Bethlehem Redemption: Sermon on Judges 17-20 and Ruth 1-4

Doesn't the church look so different today? All festooned with wreaths and baubles, all brightened up with little candles and big flowers. And over there, you'll see – as you would've seen last year, and the year before, and I'd guess the year before that – what? What is that over there? Our nativity scene. Go take a close look at it later. In it, you'll find an infant resting in a feed trough – the baby Jesus. Over him, around him, adoring him, you'll find the Virgin Mary, garbed in her traditional blue, his mother; and Joseph, her husband. You'll see a few shepherds, come to adore the newborn Messiah, perhaps with some sheep in tow, perhaps joining a couple animals already there. You might even spot the angel who makes the announcement to them. And – although they didn't actually arrive the same night – you'll find little statues of the 'wise men' coming from the east. If someone told us to close our eyes and picture a nativity scene, we wouldn't have to wrestle much over whom to include, would we? We know who belongs there. And some years, we even get sermons built around the 'characters of Christmas' or 'cast of Christmas' – like we did here two years ago. The cast is pretty predictable – we know the story well, we dwell on it each year. On occasion, we may extend the cast list to include a few characters who don't make it into the nativity scene – folks like Herod, Simeon, Anna, and others. They have their parts to play, too. I've heard sermons on all of them, and some of the better ones dive into their backstory, try to get into their hearts and heads, figure out what makes them tick and where they fit.

And yet there is one character from the nativity story which we almost universally ignore: Bethlehem itself. This 'little town of Bethlehem,' of whom we sing songs this time of year, has a story all its own, no less than Joseph and Mary do. Joseph has a story, Mary has a story – their stories begin with their parents and their birth, go through their childhood, move toward maturity, set in a particular environment, and yet with everything in God's hand of loving providence, their stories are being shepherded on a trajectory toward the Big Event, the reason behind the telling, the birth of the Savior, who is Christ the Lord. The same is true for the shepherds – they have their backgrounds, lives unfolding normally up to the hour the angel came. Even the angels have an origin story, a history, a perspective that's worth exploring. Each character offers us a different way of entering the Story through their own story leading up to the Big Event. And Bethlehem is no less a character than anybody else who graces the page. We've entered the Story through the eyes of others before. It's high time we gave Bethlehem the same courtesy. So this Advent, this Christmas season, let's step back in time, into the pages of the Old Testament, and join Bethlehem as she hums along, waiting silently for the Big Event.

Much as we could only take rough guesses as to when the shepherds were born or what their parents were like, we don't know the exact year a settlement was founded that would develop into the Bethlehem we later know. But we can guess it was a long time ago. Several sets of Canaanite tombs have been found on nearby hillsides and were already in use before the time of Abraham. Bethlehem's story begins long ago. And as Abraham's grandson Jacob passed through the area, he tearfully buried his late wife Rachel in one of those tombs, while Bethlehem quietly watched from across the field and grieved with him (Genesis 35:19-20). Then Jacob left, and Bethlehem was alone with the Canaanites again, living their Canaanite lives, worshipping their Canaanite idols right in her midst. Centuries would pass until Bethlehem again saw anyone who lived another way. Bethlehem endured through times of turmoil, and as Jacob's descendants, the Israelites, moved back into the neighborhood from Egypt and the desert, they converted Bethlehem into an Israelite town. And Bethlehem was a pleasant city in which to live – the fields were fruitful with grapes, olives, almonds, wheat, and barley.

In those first centuries after Bethlehem's conversion to an Israelite town, the people were governed through a loose system of tribal heroes whom we call 'judges,' who rose up to overthrow oppressors and settle disputes on a rotating basis in different parts of the country. And during this time, the Bible gives us three stories known as the 'Bethlehem Trilogy,' since Bethlehem is a character in all three of them.

Early in the days of the judges, Bethlehem was home to a young man from the tribe of Levi, the tribe set specially apart as religious professionals. They taught in their cities and, if near enough to the tabernacle, cared for its furnishings. This particular Levite was not just any Levite, though. He couldn't be a priest, but he was cousin to all the priests – he was descended from Moses himself! And his name was Jonathan.

Now, Bethlehem had been Jonathan's home since his earliest days. But Jonathan the Levite felt stifled there. It was a big world outside his little town, after all. And there didn't seem to be much room for upward mobility there. In Bethlehem, where people knew him, he was respected as a descendant of Moses, he was cherished as a Levite – but how much, really, was there for a Levite to do? They lived off the tithes. They were dedicated to religious functions. And being a small-town teacher just didn't seem like enough for Jonathan. He didn't think of Bethlehem as anything special. He saw no long-term prospects for himself there. He wanted to get out into the world to seek his fortune and make a name for himself, not unlike the Prodigal Son. And so one day, he said goodbye – Jonathan crossed Bethlehem's threshold for the last time, never to return home again (Judges 19:7-8).

Jonathan traveled north to the hill country, and there he crossed paths with a rich estate owner named Micah. This Micah was a very mixed-up man – having stolen a fortune in silver for his mother, he gave it back only so they could dedicate it to God... by creating an idol to worship. In his house, he made a shrine and pretended one of his sons was a priest, and he used his wealth to make all the ritual trappings – Micah's so ignorant, he can't even tell the difference between Israel's faith and Canaan's folly, he thinks it's all the same thing (Judges 17:1-5). But when Micah meets Jonathan, he offers him a stipend of silver to replace his son and be his personal idol priest. Jonathan – a descendant of the Moses who brought the commandments down the mountain – should have known better. But he sold the truth for ten pieces of silver a year (Judges 17:9-13). Jonathan was no real priest of God – only his cousins, the descendants of Aaron, could be real priests – but he was happy to playact the role if the pay was right, for he only ever saw his 'priesthood' as a money-making scheme (Judges 18:4). He was just as happy – leapt at the chance – when a band of brutish Danite spies, a tribe on the move, wanted him to come be the idol-priest, not just for a single rich household, but for an entire clan, even a tribe on the rise – and for that price, he was willing to betray the Micah to whom he'd been both father and son (Judges 18:19-20).

And so he did. Jonathan made his fortune. Having left Bethlehem, his wildest dreams of success in the world came true. He went with the Danites as they set up Micah's idol (which they'd stolen) in a city they conquered and called Dan, and Jonathan became their priest there – he married and had sons and grandsons who followed in the new family business. They enjoyed prosperity and prominence there. From a worldly point of view, all Jonathan did worked out for him in the end, and he was right: Bethlehem was only holding him back. And yet, from a higher view, Jonathan's life is a tragedy. He disgraced his good family name forever. He sold his fine heritage. He rebelled against the Lord. He cursed his soul. All the silver with which stooges greased his palms – what did it avail when he died and plunged into the darkness of the grave? The family he raised in Dan – what good was it to pass on an evil legacy? Jonathan the Levite damned himself, destroyed his family, and not only that, but the idolatry he introduced to Dan set the stage for the entire history of compromised religion in the northern kingdom – a tribal and ultimately national legacy that would stew for centuries until ultimately bringing a catastrophic downfall (Judges 18:27-30). Jonathan's quest for success proved a massive disaster, no matter what he thought during the short span of a human lifetime. He never should have left Bethlehem.

Many, many years passed. Generations came and went in that little town of Bethlehem. People who'd watched Jonathan grow up had children of their own, and those children had children, and so on, and so on. And one of those families had a daughter. Neither she nor her father have names that we know. But one day, a Levite – no doubt of less august ancestry than Jonathan had been – came to stay in town for a while. He put a gleam in the father's eye, and perhaps the daughter fell for him too. With her father's blessing, this Levite desired her and took her as his own – how much say she had in the matter, we can only guess. But he was only passing through, and as he came, so he went. To be his was to leave Bethlehem behind. And so that daughter of Bethlehem did. She went with the Levite, though he refused to make her a wife – she was only his concubine (Judges 19:1).

