A New World

There’s a resting place along the sidewalk over the Lake Street Bridge where people can pause and look out toward downtown Minneapolis. From that point, they can see the urban skyline of buildings with the Mississippi River flowing through the middle. Trees edge both sides of the river. As the seasons change, so do the vibrant colors of leaves. Sometimes, people write words like “peace” along the railing or leave a short prayer. These “revelations” from people’s hearts were especially true in 2020 after the protests and unrest following George Floyd’s murder.

From this bird’s-eye view, we can contemplate the fullness of life in the city. We can wonder, “Will the city become a place where all can thrive?” Perhaps you have a place in your local community that invites similar reflections.

Scripture tells us Jesus paused at the Mount of Olives (Luke 19:41-42) and looked mournfully out over his city, whose name literally means “City of Peace”–Jerusalem. From this resting place, Jesus saw the whole city, and with a prophet’s heavy heart, he wept among the ancient olive trees. Before him was the city named for peace, but inhabited by those who did not know the things that made for peace!

No wonder, decades later, another visionary named John imagined the same City of Peace, while he lived on the Greek island of Patmos. John was a Christ-follower, exiled under the fearsome reign of Roman Emperor Domitian. In what seemed at first like a terrifying nightmare, John then envisioned a renewed city, a bright, shining city. In contrast to “Babylon,” the deathly city of trauma and suffering, John’s “New Jerusalem” emerged as God’s own dwelling place.[1] In John’s dream, the Holy One had relocated, moving down to Earth, taking up residence throughout the whole city. In announcing God’s hope for Creation, John heard a sublime voice: “See, the home of God is among mortals!” (Rev. 21:3).

Eco-theologian Catherine Keller offers her interpretation of John’s theological pivot: “The divine…gets revealed as immanent to the world. It is no longer found dwelling above as most of the tradition before and after presumes, but ‘dwelling with them’ - cohabitating."[2] What John envisioned countermands a ‘rapture’ out of God’s Creation for another universe. Keller claims that “collective transformation takes place with the dramatic shift away from the picture of God ruling, Caesar-like, from above…[T]his making-new takes place not as a replacement but as a renewal…not a supernatural substitution."[3] Thus, “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1) signifies Christian hope for all things new, not God making all new things.[4]

In preaching as United Methodists, we can find support for regenerative hope as we align the Revelation text with the gospel lesson from John (13:31-35). The bridge can be built by connecting Jesus’ love for his friends with God’s love for the renewed Creation, as identified in the “Preamble” of our revised Social Principles (2024):

From the beginning, God called us into covenant, bound with God, with one another, and with God’s wonderfully diverse Creation. God called us, further, to live lovingly in those relationships…According to Jesus’ commandment, we are to love one another: ‘Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other’ (John 13:34–35)[5]

Curiously, both John’s Gospel and John of Patmos’ prophecy draw on a wedding feast to imagine the profoundness of God’s love. Recall that Jesus’ first public act was unveiled at a wedding feast in Cana (John 2:1-11), and Revelation portrays the relationship between the bride-city and the Lamb-groom (Rev. 21:2) as a cosmic celebration of love.

In our time, 2025, we can continue believing into Christ and the expansiveness of divine love by inviting congregations to reflect on recent decisions of our General Conference–removing the exclusive language of the Discipline regarding ordination and LGBTQ people, as well as affirming the words of the revised Social Principles that marriage is “a sacred, lifelong covenant that brings two people of faith…into union with one another."[6] The lectionary texts invite us to discern “what the Spirit is saying to the churches” (Rev. 2:7) as we love one another into beloved community within God’s whole Creation.

But then, how strange that in the prophet’s vision, “the sea was no more” (21:1)? The signifier of chaos and fearsome storms (remember, John had been shipwrecked!), the sea transported Roman military and policing power throughout the empire. No wonder then, John’s vision of New Creation included an absent sea. In our time, we can ask ourselves what dangerous entities we hope become “no more” in our own futuring of New Creation–drone warfare, drought and floods, school shootings, toxic waste incinerators, gender- and sexuality-based violence? As an imaginative exercise, consider Doug Gay’s liturgical poem based on Revelation 21, but written through prophetic eyes for his city, “The New Glasgow”:

I saw a vision – it was last Thursday at eleven o’clock in the morning:
I was standing on the Necropolis, looking down over the city;
and the cold blue winter sky broke open above my head
and the Spirit of God breathed on my eyes
and my eyes were opened.
I saw Glasgow, the holy city, coming down out of heaven;
shining like a rare jewel, sparkling like ‘clear water in the eye of the sun’;
and all the sickness was gone from the city,
there were no more suburbs and schemes;
no difference between Bearsden and Drumchapel.
I saw the Clyde running with the water of life,
as bright as crystal,
as clear as glass,
the children of Glasgow swimming in it...[7]

© Doug Gay 1992

SERMON ILLUSTRATIONS/CALL TO ACTION

(Note: Please confirm all appropriate copyright and licensing information, and provide necessary attribution before using these images in your worship setting.)

