Revelation 21:1-4, 22 – 22:5
When I was younger, I thought that the whole point of the Christian faith was to live a life good enough to get into heaven. We were to follow the example of Jesus as his faithful disciples, to practice those things that Jesus did, so that we could go to heaven and be with him forever. And heaven was always talked about as a place that anybody and everybody would want to go to. There would be streets of gold and gates made out of pearls, mansions and angel songs.
Here in Revelation 21 and 22, we find a passage that is often read at funeral services to provide comfort to grieving families. I know that I use it – or at least a part of it – in almost every funeral or memorial service that I have conducted. We read about God being with us, wiping away every tear from our eyes, in a place where there will be no more pain, no more death, nor more mourning or crying, because there will never be any reason to cry. There will be light twenty-four hours a day, even without a sun or a moon, because the glory of God provides the light. The river of the water of life will flow through heaven, and the tree of life will grow on each side. God’s people will see him face to face and they will reign with him forever and ever.
While this is, in fact, quite a wonderful vision, I think that when we see it only as a description of heaven, we are missing the point. John doesn’t say that we will go “up” to heaven; he says that heaven will “come down” to us. Michael Pasquarello III, a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, writes, “I have often wondered if limiting our use of Revelation to dealing with disaster, at the end of life or the time of death, might actually limit our vision of God dwelling in our midst in the present.” And Greg Carey, New Testament professor at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, adds to this thought: “Many reject Revelation on the grounds that it … places its hope in a pie-in-the-sky future. That objection misses the point of the new Jerusalem … [The] new Jerusalem comes down from heaven to earth. It celebrates the embodied life of culture, food, and beauty …[And] the new Jerusalem evokes faithful discipleship in the present, rather than an empty hope that sits and waits.”
I find myself connecting this passage with a line in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” It seems to me that the goal of the Christian faith isn’t so much to work towards getting to the kingdom of heaven at the end of your life, as it is to work to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth now. To bring about in this world the kind of life that we will be living in the next. Arthur Paul Boers, in his book, Lord, Teach Us to Pray: A New Look at the Lord’s Prayer, says that the phrase “on earth as it is in heaven” is the very heart of the Lord’s Prayer, and, in fact, the very heart of the gospel. God intends for earth to reflect heaven; for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We are not meant to be so concerned about whether or not we will get into heaven; that kind of worry isn’t even Biblical. As John Stoner puts it, “[T]he goal of life is not basically to get to heaven; it is to walk with God.” And walking with God means living the kingdom life here on earth. Boers writes, “Heaven is coming down. Heaven is trying to get in here (and will ultimately succeed) … God intends to take over the earth, and we are representatives in that task.”
In the gospels, Jesus makes it clear that he has come to bring about the coming of the kingdom of God on earth. In Luke 17, he tells the people that the kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, but the kingdom of God is among them. And when John the Baptist sends word from prison to ask Jesus, “Are you the one to bring the kingdom?”, Jesus answers that the work of God’s kingdom is being done on earth: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them.
There is only one problem with all of this. Some of us pray the Lord’s Prayer, but perhaps we don’t really mean it when we get to this phrase. Maybe we have our doubts about God’s kingdom coming on earth and God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. John Killinger writes in his book, The God Named Hallowed: The Lord’s Prayer for Today:
What if one day we were all saying the Lord’s Prayer and suddenly, after we had said “Thy kingdom come,” somebody stepped to a microphone and shouted, “Stop! You don’t really mean it!” It would make us think, wouldn’t it, about whether we really do mean it. And, the chances are, we don’t. For if we were truly sincere in praying for God’s kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, it would mean some radical changes in the way we live. Many of us would go to the bank tomorrow and withdraw our money and give it to fight hunger and poverty in the world. Some of us would spend the afternoon going to see our enemies and asking their forgiveness … We would all rearrange our daily schedules to include more time for loving one another and worshiping God. But maybe we have not realized this because we have not understood the meaning of the kingdom.
One problem is that we have trouble believing that God’s kingdom is at hand and is already among us. When we look around us, what we see is secularism, materialism, consumerism, war, violence, crime, hunger, poverty, corporate greed, political division, global pandemic, and a denomination in the process of splitting. But there are other things going on out there that we may not see at first. There are people living out the kingdom of heaven on this earth right now. There are people in Poland and other countries who are living our Jesus’s words to take in the stranger. There are others who are working to provide food for the hungry refugees from the Ukraine and provide housing and jobs for them. There are people who are working against the divisiveness of American politics, reaching across the aisle to try to bring cooperation and compromise.
