Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Easter 6 – Its gates will never be shut
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Revelation 21:25b

In the Name of the Living God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen

As we continue our preaching series today, we we find ourselves in Revelation, Chapters 21 and 22. While concerned with the new heavens and the new earth more broadly, much of our reading focuses on the New Jerusalem, the holy city coming down out of heaven. What captivates me are the gates, which Chapter 21, verse 25 tells us “will never be shut.”  This is as it should be, philosophically speaking, and also in terms of both our faith and our lives right now.

If you think about it, gates- doors- are meant to be open. This is because they are for entry. Walls are boundaries, gates are portals. For a door to remain always closed- always locked- would be to make it part of the wall. If there is to be no going through a gate, all one needs is a wall.  Doors are sometimes shut, sometimes locked to enhance safety or protection, but that doesn’t take away from their fundamental purpose: as an entrance.

The gates of the New Jerusalem are always open.  By  the time we get to Revelation 21, John has witnessed to the defeat of Satan and the final judgment. We are nearing the end- both chronologically and in terms of ontology, or purpose – of all things.  Christ is victorious, and so the gates are open.  Why? Because it is safe. As New Testament professor, The Rev. Dr. Craig Koester reminds us:

The new creation is marked, in part, by an absence of powers that oppose God and diminish life.

Ponder that: no opposition, no threat, no darkness or damaged lives- no need to turn doors into walls.

The gates are open to a city with no temple, at least as the old Jewish temples had been known. The redeemed of the Lord enter into a place where sacrifice has ceased.  Striving has ceased.  The work of fallen humanity, of trying to make ourselves acceptable to God and to others, is no more. What takes its place?  As the book of Hebrews tells us:

there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his (Hebrews 4:9-10, ESV)

The gates are open to rest- freedom from endless self-justification, sacrifice, and self-improvement.

The gates are also are open to all. Surprisingly, the city attracts the nations of the world and their rulers. We see again here that the gates are not designed to keep the nations away but to provide them with access to God.  Anglican Bishop and scholar NT Wright says the following:

For most of Revelation, ‘the nations’ and their kings have been hostile. They have shared in the idolatry and economic violence of Babylon; they have oppressed and opposed God, his purposes and his people. But the earlier hints of God’s wider redeeming purpose now come fully into play. The witness of the martyr-church in chapter 11 resulted in the nations, which had been raging against God, coming instead to give him glory (11:13). Now here they come in procession, in the long fulfillment of scriptural prophecies…Here they come, bringing their glory into the city through the wide-open gates

We can rightly ask, how can this be?  After all, the nations and the kings have been in downright rebellion against God. Do enemies of God now just enter the Holy City?  St. Paul, writing in 1st Corinthians reminds us to take a more humble- and hopeful- approach to the matter.  He writes:

And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor 6:11, ESV)

Ultimately, the issue is not the idolatry, sin, and rebellion of the nations and their kings. The issue is Jesus Christ and his reconciling work.  The nations have now seen the truth, turned and entered in through the open gates. In the end, the New Jerusalem is populated by even the very nations and kings that had opposed God’s rule and oppressed the church, here now pictured as redeemed citizens of the Holy City. The restored Jerusalem has trees whose leaves will be used for for the healing of the nations.  It is finished, our Lord said from his own Tree, and the veil that separated holiness from sin was torn in two by means of his atoning sacrifice.  Now all who will come are together at last: one flock, one shepherd.

What can we say about what this means to us? Let’s start with a liturgical observation: Eastertide is beginning to wind down. In the church calendar, this Thursday we observe Ascension Day, when Christ returns to his Father’s side.  In John 14:2-3, Jesus says

I am going away to make ready a place for you. And if I go and make ready a place for you, I will come again and take you to be with me, so that where I am you may be too. (NET)

This place Jesus is preparing for us is nothing less than what we have read about in Revelation today: a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem with gates wide open- safe, free from sacrifice and struggle, redeemed from sin.  This  is our hope- our promise as followers of Christ. As such, it is the case that our lives as Christians are properly lived eschatologically- with the end in mind- lived in such a manner that we actually live the future right here in the present.  This is the “already-but-not-yet” nature of the Kingdom that Paul talks about. If it is true that, at the end of all things, we are safe, at peace, free from  sin, then the closed doors in our lives can begin to crack open right here and now.

