Proper 28C
November 16, 2025
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
The town of Chartres in France is famed for its Gothic cathedral, widely acknowledged to be one of the finest structures in Europe. The first cathedral was built in that town sometime in the fourth century.
That original cathedral was destroyed by the Vikings in 858. About 20 years later, Charles the Bald gave the remnant church a cloth believed by many to have been the very swaddling clothes in which Mary wrapped the baby Jesus.
Because of this relic, a new magnificent Cathedral was built in Chartres, and it quickly became a popular destination for pilgrims. But on June 10, 1194, fire broke out and threatened to destroy the building.
Legend says that three priests took the precious relic cloth and went into the crypt beneath the cathedral, deep into the earth. They locked themselves into a room and let the fire rage above them.
Three days later, to the astonishment of the people, the priests emerged with the relic intact. The people rejoiced and with the leaders of France, pledged to build a new church on the foundations of the old, but larger, more expansive, letting in more light.
The people of Chartres all those centuries ago could have identified with the people of Israel, who the prophet Isaiah addresses in today’s Old Testament reading.
The Babylonians had destroyed most of Jerusalem, and killed many of its people. Many of the Israelites who survived were forced into exile in Babylon.
Now the exile is over. The Israelites have returned to Jerusalem, but the city is a pale reflection of what it once was. The Temple, the very lifeblood of Israel, has been destroyed. The town has no city walls; where houses and markets once stood is only rubble.
Even though they are back in the Promised Land, it is a time of hopelessness. Then out of the rubble and despair, the prophet speaks for God with a voice of hope.
“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” God says. “The former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating.”
Just as the people of France pledged not merely to restore the old cathedral, but to build a completely new and better one – so God promises not merely to restore the old Jerusalem, but to create a new one, in which there will be no weeping or mourning, but only cries of delight and laughter.
The new Jerusalem God has in mind transcends the marvels of mere bricks and mortar. In God’s new creation, the very order of existence will be turned on its head.
In the new Jerusalem, there will be no infant mortality, or premature deaths of any kind. In the new society, there will be no invasions or exiles. Everyone will live in the houses they build, and harvest the crops they plant.
In the new earth, all creation will live in harmony. The wolf and the lamb, the lion and the ox will live together in friendship and peace.
Like the new cathedral in Chartres, the new Jerusalem will be established on the foundations of the old, but will be bigger, better, more expansive, more glorious than anyone has dreamed possible.
The new cathedral was built in Chartres, and now, more than 900 years later, pilgrims still come to marvel at its wonders.
But the world still waits for God’s promise of a new earth to come to fruition.
And recently it seems as if we are moving farther and farther away from that promise.
Infant mortality still strikes grief into the hearts of thousands, even in the richest nation in the world. Children and adults die every day of causes that could be prevented, a number sure to increase in this country with the no vaccine movement.
War rages around the globe, making Isaiah’s vision of friendship between the ox and the lion, the wolf and the lamb the stuff of fantasy.
Every year, refugees are forced into exile around the globe, while millions die of starvation, while we halt all refugee resettlement here.
In far too many places on this earth, including in parts of this country, the air is filled with the sound of weeping and cries of distress.
Like the people of Israel, we experience a disjunction between the way things are and the way God intends them to be.
Against such a backdrop it is easy to hear God’s promise of new heavens and a new earth with more than a touch of cynicism.
As Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, “In our fatigue, our self sufficiency and our cynicism, we deeply believe that such promises could not happen here.”
But Isaiah urges us to put aside what Brueggemann calls “our inability to imagine beyond our present reality and our deep commitment to the known,” and instead invites us to entertain new possibilities that open our world to God’s creative promises.
In other words, Isaiah is inviting us to dream with God, to imagine how we, empowered by God’s spirit, can work to help make God’s vision a reality here and now.
Isaiah is calling us to not be content with the status quo, not to give in to the powers and principalities that profit from oppression, corruption, and injustice, who don’t care if people go hungry or cannot afford the simplest health care.
God’s dream of a new earth is not meant to engender cynicism, but to spark hope, to spur us to a commitment to compassion and justice, to call us to be agents of a love that restores dignity and wholeness to all of God’s people.
At our diocesan council last weekend we heard report after report from people and organizations in this diocese who are dedicated to helping usher in the reign of God.
From Church of the Common Ground, serving the homeless men and women of downtown Atlanta; to Holy Comforter, providing community for the mentally ill; to Emmaus House, helping the poorest of the city’s poor, to many other efforts across the diocese helping those in need, sparks of hope are being raised up.
All of us can provide those sparks. It doesn’t have to be difficult or dramatic. All we have to do is buy a few extra groceries for the food pantry, help refugees adjust to their new lives in this country, protest government policies and actions that fail to recognize the dignity of all of God’s children, or even simply write letters to our elected officials telling them that as Christians we support policies that help those mired in poverty.
All of these acts are protests against the status quo, a way of saying we believe in God’s vision of a new earth, one that is better, more expansive, more just and compassionate than anyone has imagined.
These acts are what Brueggemann calls “re-deciding” our lives, refusing to give in to cynicism, the belief that the way things are is the way they will always be.
“God will do much to bring the promises to fruition,” Brueggemann says. “But God will not do our work of re-deciding our lives.”
God is calling each of us to make that decision, to allow ourselves to be empowered by the Holy Spirit to work to make the dream a reality here and now.
“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” God says to us today. “Be glad and rejoice.” And get to work.
Amen.