In time, having moved north to the same hill country where Micah's house had been, she found the Levite's tents an inhospitable place. She found herself disillusioned, hurt, perhaps abused by the Levite. Without the warmth of a good relationship, she grew tired of his tent in those remote hinterlands, moving from place to place. She was right to long for the stability of her youth, for the village where she grew up. So one day, she left. Walked out on the Levite. She escaped and, though the walk took some time, she made her way alone through the countryside, until she finally came to the little town of Bethlehem again, and went back into her father's house (Judges 19:2). And she settled back in to the home she knew she never should've left.

Months passed. It took four months for the Levite to decide he even wanted her back. And so he packed up and traveled his own way to Bethlehem, intending to persuade her to leave with him again (Judges 19:3). Unwisely, perhaps, when she saw him, she brought him home to her father's house; and her father was very happy to see him (Judges 19:3-4). In the meals the two men had, she was nearly forgotten. The Levite wanted to be sent away with what he'd come for. The father pressed him to stay longer, perhaps hoping to convince him to stay in Bethlehem, perhaps trying to push the Levite to make a deeper commitment, perhaps trying to use his daughter to his own advantage (Judges 19:5-9). In the end, the Levite got what he wanted – the young woman went with him, perhaps of her own volition, perhaps at her father's insistence (Judges 19:10). Bethlehem had welcomed them all in. But now Bethlehem said goodbye to her once more, as she went with the Levite.

Yet this Levite was not a caring man. He took his concubine, his slave, his donkeys, and – having been waylaid too long, and having left late in the day – he was eager to make up for lost time. Rather than seek hospitality among the Jebusites of Jerusalem, they pressed onward into Benjaminite territory, to Gibeah (Judges 19:11-15), but the hospitable reception he expected never materialized except for a fellow Ephraimite stranger's welcome (Judges 19:16-21). Then came the locals banging on the door, trying to break in, re-enacting all the perverse threats of Sodom (Judges 19:22-23). And at the first sign of trouble, the Levite shoved that girl from Bethlehem outside, to be attacked and abused all night while he slept securely (Judges 19:25). In the morning, as the gang left, she crawled to the doorstep, where the Levite found her (Judges 19:26). Indifferent to her suffering and her fate, not caring whether there were any signs of life left in her at the end, he loaded her unconscious or dead body onto his donkey, took her home, and dissected her without a hint of emotion; then he packaged her in twelve bundles and mailed her to each tribe (Judges 19:27-29). It called together a greater assembly than any judge had ever gathered, and one that gave rise to a civil war among the people of God (Judges 20:1-48).

See, leaving Bethlehem spelled nothing but woe for that woman. All she got out of it was a grisly end. And for what? For a so-called 'husband' who never married her, who didn't love her, who treated her as a tool and shed no tears when she was gone – for her father's yearnings to be tied to the prestige of a Levite whose life has not the faintest whiff of anything levitical. Her departure from Bethlehem set in motion the wheels of national fratricide, nearly ripping all Israel apart in the civil war; and for her personally, everything after Bethlehem was only cruelty. If cities could cry, think how Bethlehem should have wept over her leaving! “No,” Bethlehem would have told her – “no, you should not leave, must not leave; stay here in me, stay home where you belong.”

But there were other times. And there was another man who lived in the little town of Bethlehem – a man from a prominent and established local clan. That man's name was Elimelech, and when he was a boy, he ran along the same dirt paths through the village that Jonathan had scorned. And when the boy Elimelech grew to a man, he married a local girl from the village, a girl named Naomi, who'd played in the same fields as he. Perhaps one or both had the concubine's father as a distant uncle. Who can say? But neither Elimelech nor Naomi imagined ever leaving Bethlehem. Bethlehem was where they grew up. Bethlehem saw them get married – the entire village would have celebrated it as a community event, it would have made Bethlehem quite happy. Bethlehem would have been the first to greet each of Elimelech's two sons, Mahlon and Chilion (Ruth 1:2). And the years passed, and the boys grew, and Elimelech and Naomi were both quite happy and quite content to live where they belonged: in Bethlehem. Neither had any apparent inclination to leave.

But they did leave. For there was a famine in the land. The local crops were failing, not yielding what they should have. It was a struggle to get by. And the Bible doesn't tell us how long after the famine started they waited. It doesn't tell us how long they tried to tough it out. But as the famine became more and more apparent, more and more evident, Elimelech made the decision on his family's behalf: they were going to have to leave Bethlehem behind. Just as Jonathan did. Just as the concubine did. But unlike them, the north – the hill country – wasn't the place to go. Perhaps the famine was in those parts, too. So Elimelech made the bold move to abandon the promised land altogether, and instead go to a fruitful land outside the realm of God's blessing. It wasn't so far: looking from Bethlehem across the Dead Sea, on the horizon he could already see the plateaued plains of Moab, golden with wheat – enticing wheat. So Elimelech told his wife and sons to pack up everything – because until Bethlehem was famine-free, they would move in as sojourners with the Moabites (Ruth 1:1).

Absent there, Elimelech and Naomi and Mahlon and Chilion settled in to their new place of residence. I'm sure they told themselves it would be temporary – just a short while, and then they'd go back home and reclaim the family land. Living as strangers, surrounded by no one they'd ever known, a language related but not quite the same, different customs, different religion all around them. Slowly, Elimelech and family got to know the local people. The years go by. Time keeps ticking. They settle in. Mahlon and Chilion grow up, and they marry eligible Moabite bachelorettes – much like the ones who'd tempted Israel to near-destruction in the desert. But alongside these glimmers of domestic bliss in a foreign land, tragedy struck. Elimelech died. Then Mahlon and Chilion died. All the men of the family died. Back in Bethlehem, plenty of people had survived the famine – Bethlehem had bounced right back. It was in Moab that Elimelech and Mahlon and Chilion all died. They had to be buried in foreign soil, never again to see the promised land. Leaving Bethlehem wasn't an act of clinging to life; it was a journey into death for them. It brought the extinction of Elimelech's family. Only three widows survived. Two, the Moabite girls Orpah and Ruth, were young – they were in the land of their birth, they could find nice Moabite men and have a fine Moabite life, albeit in the service of false gods like Chemosh. Naomi was devastated, though – not only devoid of property and family, but all avenues of social remedy were cut off. Naomi is old, Naomi is poor, Naomi is childless, and Naomi can change nothing. It's all left Naomi alone and deeply embittered, hating life, and in deep spiritual pain (Ruth 1:3-21).

Elimelech should never have left Bethlehem. If he hadn't, he likely would've struggled through the famine but come out the other side, and lived a long and happy life in the promised land. Naomi should never have left Bethlehem. Leaving Bethlehem gave her nothing but tragedy. Just like the Levite's concubine. And yet Naomi – like the Levite's concubine – is determined to go back to Bethlehem, to flee home from exile. But – unlike the Levite's concubine – she won't leave again. She'll go and stay. She'll go and bring her pains and griefs with her. She'll go and spread her bitter herbs and salty tears on a Bethlehem table. She'll offer them up in a place she remembers. She knew that at least Bethlehem had food again – that Yahweh her God had shown favor to his people there in Bethlehem (Ruth 1:6). And yet when she got there, the entire town was astonished (Ruth 1:19). And it was there that she lamented, “The Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and Yahweh has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when Yahweh has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” (Ruth 1:20-21). When she left, she was full of life – the life she got in Bethlehem. But living in a foreign land, living away from home, had drained her, had emptied her. Only one thing did she bring back with her: a converted Moabite girl named Ruth, the daughter-in-law she couldn't dissuade from evidently frittering away her future, all to join empty Naomi in the little town of Bethlehem.

