One of the most definitive sounds of spring assailed our ears early this morning - lawnmowers. Everywhere, everyone. Some have been mowing for a while now, but most have waited. But the recent warmth and the rains that fell last week made even the most reluctant finally decide to break out the mower and get to the work of taming the unruly lawn. And getting an early start is the prudent approach, despite those who might have thought sleeping in on a Saturday was a precious gift. Serious sleepers could pull the covers over their heads and ignore the drone of the neighborhood. But it was inevitable, persistent. First one a block away or more, then another, an antiphonal sound from a perpendicular street, then more, a different pitch, more insistent, nearer then farther. Soon it was a chorus, a lawn maintenance choir singing full-throated praises to the green of spring.
Like any volunteer chorus, there is a pull to join in, to get up and add your voice to the choir. Our lawn mower sleeps in on Saturday though, but he’ll get to it, eventually. Maybe a solo, an aria to signal the second movement of singers, those who wait until later, until the grass has awakened to the percussion of the symphony of spring. Some of this second wave are the sleepers, but some are those who have to prepare the lawn for mowing. Raking last season’s coat from the edges and the gardens. We live in a wooded older neighborhood, with trees hemming us in on every side. As the grass grows green and lush and tall, so too the trees clothe themselves in the beauty of the new season. The old brown leftovers from a colorful fall are replaced by the fresh green foliage of spring.
Leaves. If mowers are the unmistakable sound of spring in our communities, then leaves are the sight that tells us it is here at last. Here is fullness, here to stay. The trees fill out and muffle the sound of the interstate down the hill, and the very mowers singing this Sabbath morning, making it a sweet reminder of spring rather than the irritation of suburbia. The leaves on the trees convince us that we live in nature not in a human construct of concrete and asphalt. The old leaves are bagged up and carted away or mulched into the ground to feed the next generation of grass and weeds of various kinds. They are sustenance for what is to come. The foundation for what will grow and thrive and then feed what follows.
There is something of the work of creation around us today. Indeed it is around every day, but we manage to ignore it most of the time. We are more focused on our own creation, our own efforts, than on the workings of what God has put into place. But some days it just seems to leap to our attention and demand that we take notice, demand that we remember we are but a part of all God has put into place, a cog in the machinery of creation, a cell in the organism that is our cosmos. And rather than grumbling that it isn’t all about us, that we aren’t the center of all that we see and all that we know, we can instead rejoice that we were given the great privilege of partnering with the Creator of all that is in building the Kingdom, the true face of Creation. We can help realize what God intended in how we choose to live, in what we choose to offer, in the way we walk through this world and this life. We don’t have to accept what is, what has come to be because of sin and brokenness, because of greed and suffering. We can claim something else as definitive. We can reject walls and build bridges. We can turn away from oppressing, from hating, from wounding and killing and embrace healing. God’s kingdom, God’s reign, God’s realm is about healing. God wills healing and wholeness always. Always.
Rev. 21:22-22:2 I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25 Its gates will never be shut by day-- and there will be no night there. 26 People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. 27 But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. 22:1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Revelation: that most misunderstood, terrifyingly misused manifesto of God’s sovereignty. We’ll tackle the whole at another time (Join us this summer for our “Meet the Bible” series beginning May 31st and June 3). But for now we take a look at the final statement. The final image, the description of all that is right, all that will be right with what God has made. I just took a snippet of that image for this message. Just a glimpse around the corner of what is coming.
And what we see is light. Light and life. That’s what marks the Kingdom of God. Light of such a power and presence that the lights of this world no longer are needed. There’s no temple in the city of heaven, notice that? The temple, the churches, the place of worship and of faith that have been the only light in a dark and distant time are no longer needed. Because light permeates the place. Light is everywhere and everyone. You don’t have to seek God, God is among us, God is in us. We don’t have to point out God, God is the air that we breathe in heaven. We don’t have to bow to remember the light, we are lifted up by the light.
So, if there is no temple, no place of worship, then will we not worship in heaven? Of course we will worship! Worship will be our main mode of existence. The difference is there won’t be a place and a time for worship, because life will be worship. Living and breathing and moving and speaking will be worship. And any earthly thing that we once thought worthy of worship, like position and power and wealth and accomplishment will pale in that light, the light that encompasses all. And we will worship not the human things any of us have done, but the divine spark that dwells in each and all of us, in all of creation. And that which will inevitably seek to pull us away from that light will not find a place in the city of God. We will live in, we will be beings of light. The light we are now but cannot see because of the smudge of sin that clouds our vision. But creation waits for the revealing of the children of light. We will see it. We will live in it. God will be among us and in us and around us. In the light.
And we will be alive. That’s the other part of this vision. Life. The Evangelist is shown a river. Because rivers are alive. They run, they flow, they speak, babbling words of praise as they run from headwaters to delta. A river that is life. Because the kingdom is a place of life, a place alive. A river running down the street. Or maybe, the river was the street. The means of locomotion, of transportation, from one end of the kingdom to the other. We will move by life, travel by life, and live not far from life for eternity.
The river isn’t the only representation of life, however. There is the tree. One tree notice. Not trees, but tree. Lots of fruit, twelve kinds of fruit from one tree. Fruit that feeds and sustains. Fruit that builds up and creates community and gives order to life in eternity. Fruit that is no longer forbidden, but encouraged. Eat and let your eyes be opened. Eat and let your life be sustained. Eat and live in love. Eat.
But, this isn’t about the river or the tree. It isn’t about the light or about the fruit. Surprised? This is about the leaves. It’s all about the leaves. Sunday, May 6th is National Nurses Day. We’re celebrating healing. And healers. We are saying thank you to those who partner with God in helping make our lives in this life more like the life in the next one. The leaves are for the healing of the nations. Peacemaking, to be sure. Building of bridges and burying of hatchets. But also healing. Making well, patching open wounds and setting broken bones. Have you thanked a nurse lately? They are doing God’s work. God is about healing. Always. Always.
I know, I know, healing doesn’t always happen. Actually it does. It always happens. But not always in the way we want. Not always in the way we can see. But sometimes, thanks be to God, it does. Maybe it was a seeming miracle, maybe it was just the course of things. But when healing happens we get a glimpse of eternity. We get insight into the will of God, the plan of God, the promise of God that we will all be healed one day. By the leaves. The leaves of the tree that stands by the water of life. The leaves that we rake and mulch and gather and give God thanks for are but precursors to those leaves that will heal us. Remember that as you tend your yard this spring and this fall. Remember the blessing and the promise. And the leaves of the tree.
Shalom,
Derek
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