Scripture
Isaiah 65: 17
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind.”
Revelation 21: 1 – 5
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”[a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
Reflection
I have to admit that I have been spending a whole lot of time wondering about the state of the world these days. We often talk about God’s kingdom, or the coming of God’s kingdom, and sometimes I am at a loss as to what the might even mean. To be honest sometimes I don’t even know! Sometimes I don’t see how a new world is even possible, but then I read something that makes sense to me and so I would like to share this with you. I will be honest with you, it might be a bit difficult, but I invite you to sit with it for a bit and reflect on what is trying to be said here.
I am not going to write a reflection today, instead I am going to share a poem that I found online, written by Morgan Guyton, ordained Methodist minister and pastoral counsellor who offers this reflection on religion today and what might a new religion look like:
Make us a new religion, they say.
Weave together all the wisdom you encounter like we did before our wild way of mercy became an institution of empire held together by doctrine stacked to build a tower to heaven as though it were somewhere other than here where dead and living inhabit the same bodies as we search together for the perfect rest of Zion, where lions and lambs lie together as Jacob and Esau embrace while Abraham welcomes Hagar home and repents of his sin against her, unlike Sodom where Ba’al and Molech are worshiped in the daily bombing of Jesus with the golden calves of war gifted to Sodom by the good evangelical Christian politicians whose pastors made religion a sport where loyalty alone matters.
How could anyone rest in peace who takes responsibility for the legacy of the white man, which is the saints’ eternal conscious torment?
Did you think we would clink champagne glasses in paradise as we watch resurrections of Jesus crucified by sodomites supported by puritan pastors?
Do you think we are pleased with you for cutting back on your adult entertainment use when the real issue is your ravenous addiction to spreading lies about the scapegoats the devil gave you to crucify to build up a mob mighty enough to make him your president?
Did you think we would be unconcerned with the apostasy of the church we spent our entire lives trying to mold into a queendom of love?
What do you think divine wrath is if it’s not the rage of the saints against our own scholastic cathedrals of ideas about God that have held back the church from stopping war and lifting up the poor?
What do you want in the new religion? I ask them.
It must involve dancing and the worship of beauty and embodied delight.
It should be focused on learning how to listen to love in every situation.
It cannot be anything that could be shared in a tract handed out to strangers on the street or anything that causes megachurch preachers to dump each day’s details on their wives since they are reading and writing important words all day instead of engaging in mundane acts of love.
You must learn to speak with the dead instead of speaking on our behalf.
We never stop learning and we never stop longing to feel heaven in your body to know that we haven’t messed* it all up forever.
One day you will hear us in your own heart.
Written by Morgan Guyton
*word adapted from poem as originally written.
I have often wondered about this thing that we call religion. I wonder if it truly represents the one that we say we follow, or is it just the doctrine of humans, who long to keep power and privilege, wrapped in a cloak of religion and so called faith. What would it take for us to truly build a religion, whose sole purpose was to follow and emulate Jesus? To build places of radical and deep abiding love, not for a few, but for all. So let us build together a new faith, a faith of love and compassion, justice and mercy, where the words; “they are illegals” no longer stops us from seeing those whom the world has scapegoated as worthy of compassion, empathy, and love. Where our world reflects the values of Christ and not where churches reflect the values of empire. Let us build something meaningful, grace-filled, and radical. Let us build it now.
Peace and blessings,
Rev. Patrick Woodbeck
Minister
Grey Street United/ Bird’s Hill United/ The Big Red Church (Gordon-King Memorial United)