But we know how those things unfold. By the hidden hand of God, Ruth's late husband Mahlon has some sort of cousin – not his closest, but next to it – still living in Bethlehem. He's a farmer named Boaz (Ruth 2:1). This Boaz owns some farmland, and Boaz has prospered there because he had the good sense not to give up on Bethlehem when the going got a little tough for a season – not even for a long season. Boaz proves his worth, demonstrates his character – he's a devout God-fearing Israelite, who explains his own moral compass by pointing to the generosity of Yahweh, the God of Israel (Ruth 2:11-12). And as Boaz showered Ruth with kindness, Naomi's hope began to return – she knew Elimelech's line was not without relatives who could redeem it, could raise his house from extinction, could give hope where there'd been no hope (Ruth 2:20; 3:1-2).

In time, Boaz redeemed Ruth – and thereby restored the fortunes of Elimelech's house. He acquired Elimelech's old field and married Ruth to perpetuate Mahlon's and Elimelech's names (Ruth 4:9-10). The pair had a son named Obed, and all the women of Bethlehem said to Naomi, “Blessed be Yahweh, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him” (Ruth 4:14-15). Naomi herself – who had lamented being too old to welcome any more children – was the one who nursed Obed, and all the town's women called the baby a son born to Naomi (Ruth 4:16-17). No more is she Mara, the bitter woman; pleasantness has returned to her, her life has been restored, she has been nourished – she is Naomi again. She has been redeemed.

What a difference! There was only one way that redemption could take place. There was only one way for all of the bitterness and pain and loss to be resolved. And that was for Naomi to go back to Bethlehem, taking Ruth with her. In Bethlehem, all those sufferings can be made good. In Bethlehem, families can be restored in the aftermath of tragedy. In Bethlehem where she once was born, life can start over again. Redemption.

If you could ask Bethlehem itself, Bethlehem would tell you that. Bethlehem would tell you how much it just loves a good redemption story. Bethlehem loves bringing people back where they forgot they belonged, loves giving them back what once had been lost but now can be found afresh. Bethlehem mourned when Jonathan left – mourned because Jonathan left to go gain the world but lose his soul, and what profit is there in it? Yet if Bethlehem had seen Jonathan again, Bethlehem would've welcomed him with open arms, would've allowed him to start over, renounce his pretenses, and get back to the simpler things, the 'Permanent Things,' and the faith he had been raised with there as a boy. Had Jonathan gone back to Bethlehem, perhaps great heroes could have arisen from the line of Moses; perhaps an entire nation, instead of being destroyed, could have been saved. And Bethlehem mourned when one daughter left it, dragged along by a levitical sociopath. Bethlehem had hopes when she came back, but was sad to see her leave again. Had she refused him altogether, had she been able to resist her father's dealings, had she stayed with him for good, she could have married legitimately and had a fine life in Bethlehem, enjoying the good things. Bethlehem mourned when famine struck, and people struggled, and Elimelech took his family away for a foreign land. For Bethlehem never again saw Elimelech, never again saw Chilion, never again saw Mahlon. They never had to leave. They could have gone back and lived. But they died, and Bethlehem mourned them. Yet when once Naomi came back, and introduced Bethlehem to Ruth, Bethlehem was overjoyed to host their redemption through Boaz, a good son of the village. The redemption Bethlehem was ready to give any of the others, Bethlehem at last got to give.

Time and again, it was a mistake to leave Bethlehem. But going back to Bethlehem and sticking around was all anyone had to do to encounter new hope. For Naomi and Ruth, it came through Boaz and the redemption he brought. Because Bethlehem loves a redemption story. And Bethlehem is looking forward, from Naomi's day, toward being the scene where redemption comes all the more radically to life, when a better redeemer than Boaz would be born. For perhaps it was in the fields where Ruth gleaned, or on Elimelech's old property, or on the site of the mill where Boaz ground his grain, that one day the shepherds would stand outside the town and watch angels light up the sky. And perhaps it was not far from the house where Naomi's grandson Obed was born that a distant descendant of Obed would be born of Mary, there in Bethlehem: Redemption come to Life.

As for us, our lives have oft been afflicted by straying. Maybe like Jonathan, you've felt cramped and stifled by the old things, the simple things, the quiet things, and you wanted to acquire, you wanted to become, you wanted to find yourself, so you strayed. Maybe like the concubine, the complex combination of manipulation and desire led you to go wandering. Maybe like Elimelech, fear of an uncertain future drove you, step by step, away from where you should have been. Maybe like Naomi, you've been following someone who led you the wrong way. Maybe like Ruth, the place you always thought was home turns out not to have been the home God has planned for you, the home where redemption happens. Our lives have often been stories of straying.

But in the aftermath of all our straying, here's what Bethlehem calls out to us: “Come back home.” Go back to Bethlehem. Go back to where redemption calls home, where the Redeemer must be born. Bethlehem is waiting for you. The Savior born there wants to give you again what should've been yours, save that your silly heart gave it up. He's not the concubine's father – he won't turn you back out to an abusive world. He's no levitical grifter who'll tickle your ears with death in exchange for silver. He's our feast in famine's fallow time, he's our welcome at the end of our ropes. He's your Redeemer. And Bethlehem is where Redemption wants to meet you all over again. This Advent, this Christmas season: Reverse your straying. Unwind the steps of Jonathan and the concubine and Elimelech and his house. Go back to where redemption starts. Go back to the only place you can have a Redeemer born for you. Go back to where you await your Savior. Let us go back to Bethlehem!

Your Invitation: Sermon on Revelation 22:16-21

And so this journey comes to its close. Every journey must, I suppose. This is the twenty-eighth and final part of our journey through the Revelation. We've puzzled through the perplexities of the present age, and we've plumbed the mysteries of eternity to come. We've wandered the surface of the earth, and we've soared into the heavenlies. We've seen fire and fury, we've seen light and lightning, we've tangled with beasts and angels. It's been a journey, to be sure. A year ago at this time, what came to your mind when somebody mentioned this book? What did you think about the Revelation? Perhaps you found it cryptic – a puzzle whose pieces you felt little hope of unjumbling. Perhaps you found it imposing and intimidating – a book to be avoided wherever possible, deferred indefinitely. Perhaps you found it fearsome, frightening – full of doom and gloom; judgment and terror; woe, danger, and darkness. Perhaps, for one or more reasons, it didn't hold the right appeal for you.

And yet, as I've listened to some of you in the past couple of months, that's not the impression I've been hearing any more. From the sounds of things, we in this church are now thinking and talking about Revelation in a new light. We're finding it exciting. We're finding it joyful. We're finding it hopeful. We're finding it rejuvenating. We're coming away from it with our apprehensions turned to thanksgivings. Because we're no longer assuming that the Revelation is to be filed away in our mental box marked 'end-times prophecy.' We're seeing it as a book given to the church in every generation – a book made relevant to John's churches, a book made relevant to the times of Augustine and the times of Charlemagne, the times of Aquinas and the times of Luther, the times of Albright and the times we live in. It's a book that'll still be relevant to your tenth generation, if the Lord tarries long enough. It's a book that had a message before America came to be, and it's a book that'll have a message to speak after her stars and stripes crumble to dust. This is a revelation for every generation. Because it's not a revelation of future events, primarily. The first words John puts on parchment tell us it's a “revelation of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 1:1). Jesus is what Revelation reveals. The entire book is about Jesus. He is its, as he is the world's, “Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:13).

