Revelation 21:1-6a
All Saints - Year B
New Year's - Years A, B, C
Can you imagine Judas affirming this passage as he is on his way to earn his 30 pieces of silver? Isn’t it almost necessary for him to be doing so. Seeing a new heaven and a new earth leads us to deeds beyond ourselves, both honorable and dishonorable, life giving and life taking.
Can you hear echoes of Peter’s transformative vision?
If we could bring heaven to earth, wouldn’t we do whatever it took to do so? Of course. A vision of G*D among us, instead of at some distant remove, is motivational in the extreme. It is the source of X-Theology (no, not the Greek chi beginning Christ, but the contemporary eXtreme)
This is a source of any number of extreme theologies.
See, G*D is making all things new. I just need to do this one necessary, trustworthy and true deed and it is done! How refreshed I will be after attending to this now X-cusable deed.
Judas wasn’t seen as a betrayer in his moment of leaving. Peter was seen as a betrayer by the Christian Circumcision Party. Later these perceptions of the moment were reversed. For the moment pretend you are a new you in a new environment. What would you be doing? Well, go ahead—it’s true.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/04/revelation-211-6.html
Again we reprise a resolution of a deity's duality. G*D will be with the good guys. Everything is set right. Where there was crying and laughing there will now be only laughing. (If we read a bit further we find the criers being separated out for a second or final death instead of a new or final birth.)
Is this your vision of G*D with us - only good from now on? All choices are resolved? A static smile of pleasure is always present? Is this the year you have before you? What does it mean for G*D to dwell or tabernacle with us, to move into the neighborhood? How would our love of G*D change if G*D were our neighbor and would G*D then so love a neighbor as to cast them adrift forever on a burning lake?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/january2003.html