The New Jerusalem begins with each of us

24th April 2016 Fifth Sunday of Easter
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10:00AM.
Reading 1, Acts 14:21-27
Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 145:8-9, 10-11, 12-13
Reading 2, Revelation 21:1-5
Gospel, John 13:31-33, 34-35
"…I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…"
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN

I was reading the Guardian a few days ago and saw, yet again, an item about choosing a national anthem for England. God Save the Queen is thought to be too dull and boring, and it represents the entire United Kingdom rather than this largest part of it.

As you have all guessed now, the piece of music chosen by the writer, hands down, was Jerusalem, by Blake, set to music by Parry.

We hear Jerusalem each year at the end of the BBC Proms. Sometimes at great civic events we are asked to sing it (although many, including me, get a bit fuzzy on the words of the second verse). And when we do, we must suspend our judgment.

Someone, I don't know who, said that the first verse asked four questions, the answers to which were "No, No, We hope so, and No." Blake meant it as a call to an English Revolution to complement that which had recently taken place in France.

But when we hear it, we think of the Woman's Institute, Chariots of Fire, the Last Night of the Proms, and possibly some vague scenes of England's green and pleasant land that we've seen from the railway carriage on our way to Brighton to take the salt air.

In the second reading this morning, we have heard the author of Revelation seeing a new Jerusalem coming down from heaven. It is a gift from God, and will erase human sorrow and pain.

The word "Jerusalem" in Hebrew means "City of Peace". I'd like to reflect on those words as they apply to the city in which we live.

Last week a young man was stabbed to death just south of here. He was an up-and-coming musician and performer, and his friends, acquaintances, and even perfect strangers were shocked at the manner of his death and how easy it was to get a knife to use as a weapon.

Many other men and women, girls and boys, have been assaulted in a similar way, often with the same result, in the past. My friends from North London sometimes hesitate to cross the river in fear of a similar end. It is not a likely fate, but it terrifies nonetheless.

In the housing market, there is turmoil. A place where young families were able to live in relative peace with affordable rents, has been taken over by developers who spied it as an area with older buildings, close to the City and academic institutions, and ripe for replacement with high-rise buildings aimed at students, buy-to-let owners, and high-fliers from the City looking for a place to lay their heads during the week.

In the wider world, peace is a commodity that rarely exists anywhere. The Middle East, which has been an area of contention for millenia, is contentious still. The United States suffers mass shootings and deaths on an almost daily basis, as it thinks about the next President, and whether walls will be built on its southern border to keep out those who only wish to breathe free and provide for their families. Famine is rife in Africa, and families struggle to feed themselves, much less sell some of the food they raise to those who do not farm.

So where is the City of Peace, the new Jerusalem? It's not to be found anywhere on this planet. It comes from God.

God lived and died among us, in the person of Jesus Christ. His life and death points toward that new Jerusalem that we all crave. Who among us does not want to live a life of peace, looking out on a green and pleasant land, and enjoying the tranquillity of living free from want and fear, free to speak whatever we feel we need to speak, and free to worship as our hearts and souls impel us so to do.

Our secular society will never provide such a world or such a city of peace. I have an iPhone-I'm sure that many of you do as well. I have a computer (you may have one too). I have a TV, radios, and newspapers. The world's woes impinge on my life as much as they do yours. And it's easy to forget the Divine in search of the Worldly.

Surveys have consistently shown that the extent of religious belief and the number of believers of any faith at all has grown smaller in England in the years since the Second World War. The number of people who attend a Church of England service weekly has dipped below one million. This is a tiny bit more than five percent of our population. While the number of people who have a belief in a Supreme Being is quite high, the number who do something about that belief is quite low.

"Behold, I make all things new!" says the one who sits on the throne. The answer to the creation of a new City of Peace is to start that renewal in our own hearts. We can't wait for it to be done by others. The strife around us will not cease all by itself.

My question to us all is this: "How can I begin to make all things new in my own life?" We will have to account to the one sitting on the throne for our answer to that question.

And so, may we start the creation of a City of Peace, the New Jerusalem, in our own hearts and minds, by the grace of the life and death of our Saviour Jesus Christ, to whom must be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.