Revelation 22:1-5

Revelation 22:1-5

¹ Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ² down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. ³ No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. ⁴ They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. ⁵ There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

Preparing this lesson was difficult. I dislike teaching the Book of Revelation. I find it’s so often used by religious fundamentalists to justify extreme positions. People use descriptions of the apocalypse to scare people about what will happen if they don’t follow the rules. This goes against several central tenets of Christianity (hope, forgiveness, love).

Also, I dislike discussing heaven. I feel like trying to describe heaven is a silly endeavor. Heaven is supposed to be greater than you can imagine, so why are you imagining it? Additionally, the concept of making sacrifices now for heaven later makes it sound like living a good Christian life is a punishment. People should believe that being a good Christian makes you feel good.

I decided to use my concerns in my lesson.

What is Heaven like?

I started by asking my students to describe heaven.

“White clouds. Gates. Dudes with harps.”

“White clouds.”

Okay, nobody is allowed to say something somebody else already said. So no white clouds.

“All the dead people I know waiting for me.”

“Everybody has their own mansion.”

“I’m not allowed to name anything anybody else said? Heath Ledger.”

I described my heaven as sitting on a dock in the mountains, playing Civilization with my friends.

What was Israel like?

So now I asked the students to describe what Israel was like when this passage was written. They immediately jumped on war-torn (I pointed out that Revelation was written about the time that the Temple was destroyed in Jerusalem, one of the major acts of warfare in the Judeo-Christian history). It took a surprisingly long time for them to admit it was a desert. I pointed out how not only does this mean very little water, it also means little variety in food. I explained how without greenhouses and planes, food could only be harvested during specific seasons and otherwise had to be dried.

Has anybody ever had dried fruit? They agree that raisins are great, but they dislike prunes and craisins. None of them have had dried apples, but I assure them that they’re disappointing.

We turn back to review the passage again. This description of Heaven includes “the healing of the nations,” “the river of the water of life,” and “the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.” People tend to see in heaven what they don’t have. I ask my students, is there somebody who died that they miss? An uncle. Do they have to share a room? And who want to live in a Heath ledger-less world? I admit that I miss the friend group I left behind in LA and I explain that Civilization is a board game that has been out of print for more than 20 years. Copies of it cost around $200. It is very natural to expect Heaven to reward us with those things that we lack now.

How does Heaven compare to what we already have?

But all of us forgot to include in Heaven the things we have now. I even forgot to mention my wife. I love my wife a great deal and I would not want any kind of existence without her. But because I already have her now, it is natural to forget to include her in my picture of Heaven. That is the very definition of taking something for granted. I reminded my students that as much as we hope to be rewarded later, we should remember that God has given many great things in our life already and we should be thankful for those.

We have access to enormous amounts of food all year round. The early Christians would view our supermarkets as Heaven. They couldn’t possibly understand how greenhouses allow us to grow plants off season, how refrigerators allow us to keep food all year long, and how planes allow us to transport food from where it is currently in season to us. While these are exactly what they want in Heaven, they are unimaginable to somebody living in the late first century.

And this may be what Heaven is like. At several points the Bible explains how the intentions of God are unknowable. This is helpful when the world is too complicated for us to understand. We have trouble reconciling a God that is all-loving with a God who allows disasters and tragedies to occur. Christians are taught to have faith that God knows what he’s doing and we might not be able to understand it. Similarly, Heaven is likely something unknowable, unimaginable, but it is exactly what we need. It might not even be someplace we go when we die. It might be the place inside ourselves that lights up when we are closest to God, when we’re following His path, when we’re helping other people and sharing love. We have faith that God understands.