1. Share a story about a “down to earth” ministry in your annual conference or local community. For example, in the Minnesota Annual Conference, “New City Church” draws a local and global digital community with a missional focus on environmental justice. New City Church took its name from Revelation 21, where God welcomes all people, renews the whole Earth, and extinguishes violence. The congregation seeks to reflect this vision, as it sets forth the commitment on the website, https://grownewcity.church/about-us:

We affirm that Black Lives matter, we celebrate LGBTQ+ people, and we certainly invite the doubts/questions of people who do not identify as Christian. Additionally, we work to end the shroud of shame surrounding sexual violence and intentionally try, in every level of our work, to create a culture of consent…

In everything we do, we continually commit to centering marginalized voices. This means creating a space for people who do not get a chance to be heard in broader society. We are committed to centering the lives and experiences of Black, indigenous, and people of color. We are committed to centering the lives and experiences of queer people, particularly trans and nonbinary people. We are committed to centering the earth.

For a sermon illustration, how would your congregation envision itself as a “new city” or “new community” church in your context?

2. Creation justice is a down-to-earth missional priority in The United Methodist Church. In 2020, the United Methodist Global Ministries initiated the Yambasu Agriculture Initiative (YAI) in honor of Bishop John K. Yambasu of Sierra Leone, who lost his life in a car accident that year. The program grounds Bishop Yambasu’s vision that the African churches and their communities become self-sustaining through agriculture. Providing grants and training, YAI mobilizes existing United Methodist land and leadership from within congregations toward long-term food security and financial solvency. The YAI supports agricultural projects such as honey production, seed banks and tools, cultivation of maize, cassava, ground nuts, and rice, and livestock farming with rabbits, poultry, fish, and pigs. Church membership is not required for participation, but YAI lives into Christ through strengthening household livelihoods, teaching skills, and expanding community capacities. Since 2020, the Yambasu Agriculture Initiative has awarded twenty-two grants to nineteen annual conferences as they develop self-sustaining agricultural ministries. For more information and stories, see https://umcmission.org/yai/.

Image Source: https://umcmission.org/yai/. A United Methodist women’s group harvests ground nuts (peanuts) in Mozambique. (Photo: Courtesy of Moses Kamang)

3. Imagine the most joyous wedding you have attended or officiated. Describe to the congregation your experience of what made the wedding such a joyful event. The United Methodist Church has also experienced great joy after many years of striving for full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in congregational ministries, marriages, friendships, and families. In May 2024, General Conference delegates voted to remove language that excludes LGBTQ+ people from United Methodist official teachings and documents. The vote took place in Charlotte, North Carolina, during the final day of the eleven-day legislative gathering. The 523-161 vote approved a section of the church's Revised Social Principles that replaces an exclusively heterosexual definition of marriage. The vote came a day after the General Conference removed its ban on ordaining or appointing LGBTQ+ people as ministers. The General Conference closed with a joyful scene: lines of people laughing, dancing, hugging, and singing, “What the world needs now, is love sweet love,” as they embraced a new era of inclusion. The vote marks a watershed moment for the denomination. “I couldn’t have chosen a better moment,” said Bishop Tracy S. Malone, the first Black woman to be president of the Council of Bishops. “For the first time, we were the people we’ve proclaimed ourselves to be, and through our liturgy and our polity, no one person, no group of people, was excluded from our body,” she says. “I firmly believe that God has a plan and a dream …for our beloved United Methodist Church.”

Image Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/umcommunications/53697003940/in/album-72177720316666440. Following a vote to remove restrictions on clergy celebrating same-sex weddings, Marcia McFee leads a celebration outside the Charlotte Convention Center at the 2024 United Methodist General Conference in Charlotte, N.C. Photo by Paul Jeffrey/UM News.

Rev. Nancy Victorin-Vangerud, Minneapolis, MN (ancestral homeland of the Dakota peoples), is a retired elder in the Minnesota Annual Conference. She is part of the Worship Team of the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement and is a UM Earthkeeper.

[1] William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 1973), 49.

[2] Catherine Keller, Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy and Other Last Chances (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2021), 168.

[3] Keller, Facing Apocalypse, 169.

[4] Keller, Facing Apocalypse, 170.

[5] "Preamble,” Social Principles (2024), page 6, https://www.umcjustice.org/documents/124.

[6] Social Principles (2024), https://www.umc.org/en/content/social-principles-the-social-community#marriage

[7] For his full text, see “Worship for Workers,” https://worshipforworkers.com/blog/the-new-_____/.