5th Sunday of Easter
May 19, 2019
Revelation 21:1-6
(Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUo5urFD528
)
Water. We take it for granted unless there’s too much of
it or too little of it. It’s something we all need; it’s necessary for life.
That’s why it was such a big deal to find it on Mars a few years ago. And we
tend to assume it’ll come out of the faucet when we turn the knob and will keep
flowing until we turn the knob again. One of the shocks moving out here was the
first time the power went out, and we learned that on well water, no power
means no water. I’ve never lost water before; I’ve always taken it for granted
that it will come out of the faucet. Yet the weird thing about water is that
while it’s necessary for life, it can also kill life. Consider the record
flooding of the Missouri River two months ago that left half of Iowa and 2/3 of
Nebraska declared federal disasters. Water gives life and it can take life. Yet
we know this, it’s as old as time. God flooded the earth yet saved Noah and
those with him on the ark. When the Israelites escaped Egypt, Moses parted the
water of the Red Sea and they walked through on dry ground. Then God closed the
waters and the Egyptians who chased them drowned. The Israelites were saved by
water; the Egyptians died by it. Water is also used to create. You can’t make a
sandcastle without adding water to the sand. And, similarly, we are born
through water as well, baptized by water when we join God’s family. In
Revelation this morning we read, as we have read before in Isaiah, God
proclaiming, “I am making all things new!”[1]
One way God does that is through the waters of baptism. Now, in that same
passage from Revelation, there were three references to water.
The first one was in the description of a new heaven and
a new earth (also an Isaiah reference).[2]
The old things have passed away, and God
also removes the sea. This may seem like a very curious thing to remove,
because it’s not that there’s no water in the new heaven and new earth; we know
there is, there’s the river of life, which we’ll get to in a moment. So,
there’s water, but no sea. Know why? The sea symbolizes chaos and instability
and evil. Think back to the beginning of creation in Genesis 1, “the earth was
formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit
of God was hovering over the waters.”[3]
The second thing God did, after creating light on Day 1, was on Day 2 and Day 3
to put the water in its place. God created a dome, to separate the waters, and
then God gathered all the waters together in one place so that dry land could
appear and could produce vegetation. Before there could be that, the sea of primordial
chaos had to be organized, stabilized, tamed a little bit. It never is
completely, the sea remains occasionally stormy, occasionally threatens, sends
hurricanes. While a calm sea doesn’t make a sailor into an expert, stormy seas
also separate us from each other. Stormy seas threaten to undo the goodness of
God’s creation. And so here at the end of the Bible, as God brings forth a new
heaven and new earth, the sea is gone, vanished, disappeared, and its absence
is a sign of peace and security in the new creation. No more stormy seas to
separate us from each other. No more flooding to destroy life. There is only
water that is life-giving in this new creation, never life-draining.
The second reference to water is in verse 4 where God wipes away every tear from your eyes.
God does this because in this new creation there is no more death, crying,
pain, mourning, sorrow, anguish, grief, suffering, or distress, and so there is
no cause for tears of sadness. These are among the old things that are gone and
passed away, the old conditions, the old order, the old ways. While we mourn
their passing sometimes, there was another song from the recent remake of the
movie “A Star Is Born” that isn’t getting airtime, probably because Lady Gaga doesn’t
sing in it. Instead of a duet, it’s a solo by Bradley Cooper called “Maybe It’s
Time to Let the Old Ways Die.” The first verse begins, “Maybe it’s time to let
the old ways die. Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die. It takes a lot to
change a man. Hell, it takes a lot to try. Maybe it’s time to let the old ways
die.” And the last verse echoes the first, “Maybe it's time to let the old ways
die. Maybe it's time to let the old ways die. It takes a lot to change your
plans. Hella drain to change your mind. Maybe it's time to let the old ways
die. Oh, maybe it's time to let the old ways die.” In the new creation, the old
ways are gone. The old ways involve sorrow and crying and pain and death. The new ways do not. Isn’t that good news! In the new creation
water no longer takes life and there is no more death or mourning or crying or
pain.
Finally, in verse six, at the end of our passage this
morning, God offers the spring of the
water of life. God offers this to those who are thirsty and at no cost,
another echo back to Isaiah, this time to chapter 55 and the invitation to the
thirsty that says, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the
waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.” This is the invitation to all who are
thirsty. That means it’s not for those who aren’t thirsty, and that means you
have to want it. You have to know
you’re thirsty and you have to want to quench that thirst. Otherwise, you’re not going to do anything about
it. And then, both in Isaiah and here in the book of Revelation, God offers it
freely. No charge. No exchange of goods. It’s a gift, with no strings attached.
Another word for this is grace. I usually define grace as unconditional love,
and that’s what God’s offering here: love, life-giving water, without any
conditions. This is also a feature of the new creation instead of the old. Unlike
the unjust economy of Babylon or Rome, or even today’s economy with tariffs and
embargoes, this new creation is a place where life and its essentials are given
as a free gift, without money, even to those who cannot pay for them, and there
is no concern that they can’t pay, or will have to pay later. There’s no
looking down on those who can’t pay. It’s offered freely to everyone who’s
thirsty.