We understand that Jesus is eternally God – that his Father “loved [him] before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24) – that he dwelled in the high stretches of eternity when there was no time and where there was no space. We understand that Jesus is the Word who already was (John 1:1), the Word whom God spoke to call the first heavens and first earth into being (Genesis 1:1). We know that in the fullness of time, after many prophets, God sent Jesus down from heaven and into the universe we know, down even to this very terrestrial ball, to be born of the Virgin Mary. We know Jesus endured the hardships of our broken world. We know that his hardships rose to their highest point at the cross, where he offered up his life as a sacrifice. And yet we are told, in the Revelation, that in this, Jesus “has conquered” (Revelation 5:5) – thanks be given to God!

When the book opens, not only are we told about Jesus – that he's “the Faithful Witness, the Firstborn from the dead, and the Ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:4) – but we get to see him, get to meet him, not in the lowly simplicity that clothes him in the Gospels, but in the glory he's attained with his return to his Father. This is the heavenly Jesus. We've encountered him as the Living One, who was dead but is alive forevermore, and who holds now the keys of death and the grave (Revelation 1:18). We've seen him as the Everlasting Man, the perfect glorified humanity, dressed as a high priest who gently tends the flickering candle of each and every congregation that stands within the worldwide temple called the church (Revelation 1:12-16; cf. Revelation 2-3) – his glory is more than we can now handle (Revelation 1:17), but we know we were meant for it.

As we ascend with John through the open door in heaven (Revelation 4:1), we catch a glimpse of heavenly worship as it had been – we meet the four living creatures and twenty-four elders, ringing 'round the emerald-banded throne of God, and they taught us how to worship like heaven worships (Revelation 4:2-11) – but then we catch a replay of the ascension, seen not from earth as in Acts but seen from heaven as he enters. And so we meet Jesus as a Lamb once slaughtered for the sacrifice, and yet now standing tall, his wounds glorified (Revelation 5:6). And we come to understand that he's the only one truly worthy, the only one who can unfurl God's plans for the salvation of the world, bringing all things to their final destiny (Revelation 5:7). And because all heaven can see it, we listen in on their thanksgiving to Jesus: “Worthy are you to take the scroll and open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). Jesus rises to heaven precisely as “him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (Revelation 1:5-6) – his blood, the impact of his atoning death and vibrant life, washes our lives clean (Revelation 7:14).

Then, as we catch glimpses of history unfolding, we didn't need a vision to tell us that things we dread, things like invasions and strife and famine and plague, are rampaging in the world. We know that, we've feared that. But what we did need a visionary to tell us was this: those things all, somehow, will be made to serve God's good and hopeful plan. Their hoofbeats echo loud and long through history's halls, but they can only plant their hooves where Jesus, unsealing the scroll, grants them permission to roam (Revelation 6:1-7). We still find these tragedies hard to understand, especially when we see them claim the earthly lives of our own brothers and our own sisters, those who've served Jesus and whom Jesus has loved. And so Jesus shows them in heaven, their souls under the sacrificial altar, having been living sacrifices that ended in sacrifice unto death – and while they cry out for an end to the riders' rampage, he tells them to wait until God's calendar of martyrs counts down, and he makes them comfortable in heaven to wait for what's in store (Revelation 6:9-11).

To understand why so much of history and so much of life brutalizes those Jesus loves, we're given a vision of a “great red Dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems” (Revelation 12:3). And this Dragon, this Devil, wants only to devour (Revelation 12:4). Long did he persecute faithful Israel, the loyal remnant of God's ancient people, which was pregnant with the promise (Revelation 12:1-2). When she gave birth at last to the Child of promise, Jesus the Messiah, the Dragon couldn't devour him after all (Revelation 12:5). “Then the Dragon became furious” and “went to war” against all those whom Jesus adopts as his little brothers and little sisters (Revelation 12:17). The Dragon does this by summoning up beasts – vicious worldly powers – to sic on us, to trick or crush us (Revelation 13:1-18). Beasts like these – they try to pawn themselves off as compatible with Jesus, as similar to Jesus, or as superior over Jesus. But don't be fooled – they bear the serpent's image. They consort with Babylon, the world's corrupted culture and economy, and use her to their advantage (Revelation 17:1-18). And they're convincing. They trick all those who remain outside of the church (Revelation 13:8), and sadly, even many within the church are either seduced by the culture's wiles or browbeaten by the beasts' boasts (Revelation 2-3).

As a result, those within the church who do actually defy the beasts and follow the Lamb – well, they know they may pay a high earthly cost (Revelation 13:15). And yet Jesus seals his true disciples as his own, placing them spiritually under his protection (Revelation 7:1-8) – for the church's outer court – our physical presence on earth – can be trampled down by every nation; yet the inner court, the church's soul, is safe and sound (Revelation 11:1-2). Jesus the Lamb organizes his followers like an old-school army to stand with him on Mount Zion, equipped for a holy war (Revelation 14:1-2) – but our holy war is just to keep testifying to the good news of Jesus. In following Jesus, we're already forming an uncountable international crowd around God's throne (Revelation 7:9). Only Jesus can make that, because only Jesus ransoms people for God from every tribe and tongue. And no matter which tribe we come from, no matter what its customs or what its traditions, we're urged to gather together as those who “keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12).

If we live this life keeping the faith, defying Beast and Babylon alike, the worst they can do to us – even death – is only the shape of our exodus. Like God's people leaving Egypt for the promised land, so death becomes for us an exodus through the glassy sea into heaven; and in heaven, we'll sing the song of Moses and the Lamb, praising our Savior all the day long (Revelation 15:1-4). That's what each of us can look forward to, if we follow the Lamb. And yet we know the story hasn't reached its end when we get to heaven – getting to heaven is only the middle of your story. It gets so much better than heaven – thanks be given to God!

As the Revelation shows us, several times under several different images, the lead-up to the end, the approach toward judgment, it's called “the wrath of the Lamb” (Revelation 6:16) – because Jesus loves human life so much, loves his people's lives so much, that it infuriates him to see any of you mistreated and scoffed at for his name; and there will come the point when he has sworn to tolerate no more of it, and to rebalance the scales. In that day, Jesus will harvest the earth (Revelation 14:14-20), and no one can stand in the face of Jesus' judgment except for those who truly belong to him and stay with him, those who know that salvation is only in Jesus (Revelation 7:9-10). Jesus' wrath against the rest is justified because, as John sees, anybody who doesn't follow Jesus will ultimately, in the way they choose to live, end up declaring war on Jesus: “They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them” (Revelation 17:14). The violence of the nations claws deep gouges in culture time and again, and once the worldly powers have torn civilization to shreds and set it ablaze, expressing God's own judgment against a godless culture (Revelation 18:20-24), we hear heaven celebrate (Revelation 19:1-4). For all this chaos, only paves the way for us to see more of Jesus, someday riding in on a 'white horse' will all of heaven at his back (Revelation 19:16-21), letting his word be good news for all who know him, as his word wars against, and decisively defeats, everything that's wrong in the world (Revelation 19:15).

This same Jesus who returns is coming, not just as the Warrior to defend us, but as the Bridegroom to win us – the Bridegroom at the biggest wedding, his union to the perfected church, his Bride; for which God his Father will throw and host an eternal wedding-supper (Revelation 19:7-9) – thanks be given to God! But before this must come the final judgment. And for any one of us – no matter if you've lived like Ebenezer Scrooge or Mother Teresa – the only hope you can have in that courtroom is for Jesus, God's Lamb, to have recorded you by name in his book of life, the only exhibit worth any bearing in your defense, and against which not one protest can be heard (Revelation 20:15) – thanks be given to God!

