Revelation 21:1-6

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’

And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

This is the Word of God for the People of God.

Thanks be to God.

This is from the book of Revelation written by John of Patmos. The book of Revelation is probably the most exploited and abused book of the Bible? Why, because it is apocalyptic literature. Apocalyptic literature serves a purpose. It helps people who are suffering and being persecuted. It creates urgency - but the danger of apocalyptic literature is it can be used in a literal fashion. People use it as a cookie cutter to go out and punch holes in the time and the horizon around them. For instance they might say, Oh the ten headed monster ah yes, that’s the European Common Market, we can all see it’s the end time, the end is coming, the sky is falling. Perhaps you remember ten years ago at the turn of the millennium when people were talking about the end of the world coming. The “Left Behind” book series conjured up the images of the Rapture and people being taken up to the great heaven and others being left behind, thus the title. And so what happens is, the Book of Revelation sort of gets ignored. Martin Luther said it shouldn’t have been included in the cannon in the first place. Which raises the question of this vision of John of Patmos; is it a worthy vision? Or is it like the cynics would say, just pie in the sky, pie in the sky, do you ever wonder where that phrase came from?

I was working on this sermon and I decided I would find out, so I went to the modern day oracle, Google and punched in pie in the sky origin. I was fascinated! It came from a song that was written by a Swedish man by the name of Joe Hill. He was actually a labor activist for the Industrial Workers of the World in 1911. He had immigrated to this country and Joe Hill would look around the cities and at all of the squalor and all of the factory workers who in his opinion were greatly under paid and the conditions were really bad. And then he would see the Salvation Army workers that would be beating the drums and playing their brass instruments talking about you need to be saved, we will save you through Christ and you will be saved in the hereafter. Joe Hill was not impressed. In fact he referred to them as the Starvation Army. And he wrote a parody on ‘In the Sweet By and By’ that old beloved Christian Hymn. He wrote these words; you will east by and by in that glorious land above the sky work and pray live on hay, you’ll get pie in the sky when you die. So you see where he’s going here. This is a term of derision, pie in the sky, oh sure, yeah that’s what they want you to do.

What was it that Mark said; that religion was the appoint of the masses; this is the carrot that they are dangling in front of you to get your labor, to get your hard work and the fruits of your labor, to exploit you and Joe Hill was saying, I am not having any of the Pie in the Sky, we want cake by the lake, we want it right now, we want benefits right now.

And yes, I think it’s true, he had a point, I believe even speaking as a Christian, when we obsess on the hereafter, when we turn our backs on the realities of this mortal existence our faith becomes life denying. This life is so important that God saw fit to come in person. The word was made flesh and in being incarnated this life is given validity and importance. We cannot turn our backs on it, we cannot discount it. When we do that I think that we are straying from the faith at the same time when we want our cake by the lake and we embrace an epicurean vision where it’s all about getting the biggest slice of the pie you can, you only go around once in this world you gotta grab for all the gusto. After all what are we doing in this life if not accumulating thrills? It’s about pleasure, it’s about our standard of living and the one with the most toys at the end wins. We’ve seen people who have embrace that vision as well. Let me ask you this question does it work for them, is it satisfying? Is it fulfilling or is it more like that old Peggy Lee song, Is that All There Is? You see I think we instinctively know. We instinctively have a yearning for more.

The author of The Book of Revelation has captured our deepest longing. Captured a time when death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more. We hope for these things, this is the yearning that we have. The good news this morning is that we don’t need to choose between pie in the sky or cake by the lake. In the Wesleyan tradition we can embrace both. We know that we are called to embrace the social Gospel and make this world a better place to live. At the same time we know through experience that Utopian visions never end up in being a Utopian community. Paul had a phrase for that; he called it the ‘fly in the ointment’. It never quite works out the way we intended. There are always unintended consequences.

When I was attending a small college in Galesburg, Illinois, Knox College, we took a field trip to a small community called Bishop Hill. Bishop Hill was the result of a Utopian leader in Sweden, Eric Jansen, who had rheumatism and in the midst of the agony, he had a vision from God and God told him to go to the new world and create the New Jerusalem. And he did. He was very disenchanted with the Lutheran Church and the fact that it had state sanctions. So he took a group of followers and they went to this community near Galesburg, Illinois. Many of them died the first couple of years, but they were successful, they created a three story church. They had mills, they found the soil in Illinois was so much richer than in Sweden. But what happened, the leader of the group became a cult leader, the power went to his head. He began to dabble in polygamy. One of his followers to umbrage with the fact that he was having an affair with his wife and he murdered Eric Jansen, after 15 years of existence, Bishop Hill was scattered to the winds no longer having a shepherd.

Yes, it may be that all Utopian visions are condemned to failure of some sort. On Broadway they use these words; to dream the impossible dream to fight the unbeatable foe, to bear with unbearable sorrow to run with the brave dare not go. On Broadway the call that the lyrics from a song from The Man of La Mancha, but on Ross Avenue we call that discipleship. There is never any guarantee of success but we go out and we do it anyway. I love the word approximate. We approximate the Kingdom, the others never synthesizing it. We go out and we do our best in this life knowing that when our time comes and we go on to the hereafter that in the sweet by and by we will indeed gather there at the beautiful shore. Amen