Revelation 21:1-6a
A new heaven, and a new earth. A place with even the sea, that old undrinkable saltwater symbol for chaos, finally gone. A new city, a City even, sans sadness.
I think it would be incorrect to say that this vision is the Christian hope. The Christian hope is something more like 'living forever in God's love.' But this is its visualization, a vision and revelation of the Christian hope. If John the Revelator had to imagine what a physical version of this hope must look like, well, he picks this, and the beauty of that city not only characterized the hope of Augustine in his book writing and the Puritans in their founding of their new communities in the Americas, but it's downright catchy to all of us. A world re-made, ended and begun again, a world closer to God's presence, without the chaos, without the death and grief. It doesn't claim there will be no anxiety, but here's hoping.
It's too bad it gets co-opted by some who turn it into the vision of their particular hope and place their own idol at the center, the 'left behinds' of the world. We let them steal it, I think. Not our Christian hope--we keep our hope--but we lose its instantiation, its physicality, and we retreat into the abstract because we let someone else take what John the Revelator so desperately wanted us to have: something concrete to hold onto when chaos is up to the neck, rather than vanished.
I do believe that our best bet is to find some way to re-grab onto the concrete. We all know the usual apophatic warnings, and we all meditate deeply on the many meanings of keeping an idol, but sometimes we do this so much that we give up concrete hope, visible hope, the hope of an actual city. We spend so much time deconstructing various hopes as idolatrous: we take Eusebius and maybe even Acts for their hope in the Roman Empire; we take Rome apart for its authoritarian hope; we take Anglicans apart for their hope in relationship; we take the Enlightenment apart for its hope in Human Progress.
I could easily go one--we deconstruct everything, all notions, revealing their hidden idolatry. And this has often been good for us. The Roman Empire was not the fruition of God's kingdom. Roman Catholic hope in papal authority seems misplaced if not foolish; Anglicans too easily pretend relationship rather than experience its depths; the Enlightenment led naturally to its colonialism, its genocides.
But: we have got to find some concrete hope, people. Without it, we--and I really don't mean academics, I mean everybody--sit on our own piles, afraid to share our private hopes because they, too, get deconstructed. We must have a city, a city of God, something to work toward. Because once we have surrendered our vision, our hope languishes. A hope without a concrete appearance is like desiring to become a pro basketball player without my ever setting foot in a court.
What concrete hopes can we have? How can we support each other in those hopes? I can only think of concrete hope that guides our time that has survived, and it is losing its grip a bit. It was offered by our modern prophet, MLK Jr., who offered his vision, his dream of a city where race had lots its negative power.
If we are going to join in the work for that heavenly city, what, exactly, does it look like to you? And what are we going to do to make space for it?
