Babylon and the importance of community in the digital age

Scripture: Revelation 18:1-3, 21-24

    One of the most frequently used metaphors in the Bible for the kingdom of God is the “city on a hill.” The city on a hill metaphor resonated with people in the Middle East because it recalled the city of Jerusalem, which was built upon a hill, and the “New Jerusalem” which the book of Revelation tells us will be the centerpiece of the reign of God on earth. But to understand why Jerusalem matters so much requires going beyond the important events that happened there. Of course Jerusalem is an incredibly important historical city because of the temple and Jesus’ triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, the crucifixion and the resurrection, but this vision of the city on a hill looks well beyond the past into a future that is bigger than geography and history. The New Jerusalem is a place where God promises to build a community open on all sides where all peoples will worship as one. It is a city on a hill in the sense that it is both a vision of a future and a reality just out of our reach.

    But if we’re honest with ourselves this is a really tough metaphor for us to get, and it’s not only because Hallock, Minnesota looks nothing like Jerusalem. Part of the trouble stems from the strange idea of what a “city of God” will look like. Not everybody likes the idea of a “city” to begin with because of the crushing congestion, the politics and the sheer overwhelming speed of life, so the idea of the zenith of creation culminating with God creating one big city may not exactly be our preferred vision of the afterlife. And that’s OK, because the New Jerusalem—and everything it represents—could just as easily be called a community.

   In order to understand why this matters we have to look at the destruction of Babylon in today’s reading. Babylon is the name that John used to talk about Rome. According to John, Rome was not facing destruction because it did not function as a city. In fact, at that time it was the greatest civilization in the history of the world. Rome was the model which other cities strived to emulate. It was big and intimidating, economically, politically and militarily powerful, but Rome was also a place of stringent class structure, where the authorities were oppressive to the poor and the outcast, and completely averse to most things that Christians stood for—including, most importantly, the claim that Jesus was God. Caesar was the god of the Romans, reigning over all the powers that kept the state secure—economics, politics, military, and so on. So, the city on a hill stands opposed to Babylon (or Rome), because the city on a hill functions not as an economic, political or military power, but as a community. A community is not out for its own gain at the cost of its least; a community is always concerned with the needy; and a community can be any size (a great city or a small neighborhood within a small town), because a community is not determined by its size but by its unified efforts, sharing together, worshiping together and living together as one people under God.

   Fast forward two thousand years and this contention between Babylon and the city on a hill is still very much ongoing. The Book of Revelation assumes that readers will belong to some community; John does not even consider the idea of a single individual apart from community. In the first century there was no such thing—even the ascetics living out in the desert were living in community with one another! Well, today, individualism is rampant. You just hop on your favorite internet message board and boom! You’re an individual in a sea of individuality because the assumption of the internet age is that you are a detached person capable of believing whatever it is that you want. The Reformation and the Enlightenment and Post-modernity have taught us that we are little creatures unto ourselves, who are first and foremost detached from any and all commitments.

    When you create your Facebook or Twitter profile, when you Snap Chat or Instagram, these sites and services make it seem like you are joining a community, but community requires commitment that none of those virtual places can satisfy. The difference between the connections we make online and the community in which we live is that you cannot hide your true self from the community, as you can online. The community will tell you when you are crazy; the internet will not. In fact, if you search far enough on the World Wide Web you will find people to join in your crazy beliefs so that pretty soon you will be convinced that you are the only people in the world who see things as they truly are. The internet age allows you to believe that you are always right, erasing contrary messages with a single keystroke. This is the Rome of the modern world. While Rome in the 1st century was oppressive in its forced worship of Caesar, Rome of the modern world is a more insidious forced worship of the self, because online everybody can give the false impression of having it all together.

   When we break down the physical places we live into virtual connections across vast distances we lose something that cannot so easily be synthesized: we lose commitment. In the New Jerusalem, commitment is measured in worship. When John shares his visions of worship around the heavenly throne it is always in the presence of a vast community singing together in one voice. Worship without commitment is hollow. You can try worshiping God on your own for awhile, but eventually you will have to come back to a community that nourishes your faith and holds you accountable, reminding you that you are not God. I think this is why the book of Revelation is structured as it is—moments of intense worship are followed by plagues and wrath, where the terror of life apart from God is revealed. Without worship—without the commitment of the community—there is only terror, and when the individual is confronted with terror in our world today they are often forced to conclude that it this an empty, godless world with no promise but death. On other hand, without fear and affliction, we too easily conclude that we are in control and that we are in fact God. We need both—fear and commitment.

    In the 21st century the challenge of the modern Babylon is enormous. We live in a digital world that suggests that we are detached individuals, free from commitment. If you haven’t experienced this message personally I can all but guarantee your children and grandchildren have. And worst of all we are being told that the marks of the New Jerusalem are actually the most dangerous things—we are being told that commitment is the problem. We are being taught not only that organized religion is wrong but that the church itself is a force of evil that is out to control your life.

   Like most untruths there is a grain of truth in this message. This community will limit what you do and say—just as your parents and grandparents strive (or strove) to do. This community will tell you when you are crazy. They’ll tell you to say the creed (even if you don’t want to); they’ll tell you to be respectful of worship, to shake hands on the way out. This community will tell you a lot of things and often times it won’t even be with words; it will be that person who scares you the most who just lowers their eyes at you and you’ll know that you’ve done it now. That is scary; it’s limiting; it’s an affront to the freedom of the modern age.

   And it just happens to also be why communities are the most important thing we have in this world to remind us of the love of God in Jesus Christ. You see, while the age of the internet is telling you that you are good and right and can do and believe whatever you please, that is a rabbit hole that will take you to a place where you finally find yourself all alone in your self-righteousness. It’s a lonely place to be. And the reason you will find yourself there is because nobody stopped to tell you that you were crazy and nobody stopped to remind you that you are not God. Too many people who say they do not believe in God actually do; they just make God out to be their own self.

   The church will always combat that tendency, whether you agree with every iota of doctrine or not. We come together each week (and occasionally more than that) to worship as one community because that’s what life looks like in the New Jerusalem. Sure, this is a sad representation of new life on the other side of the veil. None of us should pretend that we are perfect or that this worship is holier than others, but holy or not this is a sanctuary from the Babylon we experience in our daily lives. Out there are powers that speak a lie of self-righteousness in our ears. So, we must confront them the best way we know how—in worship and in little acts of kindness and love. We don’t have this all figured out; we disagree on many things; but we share something more important—commitment to one another, commitment to work together and faithfully tell one another, “You are crazy. You are way off-track, but you have a God who has redeemed you nonetheless.” It’s astounding how much we need to hear that in the digital age. It’s astounding how desperately we need those walls to fall, how desperately we need to commit ourselves to something profound—to a God who saves us not just individually but as a whole community. Every time that commitment is made the walls of Babylon fall, and every time Babylon falls we are redeemed. It’s counter-cultural, it’s bound to scare us, it is an affront to individualism, but, honestly, so was Jesus.