Revelation 21 is a passage with familiar language. No more tears. No more death. No more pain. Comforting words for the grieving and tested. But the text also has some rich and underexplored imagery. John is trying to give us a glimpse of paradise to come — and it isn’t fluffy clouds, angels and harps. It’s a bustling city. A New Jerusalem. But heaven can wait, or so we’re told.

But if you think about it, there’s a cultural connection to this text that’s also focused on the emerging city. The 2010 World Expo is being held in Shanghai, and the event theme is "Better City, Better Life."

Looks like the Expo organizers just came up with a pretty good sermon idea.

According to their Web site, "In 1800, only two percent of the global population lived in cities, but by 1950, the figure had risen to 29 percent, and by 2000, almost half the world population had moved into cities. Despite all its glories, there is no denying that the city today, because of high-density living patterns, faces a series of challenges, such as spatial conflicts, cultural collisions, resource shortages and environment degeneration."

Therefore they’ve penned an expo-gesis that could be just as comfortable describing this week’s text: you could say that "‘Better City, Better Life’ represents the common wish of all of humankind for better living in future urban environments." Implicit is Shanghai’s own commitment to green urban development and its status as a major economic and cultural center.

The World Expo was previously called the World’s Fair, the first of which was held in London’s Hyde Park in 1851. This year’s Shanghai Expo started yesterday and runs through the end of October. The Expo’s lofty goals are to attract 200 participating countries and 70 million visitors.

Host nations often create elaborate buildings as flagships to their expansive fairgrounds. Most notable and iconic of these former World Fairs include the Eiffel Tower and Seattle’s Space Needle. In turn, participating countries construct Disney-esque pavilions to host, feed and educate the thousands of daily visitors. The whole thing is like international show and tell on steroids.

The purpose of World Expos has changed throughout history. The first 100 years of Expos covered an era of industrialization and, therefore, featured developing technology and inventions. Then Expos mirrored the mid-1900s’ shift toward the post-modern era and featured cultural ideas rather than goods. During that time, the expos took on a more future-oriented and Utopian air.

In today’s information age, Expos are all about national branding. Countries put their best foot forward to send idealistic messages about who they are and where they’re headed.

"Better City, Better Life" certainly captures that vision. And the United States pavilion is a great example of both that concept and America’s branding for the future. The pavilion is built around four themes: sustainability, teamwork, health and the Chinese community in America. Schematics for the pavilion look like an Asian-influenced, rain forest-meets-city skyline-meets-rock concert.

The Shanghai Expo and the Revelation of John both envision the city similarly: no pain, no tears, full of beauty, no enmity between peoples. But Revelation chapters 21–22:5 which is notable for its imagery of God and of the Lamb expands the image of the new heaven and earth centered on the new city:

• It’s holy (v. 2).

• It’s as intentional and lavish as a wedding-day bride (v. 2).

• God sits within it (v. 3).

• It radiates with the glory of God as the temple used to (v. 11).

• Twelve gates (v. 12) are named for the 12 tribes but entered by God’s new people (v. 7).

• It’s built from precious metals and gems — valuables purified out of the earth.

• It’s filled with cultural imports, the glory and honor of the nations (v. 26).

• It’s always daylight, never night — and restfully so (21:4, 23).

• It’s set in the middle of a garden with a tree (22:2).

Anybody want to bid on the contract to build this Expo pavilion?

Although this city is glorious, isn’t it still a weird image for heaven? It seems like such a counterintuitive choice. Cities are full of busyness, noise, chaos and crime. Most of them are dirty. Isn’t the city the place where we assume humanity is at its worst? We might not remember to lock our doors in the suburbs, but we sure do in the city.

So why would God choose a city as the picture of sinless paradise? And what are the implications for the church today?

The more obvious vision God could have sent John would have been of a garden. It all started in a garden, and it will eventually end in a garden redeemed. That’s a much more poetic ending and a much more heavenly locale, right?

Well, maybe not. In the book titled Culture Making, author Andy Crouch suggests a natural progression from the garden to the city. It’s based on the "cultural mandate" that God gives Adam and Eve: Create and cultivate. In the words of Genesis 1:28, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion. Just as God brought order out of nothingness, humanity is to bring order out of created-ness.

A quick survey of Genesis texts can theologically connect Eden to the Revelation City this way — a sort of six theological degrees of separation:

Genesis 1–2: God creates a world yet to be sin-tainted. A paradise. A peaceful, heavenly garden. Adam and Eve are connected intimately with each other, with God and with their life purpose. They are given a mandate to expand culture — to create and cultivate.

Genesis 3: Adam and Eve give independence from God a try. The results are disastrous and world-altering. They’re disconnected from God. Their creation and cultivation are cursed and will now be frustrated. They’re removed from paradise and banished from the garden.

