Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 Commentary

At this time of the year in the northern hemisphere light plays an increasingly significant role in creation. The length of our days is expanding, and the length of our nights is shrinking. With that expansion and shrinkage comes a lift in the spirits of the many people for whom darkness can be emotionally difficult.

Yet in other ways we might argue that darkness feels like it’s actually expanding, not just literally in the southern hemisphere, but also figuratively throughout our world. Violent strife continues to shadow parts of eastern Europe, west Africa, and the Middle East. What’s more, it often feels like some North American politicians and citizens have declared a kind of verbal war on people with whom we disagree. When one adds to that the darkness that is creational and relational violence, God’s world can feel like a pretty dark place these days.

So this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s extensive use of light imagery comes as timely good news. It’s not just that the Spirit inspired John to promise that the new creation will be characterized by light. It’s also that darkness will have no place in it because it will have been banished alongside all that would deliberately seek to thwart God’s good plans and purposes.

Not just once but twice John reports that “there will be no more night [nyx*]” (21:25, 22:5) in the new earth and heaven. Nighttime is sometimes marked by fear and vulnerability. It’s not just children who sometimes admit they’re scared of the dark. After all, nighttime is a time of both dreams and nightmares for adults as well. Since few people instinctually like darkness, we often try to banish it with light and noise.

In this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson John announces when darkness is condemned to everlasting separation from God’s people in the new creation, light will take its place. The place that light fills is what John calls in verse 10, “the holy [hagian] city of Jerusalem, coming down [katabainousin] out of heaven from God.” The place light will fill will not be, in other words, part of the creation that sin has so deeply scarred and darkened. God will “export” the holy city of Jerusalem from the heavenly realm.

Though verse 11’s description of the holy city of Jerusalem is not part of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s pericope, preachers might refer to it anyway. It too, after all, employs light imagery. There the apostle refers to it as shining with “the glory of God.” He also sees the New Jerusalem as having a “brilliance … like that of a precious jewel.”

The contrast between the current and coming Jerusalem could hardly be starker. After all, 21^st century Jerusalem is shadowed by figurative darkness. It’s the home of often violent clashes between members of various religions. As I write this, Jerusalem is also being threatened by wildfires that howling winds fuel.

John goes on to use light imagery extensively in verses 22-26’s characterization of the New Jerusalem. There he notes, “The city does not need [ou cherian] the sun or the moon to shine on it [phainosin aute], for the glory [doxa] of God gives it light [ephotisen], and the Lamb [Arnion] is its lamp [lychnos].”

In Revelation 22:5 John sees and records something similar. There he writes, “There will be no more night [in the New Jerusalem]. They will not need the light [photos] of a lamp [lychnos] or the light of the sun [heliou], because the Lord will give them light [photisei].” The new creation won’t need either artificial or created light, because the Lord our God, the Creator and Sustainer of light, will give it all the light it needs.

In Revelation 21:4 John celebrates how the tears, death, mourning, crying and pain that play such a prominent role in this creation will have no place in the new creation. Now he adds that darkness too will be banished from the holy city of Jerusalem. That which characterized the time before creation, as well as the time of Egypt’s punishment and Jesus’ crucifixion will have no place in the holy city of Jerusalem.

In fact, the new earth and heaven won’t even need the sun to shine on it or the moon to reflect on it. Its light will be God’s glory, and its lamp will be the lamb. The apostle implies that God’s glory and the Lamb that is its lamp will shine so brightly that it will be as if the New Jerusalem itself is lit up. There will be no need for streetlights, candles and flashlights in the city that will shine so gloriously.

Yet John continues by heaping up more light imagery. In verse 24 he rejoices to report how “the nations [ethne] will walk [peripatesousin] by its light [photos], and the kings of the earth [basileias tes ges] will bring [pherousin] their splendor [doxan kai timen] into [the New Jerusalem].”

