The New Jerusalem Revelation 21:1-6

I remember retreating to my high school library during study hall so that I could read Hal Lindsay's Late, Great Planet Earth. The book was a feast of modern-day interpretations of the text of the book of Revelation. It confirmed what Americans had suspected: Red China and the Soviet Union together comprised the beast mentioned in the apocalypse. Lindsay managed to associate many other countries and personalities with major themes in Revelation. I can offer a defense of my reading such a book: I didn't know better. Now I do, and so do many other Christians who have done even the most rudimentary Bible study. But, as the "Left Behind" series attests, folks still like the spooky "God is going to rub out the bad guys and take only we chosen Christians" way of looking at the world.
Chapter 21 mentions the New Jerusalem, which, to my way of thinking, means that the City of God has no resemblance to anything that we have formulated in our theologies and thoughts. But we still create our ideas of what it will be like to be with God, after we die, or when the world ends. As the Reverend Ike used to say, "I want apple pie in the sky when I die." Well, actually his was a prosperity gospel, so he wanted the apple pie now. Think Joel Osteen, with less greasy hair!
It is no coincidence that this passage from Revelation is offered during the season of Easter. If resurrection is about anything, it is about things turning out in ways we never expected. Easter is beyond comprehension, and so is the New Jerusalem. We should think of the New Jerusalem not as a place that we can go to when we die, but a place that comes to us. How so? As Brian Peterson phrases it, "We do not go to God, God comes to us." The Revelation to John was written to offer hope to a church under persecution, something we American Christians like to feign when someone disagrees with us, but, in reality, something that we do not experience. Salvation is found not in places, like cities, but wherever God is present. The New Jerusalem may not be a place, but, rather, an encounter with the living God through Christ.
I once spoke to a group of students who identified themselves as evangelical Christians. I asked them if they thought that salvation could have to do with this world. Only two persons out of 50 thought that salvation could relate to this life, and not just life after death. When I pressed them further and asked if Christ came for the whole world, they cautiously said yes. When I asked them if they agreed with the quote "The task of the Christian is not to save the world, but to tell the world that it has already been saved" I had a near riot on my hands. We like the idea of the new Jerusalem being a place, because that means that we can set up rules and keep some folks out of there. If the new Jerusalem has to do, instead, with the re-creation of humanity, we get uneasy, because it implies that we must do something now, rather than later, in the sky, after we die, to help bring it about. And so we wait, and read books and allow TV preachers to scare the wits out of us. It beats venturing out and meeting all kinds of people who have just one thing in common: they all belong to God, and will be residents in the new Jerusalem.