...and Beginnings

Passage: Revelation 21

A friend of mine had parents who lived in Johannesburg, South Africa.  On a visit to my friend’s home, he observed a certain behavior in his mother.  Whenever his kids were playing outside, she couldn’t relax in the house.  She kept jumping up and looking out the windows.  Periodically she would even, without warning, dart out the front door and walk around the house.  When he asked her about it, she said, “I just have to make sure the kids are safe.”  She was used to living in a place in which there was always the possibility of a home invasion, armed burglary, or kidnapping.  Her house had bars on the windows and an iron perimeter fence.  In her hometown, nobody’s kids played outside unattended.  It just wasn’t safe. 

When you live in place where violence, economic inequality, oppression and abuse are constant realities you develop certain instincts.  You become hyper-vigilant.  Suspicious.  Self-protective.  You stop being conscious that you’re even reacting to perceived threats.  You believe this is just normal life. 

We are so accustomed to living in a world shaped by the presence of corruption, evil and death that we are no longer aware of the way these realities have shaped us.  And we can’t imagine a world without them.  But deep down we long for better.  And imbedded in our collective memories is an awareness of a better reality.  The world for which we were created was one without tears, mourning, crying or death. 

And God’s promise has always been to bring us back into such a world.  The point of bringing this world and its history to an end is to bring about something new.  At the end of the Book of Revelation we’re given a glimpse of this new thing.  John writes,

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…

The Greek word we’ve translated “new” is kainos, which means, “previously unknown”.  To a world full of people who have only ever known an existence lived in the shadow of death, God promises a completely new kind of existence.  One free of pain, tragedy, loss and fear.  One in which humans live in constant communion with God, their Creator and Father; and with Jesus Christ, their Savior and the lover of their souls.  John describes this second Advent, the New Creation, as a wedding.  The moment we’ve all been waiting for.  Our eternal union with the one for whom we were made; the one who makes us holy and whole. 

The New Heaven and New Earth are so far beyond what anyone has experienced that John describes them mainly in terms of what isn’t there:

no more death or mourning or crying or pain. 

But also:

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

And:

The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.

And finally this detail:

On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 

In this New Creation there will be no need for locks; bars; motion sensors; Homeland Security.  There will be no adversaries; no terrorists; no thieves or abusers or murderers.  Only the constant presence of God.  And the company of all God’s children, gathered together from every time and every place. 

If the normal places you go for hope, love, joy and peace aren’t cutting it this year, look ahead.  Take in John’s testimony of the fresh, new, “previously unknown” thing God has in store for you.  Be willing to defer the fulfillment of your wishes and dreams just a little longer.  Jesus Christ, the one who makes all things new, is not slow in keeping his promises.  He is not far off.  He himself testifies,  Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. (Revelation 22:12-14)

Endings...

Passage: Revelation 20

When our first daughter was about two, she developed a routine every time we were out running errands in the car.  We’d get to the point at which we’d completed all our business.  And we’d turn in the direction of home.  Although very young, our daughter would perceive our change of direction.  She’d ask, “Where are we going?”  We’d reply, “Home.”  And she would immediately say, “I don’t want to go home.”  She didn’t want our trip to end. 

The Book of Revelation traces the trajectory of human history.  In references to Creation and the Serpent, John brings us back to the beginning of our story.  Throughout the book John chronicles Creation’s struggle with the effects of human sin, as well as the history-long battle between God’s enemy, Satan, and God’s people.  And at the close of Revelation John brings the story arch to its conclusion.  Humanity’s traverse of this world is finite.  It will end.

John describes forces that don’t want the journey to end.  These forces include Satan, whose power is limited to this world, as well as those human individuals and systems that have derived their power from evil sources.  Revelation is full of violent and unsettling episodes – plagues; famines; earthquakes; wars.  John rightly identifies these as the demolition component of God’s master renovation plan.  In order for God’s new thing to come, the old has to go.  Completely.  The only way to pass securely, courageously, and peacefully into God’s new Creation is to trust God completely.  And our world is full of forces who will never trust God.  Who will insist on their way rather than his. 

In Revelation 16 John gives the account of God’s wrath being poured out on the earth in the form of seven bowls.  Three times in the chapter John states the response of the remnant of humanity – those who have resisted God’s anointed, Jesus Christ, and his way.  John says they, “cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.”  In Revelation 20, John witnesses the natural end result of that posture toward God.  He says:

The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.  Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:13-15)

We don’t like the idea that the end of history means a decisive end to certain people.  There is intuitive appeal to the Universalist idea that all people will be given new life in God’s new Creation.  What the Bible consistently maintains is that there are certain people who, no matter how many chances they’re given, will not repent.  That is, turn from their way and accept God’s way.  And ultimately, God insists on having his way.  It’s his prerogative.  He’s God. 