Preachers might note the literal meaning of what English translations refer to as the “splendor” the earth’s kings will bring into the new creation. The Greek phrase doxan kai timen literally means “glory and honor.” It echoes Revelation 5:13’s heavenly choir’s “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be … honor and glory (italics added) …”

So it’s almost as if Revelation 21’s John witnesses not just God’s people, but even “the nations,” a phrase that sometimes symbolized organized opposition to God and God’s purposes, bringing into the New Jerusalem what always belonged to God in the first place, but some had withheld. One might even suggest that procession itself adds to the new creation’s luminous splendor.

That holy city will be such a place of light that “On no day will its gates [pylones] ever be shut [kleisthosin], for their will be no night there” (25). While city leaders left open gates of ancient cities during the day in order to facilitate traffic and commerce, they always slammed shut them at night in order to keep people who wished to cause harm out of their cities. In the holy city of Jerusalem all harm and those who cause it will be eliminated. So there will never be any reason for closing its gates. God’s people will have access to it 24/7.

It’s somewhat difficult to understand what verse 26 means. There, after all, John insists “Nothing impure [me pan koinon] will ever enter [ou eiselthe] it, nor will anyone who does [poion] what is shameful [Bdelygma] or deceitful [psuedos], but only those who names are written [gegrammenoi] in the Lamb’s [Arniou] book [bibliou] of life [zoes].”

While verse 26’s meaning is not perfectly clear, it seems significant that John immediately follows his report of the nations bringing their honor and glory into the New Jerusalem with his insistence that no impure person or thing will enter it. Perhaps he means to contrast the luminous glory of what the nations will bring into it with the spiritual darkness that impurity would bring into it. While there will be plenty of room for the nations’ gifts, there will be no room in the New Jerusalem for anything or one that what The Message paraphrases as “dirty or defiled.”

But God’s adopted children know that we have only the beginnings of the kind of holiness and “purity” that will exclusively characterize the new creation. We are naturally koinon (“impure”). Even Jesus’ closest friends have, for example, worshiped other gods and lied. So what hope does anyone have for the Lamb finding our names in his Book of Life?

Only in our names being inscribed in that book with the “ink” that is figuratively Jesus’ blood that others shed for our forgiveness. Our hope for our names being inscribed in God’s book lies only in God’s grace that we’ve received with our faith. Only in Jesus’ rescue of us from our sins, sin, and sinfulness. The New Jerusalem with the Lamb at its center will be, then, a place where light and grace have displaced and completely replaced darkness and sin.

Yet as N.T. Wright (Revelation for Everyone, Westminster John Knox, 2011) has written about this passage, “Like other aspects of this vision of the ultimate future, this, too, is to be anticipated in the present.” So preachers might spend some time letting the Spirit help reflect on what such anticipation might look like.

Revelation’s end certainly reminds Christians to invest our deepest hopes not in any part of this creation, but in the new earth and heaven that is coming. At the same time, however, we work to be lights in this world’s darkness that God calls, and the Spirit equips us to be. Jesus’ followers are, as Paul reminds us in Ephesians 5:8 and 1 Thessalonians 5:5, “children of the light.” Now, with the Spirit’s help, we seek to “Live as children of the light.”

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In December, 2016 Detroit officials turned on the last of its 65,000 new streetlights. Those new lights were spread out all across the city. It was, among other things, a sign that Detroit’s government could finally be trusted to keep its basic promises.

Before that, businesses like Kuzzo’s Chicken and Waffles had to shut down by dinnertime because people didn’t want to go out to eat after the sun went down. After all, they were afraid of what people might do to them in the dark. Before the city installed its new lights, traffic, says Kuzzo’s owner, “almost fell to zero after dark. Since the lights came on, it’s up 15 percent across this neighborhood.”

Louisiana Creole Gumbo catered to neighborhood workers before drug dealers moved in, and the lights went out.  Now the lights are on, says its owner, Mr. Spencer, “and diners are returning at night.” (“The Lights Are On in Detroit.” Kimmelman, Michael, The New York Times, January 10, 2017).