Following the Last Judgment, we see that where the old heaven and old earth had fled away from God's face (Revelation 20:11), they'll be resurrected as a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1). The glorified church will descend from heaven down to the new earth as a new worldwide civilization, the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2), and be united with Jesus – this is the marriage of the Lamb (Revelation 21:9). When we at last peek over into this new creation, we see that Jesus is the cornerstone of its foundation (Revelation 21:14; cf. Ephesians 2:20); we see that Jesus shares a single throne with his Father (Revelation 22:3); we see that Jesus is the temple where we worship (Revelation 21:22); we see that Jesus is the lamp shedding divine light on the whole universe (Revelation 21:23). And as we return home to an Eden gone global, the Garden-City of God, with a river of life flowing from Jesus' throne and sustaining the tree of life only Jesus can grow (Revelation 22:1-3), we're told that Jesus will be the Shepherd who guides us to the springs of living water and who shelters us in an everlasting perfect peace (Revelation 7:15-17). In eternity, we will live in a perfect creation, but the very perfection of creation is how it resembles the Jesus whom we'll worship forever, when we see Jesus and his Father face-to-face (Revelation 22:4) – thanks be given to God!

Jesus is indeed “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:13). He really is the long-awaited “Lion of the tribe of Judah” (Revelation 5:5), the “Root and Offspring of David, the Bright Morning Star” which was to arise in Israel and will shine on us as a new day dawning. Jesus is the Lord who sent his angel, his messenger, to bring this revelation to all the churches, not so that we could keep it as our own secret knowledge, but so that the whole church and the whole world can hear (Revelation 22:16). Jesus is everything. And as John learns the hard way, when he tries to worship the angel who showed him all this: to turn aside from Jesus even momentarily, even to turn aside from Jesus to the best and brightest created thing, is a serious mistake (Revelation 22:8-9). Because what this Revelation wants to show us is that Jesus is so much better and so much brighter than any next-best thing.

The angel talks about how he's a “fellow servant” alongside “those who keep the words of this book.” And we might wonder what that means, to keep the words of this book. But to keep the words of this book means to live according to the picture it sets out for us. To keep the words of this book will lead us to fall head over heels in love with Jesus, to cheer him on heaven's throne 'with all his Father's glories on,' to be a true worshipper and true witness, to be ready to follow the Lamb into a new creation. That's keeping the words of this book.

But will we keep the words of this book? As we come to the book's end, that's the question it sets before us this day and every day. Revelation sets before our eyes a stark choice, just as Deuteronomy did before: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). So, too, does Revelation give us a choice: Jesus or no Jesus; Lamb or Beast; be washed or be unwashed; receive entry or receive exile. Either we can wash our robes in the blood of the Lamb and then follow the Lamb into the eternal city where the tree of life is, or we can cling to the uncleanness of our sin, ignoring the stains or trying in vain to wash them away our own way, which will only leave is outside the city where there is no life (Revelation 22:14-15).

And you might think, “Oh, I'm here this morning – oh, some decade long past, I prayed this one prayer – oh, the destiny is sure.” But Revelation was sent to the churches, precisely because people in the church can fall away, precisely because people in the church can knuckle under pressure, precisely because people in the church can be hoodwinked by the lullabies of Babylon and the serpent's hiss through the mouths of beasts. People in the church, people like us, can subtly let other things loom too large in our mind's eye, and make Jesus out to be too small. Or we can treat him as a figurehead and assure ourselves that our paltry devotions will suffice to please him 'til our journey ends. No – Revelation wants church-folk to see that the choice is an open question for each of you. If we compromise with false teaching and false living, then we're adding our excuses alongside the prophecy, adding to the words of the book – and “if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues written in this book” (Revelation 22:18). And if we back away from the picture Jesus gives us here of how he wants our lives to look, with all the agony and all the hope, then in our rebellion, we're taking away pieces of his word, we're subtracting from the words of the book – “and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and the holy city” (Revelation 22:19). To take either of those courses is to fail to keep the words of this book, keep them as they are and uphold them in life.

And that isn't what Jesus wants for us! Jesus doesn't want us to miss out on what he's offering. “Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book” (Revelation 22:7)! Jesus carries it to you as a blessing, not as a curse; as a lightness, not as a weight. Jesus hands you this book to remind you of his solemn promise. Jesus is coming quickly, coming suddenly. A thousand years may be just a day on God's calendar, and the Lord may measure time by martyrs instead of months, but Jesus' second advent is the next thing God's got marked on it, the next big thing on heaven's to-do list: “He who testifies to these things says: Surely I am coming soon!” (Revelation 22:20). To him, the Holy Spirit is praying for his return, the whole Church is praying for his return (Revelation 22:17). And his return to us is “our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). His return is so hopeful because Jesus wants good things for you.

And Jesus wants to give me, and wants to give you, the water of life, the same water that will one day irrigate and flood the cosmos from his throne on earth, the same flow of Holy Spirit he's been pouring out since that one Pentecost, the same issue of life he pours in every age. The prophet Isaiah predicted it long ago:

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price! Why do you spend your money for what isn't bread, and your labor for what doesn't satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what's good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me; hear, that your soul may live! And I'll make with you an everlasting covenant: my steadfast, sure love for David. (Isaiah 55:1-3)

Jesus, “the Root and the Offspring of David” (Revelation 22:16), is our New David, our New Love, our New Covenant. Jesus is the One who invites everybody thirsty to his refreshing waters and satisfying table. Jesus denies no one. Jesus shouts an open invitation to all and sundry. From the ventures and adventures, from the humdrums and doldrums, you can come. From the highs and the lows, from the homelands and the hinterlands, you can come. No matter how dried-up and parched you are, you can come. No matter how sick you are, you can come. No matter how wicked and how stubborn you are, no matter your crimes and no matter your confusion, you can come! You can 'come to the waters' and be refreshed, be satisfied, 'without money and without price.' Why fritter yourself away for things that never satisfy? There's a better deal on the table.

Jesus doesn't charge for it. Hear the words of the book: “Let the one who desires take the water of life without price” (Revelation 22:17). No, Jesus won't charge you. He already paid the price, paid it high, paid it in full. The sole cost he asks is your desire for him. He only wants to give, give, give. The 'water of life,' more valued, more precious than any diamond, more satisfying than a trillion years in utopia, he offers freely. Jesus only will ask you, “Do you want it?” Do you want it? Will you come and take it, when Jesus is the one offering it?

Jesus sings in your ear, Jesus sings to your heart, “Let the one who is thirsty come” (Revelation 22:17). Does that touch on anything in you? Are you thirsty? Is there anything in you that isn't perfectly satisfied with life as you've known it? “Let the one who is thirsty come!” Is there anything in you that understands need? “Let the one who is thirsty come!” Is there anything in you that feels the contours of the God-shaped hole in all of us, which God alone can fill? “Let the one who is thirsty come!” Is there anything in you that knows loss or fears for the future? “Let the one who is thirsty come!” Is there still any thirst in you, any desire to do anything but languish in the deadness of self? Then “let the one who is thirsty come!” Come where? Come how? Come to Jesus! Come with desire, come with thirst, having faith that he can satisfy where no one else can! Come to Jesus – run to Jesus like a panting athlete, trembling from the race; crawl to Jesus like a parched man dying in the desert; fall before Jesus, dehydrated by the arid sands of time. Come to Jesus to “take the water of life without price.” Come to Jesus because what he supplies is only what he is – you cannot take the fruit without the Tree, you cannot take the water without the Wellspring, you cannot take the peace without the Prince, you cannot take the grace without the Giver. Come to Jesus – and let Jesus give you the gift of Jesus.

