The New Jerusalem

As I sat through the sermon for the second time on Sunday, as with every Sunday, my mind starts to wonder. I always start thinking about how I would writie a sermon for this particular Bible Lesson. I looked down at the handout and saw the Epistle (New testament letter or Revelation) and I saw it was that harbringer of death and destruction- Revelations. Oh Revelations (cue the Omen theme music), the popular vision of the apocolypse immortalized not only in the Bible, but on screen and page as well. Demi Moore sacrificing herself for the good of the world in the the Seventh Sign, Damien- the cute little antichrist of the Omen, the kid from "Growing Pains" leading us through the snares of the Apocolypse in the Left Behind Series.

Wow, this is heavy forbodding stuff full of sea demons, pillars of fire and hellish judgement- not very fun stuff for a religion that proposes to be all about love. This book of the Bible (that came very close to not making it into the Canon according to many New Testament Historians) has fulled some of the worst genocidial atrocities the world has ever seen. Immediately my mind races back to the history of the first crusade and the murderous slaughter of all the non Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem and how promises of a judgement of "worthy to enter the kingdom of heaven" would be bestowed upon the perpetraitors of these crimes. This is difficult stuff until we start to remeber some of the passges of Revelations that seem to be right on cue with our Christian ethics. The passages that I am thinking of are the passages that describe one of William Blake's recurring themes. That is the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is depicted as a city that takes care of all of our needs through God. There is no sun or moon, just the light of God. there is no need for Food, the tree of life provides all the fruits that humankind will need to survive.

I wonder if St John the Divene is not talking about a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth that is the New Jerusalem. A Kingdom of Conscience, of Compassion and Love. The New Jerusalem that can be achieved through the right actions of human kind. this could be a kingdom of God manifested as Love that is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning until the end.In this kingdom, according to Revelations, there would be no need for the temple. We would worship God everywhere and all of the time- through right action. We would be a unified kingdom of Priests, Shamans, Swamis, Monks, Nuns, Pastors, Sheiks, Imams and Rabbis leading each other to a Holy and Beautiful life, with and through God. There would be no need for a weekly retreat into spirituality because it would be an everpresent reality everywhere and always.This is the Revelation I want to know more about. This is a New Jerusalem that we can build and find through tolerence, love, sacred activism, compassion and conscience. Let's get to work