High Walls, Open Gates
May 25 • Sixth Sunday of Easter • Year C
Acts 16:9-15 • Revelation 21:10, 22:-22:5 • John 14:23-29
Quite some years ago, I had an awkward conversation in the back of a car. I was living with a host family in Rome, and the family’s daughter was driving me around the city with her friends.
A friend named Cristiano—or “Christian”—was great at asking me simple questions I could answer with my developing language skills. “Quanti anni hai?,” he asked. How old are you? I told him I was nineteen. What month were you born? “Ottobre”—October. Cristiano’s next question took me by surprise: “Sei vergine?” Are you a virgin?
I had no idea what a respectable answer to this question would be. I was in Rome, the capital of Christendom. Statues of the Virgin Mary were everywhere. But very few people there actually went to church. And this was the coolest, most stylish group of teenagers I’d ever hung out with, or ever would.
To stall, I asked Cristiano, “Come la Madonna?”—like the Madonna, the Virgin Mary? Horror crept into Cristiano’s widening eyes. “No!” he said. “Lo Zodiaco!”—The Zodiac. All he’d meant to ask me was whether my star sign was Virgo—the Virgin. It was a logical next question, since I’d just told him my birthday was in October.
When everyone in the car finished laughing and apologizing, I told him I was actually a Libra. “Ah, balancia,” he said. (“Scales.”)
***
For some, this story might be a sign of how far gone formerly Christian Rome is. The story of Christianity’s rise and fall in Western Europe begins with the Roman Empire persecuting Christians. It continues through twists and turns that made Christianity the Roman Empire’s dominant religion. And the story ends in a car with rather secular Roman teenagers talking so easily about the Zodiac.
I wonder what John of Patmos would think about how history has played out. John of Patmos—the author of the book of Revelation—calls Rome the Whore of Babylon. He describes her as dressed in scarlet, glittering with jewels, holding a cup of abominations in her hand, and drunk on the blood of God’s people. It’s no wonder he feels this way. The Romans had recently destroyed the city of Jerusalem to replace the one Rome had destroyed. They’d also torn down the Jerusalem Temple.
John dreams of a bigger-and-better Jerusalem. This new Jerusalem would be everything Rome was not. In our reading last week, John described Jerusalem descending from the sky, dressed like a bride for her husband. This city would be better than any city on earth could be. Today, we see that this city seems to provide food, healthcare, and public safety for free, and with no human effort. People can eat from trees that produce a different kind of fruit each month, year round—like a fruit-of-the month club. The leaves of the trees are medicinal. The city gates never need to be shut. There’s no nighttime, and the Lamb keeps watch around the clock.
This bigger and better Jerusalem doesn’t even need a Temple, because the presence of God is all-pervasive there.
But even though this city replaces the Jerusalem that Rome destroyed, it’s an awful lot like Rome and its ambitious empire by other measures. According to John’s vision, the walls of this new Jerusalem are 144 cubits high. That’s almost 75 yards, or three quarters of a football field. In length, the walls are twelve thousand stadia apiece. That’s about fifteen-hundred miles on a side—or from here past Las Vegas, but not quite as far as Los Angeles. These numbers are probably symbolic. They’re all mind-bogglingly large multiples of twelve. The point is that the city is vast. John envisions this city guiding the world’s nations and importing glory from all kings of the earth. John might have considered this vision partially fulfilled with Christianity’s rise to dominance in the Roman empire.
But what about modern Roman teenagers’ openness to astrology? Perhaps John would have been disappointed, but unsurprised, to see Rome reverting to pagan ways. But it’s possible that John might have been pleased, or even delighted by my conversation with Cristiano. It’s a stretch, so bear with me.
According to John, the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem rest on twelve foundations. Each foundation is adorned with a jewel: sapphire, emerald, onyx, amethyst, etc. I learned this week that this list of twelve jewels corresponds to the stones in the breastplate of the high priest in the Israelite Temple. It’s like the whole city is properly dressed for approaching God’s presence.
I also learned this week that in the time of the book of Revelation, these twelve stones were thought to correspond to the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
Many years ago, I heard a man on a Christian radio station claim that God had created the Zodiac signs.* According to this guy, the trick to unlocking a Christian reading of the Zodiac signs is to start with Virgo. She represents the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ. Next comes Libra, the scales, which represent Christ’s work to “buy back” his people. Scorpio represents the war between Christ and Satan. Skipping ahead a bit, Aquarius, the water-pourer, is an image of Christ pouring the Holy Spirit and the water of life on his people. And to make a long story short, Leo, the lion, represents Christ coming again in power and great glory.
I’m not sure I buy this theory of the Christian Zodiac. But, I’m impressed that someone with imaginative vision could project Christian stories and symbols onto the stars. This theory about the Christian Zodiac suits John’s vision of a heavenly city, which scales up in all directions by multiples of twelve, and where the city has no need to seal itself off from the world. Its twelve gates are always open.
***
John’s vision of the heavenly Jerusalem is a paradox. It has unfathomably high walls, but permanently open gates. It gives us a vision of a world where God dwells so fully that there’s no need to sequester ourselves in some sacred space, safely apart from the profane. It helps us navigate how to stand with deeply founded integrity, while pondering how open to be to the world in love. As we do, we invite God among and within us—where God is most at home.
* Paraphrased from The Real Meaning of the Zodiac, by D. James Kennedy (Ft. Lauderdale, FL: CRM Publishing, 1989).
~The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh