Revelation 21:1-6,
22:1-5
“Everlasting Hope”
03 September 2017 St.
Andrew’s Military Chapel
If one turns on the 24-hour cable
news channels from the US, they could easily come to lose faith in humanity and
the direction the world is headed. One could find some passages in Scripture
that would bolster that thought process, especially in some of the passages
that we’ve looked at throughout John’s Revelation.
Realizing something isn’t right in
the world today is a good sign. It means that we know there is more to this
life that what we see. Deep inside us we know that good will win over evil. The
dark side of the force may have its moments, but it isn’t the final answer.
Despite what Darth Vader may say and think, our destiny isn’t in using our
power for evil and letting the hate flow. There is something more out there because
there is something more inside each of us.
Just look at the children we have
the pleasure of interacting with each Sunday here in this space. Sure, they can
get loud, messy, overly inquisitive, slightly fidgety, and occasionally
disruptive to our service. But look beyond that and what do you see in the eyes
of children? Hope. Hope and a keen sense of right and wrong and that the good
people win in the end. There’s a reason fairy tales follow a certain formula.
That formula is based on the instinctive hope of every human that good beats
evil.
In the light of what we see in the
world, we need hope. Just look at some of the headlines over the last two
weeks. Hurricane Harvey in Houston, TX. Racial Violence in Charlottesville, VA.
North Korea firing a missile directly over Japan. It can get overwhelming and
depressing making many wonder if the world is past the point of no return and
truly hopeless. And the way in which some Christians read and interpret
Scripture can feed that feeling.
There is a tendency in America, and
many other Western countries, to ignore the impact of Genesis 1 and 2 and
Revelation 21 and 22. I mean, it’s only four chapters of the Bible, it won’t
make much of a difference in how we interpret the overall story of the Bible,
right? Well, let’s take a look at what the Bible is without those four
chapters.
If we start at Genesis 3 and end at
Revelation 20, our story begins with the fall of Adam and Eve and ends with the
dreaded lake of fire. We sin, continuously from the beginning, and no matter
what happens we have a good chance of landing in the lake of fire. Read this
way, what point is life? What good is there because we’re all sinful and not
worthy of God’s love and grace? Where is the hope? I don’t want to be a part of
that movement or belief system. Do you?
Genesis one and two clearly state that creation was created
with care, love, and purpose. It’s important that these chapters begin the
story. We are told from whence we came and that we were wonderfully made in and
with love as part of a plan with no expectation of anything in return. More
importantly, we are told that all of creation is created good with humanity
deemed very good. We all want to be a part of stories with beginnings such as
this.
On the back end, here in Revelation, we learn that all will
again be redeemed and made good. This passage is amazing because it shows us
not the end, but rather the teleos or culmination of things. Revelation shows
us our destiny, what we are meant to become, of what we are meant to be a part.
John describes how Rome, socialism, ISIS, capitalism, the
US, and any other human institution will never be supreme. God, and only God,
is supreme. And that is the Gospel, that is great news.
Here in Revelation the Gospel is fulfilled. We, as a part of
creation, reach our destiny, our own teleos, our fulfillment. We return to
where we belong, where we were made to live. This is why God tells John, “It is
done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” God was the
beginning and invited us into a plan and God will be there with us at the end.
Everything is made new, remade and resurrected according to God’s plan.
Now I’ll gladly be a part of that
story. Write me into that script. You won’t even have to pay me to play a role
in that cosmic drama. I was created with a purpose, deemed very good by said
creator, and might get to see a day when the temporary empires of the world
that inevitably turn against numbers of people are no more in favor of a place
where all are welcomed and treated equally.
Heaven isn’t a replacement of
earth. It’s the fulfillment of earth and all those who inhabit this beautiful
world. Nowhere in this passage does it describe earth as being destroyed. The
defeat of evil doesn’t bring about the annihilation of earth. It brings God to
make all things new. We are made anew with the destruction of death.
In this new world, God’s presence
returns similar to what Israel experienced during the Exodus. Rather than a
cloud of fire, God’s presence is an ever-present light to the world. Unlike the
unequal commerce present in any human form of government or empire, the
essentials of life are freely given to all as a gift. We again see the tree of
life providing not just food for all, but healing for every nation. Death and
mourning are no more and for those of us who have ever felt the sting of death,
that is welcome news.
There are gates around this city,
but they aren’t there to keep people out or turn them away for the gates don’t
lock. Without any enemies, there is no reason for lockable gates. All are
invited into the kingdom. It’s everything good in the earth, earth and us at
our full potential and purpose.
It’s hard to imagine something like
this, so perhaps it’s best to let C.S. Lewis shed some light on this concept of
heaven being the culmination, not the replacement, of creation. Near the end of
his book The Last Battle heaven is described this way:
“Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you
could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But
that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a
shadow of a copy of the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will
be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of
something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of
the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the
real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a
real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.
“It is as hard to explain how this
sunlit land was different from the old Narnia, as it would be to tell you how
the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it, if you
think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that
looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among
mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have
been a looking glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly
caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass.
And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just
the same as the real ones: yet at the same time there were somehow
different—deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you
have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old
Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country:
every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t
describe it any better than that: if you ever get there, you will know what I
mean.”
That is what we all long for. It’s
the story we all want to participate in. It’s our purpose in life. We are
called to do what we can to bring about glimpses of this place in the current
earth, our own old Narnia. We are called to help the world realize there is
more than this and that we belong to something beyond description. Let us work
to point out the glimpse of God’s Kingdom here on earth to anyone who will
listen.
Back to Lewis, “It was the Unicorn
who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the
ground and neighed and then 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 it sometimes looked a little like this.”
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