“Free At Last”

Revelation 21:1-5a

I’m opening today’s sermon with quotes from a poem written in 1919 by William Butler Yeats and a speech given in 1963 by Martin Luther King, Jr. The title of Yeats’ poem is “The Second Coming.” The title of Dr. King’s speech is “I have a Dream.”

Yeats wrote his poem in the aftermath of the First World War: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer/ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/ The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned/ The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand/ Surely the Second Coming is at hand… And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/ Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?” I wonder what kind of poem Mr. Yeats would write today?

The First World War was in a sense the end of an era of supposed innocence. Prior to 1914 mainstream Christian theology was dominated by a form of liberalism that assumed that humanity would slowly and surely evolve into what God had created it to be, that the world described in today’s text would come naturally into being. That theology pretty much died after 1918, and out of its ashes arose the neo-orthodox theology of Karl Barth and others.

A lot of Americans my age and older have a nostalgic yearning for the supposedly good old days of the 1950’s. The economy was booming. A can-do attitude prevailed. The future looked oh so bright. But not all was well. In the deep-south and other places racial segregation was assumed to be the natural order of things. For anyone who believed differently there was a set of brutally enforced Jim Crow laws. Second-class citizenship was the lot of our Negro population.

But all of this started falling apart as the Civil Rights movement gained momentum. The dominant cultural center could not hold back the tide of change. At the height of this Dr. King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which ended with these challenging words:

“… this will be the day when all God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And if America is to become a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up the day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

A wonderful dream had Dr. King, some of which has become true. But as we look around our nation and around the world it is obvious that the clanging bell of freedom is still a dream for millions of people, people who cannot sing, “Free at Last.” Slavery is still a booming business. Human trafficking is a sad reality. Starvation and disease are rampant. Old hatreds still smolder. There are wars and rumors of wars. There is a growing gap between the haves and the have nots. Rudeness, incivility, and violence run rampant. Disasters, natural and man-made, are in the headlines daily. It’s enough to make us wonder about the truth of Yeats’ poem: “Surely the Second Coming is at hand… what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.”

William Butler Yeats wrote those words out of a great sense of disillusionment. He probably thought, wrongly, that things could not get any worse than they were in 1919. And what of Dr. King? Did he believe that his words would be coming true quickly? Probably not. He knew the difference between his vision of what could be and the harsh realities that were.

As Christians which vision are we to hang our hats on? That of Mr. Yeats or that of Dr. King? Do we live a life of constant disillusionment or a life of unceasing hope? For Christians there is only one way to live: with unceasing hope. But this hope should never blind us to what’s wrong in the world and in our lives. While we should never surrender ourselves to Mr. Yeats’ dark vision we should take Dr. King’s vision for what it is: a vision of hope that will never be fully realized this side of heaven.

The Kingdom of God is at hand. In time it will come in all its fullness. John the Elder’s vision in today’s text will be realized: “… he [God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” There will come a time when all of creation will be able to sing, “Free at last! Free at Last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” The Second Coming isn’t something to dread; it is our ultimate hope.

Imagine, if you will, the affect of today’s text on its first hearers. They are assured that the Lamb will conquer death and evil. They are assured, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Jesus will, in the end, win. They are further assured that their present persecution would not be the end of them. The Mighty Acts of God we call Incarnation, Atonement, and Resurrection will be completed on that day when “… the one who [is] seated on the throne [will say], Behold, I am making all things new.”

All things new: a new heaven and a new earth, God making his home with us, God defeating death and mourning and crying and pain. That which God had created will be re-created. There will be a new Eden, a new paradise. All that is ugly, twisted, destructive, and evil will be destroyed. Caesar and all his imitators over the centuries will crumble to dust. All empires, nations, and systems will learn the hard way that the Kingdom of God is the only Kingdom that matters. Swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. War will never be studied or waged again. The saints will go marching in!

Can we make that happen? No, God’s Kingdom is in God’s hands; we are but part of it. Will we live to see it? Nobody knows, especially those who think they know. All we can do is live in the same hope that has encouraged and consoled Christians down through the centuries: the sure and certain hope that all things will be made new. Not by way of some man-made Utopia or the imagination of singers like John Lennon but by way of the will of God.

Meanwhile, what: what are we to do? We open ourselves to the Holy Spirit and thus enable ourselves to dream God’s dream. We work within the limits of our finite abilities to bring those dreams to life. We share the hope of the Gospel with the world. We build hospitals and schools. We minister to the sick and dying. We feed the hungry. We break down the walls of bigotry. We challenge the systems that oppress any of God’s children. We work to end human trafficking. Will this bring in the Kingdom? No, but it will bring glimpses of the Kingdom to a world that sorely needs them.

Furthermore, we gather as Christ’s Church to praise and worship our Almighty God. We pray that God’s will, not ours, be done. We practice forgiveness. We model civility and compassion. And today, just like our Christian ancestors did, we gather at the Table of the Lord. We see, taste, smell, and feel the Word of God by way of a broken loaf and poured out cup. We remember what God has done and celebrate what God is doing. And for a brief moment, as we’re gathered at the Table, we get a foretaste of that great wedding feast to come in the realized Kingdom of God. We glimpse, if only for a second, God’s people gathered together and finally able to sing, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last.” Amen.