You know, I didn’t have a key to my childhood home until the day I left for college. I didn’t need one- in my small Tennessee town, there just didn’t seem much reason to lock the door.  However, I have locked my door every place that I have ever lived since.  The world just seems less safe now, doesn’t it?  We are so afraid that we will be harmed, so anxious that even what little we have will be taken away from us by force. Yet the actual truth of the matter is this: we are safe, beloved, because the Lamb has conquered. We don’t have to live in fear. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus says

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:27, ESV)

Whatever happens in this life, our future is secure.  This means we can risk opening our hearts, and sometimes even our doors. We can love our neighbors, our enemies, the sojourner and the alien in our midst. We can choose to be vulnerable, loving, and open in a superficial, fearful and locked-up world.

What’s more, if we have entered into a place where there is no temple, we can stop worrying so much about self-justification projects- both religious and otherwise.  In his book, Seculosity, David Zahl reflects:

Enough. Listen carefully and you’ll hear that word enough everywhere, especially when it comes to the anxiety, loneliness, exhaustion, and division that plague our moment to such tragic proportions. You’ll hear about people scrambling to be successful enough, happy enough, thin enough, wealthy enough, influential enough, desired enough, charitable enough, woke enough, good enough. We believe instinctively that, were we to reach some benchmark in our minds, then value, vindication, and love would be ours—that if we got enough, we would be enough.

As a people, modern humans may be less traditionally religious, but we are still trapped in the rat-race of striving. We sacrifice so much to be found worthy- by God, our peers, and, most of all, by ourselves. Eventually, we can wind up just giving up in despair, and slamming shut the doors of our hearts. Yet there is no temple in the new Jerusalem. Sacrifices- and striving – have ceased.  This invites us as people of faith to live in a different way.  We do not have to build our personal Babels by means of our own strength.

The British poet Joshua Luke Smith writes of the mystery of our way of life in a city with no Temple.  He says: “The life that you long for is rooted in the life that you already live.”  Let me say that again: “The life that you long for is rooted in the life that you already live.”  When fears are stilled, when strivings cease, the gates are opened, and we have the opportunity to see who we each are created to be as a child of God. To accept it, embrace and enjoy it.  And live into it, as opposed to spending all our time trying to become something we are not, or feeling worthless because we just can’t.

Finally, I would call you attention to verse 27. It tells us that nothing unclean will ever enter the New Jerusalem, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false.  Yet we will enter it, sinners that we are.  This is perhaps the greatest open gate of all.  Romans 8:1 proclaims to us that “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” That’s the ESV, the Contemporary English Version puts it even more plainly:  “If you belong to Christ Jesus, you won’t be punished.”  This is because of the work of Christ, not our own.  I want you to remember that, right here and right now, we have a foretaste of this blessed reality: the work of the Spirit by means of Baptism and Eucharist, confession and absolution, and anointing for healing enable us to experience that freedom from sin, death, and condemnation presently, even as we remain paradoxically both justified and sinner.  The Rev. John Newton, former slave-trader and author of the hymn Amazing Grace, testifies

I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am

Hear me clearly: That is true for us, here and now, just as it was for him.

Beloved, life happens- it is scary and hard and painful.  We do things we regret and are ashamed of.  The doors of our lives and hearts close as a result.  Yet the promise today is that the gates of the New Jerusalem are always open, they will never be shut.  John the Divine offered this vision to his struggling churches that they might have hope, and so be able to overcome the way things seem to be by means of the promise of the way things actually are.  By means of Holy Scripture, we are offered the same promise, the same hope here today. We are not condemned to merely living closed-up lives of fear and striving and sin.  Not in the Last Day- and not now.  We didn’t read Chapter 21, verse 5 today, but I wish we had.  It says- in a nutshell- what I have labored to make clear this morning. It simply reads:

And the one seated on the throne said: “Look! I am making all things new!” (NET)