"THE IDEAL COMMUNITY"
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church
on Sunday September 24, 2000
Text: Revelation 21:1-10 and Zechariah 14:20-21
It was a very hot, humid and sticky day this past summer and I was tired and irritated and just dying to get out and get home but I had one other errand to run and I had to stop at the Eaton Centre. I took the subway to the Dundas Street Exit and got off the subway and climbed the stairs. In a mass of people there was a man sitting on the floor with a big sign in front of him and no sooner had I got to him when he almost grabbed me and said, "Excuse me, sir. I have a word for you.
I would like to share the Bible with you. I think you need this!" My heart skipped a beat and I thought, "Oh no, he's one of those restless radio listeners who thinks he can put me straight." Not wanting to be rude I listened to what he had to say and he said, "The world is coming to an end tomorrow." (Actually I was hoping it would come to an end right there to be honest.) But he kept on and started to pull out all these biblical texts to show that the world was coming to an end the very next day. I must admit I was somewhat relieved when I got home and woke up the next morning.
But so often, my friends, the bible is used and torn apart and different things are said to describe the end of the age and people read into these things an enormous amount of information. This type of literature that talks of the end or the end times is known as apocalyptic literature. It is literature that deals with the end, with the consummation of time, with the completion and fulfillment of God's plan. I must confess that there are times when I read these texts when I am a little confused and not quite sure what all of it means. I'm like a little boy who is sitting with his father in church one Sunday morning and the minister started to give a sermon about the end of the world. He said, "This is what it will be like: there will be thunder from the heavens, there will be earthquakes on the ground, there will be rushing winds and floods, there will be fire that will spew out through earthquakes." The little boy turned to his father and asked, "Daddy, does that mean we'll be let out of school early that day?" I feel like that sometimes when I read these texts; I'm not quite sure what some of the writers were on about. Nevertheless they are there. Nevertheless they are highly, highly instructive.
The passages read from Revelation and Zechariah are majestic passages. For all apocalyptic literature deals with three basic things. One is that people are feeling a sense of despair. They look at the world around them, they want the world to be better than it is so because of this great passion to make the world a better place, they lead to a second idea. That is that they have a craving for transcendence. They want God to step in and do something. They want God not only to be in heaven but to make and do something cataclysmic right here on earth that will change despair and bring new life. The third thing is that they contrast between the present age that has suffering and destruction of the environment, injustice, immorality and sin and they wait for a new age, one that will dawn and be glorious and victorious and full of life and hope and the reign of God.
I would like to suggest to you, my friends, that in the day and age in which we live, there are many people who I consider to be apocalyptic in their thinking but do so without a reference to God. There are people who look at the state of the world and they despair and they want it to be a better place. They want a sense of transcendence so they try to look to the mystical or the magical or something that is going to take them out of themselves. They want a new age, a new age that is dawning with a new mysticism with a new appreciation of what like should be. But that very apocalypticism that I see manifesting itself in so many things that we are being bombarded with today does so without any reference to God. For the writer Zechariah and for John in Patmos in the Book of Revelation they understood that the only one who makes things truly new is God. That the New Jerusalem, that heaven on earth, that the full justice and grace and power and light of God is something that is not just born in ourselves but is actually a gift by divine revelation and divine grace.
Such is the case, for example, in the writer of Zechariah in the Old Testament. He was despairing. He looked and saw that the Persians were ruling the land under Darius I and was wanting God to do something new. Here was a man who believed in the transcendence of God but wanted a Messianic figure like Zerubbabel to come and break in and to bring about something new. Here was a man who wanted the present age to end and a new age to come where the glorious temple of Jerusalem would be rebuilt. But at the heart of all that Zechariah said and believed was the profound conviction that although he waited for a day that would come in the end, between now and then, God was still at work transforming the world and bringing it into the light of his kingdom.
In the light of that, my friends, I think therefore that there are two very profound messages for us. Two messages particularly for those of you who are responsible for bringing up children in the world in which we live. Those of you who have agreed to help and support the parents who have brought their children here for baptism today, indeed the words of Zechariah speak loud and clear to us all.
The first thing that the words of Zechariah say to us is this: the ideal can become real.
There are two types of idealists in this world. The first are those who sort of have good ideas and good intentions, who through their own experience make up an ideal of what the world should be and want the world to conform to that particular ideal that they have. There are many idealists around. Many people have a particular vision of what they think reality should be, and they should be lauded for having such ideals, but it's simply not good enough.
There is a second group of idealists who are people who believe that the real ideal is actually objective, that the ideal rests in the heart of God and that God's desire is for the New Jerusalem, for heaven to be on earth. This is something that ends up becoming practical. In other words, it's not just pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die, it is a genuine belief that God has a will and purpose for humanity to follow. This you find in the writings of Zechariah. He had a vivid image and he uses vivid language to describe it. He describes it for example, as if the horses that existed in his time that are the horses of war, are transformed into the horses of peace. That the bowls that were being used in ordinary cooking would be consecrated for the sake of God. That the shimah of Israel, the glory of Israel, would not only be limited to the people of Israel but that the whole world might know that it is real.
You see, for Zechariah, he believed that the ideal community, the ideal world that you and I desire and seek is actually found in the heart of God himself. That there is no distinction between the sacred and the secular, that there is no distinction between what we consider our ideals and what is, but rather the two become one under the sovereignty of God.
The key is, though, do we embrace that ideal? Do we look to God first to bring things new? For Zechariah and for the great Haggai there was a belief that somewhere in heaven there is a New Jerusalem but that that Jerusalem should indeed manifest itself here on earth. For Zechariah that meant building a new temple, it meant bringing about God's grace in the marketplace, in the rooms of ordinary everyday people. So it is not just an ideal that stays detached from human experience but it is one that embraces it and changes it. There's also a sense too, that he not only has a vivid image of what this is; he also believes that it has to manifest itself by transforming and changing human life.
