A VISION OF OUR DESTINATION

6th Sunday of Easter

            When I’m traveling, especially if it is a great distance, I like to have a picture of where I’m going.  You’ve been in those motels and rest stops along the Interstate highways and seen the racks of tourist brochures.  So, if you are on your way to San Antonio, say, you can pick up some information about where you are headed.  You can get a preview of the Alamo or SeaWorld or the Paseo del Rio (the River Walk).  If you really want to get a more thorough preview of the attractions of the Alamo City, you can go online and research their jazz scene or La Villita.  With all that, as you are on your way, you can picture the wonderful time ahead.  I like to do that.  I like to have a preview of what’s before me.

            Well, if that’s true for pleasure trips, how much more important for me to have a vision of where I am ultimately headed.  Just as history gives us a better perspective of where we are presently, so also does a peek at the future, the end of history.  We can get a clearer picture of our present context for life if we have a vision of where we are ultimately headed.  What is my ultimate destination?  That’s what I want to know.  Oh, I know that my vacations never turn out exactly the way the travel brochures picture them.  An attraction might be bigger or smaller than they appear in brochures.  Or the scenery might be even more spectacular than can be depicted in a tiny glossy color picture.  Even so, it’s nice to get a glimpse.  John of Patmos gives us a glimpse of our ultimate destination.  John is no better able to describe our ultimate destination than I am able to describe my joy derived from great music.  But John’s glimpse is better than no picture at all.

            So, let’s get a look at the brochure.  A preview of our ultimate destination is in our text from the New Testament book of Revelation.  We have this book, remember, because of a vision, or maybe I should say a series of visions, given by God to a man named John who had been banished to the island of Patmos for being an outspoken Christian.  In the vision we have for today we have a kind of brochure of our ultimate destination.  It is a city.  What has begun in a garden in Genesis finds its ultimate perfection in a city.  A new, completely recreated city.  The new Jerusalem.  John’s brochure has to describe the city by what it does not have, so wonderful and indescribable it is.  “I saw no temple in the city,” John tells us.  But I thought this was a holy place.  Why no temple or church in the holy city?  Because, in a sense, the entire city is a holy place.  “I saw no temple in the city,” John declares, “for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.  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.”  This is the light whose glory we have beheld in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.  There’s more about this city:  “Its gates will never be shut by day.”  What about at night?  “. . . there will be no night there,” John announces.  Now we begin to get the picture, mostly by what this city does not have.  No security cameras.  No locks.  No safes.  No body armor.  No police department.  No Department of Homeland Security.  This, you see, is human society, all perfected.  No, not simply human society.  This is the church perfected.  No more administrative commissions to look into clergy misconduct.  No more committees on the ministry to sort out church conflicts.  This is a picture of the body of Christ now without blemish or flaw.

            Now, here’s the best part:  We will have a close relationship with God, John tells us.  We will, in the new Jerusalem, get to see the unseen God.  We will get to be in the very presence of the living God.  We will be with God face to face, so to speak.  Some of our church family is away today so that mothers and their children may be together face to face.  Of course, children could simply phone in their greetings, send an e-mail, put it on a greeting card, or send it in a text message.  But would Mother be pleased with these forms of communication?  No!  Moms want hugs.  They want to tug on cheeks.  They want touch.  Moms want the very presence of their children.  They want to be with their kids face to face.  John tells us that, at our ultimate destination, we get the great joy of being in the very presence of God.  “See,” John heard in a vision, “the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.”  The very best part of our ultimate destination will be, as John tells it, being face to face with the living God in an unimpeded relationship.  No going through a priest.  No asking the pastor what God is like.  No need for a theological education to reflect on the nature of God.  Not at our ultimate destination.  We’ll just get to be with God.  God and us.  Us and God.  Together with God forever!  That’s the best part.

            Oh, Pastor, not everybody gets in, right?  It’s just us Christians, isn’t it?  Surely, Pastor, there will be those people who we won’t see at our ultimate destination.  The Jews won’t be there, will they, Pastor?  After all, they don’t believe in Jesus as the Messiah.  They don’t believe that Jesus is the divine Son of God.  And neither do the Muslims.  They don’t believe in Jesus the same way we do.  For them, he’s just a prophet, not the divine Son of God.  So they’re out, aren’t they, Pastor?  How about atheists and agnostics?  Those people don’t have any faith in God that they profess.  They’re not Christians.  No chance for those folks to make it into the holy city, isn’t that right, Pastor?

            Well, let’s check John’s brochure.  “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth, will bring their glory into it.”  “The nations” includes all of the people of the earth, including even the heathens.  And earlier in John’s brochure, he had this verbal snapshot:  “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.”  This whole host seems to include just about everybody.  No, maybe not those who have no desire to live in communion with the holy.  Maybe not those who have made it abundantly clear that they don’t want to come to the holy city, those who don’t want redemption as a gift.  Maybe not those folks.  But what I seen in John’s brochure is a place where all kinds of people from many places are welcome to be in the presence of God.  Jews included?  Yes indeed, from the twelve tribes of Israel.  Oh, and look!  There’s our friend, Jerry.  Oh, and there’s my Jewish colleague who served with me as a chaplain at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas.  How about Muslims?  Yes!  Look!  It’s my new friend, Imam Yusuf.  He loves God and promotes love and justice wherever he can.  And who’s that over there?  It looks like that fellow who never really thought of himself as a believer, but he loves the people and values that God loves.  Yeah, you might be surprised to find him here.  Well, he’s surprised, too!  But there he is.  Remember the story Jesus told about our ultimate destination?  He said the righteous will ask, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food?”  Then, Jesus said, the righteous will be told, “Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  Just look!  Look at all the people God welcomes home at our ultimate destination!

            Of course, those who belong to God will have no reason to doubt it.  Each one will know that he or she is God’s own.  Each one of us will be marked as belonging to God, John says.  Do you put your name on your stuff, as least your important stuff?  I do.  All my Bibles are embossed with my name.  My Bibles.  All my other books, too.  My books.  I put my nametag inside the hatband of all my hats.  My hats.  You’ve seen my ever-present briefcase.  Got my name on that.  My briefcase.  If I want to keep safe the food and beverages in my stash here at the church, I had better mark them with my name.  My food.  My sodas.  When we have children, they are marked as belonging to us by means of birth certificates and adoption papers.  Our kids.  Even before we reach our ultimate destination, we have been marked as belonging to God, remember?  When we baptize children or adults, we make the sign of the cross on the forehead of each, with the words, “. . . you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.”  John tells us that, at our ultimate destination, God will put his name on our foreheads.  Sure, that is probably a metaphor.  But it remains nevertheless a powerful image of how we will know that we belong to God.  It will be as though God stuck his nametag on us.  Nowadays, when you go with kids to this particular pizza place, they mark your hands.  When you come out, each of the kids have a mark on them that show that they belong to you.  John is declaring that all of God’s own people will be marked, showing that we belong to God.  There will be no doubt for any of God’s people that we are God’s own.