CS Lewis deals with the dilemma of unrepentance in The Problem of Pain.  He argues,

“In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: “What are you asking God to do?” To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.”

In the end God gives people what they want.  If they want life without him, they’ll get it. 

Our natural reaction to the end of this world is resistance.  We automatically think of everything we stand to lose.  And when we try to picture the future God has in store for us, we can’t.  We’re faced with the prospect of trading everything familiar and cherished for an unknown commodity.  But everything we know and love in this life is a refuge – a refuge from a world that is not the way we know it should be.  The unknown thing that God is bringing is, in fact, Creation the way it was meant to be.  As the end approaches, God poses us with this question: How much do you trust me?  Is it enough to go my way, even though you can’t see where we’re going?  Do you trust me to conclude this part of your story in a way that is ultimately good?  If you’ve never trusted God, you will never tolerate the end that God brings.  If you trust God, then when the inevitable end approaches, you will welcome it. 

Love Letter

Passage: Revelation 2:1-7

This Advent our church is working through Revelation.  We’re all about Christmas cheer.  It’s easy to lose sight of the message at the heart of this powerful love letter to the church.  All of our ham-handed attempts to parse out the book’s symbols and pin down its apocalyptic events distract us from its most important parts.  Revelation is a letter first and foremost to a group of first century congregations struggling to maintain their identity in a world that wants to extinguish their faith.  More broadly it’s a reminder to the church in every time and place of who we are and to whom we belong. 

Many commentators and casual readers have mistakenly imposed a chronological division between the first three chapters and the rest of Revelation.  It’s assumed that chapters 2 and 3 address specific congregations in John’s immediate historical context, while everything that follows takes place at the end of time.  In fact John’s vision pertains to the continuous advance of the Kingdom of God, which occurs over the whole course of human history.  Much of what John describes throughout the book is happening to the First Century church within the Roman Empire; much of it is happening now, and has happened in all the intervening centuries.  There isn’t a future moment at which the dragon will go war against the church.  He’s been at war with God’s people from the beginning of time.  There isn’t a future moment at which a beastly representative of evil will lie and blaspheme.  The Roman emperor was such a beast; and human powerbrokers have been agents of evil for all our history.  Christians in every time and place profess the Lordship of Jesus only at great cost.

And as we read through the Lord Jesus’ messages to each of the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, we can’t help but hear strains of his message to our churches, too – whether your church is a megachurch in an affluent suburb, or a small congregation in a struggling urban neighborhood.  Of the seven churches, the one I most identify with is the church in Ephesus.  Jesus addresses the Ephesians as a group of committed, hard-working Christians.  In spite of mounting social and political pressure, these believers have kept the faith.  They have proclaimed the name of Jesus Christ in their words and actions.  They have adhered to right doctrine and have rejected leaders who try to preach a gospel other than the one they received from the apostles.  This is a church that is doing everything by the books.

And yet somewhere along the line they exchanged their love for duty.  The passion of the gospel and the fire of the Holy Spirit have cooled as everyday life has taken over.  The hard work of learning the right answers and doing the right things has become the glue that holds them together and the fuel that drives their fidelity.  Somewhere along the line they’ve forgotten the real reason for all the risk and sacrifice: love.  God’s limitless love for them, embodied in Jesus Christ.  And their love for him, the one who gave up his life so that they might live.  At the heart of the Christian faith is not duty, but love.  Jesus urges his bride: Do not forsake your first love.  Return to the things you did at first. 

How did you spend the time with your husband when you were first dating?  What did you do for your wife when she was still your girlfriend?  What was your emotional response to your spouse's arrival back in the days when she or he was your future spouse?  Back when your passion was unbridled, how did you express it?

When the love of Jesus Christ first became real to you, what did you feel?  And how did you respond?  Think back, way back.  Past the years of dutiful service and anxious rule-keeping and passions cooled by the daily requirements of daily life.  Rediscover the delight of joy of being the apple of someone’s eye; the love of someone who’s committed their life to you; the peace of the embrace of someone who will never let you go; the hope of being reunited with the one you were meant for.  Come back to your first love.