5 Easter Yr C

When we began reading from the Revelation to John, back on the first Sunday of Easter, I suggested that Revelation may be something like A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. At that time I said that A Christmas Carol is a morality play in which the miserly Scrooge is taken on a visionary tour of his life. As we all know, Scrooge gets a hair-raising visit from the ghost of his dead business partner, and he gives Scrooge the first warning of what his future may hold if he does not change his life.

I quote from A Christmas Carol again today. “The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to one. He advanced toward it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape. ‘Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,’ said Scrooge, ‘answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be only?’ Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood. ‘Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,’ said Scrooge. ‘But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me.’ The Spirit was immovable as ever. Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE. ‘Am I that man who lay upon the bed?’ he cried, upon his knees. The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again. ‘No Spirit! Oh no, no!’ The finger still was there. ‘Spirit!’ he cried, tight clutching at its robe, ‘hear me. I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?’ For the first time the hand appeared to shake. ‘Good Spirit,’ he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: ‘your nature intercedes for me, and pities. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life.’”

In the book The Rapture Exposed, the author Barbara Rossing describes Revelation by comparing it to A Christmas Carol. She said that the visions in Revelation are like the visions Scrooge has. The ghost of the past, present and future warn Scrooge that if he doesn’t wake up and change his ways, these visions are the way it is. The book of Revelation serves to show us the very same thing. If we don’t wake up and change our ways, if we don’t reconcile our relationships with one another and with this earth, our island home, the consequences will be dire.

And then we come to chapter 21 that we hear today. This chapter is the chapter of hope. This chapter is my very favorite in the whole bible. In this part of the story we hear Good News; we hear that what could be is that the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with us as our God and we will be God’s people. God will be with us and will wipe every tear from our eyes, death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. See, I am making all things new.

This is hope. This is where all our visions and dreams come into focus. The whole message of the bible is that God loves the world so much that God comes to earth to dwell with us. Revelation proclaims this message. God’s home is not somewhere else, but here in our midst, incarnate right here on earth. This is a message that is not just about the future; it is a message that is operative right here, right now. See, I am making all things new. New life is about now; new life is available to each and every one of us right now. We don’t live our lives for the reward at the end. We live our lives because we have this chance of new life, of a different way of being, right here, right now.

And what is this new thing, what is the gift we’ve been given. Why does any of this make any sense at all? It is the gift of God with us, the gift of Jesus Christ who lived this life, just like you and me. Jesus who suffered and cried, Jesus who loved his friends, Peter who denied him, and Judas who betrayed him, Jesus, who would not give into the cultural pressures of his time. Jesus who was God who is God and who will be God forever, whose work in his life in his suffering in his death and in the resurrection gives us something new, gives us the truth of a transformed life, calls us into a life that is about hope and growth and love and forgiveness, it calls us away from a life of self-centered and self-serving narcissism. Hope is what revelation is about.

When we embark on the journey of transformation, we enter the land of hope. When we enter the land of hope, we are in fact transformed, made new, given the gifts for living this life fully alive, where out of death comes new life, out of sadness comes hew hope, out of crying and pain come new love.

The vision of revelation is meant to be God’s vision by which we live our lives right now, as followers of the Lamb, who is Jesus, in our world. According to Barbara Rossing, “The Lamb is leading us on an exodus out of the heart of empire, out of the heart of addiction to violence, greed, fear, and unjust lifestyle or whatever holds each of us most captive. It is an exodus we can experience each day. Tenderly, gently, the Lamb is guiding us to pastures of life and healing beside God’s river.”

The theme of exodus runs through the entire book of revelation, and it is the theme that guides us through our Christian lives. Each of us and all of us together wander through the wilderness of all that which enslaves us, all that which hurts us and causes us to protect our hurts and fears at all costs. That is what the scary stuff of revelation is. It is the powers that enslave us. The powers of empire that demand worship and adoration at all cost. The powers of possession that cause us to fool ourselves into believing that people and things are ours to possess. The powers of self doubt that fool us into believing that we are not worthy to be loved by God. But it is also the theme of exodus that assures us that God is God and we are God’s people, and we can do nothing to cause God to break that covenant. That is the liberation, that is the freedom.

The vision of Revelation also is a vision of God’s realm right here right now, as well as that which is yet to come. We live in the tension of this vision always. You and I have been claimed by and for God’s realm at our baptism. We receive God’s realm on earth by sharing the love of God in Christ. It is by our love for one another, our love for the stranger, and our love for those we vehemently dislike, that we may be known as Christians. This 21st chapter of Revelation has been paired with the gospel of John chapter 13; I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another. By this everyone will know that you have love for one another.

You and I participate in God’s realm when we love one another. You and I change one life when we love one another. You and I change people around us when we love one another. You and I can change the world when we love one another. You and I can participate in the new creation described in Revelation when we welcome God in our midst, when we receive God into our very being, when we treat each and every person as if that person is created in God’s image. You and I can be an incarnational community, a community of love, of hope, of resurrection and of transformation right now, we don’t have to wait until some time in the future. Welcoming God among mortals, expecting Jesus with us, this is our call; this is the Christian life we are to be about.

Alleluia, The Lord has risen indeed: Come let us adore him. Alleluia!

2 Easter Yr C

For the Sundays after Easter we have an odd sort of thing happening with our readings. We will hear semi-continuous passages from Acts, from Revelation, and from John. It is an opportunity to hear quite a bit from each of these stories. I’m going to spend some time talking about Revelation for the next few weeks, as well as some from John.

I think many of us shy away from Revelation, assuming it is just too hard to understand or too scary maybe. Currently, Revelation is my favorite book of the Bible; it is filled with Good News for us today. So today I’ll begin with a little background.