Genesis 11: Misguided city-building. People are living out their cultural mandate but in human triumph and not divine worship; "us," "we" and "ourselves" dominate the text. Genesis starts in a

perfect garden — with connection to God, connection to each other and a call to divinely inspired culture creating. Ten chapters later, there’s aggressive independence from God and self-aggrandizing vocation in Babel.

Now the picture of a city starts to make some sense in Revelation 21. The city is the redemption of Babel and Eden.

There’s dense human interconnectedness once again. The restored presence of the Lord is in its center. Created goods — "the glory and honor of the nations" — are pouring into it as evidence of the goodness of human creation and cultivation. It’s a "Better City, Better Life" than Genesis 3 could ever imagine.

Envisioning heaven as a garden would surely have honored God for his redemption and creative beauty. Everything will be restored to the way the Maker intended it.

But envisioning heaven as a city honors us, as well. It’s God’s way of saying that the human project still is "very good." God is saying that what we create can be good, especially when it’s done to His glory and not ours. Things are moving ahead to what is new and not just back to what was old. And we partner with God in ushering it that way.

Here are several ways to apply these ideas:

First, God’s "cultural mandate" still holds today. We’re still charged with creating and cultivating. Our jobs and our free-time pursuits are city-building. We’re to add to the glory and honor of the nations.

We please God by making beautiful art, or organizing complex data into understandable reports, or framing a house, or teaching our daughter to dress herself and tie her shoes, or teaching others.

As we order the world around us, we contribute to the New Jerusalem. General Maximus applied Revelation 21 well in the movie "Gladiator": "Brothers … what we do in life echoes in eternity."

Second, if heaven looks like a redeemed city, and Christ-followers are to pursue God’s will on earth as it is in heaven, then how are we to be redeeming our cities now? That a great question that we should reflect on. How can this church serve this city well?

Or better than discussing that, we could follow the example of one Denver church plant that decided to go and ask its city. The church’s leadership community broke into pairs and went to a crowded park near the church with a question, not an answer: "How could a church in your neighborhood best serve you, regardless of whether you ever wanted to visit it or not?"

People were refreshingly taken aback, and answers ranged from community child care to organizing block parties to opening the doors for community meetings.

But one man’s cynical answer was more informative than any other: "They could leave the neighborhood."

That’s the answer the church’s leadership team took most to heart. They developed a vision of being the church that everyone would miss if it ever left the neighborhood. How could this church change this city? How can we become the church that nobody ever wants to leave the neighborhood?

Those answers are the ways you can redeem the city and bring heaven to earth.

Finally, we should view ourselves as the new city. We are the people — the locations — that can usher the presence of God and deeper human interconnectedness into their worlds.

In The Good, Great Place, Ray Oldenburg argues that by suburbanizing, America has lost its value on locations that promote a casual, public life: cafés, bookstores, pubs, the bygone soda foundation, etc. He calls these types of environments a "third place," meaning environments that "host the regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work."

Think of Norm walking into Cheers, or the Friends gathering at Central Perk or your grandma and the bridge club spending all day at the hair salon together.

Starbucks was so impressed with the "third place" idea that it made it a corporate mission to become a third place for us all. After home and work, each local store wants to be the place where we hang out with each other.

So what kind of impact could committed Christians have on their too-busy and too-isolated neighbors by becoming third placers? We should be regulars in places where nonbelievers congregate: the neighborhood bar, coffee shop, YMCA, etc. Our family rooms and our back yards can become a third place for people around us.

Oldenburg says we’ll have better cities and better lives if we re-establish these types of third places. Jesus would probably agree.

After all, isn’t that what he spent a lot of his time doing? He established third places when he spent time with the castoffs of Jewish society. He hung out with "sinners" and "tax collectors." He died on the cross for those of us who realize that we can’t save ourselves by our own good works.

His disciples weren’t a bunch of men hand picked from the cream of Jewish society. They weren’t from the groups we know as the Scribes or Pharisees. There wasn’t a single rabbi. Not a single Sadducee. Not one of the men he chose came from the religious establishment. They were fishermen, tax collectors, and other common ordinary men.

Our text even tells us that the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with us and we will be his people and God himself will be with us as our God. And when all that is accomplished, there will be no more pain, no more tears, no more death and no more mourning. All things will be new and to those of us who thirst, we will drink from the spring of the water of life. And is won’t cost us anything.

It won’t cost us anything because it cost the sinless Son of God everything. Jesus left the glory of heaven, became a man and lived as one of us. He lived a perfect, sinless life in our place but then took upon himself the death and punishment that our sins deserve to the cross. Three days later, Jesus conquered death and rose from the grave, becoming the first to rise of all of those who die in faith. And we have the promise that all who conquer, all who die in faith will have this heritage of God dwelling with us and being our God and us being his sons and daughters. Through faith we can all look forward to a better city and a better life.

In the mean time, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to share to Good News of God dwelling with us in the third places where we spend our time. Amen.