For the healing of nations

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I WRITE this in early November as the last few votes are being counted in the USA presidential election 2020.

While the news anchors offer rapid-fire commentary, fluid, articulate, authoritative, on the minutiae of flipping, percentages and miniscule margins, the pain of a divided nation, of divided families and friendships, cities and states is the larger story mostly invisible on the interactive maps.

The process our friends in the USA are going through is part of the dynamic of global democracy. This is a familiar process to those of us living on the 130+ islands that make up Great Britain and Ireland. January 2021 sees the UK continue the journey of separation from the European Union. This decision, as with so many core decisions about our constitutional arrangements may split friendships, families, communities and nations.

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” (Revelation 22:1-2)

What does this passage offer us as we seek healing and reconciliation across nations that are hurting?

The first five verses of John’s Revelation provide both a summary, and a culmination of the description of the city of God, where the last shall be first, and the first last. This vision of the kingdom turns earthly structures on their head, reminding us that a new world order is possible beyond all our earthly imaginings.

This prophetic vision is pointing us to an ultimate goal of healing, of reconciliation within and between nations. If the river that flows through the city symbolises ‘life in inexhaustible supply’, if the fruit of the trees symbolise ‘life in fullest measure and delight’ and if the leaves symbolise the salve, the ointment for the healing of the nations, then we are being invited to imagine a world of exuberant abundance where the poorest and most needy are fed and where all inequalities and injustices are overcome. This is a world, a kingdom where through divides, with abundant diversity is writ large in God’s good creation, courses the river, the love and the energy of God’s holy spirit, binding us together beyond all that divides us.

In 2021, with all that it brings including a new political relationship with our European neighbours, Scottish parliamentary elections in May, the Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow in November and ongoing responses to Covid-19, we are called to maintain this focus as we reimagine boundaries, national identity, and a just relationship with all living things.

Whether voting for the leader of a nation, a national representative, or the president of a local club, we are compelled by scripture to ask: how will you heal the wounds that divide us, how will you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the poorest, restore creation? The response of our world leaders to these questions should determine the weight we give to their wisdom and the weight of our mark on the ballot.

Ruth Harvey is a Church of Scotland minister and Leader of the Iona Community.

This article appears in the January 2021 Issue of Life and Work

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