First of all, it is the Book of Revelation, not Revelations. Jesus is the main character in Revelation. The book’s opening line, as we heard read this morning, tells us that it is an “apocalypse of Jesus Christ.” Revelation’s primary purpose is to tell us the story of Jesus, not to predict end-time events. Let me just repeat that. Revelation’s primary purpose is to tell us the story of Jesus, not to predict end-time events. Revelation and its synonym apocalypse, mean unveiling. Apocalypses pull back a curtain to unveil or reveal some deep truth about the world. When Revelation was written, apocalypse was a popular type of literature for Jews and Christians. Apocalypses were easy for ancient readers to understand because people were familiar with the structure and imagery, just as we are familiar with science fiction and horror movies today. People in the ancient world were drawn to the drama and mystery of apocalypses.

One typical element of Revelation and many other ancient apocalypses is the visionary journey. This is what we have before us. Revelation’s talking altar, multi-headed beasts, woman-cities and other fantastic creatures are not at all unusual for an apocalyptic journey. And in a typical apocalypse the traveling visionary returns from the journey with an urgent message for us about what he or she has seen, usually a call for repentance and faithfulness, perhaps also a political critique. Other examples of apocalyptic literature are contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and also the biblical book of Daniel.

Even Charles Dickens wrote about an apocalyptic journey in A Christmas Carol. As we all know, A Christmas Carol is a morality play in which the miserly Scrooge is taken on a visionary tour of his life. A hair-raising visit from the ghost of his dead business partner gives Scrooge the first warning of what his future may hold if he does not change his life. Subsequent visitations by three spirits show Scrooge his painful past and what his painful future may look like. He also sees a scene that inspires hope for him, the warmth and the love of the Cratchit house. These contrasting visions prove to be a wake-up call for Scrooge. Scrooge is changed by these visions in this story. In the terrifying moment when he sees a vision of his own grave, Scrooge repents of his ways, asks for forgiveness, and is transformed into a caring and doting uncle, employer, and friend. Scrooge commits to walking a different path. We may even say that our encounter with A Christmas Carol, in some way helps to transform us as well.

The Book of Revelation is like that. Jesus is the main character, and we may say that the story is to call us as individuals, and as the community of faith, to repentance and faithfulness. John, the author of Revelation, is taken on a series of visionary journeys on behalf of his seven churches. Transported out into the future, he is shown contrasting visions of two cities. He sees the evil whore called Babylon, whose merchants and kings lament the loss of all their wealth. He hears that Babylon sits on seven hills, identifying Rome, and he hears the voice of an angel calling Christians to reject Rome and all that it represents. Finally John sees an alternative city, God’s wonderful paradise like world, descending from heaven like a bride, inviting us in. This is the citizenship Christians are to hope for. The urgent message is that Christians must be faithful in worshiping God and renounce Babylon which is Rome, in order to participate in God’s holy city. Revelation’s primary purpose is life-changing; it does not predict literal events. The book’s goal is to exhort us to faithfulness to God by means of a new vision.

That brings us back to the beginning of Revelation, and our main character who is Jesus, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth. So what does that mean? We have just been through the wilderness with Jesus, we have been to the cross, and we have witnessed the resurrection. Jesus, the firstborn of the dead is indeed about what happens in resurrection. We believe that the work God does in Jesus on the cross and in the resurrection is to inaugurate the new kingdom, and we will hear all about the new kingdom in this Book of Revelation. The Easter reality is that death does not have the final word. The Word of God has the final word, who is Jesus. And the new kingdom, the new creation, has begun. You and I are new creations because Jesus is the firstborn of the dead; the church is a new creation because Jesus is the firstborn of the dead. We are a body, a mystical, incarnate, flesh and blood body because Jesus is the firstborn of the dead.

Scrooge commits to walking a different path as a result of his visionary journey. You and I have that opportunity as well as we hear Revelation, and as we hear this story of Jesus who visits his friends after the resurrection in John’s gospel. What difference does all this make for us today? It makes all the difference. All the readings we have heard put some flesh on what it means to be citizens of this new kingdom, to walk this path of discipleship. It is also important to remember that this isn’t about just you or me. This is about God’s renewal of our entire world, our community, our families. As we read further in Revelation we’ll see that more clearly, the new kingdom, the new earth, is about God dwelling with us right here, recreating this fragile earth, our island home.

The story of Thomas in John’s gospel points us to the different path we disciples of Christ are to take. We have heard so much about the story of Thomas being a story of doubt, but maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe, what John is doing is addressing us, the readers, who do not have the opportunity of direct sight that Thomas has, to engender belief in us that will result in the sort of transformation that leads us to the path of generosity and forgiveness, citizenship in the new kingdom.

Citizenship in the new kingdom that Revelation describes calls us to forgiveness and to reconciliation; as individuals, as a community of faith, and yes, as country. Citizenship in the new kingdom calls us to show the world a way of that is very different than what we have been experiencing lately. Citizenship in the new kingdom calls us to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. Citizenship in the new kingdom shows us that the respect we owe to God should be reflected in the honor and respect we show to each other in our common humanity, particularly in how we speak to each other. And citizenship in the new kingdom calls us to recognize in humility that we are limited and that there may very well be a diversity of rightness. We have been made new creations in the death and resurrection of Jesus; we have been born again as citizens of the new kingdom that God has begun in Jesus. The time is now for us to live the full measure of our citizenship.

Alleluia, The Lord is risen indeed: Come, let us adore him. Alleluia!

The work on Revelation is from The Rapture Exposed, by Barbara Rossing. The work on John is from Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John, by Cynthia Briggs Kittredge.