One of the great challenges that we have in this day and age is that we like to separate our religion from our ordinary lives. We talk about religion as if it's just a good idea amongst other ideas rather than a transforming idea that changes the world in which we live. That through faith, through conviction of our hearts, actually the world in which we live can be a different place. When we separate our religion from our ordinary everyday lives we take away, in fact, the transforming power of faith.
One of the darkest days of my life, the day in which I was driving to the airport in Cape Town in 1980 I was driving past one of the slums called Kyalisha. It was the last time that I would make that drive for I was going to the airport in South Africa having been deported by the South African government and as I approached the airport and went in and made my presentation to the immigration people and they stamped my Exit Visa that guaranteed that I could not return, I was allowed to be visited by one friend. That one friend came to me and slipped a piece of paper in my pocket and said, "When you're on the plane, Andrew, I want you to read this." So I crumpled the piece of paper in my pocket and after a couple of hours in the air I remembered it and got it out to read. I have read this many many times since. This is what it said,
"It is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honour, his religion and his soul and to lay a foundation for that empire's fall or its regeneration."
Those are the words of Mahatma Gandhi. Many times in my life I have thought that it is possible to make the world in which we live a better place, but not just by having an image of what it is, not just by thinking positively, not by some sort of detached mysticism, but through a profound faith that God transforms and changes the world and between now and the day of consummation, God calls you and me to be a community that shares the views of Revelation, that shares the views of Zechariah, that understands that it is God in Christ breaking into the world that changes the world and makes it the New Jerusalem. The ideal must become real.
The second thing that we were taught by Zechariah is that the ordinary can become extraordinary. In the passage from the Book of Revelation, John on the Island of Patmos believed that it was through the grace of the alpha and the omega, through the power of the risen one Jesus Christ, that there is a new heaven and a new earth. At the heart and the cornerstone of the belief of John of Patmos is that Jesus Christ brings about a new heaven and a new earth first of all by changing and creating new people. People who are changed and transformed by the grace and love of God, not just in an ideal sense but in our hearts. Not just in now but also for the future; not only in the future but for the rest of time immemorial.
There are two things that we as the new ideal community of the body of Christ need to have for that to happen. The first of it is an appreciation of the goodness of God and what God can do. Sometimes when we look at the state of the world we despair. I do. I've said that over the past few weeks when I look at the state of our environment and look at the way in which we treat people, and the poverty of the world and the immorality that is in our society, and that our leaders are unjust and immoral and I say, "Oh Lord, things are bad!" Well somebody this week came and gave me a book. People give me books all the time; usually they are 400 and 500 page theological tomes which they would like me to read and tell them what I think about it next Monday! Please don't give me books like that! The type of book I like to receive is what I got this week....it's a little book and it's easy for a minister to read quickly. But in it there is some great inspiration. I thought as we're baptising children this is a dandy. The title is "Really Important Stuff My Kids Have Taught Me." In it there are lots of good stories and quotes but there is one I think is just fantastic. When we feel that life is full of despair and things are terrible, it is good to learn this lesson. It goes as follows, by one little child, "Even if you've been fishing for three hours and haven't got anything except poison ivy and sunburn you're still better off than the worm!"
You see, I think at the heart when we look at the despair of the world and the problems that are there we need to have the vision of a Zechariah which is that the people of God have been blessed and from that profound sense of blessing, then, through the grace and power and love of Jesus Christ, we can go into the future with hope. If God in God's wisdom decides that the end of the world shall come, that is in God's hands, but between now and then the people of God live according to the vision of heaven as Jesus said, "that is on earth as well as in heaven".
The last thing that the people of God need, though it's not only to have a thankful recognition of the revelation and the grace of God, they must also have a commitment to live an extraordinary life. About three weeks ago my uncle and I, in England, drove through an area that I had never seen before, one known as the Peak District. It is a beautiful area and it was a sunny day, the day before I was to bury my mother. It was around noontime and my uncle Ray told me to pull the car to one side and to stop. There up the road was a delightful pub and I thought that he was going to take me to lunch, but he said, "No, I want you to stop right here and to get out of the can and follow me." We got out and walked just a few meters and turned the bend and there was a sign of a village. My uncle Ray said, "I want you from this day on to remember what I'm about to tell you." My Uncle Ray is an eminent historian and he showed me the town of Eyham. I'd never heard of it before. He began to tell me the story of the community of Eyham ...... In 1665 there was a plague that had swept England and it was moving gradually northwards until it reached the village of Eyham. When it got there there was a warning sent out that if the people of Eyham were to leave the village where they were, the plague would spread. But if the people of Eyham would stay within the confines of that village the plague could be stopped; it was a form of quarantine. The people of Eyham who were 350 in number had to make a very difficult decision because they were told that if they stayed cloistered in this community the plague could very well wipe them out. But if even one person were to leave that community the plague would continue to spread. Under the leadership of a Congregational-Dissenter pastor, who evidently (anecdotally) preached a great sermon on a new heaven and a new earth, the people of Eyham made a decision, every single one of them: no one would leave the town no matter how many might die. For thirteen months the people of Eyham lived in seclusion and by the time the plague had run its course, of the 350 people who were there only 83 were left alive. My friends, that is a vision of faith and a vision of commitment. That is indeed, the New Jerusalem and while we wait for its consummation and we wait for the alpha and the omega to present himself in full glory and power and majesty, between now and then the commitment for the New Jerusalem rests with us and with all those who have faith in God. May you have that conviction. Amen.