Opening Day and the New Jerusalem

“The game of baseball is glorious.”

Walt Whitman

As winter turns to spring, innumerable little changes occur. Snow melts. Temperatures rise. Flowers bud and bloom. And in numerous municipalities throughout the world—from Dominican villages to Hollywood itself—a simple game returns. A game so simply beautiful that it delights its adherents for eight months of the year and stirs a hope as fresh as the newly cut grass in the fields. This game of baseball is, as Whitman said, glorious, but its glory does not end in the game itself. The glory of this game is not ultimately found in its history, skill, elegance, leisure, prominence or hope. Baseball’s true glory is found in its pointing towards a better Opening Day than the game could ever offer: the New Jerusalem.

I have loved baseball for as long as I can remember. I was the kid whose school projects were centered around my baseball heroes: Carl Crawford, Derek Jeter, and Barry Bonds (yes, I know about steroids). I was the young man who collected newspaper clippings from the 2008 World Series run of my favorite team, the Tampa Bay Rays (clippings which I still have to this day). And every spring, I am the guy who rallies his friends and their friends to join a fantasy baseball league—an exercise in joyful futility if there ever was one.

Each spring there are numerous fans like me who look forward to Opening Day of the baseball season as an exercise in hope. When Spring Training starts, everyone has an even record. My team is (maybe) just as good as yours. And the possibilities of what may come are endless. But this hope, while real, turns out to be hollow. Injuries pile up. Hot streaks turn cold. Pitchers are Cy Young candidates one year and bullpen journeymen the next.

This seasonal liturgy of dormant waiting, bountiful hope, and inevitable disappointment not only matches the seasons, it also serves as a reminder that the greatest hopes and joys of this game are not meant to be found in the game itself.

Some fans revel in the hope, ever and always optimistic about what the season could hold. Understood from the bedrock of Biblical truth, this hope is ultimately not rooted in baseball, but in the glory of God’s creation. In Genesis 1–2, we see that God created everything to be good. Humanity was to cultivate the goodness of creation as God’s viceroys. They were to lovingly steward God’s creation as cultivators—producing new cultural products to enhance the flourishing of all under God’s domain. The hope of Opening Day is the hope of a gardener tilling soil, planting seeds, and watering the ground. It is the hopeful expectation of creatures in God’s creation, who long to see good fruit spring from good soil.

At home in this New Jerusalem, we will finally see that all the things we love about Opening Day were only lovely to us because they sometimes looked like the temple-garden-city.

Some fans anticipate the disappointment, so they turn to a self-protective nihilistic futility or a future-oriented overoptimism about every draft pick, trade, or coaching hire. The inevitability of dashed hopes is also grounded in a Biblical framework. Genesis 3 shows us that the inbreaking of sin into the world not only introduced death, it also cursed the ground meant to produce cultural fruits. “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.” (Ge 3:17–18). In a post-Genesis-3-world, the abounding hope of even the most skilled cultivators are never fully realized. Crops do not always produce their anticipated yield. Production plants must account for waste, inefficiency, and faulty materials. And at the end of every October, fans of 29 other franchises echo the oft-repeated refrain, “We’ll get ‘em next year.”

As citizens of the New Jerusalem, we can be free of the intoxication of the new season and the nihilism of futile disappointment by looking beyond the game of baseball itself to the glories of our future home.

The New Jerusalem

The book of Revelation serves as both the climactic fulfillment, and new beginning, of God’s story with the world. In Revelation 21, we see that God’s plan for the world is to be with his people in a temple-garden-city, the New Jerusalem. It is in the promises of this city that the hopes of Opening Day and the disappointments of the baseball season find their subversive fulfillment, and God’s people find freedom to enjoy baseball as a good gift from our good God.[1]

Revelation 21 opens with a glorious sight — the city of God descending to earth as the final, climactic breakthrough of God’s ceaseless presence with his people. The descriptors of this city show that it is no ordinary municipality.

This city is a temple. In fact, it is the temple of all temples. As the holy of holies was the place where God’s presence dwelt in Israel’s temple, so this city is the place where God permanently dwells with his people. But in this moment, the sin that hampered our union with God has been done away with, and we are free to restfully delight in the unending presence of the triune God.

God’s permanent presence in the New Jerusalem is both the ultimate joy and comfort of his people. He will not only be with us, he will also eliminate all sorrowful elements that resulted from sin, death, and its effects, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Re 21:4).

This city is also a garden. Specifically, it is the Garden of Eden transfigured.[2] The Edenic elements of jewels, rivers of water, and the tree of life are all present, but enhanced. There are more precious stones. The river of life flows not through the Garden, but from the throne of God. The tree of life is no longer barred by angels, but is freely accessed for the healing of the nations.

Finally, this is the city of all cities. Cities are places of cultivation. Environments primed for cultural creation. And this city is no different, “By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.” (Revelation 21:24). The nations will not be barred from the New Jerusalem, but welcomed, and invited to bring their cultural products in. These products, however, will be made pure like those who enter, and will serve as participants in the city’s glory rather than sinful detractors.

As the temple, the New Jerusalem reminds fans that the palpable excitement for the oncoming of the season is but a mere shadow of the exhilaration the people of God will feel as we watch the New Jerusalem descend to earth. And the sometimes gutting disappointments throughout the season will be fully and finally comforted on the day that God in his loving presence wipes every tear, and satisfies every desire.

As the garden, all the creational beauties of baseball find their fulfillment. Most baseball fans will tell you that one of the greatest joys of the game is walking through the concourse, into the stadium, and seeing the diamond open up in front of you.[3] In the New Jerusalem, the hopeful joy of breaking through the darkness into Edenic beauty is finally realized. The green of the tree of Life, the shine of precious stones, and the crystal-clear lapses of the river of life are the shining raiments of creational glory that not even the most glorious ballpark could ever imagine achieving.

As the city, the teeming potentials of Opening Day will no longer be potentials. As the first basemen, general managers, relief pitchers, bench coaches, and stat heads bring their cultural products into the New Jerusalem, the glories of the game will be enjoyed without its sinful burdens. Pitching without Tommy John surgeries. Competition without contempt. And joy rightly oriented as baseball is seen for what it is—yet another way to delight in the God of all creation.

A Greater Opening Day

While it is hard to disagree with Walt Whitman, the glories of the New Jerusalem show that baseball’s glory is but a shadow of a greater glory to come. One day, there will be a Greater Opening Day. A closing of the chapter of current history, that also serves as the opening chapter of an eternity of glory and joy to come.

CS Lewis captures this beautifully in the closing pages of the Last Battle,

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then he cried:

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that is sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!”

And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.[4]

All the joys and glories of Opening Day are but the cover and the title page. They have been hopeful anticipations of the Great Opening Day, the day when the temple-garden-city becomes our home. At home in this New Jerusalem, we will finally see that all the things we love about Opening Day were only lovely to us because they sometimes looked like the temple-garden-city. And dwelling in the unending, loving presence of our God, we will go further in and further up into the glories of the New Jerusalem.

And who knows? Maybe we will even catch a game or two.