Sermon Notes Rev. 21, 22, John 5

May 1 Rev. 21, 22, John 5  Acts 16

Water pervades our stories. For ages water has been a symbol in religious rites and sites. .Act 16:9 water good for the process of using dye and Lycus was the river-charmed not to flood-symbol of fertility. So a woman is leading a group here in those far away days.road to wellville-the spa waters- dead sea and cosmetic-Lourdes agents of healing of body mind and soul.

John 5 features healing waters.do you want to be made well?-that haunting question hovered over the waters as much as the alleged stirring of the waters by the wings of a passing angel (see TT article on water in John)Sometimes the answer is no. I think marital therapy is obstructed by this question and its answer. Some folks only know disharmony. Some folks  don't want harmony-they want control-some folks want to complain about a loved one. This is a good set of pictures for a guided meditation.No one gets me there in time. Jesus in giving him mobility gives him agency.All of us are caught between individual responsibility and social forces. Social forces are a powerful deterrent to claiming even a share of responsibility for one’s own life. At the same time, everybody needs a helping hand at one time or another.

Healings may happen, but we are still mortal. So,  Rev. 21-22:5 In part this is a vision of cosmic healing.For a vision we consider heavenly, it is certainly rooted in a transformation of this world. it is an emblem of salvation as security in the presence of God.this is safe space, open space, with the gates open, for what is left to fear, to be protected from? I never would have imagined that americans would be herded like cattle for security profiles to get on an airplane.

As the end of the book of Zechariah John  sees a world where the secular and the sacred are merged, and all is holy. It is the same idea as this city being transfigured into a giant temple Our old sights of heaven with Pearly gates and jeweled foundation walls are in our reading but they are drawn from the tabernacle and temple imagery. Again, its picture of heaven is being connected to the presence of God. How does one describe  the furniture for the divine, the ambience of divinity.It takes images from the Old testament and expands them, builds on them. the new Jerusalem is a giant temple. It dwarfs the restored temple and city of Ezekiel.Here we are reintroduced to the great sacred river of life.In the second creation account in Gen. 2 the sacred river is the source of all the waters in the area.Joel and Zech refer to sacred waters as well. For us with the Mississippi flowing below, this should be easy.Father Marquette and the river-Daniel  Boone crossed this river- Abraham Lincoln travelled on it. Mark Twain (worked with Captain Klinefelter-ch. 19 life on the Mississippi) worked on a steamboat-Nations built around rivers considered them as sacred. In Ezekiel the river’s tree lined banks heal Israel, but here they heal the nations. It imagines God’s new world as a place of healing. It is a place of healing not only for individual but collective wounds. (It is  a world made sacred for all.There the memories of war could be healed, of assassination of our nation’s leaders, of 9/11 and the pain we have inflicted on others as well.salvation includes safe space, elbow room, expansiveness-larger than similar material in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the new city/temple is 1000 times larger than Ezekiel’s already expansive vision.-In god’s world we have plenty of room, plenty of peace, plenty of God.