Sermon-Irenadelphia Rev. 22:1-5, John 5:1-9 

We know the name Philadelphia means city of brotherly love, so I made the name of the heavenly city of Revelation Irenadelphia, City of Peace, just as we call a person who calms troubled waters is  irenic, peaceful. We crave peace, but it is elusive. Peace, like shalom, has a sense of more than the absence of conflict but of a deep sense of safety and well-being.

In the city of Jerusalem long ago, a man was paralyzed for years. Few things disturb peace as much as illness. He waited by the pool hoping to see the water stirring, for then an angel had moved the water and it was ripe for healing, like many go to Lourdes yet today in desperate search for healing. A man, not an angel,  comes up to him unannounced and asks a most unusual question: do you want to be healed? My guess is that he needed healing not only in body but in mind and heart as well. Why were others healed? How long would he wait? Did he deserve his disability? Did he grow bitter as the years rolled by? He was utterly dependent, as we all are to a degree, with no one to get him to the water in time. Now this man noticed him and healed him from the side of the water with a command. I wish healing were more predictable, but it seems to be as flighty as the movements of the Spirit. Yet, the question of Jesus resounds in our hearts and minds, do you want to be healed? Do you prefer the way things are, the way you've grown used to them?

 

In the universal vision of Revelation, a city, human community will be safe and secure in the presence of God. A river, a sacred river, just like the river imagined by Ezekiel, maybe a new version of the sacred river in the creation story in Genesis 2 flows right down its center. I love the phrase, the leaves of the tree (of life) are for the healing of nations. In Ezekiel there are 12 sacred trees to heal the nation, but in this global viewpoint, one tree provides healing for nations. For what? for us, the memory of Pearl Harbor or 9/11, or Katrina. Perhaps only the hand of God can heal the wounds of war. Personal pain needs to be healed as well. In the book A river Runs Through It, the son and father are speaking about his brother's death. The father says, "it's not much is it?" No, the son replied but you can love completely without complete understanding." Later the father says, "it is those we live with and love and should know that elude us." Later the narrator says"eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it." Come at it from another angle. "I've got peace like a river in my soul." One day we will not only glimpse the presence of God from time to time but be suffused with it and by it.

 

Both these passages feature water and waiting. We feel for the long wait of the man by the pool, but we live our lives waiting for a peace that passes all understanding. We too wait for the violence inherent in our species to subside even a little bit. So, we wait for heaven to give us the reality of the vision of John so many years ago. Know this. We have the river of the water of life within us all in our baptism. the traditional churches have made a big mistake in ceding the book of revelation to dime-store prophets.l for all of the fear of 666, know that we have the perfect number, 777, on our lives; we carry the name of Jesus Christ with us.