In the fifth part of his study series focussing on people in new places, the Rev Richard Baxter considers the words of Revelation 21:1-4

MOST of my favourite places in the world – the cliffs of Yesnaby in Orkney, the beaches along the Fife Coast, my home town of Bangor in County Down in Northern Ireland, the wild Atlantic fringe marking the western edge of the Western Isles – all have one thing in common. They are landscapes shaped and dominated by the sea.

I’m not a sailor or a fisherman, and only a very occasional sea swimmer, but seashores are where I relax. There I unwind, there I can be soothed by a sunny stroll watching the wading birds, there I can be reinvigorated by a wind and rain-lashed walk. So it disturbs me that the picture of our ultimate new place, John’s vision in Revelation 21, of the new heaven and new earth, contains the words, “the first heaven and earth disappeared and there was no longer any sea.” I can’t imagine a world without any sea, and I’m not sure that I want to, either.

I suppose the background to John’s vision is that he comes from a nation who were not natural seafarers. Their horizons lay south to Egypt and north to Syria, not out across the Mediterranean. What made Jonah’s rebellion against God so extreme was not just that he travelled in the opposite direction to God’s itinerary, but that he voluntarily set out on a long sea journey, unthinkable to most of his contemporaries. For his part, Job envisaged the sea as a place of mysterious sea monsters like Leviathan – unknown and dangerous. For John himself, the sea was both the path into exile and the barrier which separated him from his home and all that was familiar.

For John himself, the sea was both the path into exile and the barrier which separated him from his home and all that was familiar.

What are we to make, then, of John’s vision of the new place which is our future destination? The absence of sea may be meant to reflect an end to the chaos symbolised by the waters in the creation story of Genesis 1, or perhaps an absence of enforced separation like the exile which John endured.

To be honest, I’d be perfectly happy to swap John’s image of a city of gold with precious stones everywhere for a beach of golden sands. Perhaps it is just as well that what he offers is a symbolic picture meant to convey a new place that is perfectly peaceful and harmonious, not a literal description. The other missing elements give us a clue to his thinking. In his vision, God and people dwell together. He conceives of a place where death, hurt and pain are banished, and all the old injustices are wiped away. Since none of those are things we might miss, it’s fair to think that the problems John associates with the sea are what he imagines will be absent – separation, exile, and the gulf separating people – rather than the waves and seashore themselves.

Since he’s offering a picture, we’re entitled to use different images to help us understand the message he expresses, and I think I need room to include the sea in my vision of heaven. John’s words are strange, mysterious and opaque, but they do offer the great message that God’s ultimate new place is far beyond our imagination or powers of description. While we may be uncertain of the landscape, we are certain about the welcome that awaits and the love that prepares the way. ¤

The Rev Richard Baxter is Transition Minister at Glasgow: Wellington.