Pictures of the future can be beautiful, like the passages that were read to us from Isaiah and Revelation. They offer a vision of utopia, a world that is much better than anything we now know. But there are also apocalyptic visions that are very frightening. A few months ago the book club I attend read Cormac McCartney’s novel "The Road". It was a compelling read, and it has continued to haunt me. Many people I have mentioned it to have said they can’t bring themselves to read it, it sounds too bleak, and I admit it was gruelling to read, and yet I found it beautifully written in the way its sparse prose mirrored the stark atmosphere and setting. I sat up late one night to finish it, and wept through the final pages, it left me profoundly moved. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, "The Road" describes a father and son surviving in a post-apocalyptic world where civilisation has been destroyed, the sun no longer shines, everything is covered in a thick layer of ash, and food must be scavenged from deserted towns and farmyards. As the unnamed man and boy walk along a road towards the sea, hoping to find an end to this dreary landscape, they hide from other survivors for fear that they will run into marauding gangs ruled by violence and lawlessness, whose desperation for survival has turned them into cannibals.

One of the reasons I found the novel so compelling was the questions it raised and left me with. Questions such as

• Is violence inevitable when structure of society is broken down? Even the father had to kill in self-defence at one point.
• Does suspicion and fear become the marks of relationship in such an environment?
• Can happiness be found in a world without sunshine, living vegetation or animals?
• And perhaps most basically, in such a world is there any possibility of hope?

The relationship between man and boy is what kept me reading, and admiration for their determination, even in the face of possible starvation, to not become like the others on the road. But even this raises questions – ultimately are we reduced to loving and protecting our own against "the other" – who become a demonic force in their faceless and nameless presence?

The story did deal with this issue to some extent – at one point, at the prompting of the boy, the man did offer food to another man on the road and discovered that there were others like himself, who maintained a dignity and morality that refused to stoop to survival at all costs. And at the end of the novel, just after the death of his father, the boy is invited to join a family – a father, mother, son and daughter whose existence seemed to mirror the journey he and his father had been on. They too were a group determined not to succumb to the depths of depravity. This determination was summed up by McCartney in the succinct phrase to "Carry the fire". Frequently along the road the man reminded his son that they were carrying the fire – the thing that enabled them to continue travelling and hoping beyond their present circumstances. And when the boy met the family, he asked if they were carrying the fire also. Ultimately, The Road seems to suggest that no matter how bleak our existence, we must live life as if it has meaning, keep that meaning alive within us, and pass it on to others.

I had a conversation with someone who had seen the film adaptation that was made and released late last year. He was disappointed in the final scene where the family appeared from nowhere and took in the boy. He assumed it was the intrusion of the Hollywood happy ending. In fact, he was surprised when I confirmed that the novel also finished that way. It was a big part of the discussion in our book club too. But rather than romanticism, some of us saw the final scene as a sign of hope – because in it was the creation of a new community. A family adopting a child that is not their own, accepting a stranger into their community and journeying on together. Because of this, the boy could keep carrying the fire even after his own natural family were gone.

This week I was again involved in events to mark National Sorry Day – on Wednesday there was a community bridge walk over the lunch hour. People were given a coloured foot as a symbol of the journey of healing which they carried with them and planted in the grounds outside Parliament House. Each year Sorry Day reminds us that black and white Australians need to be journeying together towards healing and newness despite a past of grief and pain, when force was used against the most vulnerable – the children who were taken away from families and homes. Last Wednesday evening a small community gathered around a sacred fire lit at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, we remembered and reflected, lit candles and carried the light of the fire on a symbolic walk to the stolen generations memorial at Reconciliation Place. There we prayed for healing and reconciliation and committed ourselves to continuing this journey.

This series of sermons and studies that has been entitled "Peace by Peace" is a challenge for us to commit ourselves to a journey towards peacemaking. What symbols and visions can give us inspiration and hope as we take up this challenge?

There are a number of wonderful biblical passages that envisage a peaceful and harmonious world. The two that were read to us both present a theme of newness – a new world, a new reality, where the realities of life as we know it have been swept away. But they need to be linked to their context for the particular power of the images to be brought out.

The end of chapter 10 in Isaiah is a prophecy of Jerusalem’s destruction and God’s vengeance. The sovereign Lord of Hosts is described as wielding his "terrifying power". But chapter 11 opens with the words "a shoot shall come out of the stump of Jesse". After the chapter before this is a surprising announcement of something new that will grow out of the destruction. One of my favourite writers Walter Brueggemann says about this passage "Isaiah never fails to summon God’s people to hope and expectation in the face of discouraging circumstances". The verses go on to promise a messiah who will establish justice and peace on earth, with implications for the sociopolitical order in verses 1-5 and for the natural order of creation in verses 6-9. The vision we heard in vv 6-9 imagines natural predators and prey becoming playmates and children live without danger. It is a vision is linked to the earlier verses because such a vision can only become possible when human relationships of power are re-ordered. Peace in the created order cannot happen if the human community has not enacted equality. It is when humans, along with lion, leopard and bear, no longer have a hunger for injury, or a need to devour, a yearning for brutal control, or a passion for domination that such a vision can be entertained.

