The kingdom of heaven on earth: God’s desire for justice

Revelation 21: 10, 22-22:5

An echo from history

The recent election of the north American Robert Prevost to the office of Pope Leo XIV brought to mind my first encounter with his namesake predecessor, Leo XIII.

I first learned about Leo XIII from Kevin, a Catholic layman and work-injured fire fighter. When I met Kevin he was looking for justice for injured workers. Our Urban Ministry Network helped Kevin start a support group for injured workers near his home, and soon after Kevin began volunteering as an advocate for injured workers. Being a good unionist, Kevin introduced a regular 10.00 am ‘smoko’/morning tea break to our office, and being a good Catholic he carried Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical with its Latin title, Rerum Novarum in his back pocket for regular guidance and reflection.

This letter to Catholics and the world was published in 1891 in response to the degrading conditions forced on the working class by the industrial revolution of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, conditions which Leo said were “a yoke little better than slavery itself.” (Note 1)

Leo XIII spoke truth to power; words with a clear vision advocating a Christian understanding of the rights of workers and a sacred or divine priority for social justice that a newly consecrated Leo XIV has underlined again for today.

God’s presence, heaven sent

St John the Divine, in writing about the Revelation given to him in a vision, gives us a similar task to Leo XIII’s dramatic vision of what God’s justice and mercy means for an unjust world economy. John’s poetic vision begins with an unnamed angel that carried him away in the spirit to a great, high mountain and showed him the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God (21:10). Heaven is simply another word for the reality of God’s presence, a kingdom of justice and mercy, meaning that God’s absolute intention for earthly kingdoms is that heaven breaks into them to transform them.

Jews believed that there were instances where heaven touches earth, such as on high mountains, and at sacred spaces such as the Jerusalem Temple. Christian belief goes further than this, declaring that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s presence breaks into the earthly mess left by sinful humanity. The resurrected Christ becomes the first fruits of God’s new creation on earth, a taste of God’s promise to renew all of creation through God’s patient and compassionate mercy.

John’s vision describes God sending a new Jerusalem from God’s heavenly realm of justice and mercy to be fully realised on earth: a corrupted earth that has been contaminated by the domination of the Roman empire. Pope Leo’s Rerum Novarum follows a similar pattern to Revelation, first condemning the violence and suffering of both capitalist and socialist economies, then setting out a Christian vision for human work drawn from God’s word in scripture and Christian tradition. Now, 134 years after its publication, Rerum Novarum is the inspiration for the world’s newest pope, and his stated priority for a world whose people live in peace and justice.

Ignoring pain no more: God’s people’s new vocation

Part of my colleague Kevin’s grief about his work injury was the suffering he endured because of the pain from his injury. But his grief was made so much worse because he believed he had been thrown on work’s scrap heap and forgotten by both his employer and his union; he was treated as an object by the workers compensation system; was patronised by his priest, and isolated by his congregation because he was no longer considered productive.

Ten finance sector workers that I researched suffered similar pain from unjust work relations that led four workers to attempt suicide and six to suffer suicidal thinking. A second study of workers at one of Australia’s big four banks reported their managers regularly ‘turned a blind eye’ to their work stress and resulting psychological and physical injuries from enforced unpaid overtime. Our research found that their suffering was ignored: their complaints were met with threats of dismissal. Such conditions still stand under the judgement of God’s justice, as Leo XIII said 134 years ago, these workers are burdened with “a yoke little better than slavery itself”.

In the New Jerusalem God is sending to earth from heaven, silencing human pain and the injustices of empire have been transformed by the glory and power of the light of God’s love.

John’s vision of this transformation may be hard to follow for modern ears. This is how John sees it: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.” (21:22-23).  The purpose of a temple was to create a sacred space where heaven touched earth, and worshippers were given a taste or a glimpse of divine life. In John’s vision of the New Jerusalem, there is no longer a temple because the whole city is now filled with the presence of God and the Lamb, which is another name for Jesus Christ.

