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One afternoon while coming out of the Jerusalem temple one of Jesus’ disciples remarked how beautiful the temple was saying, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!" And then Jesus dropped a bomb. He prophesied saying, "Do you see these great buildings?” Which means do you understand what they are about, what they represent? “There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down." In 70 AD that prophecy came to pass.
Flavius Josephus was a Jewish historian in the first century AD. In his book The Jewish Wars he recounts how the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. He recounts of how Titus Caesar ordered his army to utterly destroy the city and the Temple leaving only its two towers and the Western Wall of the Temple in order to demonstrate to posterity what kind of city it was, and how well fortified, and yet the Romans were powerful enough to demolish it. They even destroyed all the gardens and trees around it in order to make it like a desert. Josephus claims that 1,100,000 people were killed during the siege, of which the majority were Jews, and that 97,000 were captured, enslaved, and most were made gladiators. The Jews that were left mostly fled to areas around the Mediterranean. Titus reportedly refused to accept a wreath of victory, as there is "no merit in vanquishing a people forsaken by their own God".
Building further on that note, the God forsaken note, the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem temple on the last day of the Jewish month of Av (our July), a day they call Tisha B’Av, the Day of Five Calamities. On that same date in 586 BC, the first temple, the temple Solomon built, was destroyed by the Babylonians. In those days the prophet Ezekiel had a vision in which he saw the glory of the Lord leaving the temple in Jerusalem and heading east to be with the exiles in Babylon. A very touching message proclaiming that God had not abandoned his people even though he had cast them off of the land. Seventy years later when a remnant returned none of the prophets in that day claimed a vision of the glory of the Lord returning to the temple. Isaiah 65:1 which dates to this time indicates that God didn’t want to live in the temple anymore. “Heaven is my throne, earth is my footstool. What is this house that you would build for me?” The Lord God apparently did not return to the Jerusalem temple after it was rebuilt by the remnant that returned and certainly not after Herod the Great did all his glorious renovations just before Jesus was born. It was not until Jesus that the presence of the LORD God of Israel again dwelt among his people.
Coming to John in exile on Patmos, he was a Jew and his love for Jerusalem, the Holy City, would have been quite strong. The destruction of Jerusalem by Rome and the dispersion of the Jews was only 20 years prior to the writing of the Revelation. Talk to any war refugee and they will let you know full well that what happened 20 years ago might as well have been yesterday. To a Jew the Roman destruction of Jerusalem was as vivid and traumatic as the eruption of Mt Vesuvius to the Mediterranean world 9 years later.
Jerusalem was more than just the symbol of national identity over which people swell with patriotism. The temple was in Jerusalem and to a Jew the Jerusalem temple was the one place on earth where heaven and earth were open to each other. To a Jew the temple symbolized the presence of the LORD God with his people. Therefore, the opposite would be true as well. Jerusalem destroyed, the temple destroyed, and the Jewish people cast forth from the land would have been clear indication that God had not only rejected his people, but abandoned them as well.
It is into this context that we must place this climatic vision of John’s. He saw a new creation, a new Heaven and a new Earth. The old had passed. It was gone, never to be again. The Greek word for “new” here, kainos, is more powerful in its emphasis on utter newness than is the typical Greek word for “new”, neos. Neos is like having a new car. Kainos means coming up with an altogether new mode of transportation, the flying car of The Jetson’s. The old was gone and the new had come. And then there in the midst of this utterly new creation where heaven and earth are openly now joined as one, where it finally is on earth as it is in heaven, John sees the New Jerusalem coming from God. I suspect that the heart of John the Jew leapt. Like the tower of Babel, God had destroyed the Jerusalem his people had built as a symbol of the name they had made for themselves and sent them asunder. Now God himself is giving a new holy city to his people to symbolize the name that the LORD God had made for them and it was as beautiful as a bride prepared to wed her husband.
Then a voice came from the throne of God saying that God himself is with his people and he himself will comfort them. Not only would a new esteem be given to his people, Jew and Gentile alike, but God would once again be with his people and this time personally. He would intimately involve himself with each of them to heal and comfort them. God himself will wipe away their tears. Moreover, death will be no more and mourning, crying out, and toilsome suffering will be no more.
Then, God himself speaks, “Behold, I am making all things new. Write this down. It is trustworthy and the Truth.” This is the most important word spoken in the entire book, indeed in history. God is making all things new. Time in the Book of Revelation is two faceted. John sees what is and what is to be. Sometimes, it’s skewed to one side more than the other, but in this passage John is seeing both what God is doing now and what will be in the future. In this world that is a mess, God is presently working to make all things new until the day comes when the old is utterly gone and everything is made utterly new with the glory of God. It may not seem like it to us, but behind the scenes of history God is making all things new. That’s the Truth; capital “T”.
Then God speaks directly to John and it is a message for John to give to his churches in Turkey who are about to undergo great persecution for refusing to call Emperor Domitian Lord. He says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” This means the buck stops with God. The LORD God has the final word in every matter and his final word is all things are being made new; all things on earth will be as they are in heaven. He says to those Christians about to suffer and some even be martyred that the one who conquers, the one who keeps the faith even unto death, he will freely give of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Living Water. But those who cowardly deny Him and in turn resort to a pagan life, they will suffer the bitter fire of judgment for there is nothing left for those who knowing the Truth, turn back from it, who put their hand to the plough and leave it in the field when the ploughing gets tough.
Then John sees a river of living water flowing out from the middle of the city from the throne of God and straddling it is the Tree of Life from which humanity was banned from eating after the Garden of Eden fiasco. John notes that the leaves on the Tree are for the healing of the nations…for the healing of the nations. Friends, this image of the New Jerusalem with the River of Living Water flowing from it and the Tree of Life with its healing leaves, this is what we are as fellowships of followers of Jesus. We, who are born of the Holy Spirit, the Living Water, and united to Jesus and to each other in him and share in Jesus’ relationship to the Father so that we know the steadfast love and faithfulness of God and drink of the very communion of love that the Trinity, the LORD God is, we are the new Jerusalem in the making.
We are the Tree of Life and each one of us is one of those healing leaves. Love one another. It’s important. Feed the hungry. Give drink to the thirsty. Give home to the homeless. Clothe the naked. Visit the prisoner. Care for the orphaned and the widowed. Show hospitality to the stranger, the refugee, the immigrant. It’s important. Those are the actions that heal the nations, that point to the coming new creation. The ways of Empire are exercises in futility that lead to death but the work we do in the Lord is not in vain. In these interesting times in which we presently live, when Empirism is making itself so blatantly obvious (except to those who are deceived and deluded by it), what the world needs is for us Christians, each and every one of us healing leaves, to step up and show our loyalty to Jesus through acts of unconditional love. Amen.
