Scripture: Revelation 21:1-7
This final week of Advent also marks our final week of our journey through the book of Revelation. And as I promised that first week – we end up pretty much right where we started. With Jesus saying to us once again, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” We began by hearing the promises given to the seven churches, to those who conquer and overcome – that they would be given crowns, robes, and made pillars in the temple of God. And here we see the culmination – what those who “conquer” will inherit.
These past 7 weeks we’ve gone on a very “revealing” journey about our world – of where we are versus where God wants us to be. We’ve seen beasts, harlots, plagues, horsemen and countless other threats to our world, our livelihoods and our faith lives. We have been called out of the evil systems of our world, called out of operating like the rest of the world operates, called to a life of faithfulness, called to renew our love for one another, called to hear the promises that we will be victorious if we can resist the seductions of evil around us.
And now, at the end of the book – we are being invited in and given a glimpse of God’s vision for our future.
As the conquering Word of God goes out and defeats the evils and threats we face on a regular basis, Revelation 21 and 22 invite us in to see what God envisions for our world. Invites us to see what heaven on earth will look like. Invites us to see how what we pray each week will become a reality. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Revelation has not been about rapturing us up into heaven so we don’t have to face the ugliness of our world - but rather delivers to us a promise that equips us to handle the ugliness and evil of the world around us. Instead of sweeping us up into heaven to let the world just fend for itself and be destroyed – Revelation ends instead with God and his Kingdom DESCENDING, coming down to earth – coming down to us.
It’s about how God has broken into our world – and conquers the evil we face each day. During our mid-week advent services, we read a portion of John 1 as we lit the advent wreath candle… in that reading of John’s gospel we hear these words: “the word became flesh and lived – or dwelt – among us.” That word in Greek that means to “dwell among” or to “live among” literally means to “tabernacle” – or to make one’s home with us.
God made his home among mortals by coming to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. We hear that promise reiterated in Revelation: “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.”
This is what we celebrate this time of year – we celebrate God coming to earth and making his dwelling place among us. Christmas, you might say, is a celebration of a “rapture in reverse” – God taking up residence with us.
The problem we face on a day in and day out basis is that while we know the Kingdom of God has come in Jesus Christ, we struggle because we haven’t seen the New Jerusalem come with Him.
It is the tension that we live in – living in the now, but not yet. That God has conquered and Christ has won the victory – but we still live in a world where evil rages and we await heaven on earth.
But Revelation insists from the outset that God and the Lamb already reign, that Jesus is already king over the kings of the earth. While Christ’s reign is not yet fully realized in our world, God is giving us glimpses of it.
Because the vision is not a vision that is to be reserved for some far-off time in the future. The New Jerusalem vision is meant to be God’s vision by which we live our lives right now as the followers of the Lamb in this world. It is a powerful vision of God’s New Jerusalem for our world and communities today.
Most people when they talk about Revelation focus so heavily on the “Armageddon” event that we heard about last week. But a few things about Armageddon… there were no bombs going off. The world was not summarily destroyed by the battle between Christ and the armies of the beast. The Biblical Armageddon was actually pretty anticlimactic. There was no nuclear holocaust – simply Christ riding in on his white horse, wearing a robe covered in his own blood and defeating the forces of evil with the sword of his mouth. Conquering not with bombs and missiles but with the Word of God.
And Armageddon is not necessarily some far-off, distant reality. Armageddon is wherever the Word of God triumphs over evil.
The whole journey of Revelation is about leading us on an Exodus out of the heart of empire, addiction, violence, greed, fear, unjust societies – or whatever vice holds us most captive. And it’s not an exodus that is reserved for the future – but an exodus we are able to experience each and every day.
Dr. Martin Luther King wrote in one of the last sermons he gave prior to his assassination the following regarding this sense of the New Jerusalem as both a future and present reality:
“Thank God for John, who centuries ago out on a lonely, obscure island called Patmos, caught vision of a new Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, who heard a voice saying, “behold, I make all things new—former things are passed away.” God grant that we will be participants in this newness…if we will but do it, we will bring about a new day of justice and brotherhood and peace.”
We are being invited into the newness, to be participants in the New Jerusalem.
The New Jerusalem shows us what life with the lamb is like. What life with God is like. We started off with a vision of worship, a vision of the throne of God and were taken on a journey to see what the Lamb’s vision of true power and life and salvation are, revealing the falseness of the world around us. The falseness of putting our hope and trust into anything but God.
At the end – our vision is transformed to see the world transfigured in the light of lamb. A place where there is no temple, because the entire place is a city of holiness, where the God and the lamb are themselves the light that guides. Revelation is revealing for us what lies ahead for us as faithful followers. We are invited more deeply into God’s picture and vision for our world.
If any of you have ever read C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, it is like how in his final book, “The Last Battle,” Aslan the Lion invites Peter, Lucy, and Edmund more deeply into what is referred to as the “real” Narnia – the “world within a world.” Aslan tells them to go “Further up and further in” to Narnia. Once there, they recognize it as Narnia – but a perfected and better Narnia that defies attempts to describe it fully. It is the real and true Narnia.
The series ends with the revelation that everything that had come before was only the beginning of the true story. Narnia had only been the cover and the title page and “now, at last, they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one else on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia are an allegory of the Biblical story. So it should not surprise us that Revelation works in much the same way – since he’s basing his ending off the Bible’s ending. Revelation invites us “further up and further in” to God’s vision for our world. It pulls back the veil of everyday reality so that we can see true reality and are able to go more deeply into God’s picture for our world. That the end – is just the beginning.
It once again reminds us that God’s purposes are not ultimately destructive… but that God’s purposes in our world are to heal and renew.
Revelation is urging us to leave behind everything that is violent and unjust – urging us not to follow the beast’s way of life, but instead the lamb’s way of life by revealing the future to us so we have the strength to stand up in the midst of this world’s challenges. The strength to remain faithful to Christ and his calling.
Jesus promises, “See, I am coming soon!” He has already broken into our world and begun his reign – and with the patient endurance of the saints, we await the fullness of his promises. The fullness of his reign.
Next Sunday we celebrate the beginning of God’s salvific work in the world – the birth of Christ into our world. We celebrate Christmas – knowing it is just the prelude of what is yet to come.
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