Canter Bridge

From time to time the course of events hands to us a particularly pleasant fruit encased in a most bitter shell.

The genre of biblical literature—it is of course to be found outside the biblical text as well—that is called ‘apocalyptic’ addresses itself to the faithful who have lost control. Words like ‘power’, ‘influence’, and ‘clout’ have meaning in a society and an historical moment in which the pious can share in the shaping of their space, their time, their shared destiny. Often this privilege is denied. Then, apocalyptic speaks its word.

A common thread in this word to the distressed is that God acts on his own time and his own terms. His ‘Jerusalem’—to point to just one destiny-rich term whose connotations reverberate far beyond the walls of the ancient, remembered city—is not built, but rather received. It is not a city to be erected; rather it descends.

Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he leave it. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on him my new name.

To the eyes and ears of those bent on shaping the world, such language not uncommonly sounds like a cop-out.

To those who know they are, in this world’s terms, the poster children of powerlessness, it is the dialect of life itself.

Humanity may well splatter its garish paint across the walls of the Babylons it has built for itself. No matter the waiting, Jerusalem shall descend.