I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, dressed as a bride for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying:
See the home of God is among humans,
and he will dwell with them
and they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Revelation 21:2–4
Two Extracts from Jerusalem by William Blake
The fields from Islington to Marybone, To Primrose Hill and Saint John’s Wood, Were builded over with pillars of gold And there Jerusalem’s pillars stood. Her Little-ones ran on the fields, The Lamb of God among them seen And fair Jerusalem his Bride Among the little meadows green. Pancras and Kentish Town repose Among her golden pillars high, Among her golden arches which Shine upon the starry sky. The Jew’s-harp-house and the Green Man, The Ponds where Boys to bathe delight The fields of Cows by Willan’s farm, Shine in Jerusalem’s pleasant sight. Jerusalem fell from Lambeth’s Vale Down through Poplar and Old Bow Through Malden and across the Sea In War and howling, death and woe. The Rhine was red with human blood, The Danube rolled a purple tide On the Euphrates Satan stood And over Asia stretched his pride. He withered up sweet Zion’s Hill From every nation of the Earth; He withered up Jerusalem’s Gates And in a dark Land gave her birth. He withered up the Human Form By laws of sacrifice for sin, Till it became a Mortal Worm, But O! translucent all within. The Divine Vision still was seen, Still was the Human Form Divine, Weeping in weak and mortal clay, O Jesus, still the Form was thine. And thine the Human Face, and thine The Human Hands and Feet and Breath Entering through the Gates of Birth And passing through the Gates of Death. And O thou Lamb of God, whom I Slew in my dark self-righteous pride, Art thou returned to Albion’s Land? And is Jerusalem thy Bride? Come to my arms and never more Depart, but dwell for ever here: Create my Spirit to thy Love: Subdue my Spectre to thy Fear. Spectre of Albion! warlike Fiend! In clouds of blood and ruin rolled, I here reclaim thee as my own, My Selfhood! Satan! armed in gold. Is this thy soft Family-Love, Thy cruel Patriarchal pride, Planting thy Family alone, Destroying all the World beside? A man’s worst enemies are those Of his own house and family; And he who makes his law a curse, By his own law shall surely die. In my Exchanges every Land Shall walk, and mine in every Land Mutual shall build Jerusalem Both heart in heart and hand in hand.
Three Extracts from Oracle upon Managua by Ernesto Cardenal
After all God is also City
(God as City:
city where finally each single person
meets the whole of humanity
city of fulfilment for each and for all
City of Communion).
And Yahweh said: I am not.
I will be. I am the one who will be, he said.
I am Yahweh a God who waits in the future
(who cannot be unless the conditions are right)
God who is not but who WILL BE
for he is love-among-humans
and he is not, he WILL BE.
A classless city
the free city
where God is everybody
He, God-with-everybody (Emmanuel)
the universal City
the City where God’s humanity is revealed to us.
There is a series of ‘divine descents’ in the New Testament and in this final one, at its end, both God and humanity come home. As in a game where the objective is to reach or ‘make it’ home, they have ‘made it’. In this poetic vision when the beautiful city, New Jerusalem the bride, descends for her wedding to Christ the Lamb, God comes home among humans. God as the ideal, personified Love in the Letter of John, comes down to Earth and is realised in a kind human society. And humanity, which imagined God as a ‘leading idea’ – in this case of loving kindness – is led to its goal, comes home to the beautiful garden city where tears are wiped away.
In Blake’s lyric within his much longer poem Jerusalem, the beautiful city appears first as an ideal vision set in the past but, importantly, it is not ‘elsewhere’, but here in his own London. That is why he begins his poem with a list of familiar London names. But humanity falls short of this vision: ‘Jerusalem fell… in war and howling, death and woe’. In fact, as we know and as we see in London and other cities today, we constantly fail to create a fair and kind society. However, there are inklings of it everywhere and, at the heart of his lyric Blake insists we must not lose faith in humanity: ‘The Divine Vision still was seen / Still was the human form divine.’ And it is humanity that must realise the vision and build the city, through love ‘builder of cities’, embodied in the wedded male and female human form divine. For in the final verse the tense changes to the future: ‘every land / shall walk’ and ‘mutual shall build Jerusalem / both heart in heart and hand in hand.’
Cardenal’s Oracle upon Managua was written in 1973, shortly after the ‘apocalyptic’ earthquake that had devastated Managua. For Cardenal, a Catholic priest, the ‘human form divine’ is also not only male in Christ the Lamb but also female in his bride Jerusalem: ‘for God is also city’, where ‘God is everybody… the city where God’s humanity is revealed to us’. Cardenal sees God as an ‘emergent property’ in us – ‘love-among-humans’. He is a God who ‘waits in the future’ when the ideal of the kind society is realised on Earth. Revelation goes on to say there is no temple in the city because it is now God’s home and ‘the glory of God is its light’. As the Church Father Irenaeus put it: ‘Gloria Dei vivens homo: the glory of God is the human being alive.’
The beautiful city is for everybody (not confined to the institutional Church as a kind of ‘beacon’). Blake says: ‘In my exchanges every land shall walk’ and Cardenal stresses ‘the universal city’. Both follow Revelation where it says: ‘the home of God is among humans…they will be his peoples’. The Greek word used here for ‘peoples’ is not εθνη (ethne), the word used for the ‘nations’ but λαοι (laoi), the usual word for ‘the people of God’, but this time in the plural.
Revelation goes on to say the river of the water of life flows through the middle of the city and on either side of the river stands the tree of life, whose leaves are for healing. Both God and humanity come home to the achieved kind society which is about healing and abundant life for all. At the very end of the book there is an invitation and a prayer for that homecoming: ‘The spirit and the bride say: “Come.” And let everyone who hears say: “Come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life freely… Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.’