It is a privilege to be here again in this amazing and marvelous church where you are forging a future of progressive Christianity that is reaching the hearts and minds of people around the globe.  I bring you greetings from C3 North, where at this moment David Begley is worshiping in Frankfort at the Betsie Bay Inn.  All of you are invited
to join us whenever you are in Benzie County.

Now you have heard a lot about the Revelation of St. John in the past month or so, and my task this morning is to sum it up.  Revelation is really a letter written to some churches in Turkey in the late first century during times of persecution at the height of the new Roman Empire, where all were obliged to bow down to the Emperor as Lord.  It is about churches and for churches.  It starts out by telling the churches what’s wrong with them.  John says to one church:  “You are neither too hot nor too cold.  I wish you were one or the other.”  What he meant was:  You are really boring.  He said to another church, “You seem to have forgotten how to love.”  Lots of squabbles going on there.  Then he says:  “Listen to my story, my vision.  Maybe you’ll get the idea of the payoff for going through difficult times.  And he goes on to tell a tale like those we heard as children, an epic story of great beasts and great battles, a story about the slaying of dragons with many heads and horns.  It’s a Harry Potter story.  It’s a story in which the dragon slayer wins the hand of the king’s daughter, and establishes a new kingdom of peace and riches for everyone.  It’s a love story.  That’s what Revelation really is:  a love story for depressed churches. 

Last summer I was in Vancouver, British Columbia, for a family wedding.  I was walking in the downtown area of the city after dinner and stumbled upon a sight I could not believe.  I had my sister-in-law go back and email me some pictures of it to show you this morning.  Brad, let them see my vision. 

On seeing this, I immediately said to myself:  “I didn’t know they had a Progressive Church in Vancouver.”  You will notice that it is a life sized church, upside down, with the steeple sticking in the ground, as if it had fallen from heaven.  Its roof is red like jewels, but the church is unfinished, and it is empty.  I suddenly realized that this is the story of Revelation. Some might see it as the downfall of the church, but I said to myself: “This is the church taking its faith seriously, doing its work, and waiting to be complete.  This church has a fantastic future, just like C3.”  You think I am crazy.  Well I’m no crazier than the writer of the book of Revelation.  Look again and think about it.

Seven years ago I set out with a committee to build a new church building in Beulah.  It was fun, except for the church fights over what it should look like.  One of the most serious debates that went on during the planning of this new church building was over whether or not the new church should have a steeple.

Half the people said: “Yes, we want it to look like a church, pointing to heaven and reminding people of God.”  The other half said: “No.  We want it to look unique and remind people that God is in the beauty and people of this world around us.”  So we had the “Steeple-people” and the “No-steeple-people”.  And one of the best stories of the building of this church was what happened when the 32 members of the planning committee all got in the same room one afternoon and tried to find a way to resolve their differences. It was not easy.  The steeple-people had a plan with a tall 75 foot mast-like steeple with a sail on it.  Oh, was it pretty!  It looked like the church could sail right out into Lake Michigan.  The others had sort of a flat looking church that would blend into the sand dunes.

Suddenly there was a win/lose situation.  Who would be the winners and who would be the losers?  Just like in Revelation: who would be in white robes and who would be the beasts?

So how do winners win, and losers lose?  It’s a question that we struggle with today as a nation, as a church and as individuals.  We tend to think that winners are those who get the most votes or who have the most military might, or the most money.  It comes down to power.

We like to adhere devoutly to the belief that one more application of power will bring in the kingdom.  One more invasion, one more war, one more escalation of troops, one more execution, one more jealous fit, one more towering rage, one more threat to the children—in short, one more twist of whatever arm you have got hold of—will make goodness triumph and peace reign.  But it never works; never with persons, since they are free and can, as persons, only be wooed and loved into transformation, not controlled.  

Some think that the book of Revelation is about winners and losers: those who go to heaven and those left behind.  Did you read about the new Christian game for children called “Left Behind?”  It is a computer game in which you either convert the bad guys to the way you think or believe, but if you don’t succeed, you can destroy them (kill them.)  What does this teach children?  It teaches them, not how to be a Christian, but how to be an intolerant terrorist.

If we continue to divide our world into the good and bad, the Christian and the heathen,
where bad deserves punishment or death and only the good get rewards, then we continue to miss the point of Christian faith and the story of Revelation. 

Worse than that, we begin to make ourselves into righteous Gods, judging others and making up our own religion to suit us.  Jim Wallis, in his recent book, God’s Politics, asks the questions all Christians who take Jesus seriously should be asking:  “How in Christian America did the religion of Jesus become pro-rich, pro-war, pro-military and only pro-American?”  Is that the Jesus you read about in the New Testament?

To me this is the heresy of dualism: the good guys versus the bad guys.  The rich versus the poor.  Good versus evil.  God versus the Devil.  Wrong versus right.  I believe that psychologically dualism is the projection of our own inability to deal with the parts of us we don’t like and feel guilty about. 

There is another New Yorker cartoon I like.  It shows people standing along each side of a road watching the Mongel army pass by on horses.  Each Mongel soldier is holding a pike with a severed head on top.  Staring at the death march, one of the people on the side of the road says to another: “They were really good people.  It’s just that they were wrong.”  We tend to punish people who we think are wrong.  We come to equate being wrong with being bad.  I knew children in my elementary classrooms who were whipped by their parents for bringing home a bad report card.  I don’t believe being wrong is a crime worth punishment.  But it’s that dualism in us again.

After being convicted of assault for bashing his wife’s head through a plate glass window right in front of a policeman, a city council member in Traverse City told the judge this fall:  “I am really a good person.”  Friends, we are all good people, except for the abused and hurt child in us that insists on being in control.

Well, the steeple-people and the no-steeple-people talked it out that afternoon and started listening to each other.  They didn’t talk about “I’m right and you’re wrong.”  They talked about what they wanted the church building to say to the world.  I had each of them write a little essay on this subject and had each person read his aloud.  What all of their ideas boiled down to was this: “God has brought this church together to love the earth and its people.”  So the church in Beulah was built with glass walls, 12 feet high, pointing to where God matters—in the world that God loves so much.  The steeple became the walls.  Come up to Beulah and see it. 

Some people in the Beulah church have been complaining ever since about how bright it is inside,  how they have to wear sun glasses during the service because of the glare, and they can’t see the minister.  That’s the whole point!   The sanctuary is dedicated to Epiphany: the glory of God.  And what is “glory?”  In the Hebrew it means “Light.”  God said: “Let there be light!”  The light and the world outside is always more important than the minister.  And in Revelation we read that the New Jerusalem needed no sun or moon for light, “for the Glory of God is its light.” 

C3, here’s a little suggestion from the progressive church of Vancouver.  Stick your steeple in the ground and decide what unique earthly mission you have beyond survival.  I was pastor of a church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, which lost 400 members in two weeks because the church’s board announced a policy of open and racially integrated housing in our neighborhood.  The budget was cut in half.  “How can we survive?”  was the cry.  The answer was this:  “We will find a purpose greater than we have known, and stick our steeple in the ground and do it.”  After consulting with the mayors of two cities, social agencies, other churches, business leaders, bankers, and they found the purpose.  They would respond to ‘white flight’ by restoring the housing of the city, restoring the value of people’s property.  The church raised money, borrowed money, attracted money from other churches and large foundations, and in a few years they had restored hundreds of homes and had a million dollars in three banks as leverage to do more.  That church is more alive now than it every hoped to be because it stuck its steeple in the ground in a time of crisis and fear.

So what is your unique purpose?   Find it.  Follow it. I can see you being the center of Progressive Christianity for the world, publishing progressive hymns and liturgy and theology, having retreats for struggling ministers and “church alumni”.   But whatever you become, use the lessons of Revelation, which teach us that there are only 3 things that make a person truly eligible for the Kingdom of God:

Integrity—putting yourself and your church together so the good and the bad are understood and accepted within your spirit.  No one is a good person or bad person.  We are all good and bad.  But we need not be ashamed.  Don’t let anyone tell you that you should be ashamed about anything.  Shame is the thing that tears us apart.  It’s always another voice that tells you to feel shame, never yourself.  Don’t buy it.  There are no losers among people with integrity because they have integrated the dualism within them.  Being good or bad, right or wrong is not the issue.  Loving God and your neighbor is the issue.
Compassion—caring, understanding, enabling others to live with more integrity and hope, no matter who they are.  That’s what Jesus did.  He never asked anyone what they believed.  He never talked about things you have to believe to get into heaven.  He even made heroes of the non believers, like the good Samaritan who believed very little of Jewish law or scripture.  But Jesus talked a lot about how you must relate to others in need if you want to be a part of God’s kingdom.  Beliefs are secondary, not primary.  Christianity is a way to be followed in relating to others, not about a set of beliefs to be believed.  It’s about seeing the light, not the words.
The consummation of love is the surprise ending to every good story.

How does the Christmas story end?  How does Revelation end?  How does the Bible end?   How will your life end?  Does anyone know?  Of course we do.  It’s how every love story ends.  The Christmas story ends in Luke, with old man Simeon, having an epiphany: seeing the love and glory of God before he died in peace.  And the Bible ends with the bride of Christ, the church, the new Jerusalem, coming down to earth out of heaven, creating a new heaven and a new earth, not by simple definition, but by loving and wooing the earth and all its creatures, especially you. 

The picture before you is the perfect church, a new church, yet to be completed.
It’s steeple is pointing to God, come to earth to live among his people.  You see, God is not a being among other beings.  God is being itself—life, all life, love, all love.  As the theologian Paul Tillich put it, “God is the ground of being.”  That is why the steeple should be stuck in the ground, not pointing to the sky.  And the language of Revelation about the church, the new Jerusalem, is only LOVE language, borrowed from the Song of Solomon:  “You are beautiful , O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, and I will cover you with gold and jewels.”

The new church exists for the sake of the world, not for its own sake.  It is grounded in God, who “so loved the world”.  The church is the instrument of God’s love for the world, God’s passion for the world’s well being.

And the end of your life?  You know what happens, just as it did with Jesus.  When you know the love that is God, you die as Jesus did, saying “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”  There is nothing else to do or be worried about.

In Marcus Borg’s new book, “Jesus,” he concludes by talking about how simple it is to be a Christian.   He talks of Jesus’ simple summary of the Christian Life: 
Love the lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

He tells also of a friend whose mother had a summation of her faith worth remembering:
“We are in good hands, so let’s take care of one another.”

Friends, we have begun a New Year.  You have the opportunity to be a new person, a new church--perhaps a church like no other, because you have a new heaven, right here on this new earth.  I hope you become a church with its steeple stuck in the ground of being, empty because its love is all out in the world, showing others how to have integrity, showing compassion for those in need, and, because you know you are in good hands, taking care of one another.    Amen.