What is special about the presence of God and the Lamb is their relationship during Jesus suffered a humiliating and painful death at the hands of the Roman state: in effect, he was thrown on the scrap heap to die, and yet because of his faithfulness to the love of God in his living and death, God raised him to new life. The Lamb - as Christ - is likened to a lamp that reveals the glory of God’s love, that is, when you look at the resurrected Christ, John wants you to see God did not abandon Jesus in his pain and suffering. Rather, deep in the mystery of God’s love is its power to transform the suffering and death of Jesus.

Solidarity flows: from the scrap heap, justice …

Another way to understand the mystery of love’s transforming power is the experiences Kevin had through his support group of injured workers. For in sharing their pain, these workers found a new acceptance of themselves and each other as persons of human dignity and compassion. Such love exposed the sin and evil of a capitalist economic and political system that could throw workers on the scrap heap when they were no longer productive.

So, in the congregation where I worship we established a Justice@Work support group that meets monthly to support one another in the struggle for justice in our working lives.

Remember that it was on the scrap heap of life in imperial Rome that a loving God came to the humiliated and broken Jesus through the unbounded compassion of divine love to renew him in the mystery of resurrection life. The path Leo XIII followed in 1891 to bring the full extent of God’s justice into the middle of working life was of the same spirit: against a violent economy captive to maximising profit. How many people today yearn for justice in their working lives? Leo XIII intended to renew what human work could be and should be like: that is, it should be fulfilling and life-giving.

And as John foresaw, God’s love has great power to draw kings, presidents and prime ministers to ponder its mystery. ‘The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations.’ (21:25-26). We may pray that in the crush of world leaders who flocked to Leo XIV’s inauguration, the light of God’s justice and peace touched their hears.

And to those hard-hearted world leaders who did not attend Leo XIV’s inauguration, John’s judgement is also a revelation: ‘But nothing unclean will enter [God’s renewed city], nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life’ (21:27). This is the standard for entering God’s kingdom of heaven on earth: that is, only those who have exercised their power with justice will be allowed to enter God’s presence.

… and life’s merciful healing

Given the fundamental importance that human work has for the health of our planet and society, John’s vision is something of a clarion call to the church to raise our voice for justice at work inspired by the tradition framed by Leo XIII. We are called to value justice at work as the presence of God, bringing ‘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.’ (22:1)

As I learned from Kevin, when justice does not flow through the middle of our work, the world of work will continue to refuse God’s intention and destroy human lives mercilessly. And as I also witnessed with Kevin and through our congregation’s support group, when justice flows through the centre of human work, the vision from John calls us further into our responsibilities: ‘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.’ (22:3).

The vision could not be more comprehensive: God’s intention for the healing of workers damaged by our world’s idolatry of profit and the accumulation of wealth is a call for a life-giving fruit twelve months of the year. The fruit of God’s justice is the balm of healing love for workers’ lives who have been thrown on the scrap heap. It is a merciful spirit without limits that begins in compassionate listening to each worker’s story of pain, and it is their healing that begins the flow of justice God has promised for renewing nations.

Let us pray that Leo XIV continues to speak as he did at his inauguration, speaking truth to the power of our globalised economic system that ‘exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalises the poor’. May God’s life-giving fruit of the tree of life be on earth as it is in heaven.

Reverend John Bottomley BA (Hons.), Dip. Sociol., M. Min.

Scoresby Uniting Church

Sixth Sunday of Easter

25 May 2025

The author

John is a Uniting Church in Australia minister and Chairperson of the Religion and Social Policy Network of the University of Divinity. John established a research consultancy, Transforming Work, to continue his focus in retirement on ministry at work. His research interests have addressed the trauma caused by the deep-seated violence in the way work is shaped by and shapes both our free-market economy and our political system of government. He is a member of the Creative Ministries Network UCA Congregation.

Notes

1 Encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII on the condition of the working classes, (1991 edition, J. Kirwan, The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society). 2.