I used to live and work in
Washington, D.C., and about a year after we moved there I bought a new Apple
laptop computer. (When I brought in the one I had bought only five years
earlier for servicing they told me that it was now considered a “vintage” model,
a Silicon Valley phrase meaning they no longer serviced it.) The new computer
worked great, but it developed a couple of persistent glitches, so I found
myself a couple times a year visiting the bright, shiny Apple Store in
Georgetown.
If you’re a white-haired sexagenarian
like me, the Apple Store is quite a treat. Where else can you get a reliably
regular dose of Millennial scorn? There’s nothing quite like getting sneered at
by a 24 year-old guy in a watch cap as you try haltingly to explain what’s
wrong with a machine you clearly do not understand and he does. In much the
same way you do when having blood drawn, I would try to distract myself by
looking away toward the displays on the wall. And after a while I began to find
them ultimately more depressing than the spectacle of the tattooed hipster
running a clinic on my laptop.
The walls of an Apple Store provide a
kind of life lesson in the attractions of technological culture. You will find
blown up far beyond actual size the most alluring screen displays from
high-resolution computer screens: beautiful nature scenes, sporting events,
smiling faces of children. As depicted on the walls of an Apple Store, the
technological world seems to offer such endless possibilities for fulfillment
that you can hardly imagine ever wanting anything else. “Please, God, just give
me an iPad, and I swear I’ll be happy.”
Why, you may ask, did I choose to
find this display of technological beauty depressing rather than, say,
inspiring? I think it’s because I had spent so many years of my professional
life in the church working with congregations to try to reverse the steep membership
and attendance decline we’re experiencing these days. One look at the walls of
an Apple Store and you realize what the church is up against. With our prayer
books and hymnals, how can we compete with all the attractions of the secular
world? It doesn’t seem like a fair fight. And remember, I was living and
working in Washington, a city filled with monuments and images that are pretty
spectacular in themselves.
If you’ve been in Washington
National Cathedral, where I was working at the time, you know it is a beautiful
and transcendent space. Yet even that emblem of Christianity has to compete for
attention with the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the Washington Monument, the
White House, and all the collected monuments to American history and power.
Even though our cathedral sits on the highest point in the District, it is
visually overwhelmed by the imagery of the nation state. Try as we might,
religious communities are no match for imperial spectacle. They’ve got us beat
from the get-go.
I thought of the cathedral, the images
on the walls of the Georgetown Apple Store, and Washington’s array of national
monuments when I read the passage from Revelation we heard this morning. I have
to begin by saying I have never been a big fan of Revelation. On the surface,
it seems like a vengeful, apocalyptic book, and it is filled with what often
seem like drug-induced visions. Consider this morning’s passage [Revelation
21:10, 22-22:5]: the
speaker tells of a vision of the heavenly city, Jerusalem, the “new heaven and
new earth” predicted in last week’s reading. The city is illuminated by the
light God and the Lamb. The river of the water of life flows from God’s throne.
The tree of life blooms alongside the river and produces twelve kinds of fruit.
And God’s name is written on everyone’s foreheads. At first pass, this sounds
like something written by Timothy Leary: hallucinogenic imagery, seemingly
produced by an extended moment of expanded consciousness. This book and its
pageantry have never much appealed to me. I’m much more at home with the
homespun images of Jesus and his companions walking and talking on the dusty roads
of Galilee.
On this occasion, though, I’m much more
minded to give Revelation’s author, St. John the Divine, a break. In Easter
season we follow the earliest Christians from their experience of Jesus’s
resurrection as they make their way out into the world. And one thing you
realize the more you read the New Testament is exactly what the early church
was up against: imperial Rome in all its military and public relations power.
It wasn’t only that Rome’s occupying armies dominated the Mediterranean world.
It was also that they used all the symbols of imperial power (amphitheaters,
coliseums, aqueducts, monuments, and impressive military displays) to remind
people of just who was really in charge. The implication: who needs Yahweh or
Jesus or any religious leader when Caesar has so much to offer?
And this, I think, is where Revelation
becomes more than just a psychedelic trip. Sure, it depicts God’s new heaven
and new earth in gaudy and sometimes over-the-top imagery. But I now believe it
does so not just to be outrageous but to give Jesus’s followers a kind of
internal corrective to Rome’s imperial display. Early Christians could now walk
among the Roman visual spectacles and contemplate an alternative, inner reality.
Instead of feeling defeated by Caesar’s pretensions to authentic power, they
could meditatively remind themselves of how things will finally turn out. In
day to day imperial Rome it may look like Caesar will be in charge forever. But
a new world is coming, and in the new heaven and new earth we believe God is
making, the Lamb will be the one by whose light all of us will walk. Revelation
is not a stunt. It is a gift, a set of vibrant images that keep us centered on
the reality of the Christian hope.
We are now entering the last part of
the Easter season, the time when Jesus begins to prepare his companions for
life in the world without him. In today’s Gospel [John 14: 23-29] we hear Jesus
say,
Do
not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me
say to you, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” If you loved me, you
would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than
I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur,
you may believe.
Jesus
IS going away, but he is not leaving his friends alone or helpless: “But the
Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you
everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” Those of us who
follow Jesus will always struggle to hold on to the reality of what he promises
in the face of seemingly overwhelming competition. But we will be given heavenly
resources with which to withstand that competition. The attractions and
blandishments of Western, imperialistic, late Capitalism are real, and they are
almost hopelessly enticing. But the love and compassion and grace of what Jesus
and his movement have to offer are finally both deeper and more lasting than
any military parade or retinal display in an Apple Store. In the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus, and in the community that gathers in his name, God
has given us a story and a household in which to nourish ourselves and each other
with the truth that deflates both imperial and commercial pretensions to power.
Love is stronger that death. Weakness outlasts strength. Compassion and
forgiveness are all that finally matters.
One of the reasons I come to church
is to remind myself of what is real and what is false. There are so many claims
made on us in our daily lives, so many attempts to get our attention. Everyone
seems to want our allegiance. As followers of Jesus, you and I need, both individually and together, to find
ways to turn our attention to the things that finally matter. The collect for today,
the Sixth Sunday of Easter, has long been one of my favorite prayers in the
Prayer Book, and I use it regularly to help refocus myself on how, regardless
of how it looks now, things will finally be. Listen to it again:
O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good
things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards
you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your
promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
God is making a new heaven and a new earth, a new
creation that will surpass our ability to imagine or understand it. You and I
and all people are invited into that world- and life-changing work. The images
and symbols on offer through all our screens only pretend to be the real deal.
Jesus and his faithful values of love, compassion, and justice will outlast
them all. Our job, as his followers, is to turn our attention toward the things
that last and matter, and then to help God build that new heaven and new earth
together by making love, compassion, and justice real around us in the here and
now. Amen.
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