I only don't invite you to come. “The Spirit and the Bride say: Come!” (Revelation 22:17). It's a single invite from both. The Holy Spirit tugs at you, pulls at wherever he can grasp in you, whispers in the cathedral of your soul: “Come on! Come on! Come to Jesus. If you've never believed, if you've never followed, start right here and right now – come to Jesus. If you've been a follower thirty thousand days, but you still have any thirst – come to Jesus. If you've strayed like a lost sheep, if you've been swept under the dirt like a lost coin – come to Jesus. If you're a spendthrift child wasting your inheritance in the far country – come to Jesus. If you're a fruitless fig tree, a branch fallen from the trunk – come to Jesus. If you're chained up in a graveyard of dreams, beset by a legion of fears and doubts – come to Jesus. If you're a boat tossed in a storm of wind and waves – come to Jesus. If you've never seen, been blind for longer than you recall – come to Jesus. If you've checked off the boxes and wonder what more there is to do to be satisfied and get the true life – come to Jesus.”

And the Holy Spirit doesn't speak alone. The Lamb's own Bride – the Church – bids you come. I stand up here this morning, speaking as one of John's brothers (cf. Revelation 22:9), and the voice I speak here is the voice of the Bride of the Lamb herself: “Come! Listen to what the Spirit says to the churches! Listen to what the Spirit says to the hearts! Listen, listen to the Spirit – come, come to Jesus!” The Bride says, “You don't know goodness 'til you've been swept off your feet by my Bridegroom. You don't know truth 'til you've heard my Bridegroom. You don't know beauty 'til you've fixed your eyes on my Bridegroom! You don't know life 'til my Bridegroom's brought you home! Go, go now, go now and wait not a second longer! Come to Jesus!”

Come to Jesus. And when you've come, add your voice to the chorus. “Let the one who hears say: Come!” (Revelation 22:17). It's an invitation of which the hearing of it authorizes you to extend it to others. Go invite your sons and your daughters, your grandchildren and great-grandchildren, your brothers and your sisters. Go invite your family and your friends. Go invite your neighbors across the street and down the way. Go invite your workmates and colleagues, your doctors and your nurses. Find out who thirsts, and tell them of the Jesus with water of life to give. Find out who's bankrupt, and tell them of the Jesus who doesn't ask a price. Go invite the world to the Everlasting Man, the Living One, the Lion, the Lamb, the Warrior, the Judge, the Bridegroom, the Lamp, the Star – say to all the world, “Come to this Jesus, this Jesus who changes everything, this Jesus who holds out life in his hands, this Jesus who makes all things new!”

We invite others to come to Jesus, so we may all cry out to him, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20). What other hope could we hope for? What else should be our truest desire? The Holy Spirit prays for Jesus to come back down. The Lamb's Bride, the Church, prays for Jesus to come back down. John prayed for Jesus to come back down. And each of us must pray, pray, pray for Jesus to come to us, come be with us, come make all things new. So we pray. “And may the grace of the Lord Jesus be with [you] all. Amen” (Revelation 22:21).

A Walk in the Park: Sermon on Revelation 22:1-3

A month after Easter, the days of April rain had at last left off, so a barrel-chested man in his early sixties went for a solitary morning stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue. The birds had started singing their brightest happy songs. (Listen: Can you hear them?) The grass was luxuriant. And at either side of the massively broad avenue, the trees were beginning to bud. He paused to admire one, a sycamore – he knew it well. After all, he'd planted it, along with many of the rest. Jemmy Maher, out for a stroll in the spring of 1856, had by that point been serving for 22 and a half years as Washington DC's public gardener. He mused as he caressed the fresh buds of the sycamore.

Jemmy – “loud, vehement, emphatic, and intensely Irish,” one paper put it, as Irish Catholic as they come – had been born and bred on the Emerald Isle. He was about six years old when the Irish Rebellion of 1798 tried to rise up and cast off the English yoke from his land. His father had been a captain in that rebellion, and when things failed, the elder man had fled to America for self-preservation, leaving his family behind - including six-year-old Jemmy. Jemmy, who'd taken up gardening as a hobby when he was twelve, waited another twelve years to follow his father's tracks. In 1816, Jemmy'd sailed to Boston, promptly taken an oath of allegiance to his new land of refuge, moved to Philadelphia, and within five years got his naturalization papers. He and his wife Bridget moved to Washington in 1833, thrilled to get nearer their hero, President Andrew Jackson, who that autumn appointed Jemmy as public gardener for DC.

Though Jemmy had no easy time of it – partisan politics, power plays, prejudice, and admittedly a predilection for whisky – nonetheless he proved a rousing success in the position. He beautified the grounds of the White House and Capitol with honeysuckle and rose, and all the stretch of road in between and around with a selection of magnificent trees, some of them from his thousands-strong private nursery. Nobody knew plants like “Jemmy Maher, born widout a shirt!” And he loved them as his children. As each winter approached, Jemmy wept hot tears over the thief Jack Frost's abduction of his blossoms. An ambitious man, nevertheless the years rolling by never quite fulfilled his dream of a city flowing with fountains; but he did have many of the broad avenues thoroughly shaded by his sycamores, his maples, his ashes and elms. And as he'd stroll past on mornings like this one, he said, “they speak to me and bow and nod their heads to me as I go along the streets, and bless and thank me for planting and caring for them.” It was a beautiful morning for just such a stroll. And to Jemmy's eyes, the trees were full of joy and gratitude – the birds were giving voice to their spring hymns of thanksgiving. Even in the midst of the city, Jemmy had toiled his life to preserve the beauties of nature, with all his heart and soul.

Not quite three years from that day, Jemmy would pass from this world, six months after Bridget. And during the Civil War, soldiers would harvest many of his beloved tree-children for lumber. But his work would continue, and in the 1870s, the newly-formed Parking Commission would line the streets of DC with tens of thousands of more trees. (Alas, fifty years on, officials would begin chopping down those roadside tree parks to make more room for the automobiles that had begun to pull in between them to stop by the side of the road – hence why we still say we 'park' our cars.) Off and on through the years, in the nation's capital and elsewhere, we've had varying levels of awareness of the importance of what's known as 'urban forestry,' the planting of tree life and other park and garden spaces within city environments. Without maintaining a vibrant urban forest, cities – and even small towns – can too easily become sterile, artificial, and (dare I say) ugly, cutting us off from the nature in which and with which we really do belong, in some measure. Men like Jemmy Maher knew that. Men like Jemmy Maher were determined not to let us get so far from our roots. In May 1845, one DC observer remarked that the lands under Jemmy's care became “a perfect Garden of Eden in appearance.” Three years later, another praised the “Eden-like beauty of the blooming gardens” Jemmy tended. Eden – Jemmy knew, and we know, where we're from.

The Bible's recounting of our roots plants them in a garden – God's garden. We're told that “God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed; and out of the ground, Yahweh God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers” (Genesis 2:8-10). That's the Bible's basic picture of the original paradise: a garden filled with good trees, crowned by the tree of life, and “well-watered everywhere” by its very own river (Genesis 13:10). That's the park where Adam and Eve, the Bible's representation of original manhood and womanhood, were appointed by God as public gardeners, much like their descendant Jemmy. For God took humanity “and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15) – to serve God and guard the garden. It was a high and lofty position – those are the same Hebrew verbs used in Leviticus for the mission of priests. As a later book says outright, “the Garden of Eden was the Holy of Holies and the dwelling of the Lord” (Jubilees 8.19). The garden was the original inner-sanctuary of the universe, God's own place of beauty. Adam and Eve were royal priests, tasked with maintaining the garden and expanding the garden until the garden filled the entire world. Their joy was have been to worship God face-to-face there as he would walk in the garden in the cool of the day; their joy would have been to celebrate the beauties of Eden, and to be fruitful and multiply in the garden, and disciple more and more generations of human gardeners, and give rise to a deathless civilization of Eden that would gradually extend the garden to fill the whole earth, lovingly ordering all things to the glory of the one and only God!  That's what Adam and Eve, what we, were put there for.