One
more thing about this spring of life-giving water – unlike other springs and
wells, this one won’t dry up. A few weeks ago I went on a walking tour of
Silver Spring with my fellow pastors who are provisionally ordained and in the
process, like me, towards full ordination. One of our stops was the site where
the spring was where Silver Spring got its name from. Have any of you ever been
there or know this story? Francis Preston Blair, a journalist and political
advisor in the early 19th century came to that area seeking a place
for his family to live that was a little bit out from Washington, D.C. His
daughter found a spring with flecks of mica in it that in the sunlight, made
the spring shine like silver. That spring is long since dried up and there’s a
small park and plaque now marking its place. However, when we’re talking
springs with Jesus, it’s more like his conversation with the Samaritan woman at
the well in John 4. They meet at a well and Jesus asks her for a drink. She’s
astounded that a Jewish man would ask
a Samaritan woman for a drink. Jesus
tells her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a
drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water…
Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the
water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become
in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”[4]
This spring of life-giving water is an eternal one that will never run dry. There’s
not going to be a plaque that says, here was
a life-giving spring. This is the
spring of the water of life in the new creation. It gives life, not takes it
away. Tears of sadness and despair and chaos are wiped away. And God offers to quench
our thirst from a living and everlasting spring. What good news.
Now,
there are a few implications of which I want to mention two. One is from a hymn
I almost chose for today called “Freely, Freely.” It’s number 389 in your
hymnal if you want to look it up later. The refrain says, “'Freely, freely you
have received; freely, freely give. Go in my name, and because you believe
others will know that I live.” We who have so freely received this life-giving
gift of water are to freely share it with others. We don’t keep it boxed up or
hoard it. We don’t bury it, like the third servant in Jesus’ parable of the
talents, who buried his talent in the ground because he was afraid to use it.
We don’t charge others for it. Instead, we forgive others just as we have been
forgiven, like we say in the Lord’s Prayer. We love each other just as we have
been loved, just as Jesus said in our Gospel this morning. This isn’t “love
your neighbor as yourself” from the Old Testament.[5]
This is “love each other as Jesus loves you.”[6]
Unconditionally. Without limit. Not based on what you can do or what you
achieve. No based on whether you agree on politics or share a lot in common or
even understand each other. You can love someone without understanding them.
You can be gracious and kind toward someone without knowing anything about
them. We are all invited to the spring of the water of life. We who have
already received are to now freely give.
The second implication that we can do something about is
those systems and institutions in place today that “create conditions such as tears,
death, mourning, crying and pain that deny God’s purposes for life.”[7]
There are obvious things like poverty and oppression and racism and sexism
where you can examine your own biases and how you unwittingly contribute to
their perpetuation and change your response. One of today’s biggest problems is
what journalism calls “the big sort.” A Texas journalist named Bill Bishop
published a book by that title ten years ago. It’s about how “Over the past
three decades, we have been choosing the neighborhood (and church and news show)
compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. The result is a country that has
become so polarized, so ideologically inbred that people don't know and can't
understand those who live a few miles away.”[8]
This division in our country is a cause of tears and grief and suffering and
death. It is not life-giving. It’s creating chaos. It’s causing people to be
thirsty for another option and this is what’s key. God is “at work through
social process to replace circumstances that create tears, death, mourning, crying,
and pain with circumstances that replace those things with mutually supportive,
covenantal community.”[9]
That’s
where the church comes in. We, God’s people in God’s world, are called to be a
mutually supportive, covenantal community. We come from a variety of
backgrounds. We don’t all agree on everything. Yet we have all received the
water of eternal life. We have all been baptized into Christ’s Church and are
all members of God’s family, brothers and sisters. Today we’re going to renew our
covenant as part of K’s baptism. Listen to the different pieces, both the ones
that you say and the ones that I say. It’s all there in your hymnal for you to
follow along. We have been “given new birth through water and the Spirit.”[10]
That’s the new creation that we were born into and join God in working to bring
about here on earth. We “renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness.” We
“accept the freedom and power God gives [us] to resist evil, injustice, and
oppression.” And one of the promises we make to every baptized person is to
surround them “with a community of love and forgiveness,” which means that
unlike other places, we must be a community of love and forgiveness.
We are called to live into the new creation and be a community of peace, not chaos,
to let old things that are life-draining pass away, to wipe away each other’s
tears when we run into conditions that deny God’s purposes for life, and work
to change those conditions. Let’s begin. If you’d please turn to page 33 in your hymnal
and if K and her family and her godparents would please come forward.
[1]
Revelation 21:5; Isaiah 43:19
[2]
Isaiah 65:17
[3]
Genesis 1:2
[4]
John 4:10, 13-14
[5]
Leviticus 19:18
[6]
John 13:34
[8]
From the back cover of “The Big Sort” by Bill Bishop, 2009
[10]
UMH 33
