It begins in a garden and ends in a city. It begins in Eden and ends in the New Jerusalem. It begins with Genesis and ends with Revelation. Our Bible, our root of our religious heritage, that is.
Most of us are pretty familiar with the beginning, with the garden part and its sacred stories. For those of us who went to Sunday School, there we first encountered the marvelous myth of Adam and Eve, the serpent, and the apple.
That is where we also first heard the other creation story in the Book of Genesis. In our mind’s eye, we imagine the leafy canopy of trees, all measure of colorful blooming plants, and seemingly infinite numbers of creatures great and small. We remember the water flowing in abundance: cool rushing streams and quiet clear pools. Nourishing life-giving water. And above all, we remember that the Holy One, the Creator, proclaimed in no uncertain terms that it was all good.
When it comes to the Bible’s beginning, the garden part, we are well-versed. However, most of us know far less about the end, about the city part. The Book of Revelation whose climactic image is that of the New Jerusalem is somehow elusive, perhaps because we either we take this apocalyptic piece of prose too seriously, putting our own stamp of literalism on it, or we do not take it seriously enough and toss it aside as so much claptrap with little relevance to us who pride ourselves in our progressivism.
Either way, we tend to focus on the more dramatic middle chapters of the book. We zero in on the Armageddon images and the horrors that accompany them – the dragons and wild beasts, the smoke, the fires, the lightening, the earthquakes, and all those puzzling numbers.
If we take Revelation literally, we probably have books like “Left Behind” and “The Late Great Planet Earth” on the nightstand next to our bed. We may even have convinced ourselves that the author of Revelation surely had us – you and me - in mind when he wrote his apocalypse nearly 2000 years ago.
Yet, as theologian Bart Ehrman (himself once a Christian literalist) wrote, “In every generation since the book [of Revelation] was written, Christians have argued that its vivid description of catastrophic events would happen in their own day. So far, none of them have been right.”
And even if we do not take this Biblical book literally, we still look to its middle chapters, like our fundamentalist counterparts. However, instead of matching its images with current events, we “pooh pooh” it all, bothering neither to delve into its historical context nor to search for more promising reasons for its inclusion in our Bible.
If truth be known, too many of us disregard the Book of Revelation as the dubious work of man named John who was probably tripping on some hallucinogenic substance as he sat on his solitary island beach and wrote this apocalypse, an erstwhile Timothy Leary.
This morning, however, I challenge you to put aside all those pre-judgments and look with new eyes at this Book of Revelation. First, let’s understand why it was written, and, second, let’s ponder whether the verses I just read, which come so close to the end of the book, say something worth remembering.
Like all books in our Bible, Revelation was penned at a specific time in history and was written to a particular group of people. The book is attributed to John, but we really do not know the author’s name. However, we do know that he wrote to a community of Christians who were suffering and feared for their lives.
Revelation is a letter of support and encouragement in the literary style of an apocalypse to people enduring tremendous, heart-breaking hardship, people so thirsty for hope. In spite of all the crazy and otherworldly images, this book was designed to comfort as it related the dreams and visions of its author, an author who himself was also victimized because he was an exiled prisoner. For the next few moments then, let’s entertain the possibility that John (or whoever wrote this book), as one blogger maintains, wrote it as a “document that describes the attempts of a community to deal with unspeakable loss.” (Magdalene’s Musings”)
The community that first heard this letter, this Book of Revelation, lived in a world rife with persecution directed at them. Life had changed on a dime and was spinning out of control. Nothing was the same anymore. John’s listeners were desperately afraid – for themselves, their families, and their communities.
It was like the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was like the hours after 9/11. It was like seeing the recent bold headline that Russia was invading Ukraine and wondering how NATO would respond. It was like just this past week when the CDC announced that the COVID death count in this country had surpassed a million people. It was like this morning when you read about the 18 year old boy responsible for a mas hooting directed at black Americans in Buffalo.
It was the kind of world that made you ask all those questions you never in your wildest dreams thought you would ever ask. What do we do now? How can we be safe? How can I protect my family, my children? I am so tired of this pandemic….Would Putin ever use nuclear weapons? Wil Congress ever pass adequate – if any – gun control?
As the author of the blog “Magdalene’s Musings” writes: “For the early Christian community, which we must remember was also, largely, a Jewish community, there was at least a twofold trauma: first, Roman armies had destroyed both the Temple and Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. And second, in the aftermath of that destruction, followers of Jesus had been singled out for persecution.”
The Book of Revelation was written at a time of tremendous loss. The annihilation of the Temple was like death itself. It was the symbolic destruction of more than 500 years of sacred ritual. A way of life was gone forever. A holy site that had been central to generations of Jews as well as to Jesus was a pile of rubble.
