Revelation 22:1-7:

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit each, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

And he said to me, ‘These words are trustworthy and true, for the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.’

‘See, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.’”

*****

Hannah Ratliff

Village Presbyterian Church

The Gathering

August 13, 2017

Just a few lines prior the words that Matthew just read for us, John clarifies that this is his description of the kingdom of heaven, the New Jerusalem, which was revealed to him in a glorious vision. When I close my eyes to try and imagine what John’s describing, I catch glimpses, but there’s so much of it that’s beyond my reach. How can one tree be on two sides of a river? How can a tree’s leaves heal all that ails us? How is a throne also the source of a magnificent river? How can we move and exist in the midst of a city which has a river rushing through its main street? John is trying to do us a favor by using the world we know, the city we’re so familiar with, the trees and rivers we walk by every day, to try and help us grasp the beauty of the kingdom, but my imagination falls short a bit. Here, you try.

Close your eyes with me, try not to feel too silly. Come on, I can see you! Close your eyes.

Imagine the kingdom… What does it look like? Are the colors more vibrant and beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen? Does the river’s water play in the dazzling light? Can you hear it? The rustling leaves of the tree — our healing leaves… the babbling of water… the happy, contented sigh of God’s people, finally rejoined with God in heaven. Alright, you can open your eyes.

So the problem is, we can only imagine what John sees, but he gets the whole thing, the kingdom in full view, more spectacular and glorious than anything our minds can comprehend. Instead of simply saying “it’s beyond you,” he tries to use earthly concepts to help us understand. “It’s like the most beautiful river you’ve ever seen… but even purer and more crystalline. It’s like the strongest, most fruitful tree, but it’s somehow everywhere all at once, and it grows year-round. It’s like the most amazing city you’ve ever been to… but so much better.” It’s the world we know, the one we love and cherish, but even more spectacular than we could imagine.

As I was trying to start writing this sermon, I asked our senior pastor, Tom Are, for some help digesting this verse. Sitting in his office, he asked me: “Well Hannah, what does hope mean to you?” …You ever have that moment when one of your heroes asks you a profound question about faith and the human condition and your mind just kind of goes blank? Well, I fumbled for a moment, and then I regained consciousness and said something about hope being the “ultimate motivator.” I said, “I think it’s the little voice in the back of our minds that keeps saying ‘What if we get it right this time?’ I think it’s an irresistible voice, and I think it’s one that everybody has, no matter how deep down it is or how quiet it gets.”

Tom told me he didn’t know if that was true. He said, “I know some people who have been hurt too many times, and can’t bring themselves to hope again. I think you’re onto something,” he said. “It’s just that not everyone is as hopeful as you are.” I had to mask my surprise, since most days, I think I’m kind of a cynic.

It’s not hard for me to get disillusioned about the world. We are constantly bombarded by stories of parents mourning their children. Stories of trusting people being taken advantage of, their lives destroyed by the greedy. Stories of the powerful casually and callously threatening war and destruction on a daily basis. Stories, often too close to home, of prejudice and bitter, bitter, hatred being spit out of our mouths. Stories like the ones of our brothers and sisters in Charlottesville, whose lives are on the line because of the racism and white supremacy that we tricked ourselves into thinking we had already conquered. Sometimes my hope feels pretty flimsy. But I don’t think it’s ever disappeared entirely, sometimes to the point where I am frustrated by its persistence.

My parents can attest to the fact that I regularly take over our kitchen to bake sweets. I have been known to make a cake without any need for an occasion, a pie just for the heck of it, or brownies from scratch because I needed something to do. Most of the time, I stick to recipes that are comfortably in my wheelhouse, old standards I know I can make easily and pretty well. But every once in awhile the siren song of a new recipe comes calling. German chocolate cake, berry linzer bars, chocolate and berry pie… I diverge from my old faithful recipes and venture into uncharted territory. Sometimes it works. Many times, it has not. With every failure, my parents and friends assure me that my creation is “still good” even if it “looks a little funny.” There was a time when I tried to pick up a pan of cookie bars from the oven with one hand because I didn’t feel like finding a second oven mitt, but the pan was heavier than I anticipated, and it tilted to one side. The bars, still hot and soft from the oven, slipped right out of the pan and landed in a heap on the open oven door. We scooped them off and ate them in spoonfuls anyway.

When my creations aren’t quite what I expected, my parents and friends, in their politeness, assure me that it’s “still pretty good.” But I can’t shake the frustration of knowing that it’s not quite what it’s supposed to be. It isn’t right, it isn’t how it was intended to turn out. It’s all supposed to be… better.

Now, I fully recognize that these are pretty low-stakes situations. If my pie, my beautiful pie that I had such high hopes for, instead of tasting like rich delicious chocolate, flaky crust, and sweet yet tart berries, instead tastes like charred cardboard, well, it’s not the end of the world. Only I and my sous chef will ever know. But it’s still so frustrating to me to know that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. And yet…. I keep trying. Every time that I literally taste defeat, I’m disappointed, and I know I got it wrong. But I still wonder: what if the next time that I try this, what if that’s the time I get it right? What if this time, if I just try once more, it all comes together just as it was intended, each part working together harmoniously, into the amazing creation it was meant to be all along? What if the next time is the time we do things the way they were always supposed to be?

What if the next time you intervened when you saw someone being harassed because of their gender, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, or race, you saved a life? What if the next time that you choose not to be silent, but to speak out for the protection of our brothers and sisters who have been unduly oppressed since our nation’s founding, you inspired another person to do the same? What if we believed, I mean really believed, that through God’s love, we could radically change the world? I wonder if maybe, that’s what living in hope is. Living like it’s possible for the next time to be the time. The time that God is fully revealed to us, the time when it all comes together and all is made right. I wonder if maybe living like that would change the way we look at the world, and look at each other. I think it has for me.

The frustration of hope, and often the cause of our deepest, rawest sorrow, is that we know it always comes with a risk. Hoping is an act of rebellion. It can defy logic, it can defy reason, it can defy reality itself. It rarely makes sense, and for me, it often feels counterintuitive. To hope means that we allow ourselves the possibility of disappointment. To hope means not that we ignore the very real possibilities of danger, rejection, and heartache, but that instead, we listen to the tiny voice that wonders if maybe this is the time when all those things we’re afraid of fail. The voice that wonders if maybe this is the time that love, justice, mercy, and peace, prevail. But in order to hope, we have to confront the reality of the more frightening possibilities. It’s a scary thing to do.

Maybe it is naive of me to think that hope never quite dies for each of us, even in our very darkest hour. I know that in my first 22 years of life, I have experienced far less pain and heartbreak than many others, and likely many of you have faced pain that I cannot comprehend. So I can’t speak from my own experience. But I can speak from the scripture, which tells us stories time and again of God sitting with us through the very darkest times of our lives, and promising us that we will be reunited on that beautiful day when all is made right.

In less than two weeks, I will leave Kansas City for a place I have only visited for a few days. I will start classes in seminary, at a school where I know only a handful of people. I will pour most of my time, energy, and money into a future that is not guaranteed to me. And I’m very aware of the fact that this comes at a risk of failing. Those doubts linger in my mind most of the time: “What if I get there and no one likes me? What if I can’t keep up in my classes? What if I embarrass myself in front of everyone? What if I dedicate three years of my life, not to mention most every penny I have, to getting this degree, only to realize I’m no good at ministry? What if I can’t find a job after I graduate? What if I’m a terrible preacher and everyone’s too polite to tell me so?”

…And then that voice, the one that is often so much quieter than all the others, comes back: …what if it works?

I can’t claim to live like this every day, but I think Jesus wants us to live listening to that voice. That voice is what’s telling me to leave for Atlanta in a matter of days. I think the promise of the kingdom that John tells us about in Revelation is supposed to assure us that one day, it is going to work. One day, God is going to make right all that is wrong. One day the city and the river will, somehow, exist in harmony and peace together, even if we don’t yet understand how that could be. One day the city will be not a dangerous place, a place of suffering and loneliness, but a place where all God’s children will be together in faith and love, even if we have never seen that happen before. One day the water and the fruit will be clean and plentiful for all people, even though we now live in a world where so many are denied access to the food and water they need to survive. One day the brilliant light of God will mean a day with no end, one like we have never seen before. John knows it to be true. He’s seen it for himself. We, on the other hand, have the harder job of taking his word for it. And believing in that kind of hope has a risk. The fact is that we don’t know when God’s promise will be made real for us, and some days, we wonder if it will at all. That feeling of not knowing can be terrifying, and it can be painful. Some of you may know that even more deeply than I do. But hoping for that word to be made real, and living every day like the promise could be redeemed today, that’s what Jesus is calling us to do.