A famous image of the Isaiah passage is the series of paintings entitled "Peaceable kingdom" by Edward Hicks, an American folk artist from the early1800s. Hicks was a Quaker and his commitment to non-violence was reflected in his art. In the "Peaceable kingdom" series beasts and children are grouped tranquilly together, but in many of the paintings there is another group in the background, a group that represents William Penn and others making a peace treaty with native Americans. Hicks understood the impact of the passage in Isaiah: that peace needs to be made quite concrete in human society and politics.

In the world we know political and social realities are threatened by potential violence every day. War and conflict continues around the globe, the threat of terrorism is now a constant menace, natural disaster and its aftermath causes great upheaval and much suffering, and with little real advance in the area of responding to climate change we are increasingly hearing talk of climate wars.

In such a world can the visions of Isaiah and Revelation be relevant? I have been wary of Revelation, ever since my teenage years when Christian groups in schools and universities were showing fictionalised movies about the rapture and the horrible existence for those left behind to scare viewers into conversion. But such scare tactics are thriving today too. I’ve heard that when they first came out a few years ago the "Left Behind" series of Christian novels were outselling Stephen King and John Grisham in America. And for some, Armageddon and God’s judgment at the end of the world are eagerly sought. There is a worrying trend in fundamentalist Christianity that wants to see Revelation not as a guidebook on how the world will end but a manual on how to end the world that includes an invitation to participate in violence in the name of God.

It is true that Revelation was written against the background of the domination of the Roman Empire which wielded power with force and cruelty. But it is not about conquering that empire with a more powerful force. The focus of Revelation is on churches and Christians can live in such a world with the knowledge that the lamb of God is on the throne. The lamb who was slain, but whose resurrection meant that the power of love overcomes the power of death. Ultimately all the world will come to understand such a vision.

But in the passages that were read to us come at the end of the book – after John’s visions of what is happening in the heavenly places the focus comes back to earth, not with a thud, but with a wonderful new vision of God coming to dwell amongst humanity.

The language of Revelation is very visual, but actually quite hard to envisage. Anyone who has tried to portray it ends up with strange, fantastical images of flying hybrid beasts and heavenly spheres…but when John speaks of God coming to live among us he is affirming the value of this world. After all, he says that God will make "all things new" not "all new things". And the final vision in the book of Revelation is very much grounded in the world as we know it. It is a vision of a city. John doesn’t write to people on a spiritual retreat, he writes to real churches in real cities. They are listed by name in chapters 2 and 3. The city is the realisation of human community, the concrete living out of the interdependence of human life. In cities people are not self-sufficient, but contribute their own part to a greater whole. So the focus is on community, a new community with God dwelling in the midst.

This is an inclusive community. John quotes from Ezekiel, but changes the quote slightly but significantly. He says "the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them" Ezekiel had said "they will be his people", with the chosen race of Israel in mind. John broadens it to "peoples" to include all of created humanity. And he re-asserts this when he speaks of the tree of life, with its twelve kinds of fruit alluding to the twelve tribes or the twelve disciples, but then he says there are leaves that are for the healing of the nations. Peace and healing are God’s intention for all humankind.

The theme of newness echoes through John’s words when he speaks of a new heaven and a new earth, a new Jerusalem and God’s work of making all things new. But every aspect of the vision he paints can already be found in the Old Testament and other Jewish and Hellenistic writings, although he has arranged them in a way that hasn’t been seen before.

In the same way these visions come to us afresh, but they are not new. We know that God is a god of peace and justice, that Jesus came as the prince of peace, that God’s kingdom is one marked by the Spirit to makes all things new, who empowers us to resist the power of the world as we know it and offer the power of love instead. As we hear these visions of hope, we also hear a judgement on what is, a judgement on a world where the strong eat the weak, where death and crying and pain are allowed to continue undiminished, where the vulnerable are not safe.

The language in both of the readings we heard is in the indicative. The visions are spoken of as if they have already come about. But the meaning is imperative. They are saying, if this is what is intended, then we need to make it so. Gift becomes assignment.

We have been given a vision of how things can be in a world where peace reigns.

It is up to us live by the vision, to carry the fire.

Last week was Pentecost Sunday and today many churches focus on the Trinity. So it is good to be reminded that living such a vision is possible through the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit has not been mentioned in our readings, but it is God’s spirit that we carry with us as we take hold of a vision and live by it. When we carry the spirit, we carry the fire.

God’s spirit found its way into McCartney’s novel The Road in another way too. At the end of the story the boy is encouraged by his new mother to talk to God. He finds that he can only do that by imagining an ongoing conversation with his father. The novel reassures its reader that this is valid with a brief but deeply theological truth that speaks of "the breath of God" that "passes from man to man through all time."

God’s breath, God’s fire, God’s spirit has passed from Isaiah and John to their communities and on to us, continuing to inspire us to live and work for a world of peace and justice, a world where all things can be new.

Jeanette Mathews

30 May 2010