The Glimpsed City

AM: Psalm 111, 112; 2 Esdras 2:42-47; Hebrews 11:32-12:2
PM: Psalm 148, 150; Wisdom 5:1-5,14-16; Revelation 21:1-4,22-22:5

I love today’s text from Revelation, in part because of how much I adore Edgar Bainton’s beautiful setting of verses 1-4. Few things fill me with more longing for the end of all this First Earth nonsense than hearing the promises of New Earth in verse 4—all tears wiped away; no more death, sorrow, crying, or pain—shared among the four voices as they build to an emotional climax and evocative ending as the music, like the former things, passes away.

Bainton’s “And I saw a new heaven” and the program for tonight’s Requiem concert are fundamentally of the First Earth. We invented music here, where we have all the tears and sorrow as well as joy to inspire it. If there’s music there it’s because it was here first. “Why give ourselves music, painting, chemistry or cooking?” Robert Farrar Capon asks in The Supper of the Lamb. In his view, our creative pursuits are so moving because they give us a preview of the Holy City. “Half earth’s gorgeousness lies hidden in the glimpsed city it longs to become,” he says.

Maybe music isn’t your thing. Cities are full of many buildings, not just churches and concert halls. If you think it belongs in the Holy City you shouldn’t wait until the End to experience it. We won’t banish pain and death while we’re here, but we can certainly, if only for a few transcendent moments, reside in that reality.

Written by Kathryn Haydon

Kathryn holds a doctorate in Plant Science from the University of Arkansas and currently lives in St. Louis where she works as a food and plant scientist. She reads oodles of science fiction and fantasy and shares a happy, book-filled home with her husband Nathan and their cats Ollie and Adair.