That's what was supposed to happen. But it didn't go so smoothly. For allowing an unclean serpent to infest the garden, and then for listening to its incitements to mistrust and overthrow God's authority in his own sanctuary, Adam and Eve – having refused to guard the garden – lost the Garden of Eden. They were exiled from the garden-temple, and their responsibility to guard it was handed over to cherubim stationed at the east entryway (Genesis 3:24). They exited into a world where the very dirt itself was cursed on their account, cursed to yield with difficulty and diminution, and cursed to one day receive their dusty bones in death (Genesis 3:17-19). Out we went to farm and forage, living off the land, multiplying in a fruitless desert place, until the first city (Genesis 4:17). Down through the centuries goes human civilization until Israel, under Solomon, builds a temple, a new permanent sanctuary. This temple was supposed to be a recreation of the garden – there's a reason King Solomon decorated it with “gourds and open flowers” (1 Kings 6:18), and why “around all the walls of the house he carved engraved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers, in the inner and outer rooms” (1 Kings 6:29), with each of the supporting columns being topped with lilies and pomegranates (1 Kings 7:18-19). The temple was decorated like the garden, a simulated Eden in lumber and gold, a stand-in for the realities of paradise lost.

And the prophets predicted one day it'd grow again. Isaiah heard God promise to “open rivers on the bare heights” and to “put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive..., the cypress, the plane, and the pine together” (Isaiah 41:17-19). Joel imagined that “the mountains shall drip sweet wine and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the streambeds of Judah shall flow with water, and a fountain shall come forth from the House of Yahweh and water the valley” (Joel 3:18). Building on Joel's hope, Ezekiel – a prophet living in exile after the temple, their simulated Eden, was burned down – dreamed dreams of a new temple, bigger and bolder, whose walls and doors would again be decorated with cherubim and palm trees (Ezekiel 41:18-26) and from which would surge an ever-deepening river flowing into the Dead Sea (Ezekiel 47:8). Its purity would be so great that in it would live “very many fish” of “very many kinds” (Ezekiel 47:9-10), and on either bank of the river would grow “very many trees” (Ezekiel 47:7). There'd be “all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing” (Ezekiel 47:12). In other words, it would be an Eden restored, flowing and growing in their own land after all exile was ended. Decades later, a prophet named Zechariah was still hoping for the day when Yahweh would stand on the Mount of Olives and bring “a unique day..., neither day nor night, but at evening time there shall be light. On that day, living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea: it shall conitnue in summer as in winter, and Yahweh will be king over all the earth” (Zechariah 14:7-9), “for there shall never again be a curse” (Zechariah 14:11 LXX).

Through the centuries after Ezekiel, Jews kept hoping for those living waters and that new garden. One had visions of the whole earth being “cleansed from all pollution” (1 Enoch 10.22) and the entire earth then being planted with “pleasant trees” (1 Enoch 10.18-19), particularly the tree of life growing in the holy place, with leaves that never wither and beautiful fruit and an incomparable fragrance (1 Enoch 24.4; 25.5). Another later hoped for the Messiah to “open the gates of paradise; he shall remove the sword that has threatened since Adam, and he will grant to the holy ones to eat of the tree of life” (Testament of Levi 18.10-11). Their dream was that “the saints shall refresh themselves in Eden; the righteous shall rejoice in the New Jerusalem, which shall be eternally for the glorification of God” (Testament of Dan 5.12). Still later, another writer longed for “twelve trees loaded with various fruits, and the same number of springs flowing with milk and honey, and seven mighty mountains on which roses and lilies grow” (4 Ezra 2.18-19).

And humbly, John – filled with the same age-old longings as a son of Adam and Eve – steps onto the stage. We already heard much about the New Jerusalem he sees, a city that signifies a whole civilization, the future hoped for every city and every town and every space on the earth to be 'New Jerusalem-ized.' But if what we'd heard thus far were all he said, then we might fear it would be a concrete jungle, a sterile thing of metal and stone, discarding nature in the interests of shelter and security. John does not want us to fear that. Which is why it's important that John adds the verses we've read this morning. John wants to be clear that New Jerusalem is not that kind of city. No, the New Jerusalem he can see is a New Jerusalem with an urban forest that'd put Jemmy Maher to shame. Because the New Jerusalem that John sees is also a New Garden of Eden – both Holy City and Holy Garden, construction and natural growth, in one. All Jemmy's works of love pointed forward to an eternity that's a true garden-city – neither a return to a primitive wilderness state nor an urbanism that alienates from nature.

This is the kind of place we were always meant to live. In a way, you could say that everything from Genesis 3 onward has been a detour, an 'off-the-beaten-path' roundabout way of getting to where God meant us to go quite simply. We were meant to expand the garden, to build up a civilization of Eden across the world, developing holy settlements around the globe, which would have always been in perfect harmony with nature, always have gone with nature's grain, always have seamlessly blended with the flora and fauna we tended. But in our detour east of Eden, led astray in the exile of our sins, we haven't built our world that way. Even since the ancient Sumerians, we've felt a tension between nature and civilization (consider the Epic of Gilgamesh!). Still, even along our detour, God has unfolded his plans in majestic and marvelous ways, albeit in a less fruitful and less beautiful world afflicted by a curse. Yet the destination remains the same as it always has been and always would have been. What John sees, what prophets before him yearned for, is for the curse to be lifted – for a day when it can be said, “no longer will there be any curse” (Revelation 22:3a; cf. Zechariah 14:11).

For because there was a curse, Adam and Eve were once cast out. But history will have its symmetry. The curse will be withdrawn, its purposes fulfilled. The edict of exile will expire. And those who follow the Last Adam will be welcomed back home – we will go home to the garden, go home to the life we should've been living all along, go home to Eden. But it will not be back to Eden as Adam and Eve first knew it. For they were given a small and limited garden, governed by sun and moon overhead, and tasked to build it up into something, to take it in hand and work it and keep it. They were given an Eden in formation, an Eden with a long mission ahead. But we will go back to an Eden with a long mission accomplished, an Eden already extended, an Eden tended by the gentle hands of the Last Adam, Jesus Christ, the best Urban Forester, the perfect Public Gardener. We will go home to an Eden already built up into a Divine Garden-City, verdant and fragrant and radiant. The new creation will be naturally beautiful, liberated into our glorious liberty as God's children; it will be a landscape saturated with God's own glory and populated by flora and fauna all fulfilled in their perfections!

And in this world made new, in this global garden-city, we'll find all the joys Adam and Eve had set aside – yet we'll come to them in mature responsibility, on the other side of innocence. Once, they walked with their God in the garden's cooling breeze. And so will we. For God will be there, walking among us, talking with us. Zechariah declared that in that day beyond the familiar rhythms and seasons of this world, “Yahweh will be king over all the earth” (Zechariah 14:9). And he will reign from the garden-city, for “the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him” (Revelation 22:3b). God will be enthroned in the garden, ruling over every redwood and every rutabaga, every bear and every bobcat, in his New Eden. And he will rule this garden world through us, for John tells us that we “will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5). Nor will the Father rule without his Son by his side, sharing the same throne of authority. Jesus will still be King of Kings and Lord of Lords – and he will still be the Lamb, still be the one we recognize as having been sacrificed for us. He will still be the One who was once crucified, the One who gave up his blood to wash our robes clean, the One whose transfigured scars stream light and beauty into all the world. Jesus will still be our all in all. Our eyes will “behold the King in his beauty” (Isaiah 33:17), the beauty that makes Eden itself beautiful. And we will, for all our eternal days in his garden-city, worship Jesus just as we worship his Father (Revelation 22:3).

When John sees this glorious global garden-city, his guiding angel shows to him “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city” (Revelation 22:1-2a). This is the river Ezekiel saw flowing from the temple foundation – turns out that God and the Lamb are that temple, so from them comes the gush of living water. This is the river Zechariah saw spilling from Jerusalem, flowing to the eastern and western seas.

What John sees here is a great mystery, but to start out, it shows us what will someday be true of every river. It shows us that everywhere on earth will be well-watered like the Garden of Eden was. It shows us what that water will be like – this river is “bright as crystal,” clear and transparent. There's no pollution in it. There's no muck or murky disturbance to it. Go stop by the Conestoga River, and tell me how well you can see the bottom. The water's too muddy. Go join Jemmy on the banks of the Potomac, and the water may be a more beautiful blue, but it isn't as bright as crystal. The water John sees is translucent, and with all things filled with life, you could see right to the bottom of it. Magnificent. So, too, the water John sees is flowing water, living water, life-giving water. The prophets had seen how this water, holy water flowing from the sanctuary, would cause life to sprout in the desert, would sustain a bustling ecosystem all its own, would purify even the most sterile waters with its contagious purity, its exuberant purity of life, and make everything live wherever it goes. We can hope for every river to have a share in that – for every river, every stream, every brook and creek and littlest trickle, to sustain life, to set in motion a cascade of ecology, to be the nourishment of nature in every clod of soil.

But, of course, John speaks in deeper symbols. And when he sees a river of the water of life, flowing from the throne of the Father and the Son, he's seeing, among other things, the Holy Spirit, flowing out from them, connecting us all with a divine goodness that gushes in torrents of life. God's goodness, God's life, will flow into us, supply us, refresh us and all creation. This “living water flowing / in soul-refreshing streams,” the Holy Spirit's flood, is the “living water” that Jesus longs to give us when we ask (John 4:10), the rivers that well up within and flow from a heart of faith (John 7:38). The Holy Spirit will one day flood us, flow through our society with the refreshing goodness of God at all times. And John sees his river as flowing down the middle of the city's street, at the heart of the thoroughfare like a Venetian canal, because the Holy Spirit will be central to all our comings and all our goings. There will be no pathway in any of the world's villages where the Holy Spirit isn't torrential, isn't obviously rushing in power, for all eternity bringing refreshment to the highways and byways, watering the earth with the effervescent life of the Father and the Son.

And because the River flows with life, the Tree of Life will grow there – “on either side of the river, the tree of life” (Revelation 22:2b). And we can understand this, first, on a more mundane level. The whole earth will be a well-watered garden, and every garden has to have growth. If Ezekiel saw the river producing many kinds of trees, well, John focuses on the tree of life, the tree at the heart of Adam's longing and Eve's missed chance. As John reviews Ezekiel's visions, John sees that all our trees will be trees of life – every tree will be productive, every tree will be fruitful, every tree will be a source of delight and plenty, every tree will be the fulfillment of our deep longings. (And so, I would suggest, for each shrub, each bush, each vine, each flower, each blade of grass, to partake of something of the character of the 'tree of life.')

John sees that the tree planted by the river will have healing leaves – “the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2d). Ezekiel saw that, how the leaves of all the trees he witnessed would be “for healing” (Ezekiel 47:12). That doesn't mean people will keep getting sick for all eternity, will keep needing medical attention for all eternity. It's to show us, again and again, under all kind of images, just how lavishly committed God is to doing away with everything wrong. He wants us to know just how many benefits there will be. And so he gives images of abundant healing. Some ancient Jewish readers of Ezekiel interpreted the healing leaves as being either a digestive aid or a fertility treatment (Midrash Rabbah Canticles 4.12.4). John doesn't get into that. The main point he wants to get across is that the 'healing' from Ezekiel is “for the nations.” God intends to gather the world around the tree – Americans and Russians, Israelis and Palestinians, Syrians and Turks, the discipled from every people and party – and bring us all together in the garden, heal us all together in the garden, help us all grow into a new world together in the garden.

John's one other observation about the tree of life is that it bears “twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month” (Revelation 22:2c). Ezekiel had already seen the trees as “bear[ing] fresh fruit every month..., their fruit for food” (Ezekiel 47:12). Both want us to have the image that God's provision never gets stale, never gets tired, never pales, never becomes insufficient. Never will we have to depend on last month's leftover grace! There will always be a new flavor of grace, a new species of grace, waiting for our fingertips to stretch forth and effortlessly take what he offers. The world we know can't measure up to the fruitfulness of what God has in store! Each tree is pictured as bearing its fruit for us all the time, a rotating crop supplying us with a diverse range of freshness, ripe for the picking. God's gifts are not only sufficient, they will be super-abundant. All this world is stuck in dreary winter in comparison to the bloom that's ahead of us. Jemmy's gardens and our gardens are only the barest pointers to what lies in store. The world will really be as beautiful as John tells it. We really will find all around us that “everlasting spring abides, and never-withering flowers.”

But as we ponder this tree of life John sees, we should see it with the eyes of the church. And for a very long time, the church has understood that the cross of Jesus Christ is our tree of life – for from the crucifixion of the Lord, there grow all the blessings our spirits can savor. Over sixteen hundred years ago, Christian poets were already saying things like, “Greatly saddened was the Tree of Life when it beheld Adam stolen away from it; it sank down into the virgin ground and was hidden, to burst forth and reappear on Golgotha; humanity, like birds that are chased, took refuge in it so that it might return them to their proper home; the chaser was chased away, while the doves that had been chased now hop with joy in paradise.” The church long ago started singing lines like, “The church has been revealed as a second paradise, having within it, like the first paradise of old, a tree of life, your cross, O Lord: By touching it, we share in immortality.” Now, as an old Christian poet said, “the very Planter of the Garden has become the food for our souls.”

Jesus' cross is a tree of life, whose every leaf is a healing balm for hurting souls and who perpetually yields fruit for our food, never becoming barren. Jesus is always fruitful, and Jesus will always be fruitful – John sees that! John sees that it is exactly as the crucified-and-risen Jesus, exactly as the slain-and-standing Lamb, that Christ will be enthroned with his Father as our everything in our paradise regained. Jesus alone wins our paradise!

And we begin to taste this paradise now as we come to Jesus for the healing of his leaves, as we pluck the fruits of his atoning sacrifice and eat them, letting him make his life a part of us, and one day the whole of us. (And only at the cross of Christ, the tree of life, will all the nations find healing for what ails them.) For it's not for nothing that “in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb..., [and] they laid Jesus there” (John 19:41-42). And it's not for nothing that he rose victorious over death in a garden, and not for nothing that the first eyewitness to encounter the risen Lord Jesus “supposed him to be the gardener” (John 20:15). Gardens have everything to do with it. If you thought Jemmy Maher was good, wait 'til you see what this Gardening God can do with the New Jerusalem's New Eden, where the Tree of Life grows and the River of Life flows from God's own throne!

The cross shows us that the long history of sin has not been allowed to finally sidetrack humanity from the great and glorious destiny God has always had planned for us; nor does the long history of death's curse finally keep creation back from its destined blessing! Eden lies, not just behind us, but ahead of us. The world will be the garden-city it was always meant to be. Every place – be it New York or New Holland, be it Detroit or desert – will be filled with the lush verdure of Eden's spring, not erasing what we've built but reforming and conforming it to the design of Christ. The world will then one day be perfectly beautified; we will then one day live in perfect harmony with all creatures great and small; we will then one day sit under the shade of our own trees and our own vines, amidst our own flowers and our own fields; we will then one day savor all Eden's choicest fruits and fragrances; and best, we will at last one day walk with God himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as our sole supply and closest companion, face-to-face in the New-Eden Garden-City of God. For “Yahweh comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song” (Isaiah 51:3). Forever, through the grace of Christ our Gardener. Hallelujah!