I have been a part of a program called Creating a Culture of Renewal for two years now. At the beginning, all the participants read a book called Dream Like Jesus, by Rebekah Simon-Peter, the person who created the program. In it, she urges us to dream Jesus-like dreams, big dreams. And she says that Jesus’s big dream is found in the Lord’s Prayer, in this very phrase: Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. That is what Jesus had in mind all along. That the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, would come about on the earth, as his followers put into practice his teachings. Love your enemies. Forgive seventy times seven times. Feed the hungry. Give water to the thirsty. Go the extra mile. Visit the sick and the prisoners. Confront evil. Give to those who are in need.
Rebekah talks about miracles happening when we dream those big dreams. At first, before I started the first year of the program, I kind of questioned the promise that God would work miracles in my churches. But over the past two years, I have heard the stories of other pastors who have worked through the program. Steve Trout, who is retired now, who served in New Mexico, worked with other clergy in his town to virtually eliminate hunger through providing hot meals and also operating a food pantry. A pastor from Maine wanted to provide free wood for those who still heat their homes with wood-burning stoves. They started small, but now provide many cords of wood each year. They also just received a three-year, $25,000 a year grant to expand their ministry.
I am seeing miracles happen in the Sunapee church. Before I really formed my vision into words, some of the members were already acting on it. My vision was for our church to become more of a leader in our community, more of a center for ministry and mission, to connect with town leaders in new ways. Before I really communicated that to the church board, Sue Maurer was having the same vision for the UMW and wanted to connect with the town welfare officer and other folks to see how the UMW could respond to needs in our town. As I set about the task of gathering a vision team, not only did I receive a “yes” from every church member I asked, but I also have had the town welfare officer join the team and she invited the town manager to participate. On top of that, the town welfare officer contacted Sue to see if we might be interested in hosting monthly community meals, and at our first Vision Team meeting she said that she hoped our church could become a center for the town again as it had been in the past. And not only that, the church received a generous donation that will pay for improvements to our kitchen that will help us as we work towards providing the community meals and hosting other events for the town. As a matter of fact, the town manager has a long list of ways that she envisions partnering with our church. All of that was clearly God’s doing, not mine. It is a miracle. It is God’s kingdom coming on this earth, as we work to serve the members of our community. As John Killinger puts it, the kingdom of God is about “a community of love in which we all try to do the will of God, the way the angels in heaven do; in which we love our enemies and go the second mile and share everything as if it belonged to others and not to us.”
John Killinger states, “The kingdom is here – in Christ. It is already establishing its beachhead – in us. That is why praying ‘Thy kingdom come’ is so radical. It is personal. When we pray it, we are asking that it come in us, that God use us … in the world, that his will begin in us and then spread to others.” That can be a scary prayer, a risky prayer. But it is also an exciting prayer. Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. I want to be a part of that! And I want all of my churches to be a part of that, too. That’s why, in a couple of weeks, we are going to begin a study of the Dream Like Jesus book. In fact, I have copies available today! There will be an in-person group at the Sunapee church on Tuesday mornings at 10:00 beginning on May 31, and a Zoom group meeting on Thursday evenings at 7:00 beginning on June 2. I would like for as many people as possible to participate, or at least to read the book. It can change you and our churches.
Steven Curtis Chapman recorded a song some years ago that talks about what it means for the kingdom to come in and through us in the world. It is called, Coming Attractions, and it goes like this:
A day is coming when all will be fed
There won’t be a single hungry mouth begging for bread
A day is coming when every disease
Will be swept away as mercy floods through every street
A day is coming, a day is coming
A day is coming
A day is coming that won’t fade to night
There’ll be no more hatred to endure, no wars to fight
There’ll be no more orphans, no prisoners or slaves
And all the tears of death and pain will be washed away
A day is coming, it’s surely coming
A day is coming, but until that day comes
Let your kingdom come in me, let your will be done in me
Here on earth as it is and as it will be in heaven
Show your glory to the world, tell your story to the world
Let my life be a preview of coming attractions
Shine your light through me, live your life through me
Let the world see your kingdom come in me
