thing or a feeling or a place. In Hebrew, one definition of heaven is “God’s dwelling place.” Our scriptures tell us that when God could no longer be contained by the heavens, the heavens came to earth in the form of a baby boy. God was born in human flesh in the person of Jesus. Jesus said, “in me, the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Jesus tells us in Luke that the Kingdom of God is within each of us. Heaven is as close as your own body and breath, as you are God’s dwelling place. See the home of God is among mortals! Creating heaven on earth is an insistence to live differently than the culture tells us we should in response to this grace. It’s an insistence on consistently seeing the old world we live in with new eyes. Do you remember the words to the Hallelujah Chorus? For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. |: Hallelujah! The kingdom of this world Is become the kingdom of our Lord, And of His Christ, And He shall reign for ever. There are two kingdoms—the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of this world. In the kingdom of this world: money reigns. In the kingdom of this world, only the strong survive. In the kingdom of this world, the marketplace determines who you are. In the kingdom of this world, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is a value. In the kingdom of this world, there are tribalistic in-groups and out-groups, and categories of human and sub-human. There is violence and death. In the upside down kingdom of heaven where Christ reigns, to become rich, you give your money away. In the upside down kingdom where Christ reigns, to get back at your enemies, you love them. In the upside down kingdom where Christ reigns, to become a leader, you become a servant. In the upside down kingdom where Christ reigns, to truly find life, you die to self. In the upside down kingdom where Christ reigns, all people are called beloved children of God, and treated as though that is true. Love wins, life wins, in this upside down kingdom of heaven. So, we create heaven on earth when we practice the principles of Love. And look for new life among the rubble of the old. We practice heaven on earth by feeding people, giving our money away, loving our enemies, becoming servants, lifting up the lowly, visiting the prisoner, and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. Revelation envisions a day of renewal of the earth home we inhabit, not an escape: a new heaven, and a new earth. My colleague Jake Morrill refers to this as the day “society will be re-ordered from the transient structures of Empire to the enduring and sustaining ecosystem of love.” Beloved, our commitment to create heaven here looks like this: searching for signs of the enduring and sustaining ecosystem of love amidst the structures of empire. I think our job is to see our own black and white world with new eyes—to look for God peeking through the curtain. To envision a renewal of our current world, and not an escape from it. It is our job to see the home of God among mortals. Can you see it? You and I woke up today on this beautiful fall morning and we looked upon the radiance of fall leaves turning the trees red gold yellow orange purple amazed because no matter how many falls we have lived through in New England, it still doesn’t cease to dazzle us. See the home of God is among mortals. This morning your dog licked your face, you had a hot cup of coffee, and you drank it in a warm kitchen. See the home of God is among mortals. This month, you needed comfort and were comforted. See the home of God is among mortals. This month, this year, you celebrated however many years of sobriety, or cancer remission, or parenthood, or single parenthood: this month, this year, you celebrated the day your life began again. See the home of God is among mortals. This month you forgave—truly forgave—an enemy, and a weight was lifted off of your chest. See the home of God is among mortals. This week you were forgiven again when you didn’t deserve it. See the home of God is among mortals. This year you loved with wild abandon, not worrying about what that would mean for your future broken heart. See the home of God is among mortals. Yesterday you watched people who came to lift the rubble in Haiti, to care for the dead, to comfort the mourners. An ecosystem of love built among destruction. See the home of God is among mortals. Mechtild of Madgeburg says that “The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw—and knew I saw—all things in God and God in all things.” May we see God all things in God and God in all things. May we see ourselves and each other as a home for God. May we see the earth we inhabit as a home for God. May we experience someday and somewhere as here and now, because there’s no place like home. They say in heaven, love comes first. We’ll make heaven a place on earth. Amen.
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AuthorRev. Robin Bartlett is the Senior Pastor at the First Church in Sterling, Massachusetts. www.fcsterling.org Archives
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