And the losses spread relentlessly, like tentacles reaching into each home, every life. Parents, children, spouses, friends… everyone was touched by death. Everyone was touched by loss. Entire communities struggled with how to face another day of persecution, another day of uncertainty, another day of impending disaster.
The early followers of Jesus were living in a frightening world, one that caused them to ask all sorts of questions they’d never faced before. What do we do now? My family, my community, those I love… are we safe? And where in heaven’s name is God?
Who can blame this little Christian community for its crisis of faith? The author of Revelation wrote his apocalypse in response to that historical reality, a reality devoid of hope.
With that in mind, listen to John’s words again, this time in “The Message” translation:
“I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea. I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven….
I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: “Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They’re his people, he’s their God. He’ll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone.” The Enthroned continued, “Look! I’m making everything new. …Then he said, “It’s happened. I’m A to Z. I’m the Beginning, I’m the Conclusion. From the Water-of-Life Well I give freely to the thirsty…..
After all, (he might have continued), I am the garden with its quiet pools and rushing streams. I am the city with the water of life.
What would it have meant to first hear those words? What does it mean today to realize that the same message of hope that began our Holy Scriptures also concludes it, closing a loop, completing a sacred web?
Revelation is a powerful message of hope for us today because, when you come right down to it, we are not all that far removed from John. Like him, we are all prisoners because we all live in some sort of fear and insecurity. We are all exiled in one form or another.
Like him and the community to whom he wrote, we thirst, we thirst for hope in a broken world. We may not have lost someone we love to COVID. We may not fear for our teenaged sons because they are black, but in one way or another, we are all victims, thirsty victims. So much of the time recently, in one way or another, we all are just trying to survive in circumstances beyond our control. And if you do not feel like a victim now (not to suggest a downer), but someday you will.
And so John’s words are as much for us as they were for the struggling Christian community to whom he wrote. And if you only remember only one thing from this sermon, remember that John’s purpose in writing is to restore and renew and heal and to quench an unbearable thirst for hope in a sometimes cynical and jaded and often confusing, fearful, and imperfect world. It is as if we have been invited into the author’s vividly imaginative and creative brain to catch a glimpse of God’s dream for us and for the world that once long ago the Holy One called good.
And what do we find? Well, I can tell you this. We will not come face to face with that sacred dream by being beamed up to heaven in some glorious rapture. Nope - we do not need to sit on some desert mesa and wait for the end times!
John tells us instead that God is descending to earth, moving into the neighborhood (as The Message translation puts it), making a holy home with us, right now, ready to wipe away our tears and embrace us in our pain. As a blogger I read noted: “When we are oppressed by a sense that our losses are too much for us, Revelation beckons us to that place where we can find that we are already part of a new heaven and a new earth.” (Magdalene’s Musings)
John tells us that God is not starting over again. God is not about destroying. God is about restoring, renewing, resurrecting, healing. How hopeful is that!
We should not be surprised really. After all, God has a long history of using the world and all that is in it to make new things happen. There were the Hebrew slaves that ended up a chosen people. There was Jesus’ crucifixion that ended up in resurrection, and for us who are Christians, we trust that, in the aftermath of Easter, all the sacred promises of the past as well as our hopes for the future have already begun to take shape. Deep in our hearts, at least a part of us trusts that God is taking all our shattered pieces and making us whole again. How hopeful is that!
Oh, we are not a bunch of Pollyanna’s, holding hands and singing Kum Ba Yah. We know all too well that we do not live yet in the New Jerusalem. No - we live where life is cheap, and the innocent often suffer. We live in Poland as Ukrainian refugees. We live in Portapique, Nova Scotia, trying to comprehend how the worst mass shooting ever in Canada could have happened in our little town. We live in a nation where more than 100,000 people died of drug overdoses last year.
But still, we hear John the exiled prisoner whisper…“Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They’re his people, he’s their God…, “Look! I’m making everything new. … “It’s happened. I’m A to Z. I’m the Beginning, I’m the Conclusion. From the Water-of-Life well I give freely to the thirsty…..
Such words of hope – enough to keep in our own hearts – with some left over to share. Isn’t that what we as Christians do with the hope we find tucked away in our hearts? Share it?
As Methodist pastor David Haley remarked, “Having seen John’s vision of the world God will bring, of the new world God is struggling to bring, is it too much to ask that we work for it as best we can, by seeking justice and peace? Where, in emulation and anticipation of our God, we dry the tears from human eyes, in the name of Jesus Christ?”
Is it too much to ask that we share the waters of life and abundance with others who thirst for hope? Is it too much to ask that we follow the Risen Christ, the Living Water, and walk with him who proclaims the resurrecting power of God?
It begins in a garden and ends in a city. It begins with quiet pools and rushing streams and ends with the endlessly deep well of the water of life. It begins with creation and ends with re-creation. It begins with hope and ends with the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment