Ezekiel 47:1-12
Title: Paradise is a Garden. But Heaven is a City.
“Paradise is a garden, but heaven is a city,” Sara Miles says, in her second book, City of God: Faith in the Streets. As the founder of Food Pantry, (http://saramiles.net/food_pantry) Miles says her twenty years of living in the Mission District of San Francisco have changed her view of heaven. “For me, paradise is a garden, but heaven is a city…. I begin to see that city-ness, not necessarily prettiness, might be a characteristic sign of heaven. Sexier and more beautiful than Eden, the city of God is a crowded, busy place jammed with languages and peoples, including the ones who argue incessantly with one another. A place so mixed, so layered, and so apparently impure that it proclaims a love vaster than humans can come up with on our own.”
I wonder how we can relate to her insight? What is, for you, the "Characteristic sign of heaven”?
This is the question I would like to share with you this morning. Where do you see the character of the viable presence of heaven, and what tells you if it is already here, not just waiting for us after death? When it is here - no one can ignore it. It is like a heartbeat - always present, but we may not see it or notice it in every moment. Our eyes might not catch every detail, but Jesus asks us to see things through the lens of heaven.
The city of God, the “city-ness, not necessarily prettiness”, sounds to me like “Winnipeg-ness”. So far just a few people have told me that they LOVE Winnipeg, and what they think is the beauty of Winnipeg. Certainly there are things that make us think that our city is not necessarily pretty. Weather is just one thing - that’s what I learned from an outsider’s perspective in the past two years. Other cities in Canada can be as deeply cold as Winnipeg. Mosquitoes literally ate me and my friends and had a feast in a campsite in Edmonton. When I first told one member of my last church, David, (in his seventies and very wise) that I was applying for a church in Winnipeg, he quietly advised me, “Winnipeg? It’s a city which has traditionally experienced many hurts and still does.” I often reminisce about what he said to me when I drive down the complicated and uneasy Winnipeg downtown roads, and see the people who live there.
Winnipeg is big - it has a great story to tell about the way it has grown to be what it is. There are divides, junctions, along the highways and the rivers. People have lived here for a long time and thrived here for a long time. It is still expanding with newcomers. The current newcomers to Winnipeg are different from the newcomers of the past. Whenever I get a chance to explore new places in the city, whenever I join a new social group, I learn each time, as if it were the first, that we have many and diverse people living in our city. We already know that we are big, but if you go deeper into meeting others beyond your familiarity and close affinities, we realize that we are much bigger and even more diverse than we first thought. I am not just referring to race, ethnicity, nationality, language, immigration, refugee status, things that can be measured and analyzed into numbers and data, but more in terms of the characters, hopes, and dreams; the actions and the experiences of real people. Diversity has a strong voice that is truly humbling and powerful.
St Vital Mall or Polo Park shopping malls are not the right places to look for a sharper sense of who we are, or to make meaningful contacts with diverse people. We can hardly be more than consumers there, visitors to a money-driven planet.
We live in the city of God. By saying that we live in the city of God, I am not trying to erase other religions in our city or claim a colonial God, (“Everything belongs to God as God’s possession, land, people through conquer.”) I want us to see the city through the lens of heaven. In Jewish Torahs and Christian Bibles, heaven is always envisioned as city. There’s a temple and the water flowing from the sanctuary, and many peoples. The great numbers and diversity of the people are key. The authors of Ezekiel and the book of Revelation, which both describe the vision of the New Jerusalem, the New City, wrote them in their experience of exile, in diaspora. Early in the 6th century BCE, the city of Jerusalem was attacked and destroyed by the Babylonians. Many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were taken to Babylon, (the Empire), which led to the establishment of a large Jewish community, which ended up thriving in Babylon for centuries. Ezekiel was one of the original exiles. The city of God is not composed of one kind; it is composed of diverse people’s resilience and growth.
The city is not only downtown, but where we live - the suburban South end of the city is also the city. As a suburban United Church, we have our own limits and potential. In character, we are mostly a Caucasian, middle class, liberal church. We are more protected and sheltered than people in the other parts of the city. We may choose to be complacent rather than controversial, politically and socially. Yet we definitely show the potential and signs of the character of heaven in our diversity. The first thing to notice in our community is our strength in intercultural experiences. Yes, we say that “If you are not First Nations, you are immigrants.” But I would like to point out our strength not just in terms of race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration, but more importantly, in terms of our hunger for meaningful relationship, and that need comes from all walks of life. None of us have ever crossed the threshold of the church entrance without carrying their need for deep nurture that comes from the vast love of God and the ministry of relationship. That’s what we do as a church - through Christian education, pastoral care, welcoming, greeting, outreach, fellowship, property care and other important works: We would like to let you know and let whoever we welcome, whoever we meet through our ministry know that we are no longer just our everyday 'earthly world’. Here, we are in ‘God’s world’. No one needs to journey alone.
In addition, with God, your life can’t be like stagnant water. I think that’s what today’s Bible passage is telling us - with God, your life cannot be like stagnant water. In the city of God, God never lets our life lose the viability of new hope. Notice how Ezekiel goes into great detail to show the incredible abundance of water that flows from the temple. The temple means the whole of God’s world, the whole city of God. We, as a church, are the microcosm of God that reflects the macro dynamic of God. The water is a source of nourishment for a “great many trees... For “every living creature that swarms... For very many fish.”
Think about what this water might contain that makes it so very, very nourishing. God says, “ This water flows east, descends to Arabah and then into the sea, the sea of stagnant waters. When it empties into those waters, the sea will become fresh. Wherever the river flows, life will flourish - great schools of fish - because the river is turning the salt sea into fresh water. Where the river flows, life abounds.” Then God says we are like the trees planted beside the streams of water whose ever-bearing leaves and fruit are for healing and food.
Our Stewardship committee asked us last summer “What does stewardship mean to you?” and encouraged us to share our answers. Please know that we are still welcoming your insights and thoughts. My own definition of stewardship is that it is asking and responding to the question, "Can I give small pieces of my heart for others - because I care? What means do I have to do it?” Can we grow leaves and fruits in faith and give them for healing and food for others, “For healing of the nations", modelling Jesus, the Bread of Life?
The character of the viable presence of heaven with us, in our church, is that we trust the strength of the diversity of God’s people, and we work hard for the healing of the world and meeting the hungers of the people. With God, we can’t just be stagnant water. In the city of God, we have work to do. We are the micro city of God, the micro world of God. The work of the people for the people of God should never be a lonely job and it will not be; we pool our common hopes, dreams, wisdom, experiences, time and wealth together to forge a bigger chain of God’s vast love through the ministry of relationship. ‘Relationship’ is our mission field, our vocation.
May we all know that we are loved, more than we can ever imagine. In the city of God, everyone is part of the tree of life that bears fruit. As 1 Corinthians affirms, the greatest fruit of the Spirit, the greatest fruit of all, is love. That love, vaster than just us, impels us to see the character of the sign of God’s work, the presence of heaven - viable and indeed visible. Let us become part of love’s heartbeat.
Prayer of Dedication
O God, river of life, river run free...
Hymn
River Running in You and Me MV 163
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