(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on November 13, 2016, Proper 28)
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“A New Heavens and a New Earth”
The glory that Haggai proclaimed was smaller, emptier, and weaker than before. That probably struck us as a bit odd. But then we recalled the tiny glory of God who is born in a manger, the emptying glory of God who took the form of a servant, and the weak glory of God whose crowning moment was a cross. For Jesus, glory had less to do with might and material, power and prestige, and more to do with a love that lives for others.
Jesus called this way of life “the kingdom of God.” Haggai caught a hint of it, I think, and called it “a glory greater than before.” Today, Isaiah catches sight of it too and calls it a “new heavens and a new earth.”
A Daydream
…The sun is beginning to set, and I’m walking along a dusty road lined with field and forest. There are also gardens and vineyards, where young men and women are kneeling among leaves and branches, pruning, planting, scooping, filling baskets with fruits and vegetables. Occasionally I pass by a small home. Each one glows with a warm orange light inside, and through the windows waft the smells of dinner. If I listen closely, I can hear the clink-clank of dishes, the gentle tones of overlapping voices, the odd burst of laughter. As I pass by the fourth or fifth home, a couple of children run out the front door, chasing one another. So great is their vigor, they are out of my sight in a matter of seconds. A couple more homes down the road, I notice an elderly couple sitting silently on the porch, enjoying the evening breeze. Their silence feels like a smile, a quiet nod to the dusk. It’s getting dark, and so I decide that I will need to end my journey soon. I have a feeling—a trust—that any one of these homes would welcome me for the night.
As Down-to-Earth as You Could Get
I didn’t even mention the wolf and the lamb together, or the lion and the ox, but you’ve probably already guessed the whereabouts of my daydream. Isaiah’s vision transported me there. Some people have called it “the peaceable kingdom.” That seems like a reasonable enough name, considering how God promises that predators will no longer “hurt or destroy” in that place (Isa 65:25).
If Haggai’s promise last week suggested that the kingdom of God might look smaller, emptier, and weaker than we expect, then Isaiah’s vision today develops the picture a bit further. In Isaiah, the picture is one of simplicity and sharing. There are no mentions of a grand temple or great riches or a war to end all wars. The dream is as down-to-earth as you could get: people who build homes and live in them; children who are born healthy and who grow up without fear; people working the field and eating its fruit with satisfaction; elders growing old and grey in the comfort of their community.
“Lord, Make Us All like Trees”
Like any prophet worth his salt, Isaiah uses a strange image to get his point across. He says life in the kingdom will be like “the days of a tree.” To put that more bluntly, he’s saying that in the peaceable kingdom, we will be like trees.
Think about that the next time you pray the Lord’s prayer and say, “Thy kingdom come.” According to Isaiah, what you’re really praying is, “Lord, make us all like trees.”
I jest—but only partly so. In fact, I’m only taking a page from the book of Hildegard of Bingen, a Benedictine abbess of the 12th century. Hildegard was a creative and visionary church leader, which was a highly unusual thing for a woman in the 12 century. She had a unique word to describe the power of God: “greenness.”[1] She proclaimed that all of creation contained God’s greenness. God’s power was not a matter of might or muscle, but a matter of sap and spirit. What better word to describe the power of God that Isaiah envisions? “Greenness.” Growth. Life. Children in good health, gardens full of produce, workers whose hands multiply the life of their patch of land, elderly whose last days are as beautiful as their first, as beautiful as the autumn leaves.
“To Life—Here, Now!”
What will heaven be like? If Isaiah has anything to say about it, heaven will be a lot like earth. It won’t be some white, spotless, luxurious place where we all just float about happily. How boring. Heaven will be life: that includes building houses and planting gardens, cooking meals and setting tables, children playing and elders tinkering. In other words, in Isaiah’s mind, heaven has nothing to do with eternal rest. It’s eternal life—which includes work, but fulfilling work; relationships, but fulfilling relationships; change, but fulfilling change.
But to focus on Isaiah’s vision as a vision of the afterlife is an injustice to Isaiah, I think. In Isaiah’s vocabulary, “afterlife” would be an awful word because of that prefix “after.” For Isaiah, life is the main course, and anything “after,” or other than, cannot compare. For him, heaven would not be an “afterlife” but simply “more life,” or “better life.”
When Isaiah delivered this dream—God’s dream—to the people of Israel, he wasn’t comforting them with a picture of what would happen after they died. He was inspiring them with a picture of the life that God wanted for them now. Like Jesus, who prayed, “Thy kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven,” Isaiah was crying out, “L’chaim! To life—here, now! More life, better life!”
More than Pliable Propaganda
Of course, dictatorships have been built on such promises. A safe and healthy environment, homes for everyone, food on every table, worthwhile work for every able body. What distinguishes Isaiah’s dream from the dangerous dreams of a dictator?
I think Hildegard got it right. It’s the “greenness” of God that makes all the difference. Dictators cannot appreciate the greenness of God in all things. They are ultimately concerned with the selfsame, not the other; they care only about certain homes, certain tables, certain able bodies. But for Hildegard, all of creation is green, which means that God dwells in all things—and all people. It’s this greenness that brings Isaiah’s vision down to earth, that makes Isaiah’s vision more than simply the pliable propaganda of a power-thirsty dictator. And it’s this greenness of God in all things and all people that makes Isaiah’s vision particularly pertinent today.
No Weeds in the Kingdom of God
In the wake of this last week’s elections, tensions are running high. Sometimes when we see someone who voted differently, we have trouble seeing the image of God. The greenness of God. The potential for beautiful and abundant life. For all we care, perhaps, that person is a weed. The world would be better without weeds.
But horticulture teaches us a valuable theological point: a weed is not a reality but a matter of perspective. A weed is merely a plant that a person considers unnecessary. In the kingdom of God that Isaiah envisions, that Jesus prays for, there are no weeds. Every person and thing is filled with God’s greenness, blessed with an uncounted possibility for life. The first task in the great garden of God, then, is not to change people but to love people. It is to “water” them, to tend to them in ways that help them to grow. In doing so, we may find that the change happens first not in their green hearts but in ours.
The Kingdom of God Is Growing
The kingdom of God, Jesus says, is like a mustard seed.[2]
Which means the kingdom of God grows. It does not appear overnight. It is not be achieved by a final victory or a quick fix. It will not be accomplished by might or muscle or material.
It will come forth like a shoot from the stump of a tree.[3] Slowly. Inconspicuously. By a green power that is unseen in all things.
It will come forth with the simplest gestures, the kind available to us everyday. Smiles and “hellos” that grow into invitations and homes of hospitality. “I’m sorrys” and “I forgive yous” that grow into shared tables and healed hearts. Working hands and caring faces that grow into environments for healthy childhoods and worthwhile living for elders in their twilight.
The kingdom of God will come forth, and we will be surprised, perhaps, to discover that it was here all along—in the gracious greenness of God.
Prayer
God of abundant life—
Make us all like trees.
Open our eyes
To the greenness in one another;
Teach us your loving touch,
That we might tend
To the life all around us.
In the name of our vine, Jesus Christ.[4]
Amen.
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[1] Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 444.
[2] Mark 4:30-31; Matt 13:31; Luke 13:18-19.
[3] Cf. Isa 11:1.
[4] John 15:5.
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