Revelation 21:1-6

Easter 5 - Year C

"It is done."

"To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life."

"Amen. Come Lord Jesus!"

Whatever "it" is, it's done and still to be done.

Was the Tree of Life barred by flaming swords nurtured by the spring of the water of life? Did that come from the chaotic waters below? Is it a suggestive image regarding the bounding of such chaos into a directed energy - a River of Life - a constrained chaos directed toward an expanding mystery of life?

In the face of seeming defeat of positional belief and loss of identity, revelatory images provide a modicum of relief. We still can catch a new context of our journey toward a new heaven and a new earth: and a journey of a new earth and a new heaven toward us. It appears from our old spot that the distance between has increased. As we cast our spirits toward a longer view we can see that the issue of "life as a gift" is a done deal. So we weep, breathe deep, and keep on being who we were and are and will be.

Identity cannot be legislated away. Death cannot deny identity. Invisibility cannot hold identity.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/may2004.html

 

 

Connecting this revelationary passage with the Acts passage recounting Peter's conversion to inclusion, we might extend the language of "unclean" to mere "mortals." The Revelationary exclaims, "G*D is among mortals." G*D is among the unclean - already, before we knew it.

It is exactly here in the midst of evolutionary-choiced creation and discriminated-against creatures that we hear about all things being made new. Pray tell, where else besides the indeterminate and the outcast might newness have an opportunity to break in. For those who have control, everything is just fine the way it is, thank you. For those who are the measuring rod for everything else, there is no standard beyond the present.

So we can't just go from Mayflower descendants and think Alpha dogs have the market cornered on prestige. The latest immigrant (legal or not is completely beside the point here) and some later Omega point also need consideration. When we find ourselves between beginnings and ends we are open to newness, to a spring of the water of life still bubbling up within and without us.

- - -

a first April and the last one
have passed away
their showers are no more

now another holy month
May arrives flowering
toward some new end

earth adorned with beauty
mortals putting on immortality
G*D's dwelling place

the showers of April
drunk deep within
birthing pains

and now a newness
flows into the breast
completing promises

Alpha and Omega
April and May
weave a new paradise

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

 

 

When does a vision of "a new earth and new heaven" happen along? When things are at their worst - worse than what we do to the earth and its response, worse than what we do to one another, worse than a theology of rapturous end-times. When we have exhausted ourselves using old technology on intractable issues, then we come round to consider jettisoning the unworkable and begin to envision a goal large enough for us to be open to new ways of working. Simple examples today are "immigration" bills in Arizona and drilling for oil in deep water - a new vision, please.

One way or another, each re-envisioning posits a closer relationship between G*D and Creation/Humanity. Here we have G*D's home changed from a high and lifted up position to that of a co-dweller on earth, in paradise. At question is whether we will repeat all our previous history, just in a new horizontal relationship instead of the old vertical one.

There is still a way to go on this vision, too few have made the jump to co-creators over the face of the chaotic deep newly christened "water of life". We are left with a new creative moment. Unfortunately it is one without the deep engagement of tears, death, mourning, crying, and pain. This avoidance will carry seeds of its own destruction.

Presumably we will find the worst in this new relationship and need to work on a new vision of G*D and Humanity being one, not two images. More about this in another reincarnation. For the moment it is enough to work on this reciprocity option.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/04/revelation-211-6.html