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God With Us
Revelation 21:1-7
May 6, 2007
University Christian Church, Seattle, WA
Rev. Sandy Messick

My, oh my, what have I done? Here I have four different scriptures from the lectionary each week and all I have to do is pick one on which to preach. And if I don’t like any of them, I can just say I’m going off the lectionary this week and pick something else. So why does it say here I’m preaching on this passage from the Book of Revelation? Did I really tell Niki that was my scripture? What was I thinking? After all, no one in their right mind would willingly preach on Revelation. My, oh my, what have I done?
Revelation, after all, comes with such baggage.

It conjures up images of ultra-conservative fundamentalist churches passing out tracts and little booklets about the rapture and the end of time and how you better get off the fence and get right with God before it’s too late.
It brings to mind televangelists who quote from Revelation as a means of explaining terrible tragedies like tsunamis, and 9/11, and AIDS and describing them as signs of God’s judgment.
It reminds us of cults who use the Book of Revelation to pinpoint THE exact date and time when the world will end and Jesus will return and the evil and unbelievers will be punished and the chosen few will go to heaven….and then they use the same book to explain why it didn’t happen when they thought it would because their calculations were off or they misread a translation.
Frankly, none of those uses for the Book of Revelation are very appealing to me. Preaching any of those messages is simply not my style and honestly, I don’t believe a word of it.
So what was I thinking? Why bother to preach on Revelation at all when the Acts passage would have done just as well?

Perhaps it’s because I remember my preaching professor in seminary. Dr. Ron Allen, saying something like, “Preachers should preach on this book at least once a month…because it’s a book of hope.

So either he was wrong…or….maybe there’s another way to look at this, this last book of our Bible. Perhaps there’s something more than just doom and gloom and words we don’t understand.
Eugene Boring, professor emeritus at Brite Divinity School and renowned biblical scholar wrote a commentary on the Book of Revelation. In it, Dr. Boring reminds us that Revelation isn’t first and foremost an apocalyptic document dealing with the end of time for all time. It is first and foremost a letter, written to a specific group of churches in a specific time and place.
Revelation was written to a group of churches in Asia, a Roman province on what would now be the western coast of Turkey. The churches include some of which we’ve heard of, like Ephesus or Laodicea. Others are less well known like Smyrna and Pergamum. Probably they represent a sampling of churches in the area, but they refer to churches started by Paul and his cohorts back in the 50s.
Revelation itself was probably written around 90, after the Jewish uprising and destruction of the temple in 70. It was then that Rome came to equal Babylon, as it is used in Revelation.
While the churches were probably not being systematically persecuted by Rome, it is clear that there were struggles with both the Romans and with the Jewish community as the divide between Jews and Jewish Christians became more pronounced. As Eugene Boring writes, “During this period increasing social and political pressures were brought to bear by government policies and there were tensions between the Christian community and other social groups, particularly the Jews as well as tension and conflicts within the church itself. The church was in a transitional and vulnerable situation, trying to find its way forward in the generation between the death of its apostolic leaders and the emergence of a firm structure and sense of self-identity. What did it mean to be Christian, to try to follow Jesus as Lord in such a place and time?” (Revelation, Interpretation Commentary, p. 9) Hmmm, sound familiar?
So those who first heard this writing, heard it as a letter, addressed to them in their time and place. They didn’t hear it as the last book of the Bible, or as a generic message for all people and all times. It was a pastoral letter, written by one who knew their struggles and their pain, written to them to convey hope in their situation.
And so as we read this book today, we need to read it not as a book written about us or about our time, but as a letter written about others and to others that still has meaning for us. It was written to give hope, and it still gives hope.

Which brings us to the passage for today.

Most of us have probably heard this passage ready before. It’s a favorite passage for funerals. I’ve used it a lot myself.
But it wasn’t written for a funeral service. It was written to those whose present was difficult and whose future was uncertain. It offers an image of a new possibility where the pain of the present is wiped away and peace, lasting peace, prevails.
It is the message of the New Jerusalem, the new Holy City, but notice, it’s a city not up in the cloud somewhere, but a city here on earth. The holy city descending from heaven and resting on earth.
It’s the message of the end of division. That which divides, separates, and causes us pain is no more. Gone is the sea, and for the author of Revelation, the sea is not only literally a body of water that separates us from one another, it is also the place from which chaos arises. So if the sea is no more then neither is that which can divide us one from another.
There are no more tears, no pain, no suffering, no heartbreak. That which wrenches us from God and from each other and from ourselves is no more.
And in its place – there is a new vision of our life together – and a promise of God dwelling with us. God with us. Now where have we heard that before?

We heard it back at Christmas time when we heard the proclamation of Emmanuel – which means “God with us”
And we heard it a few weeks ago at Easter, when the risen Jesus spoke to his Disciples promising them that “Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
And now we hear it again, here, in Revelation, in the fullness of time when God’s vision is fulfilled – God is still with us – in the midst of us. “See, the home of God is among mortals, and God himself will be with them.

Revelation, despite all its fantastic imagery and the interpretations of doom and gloom, is essentially a word of hope to a people in pain. As bad as things are, as bad as they are likely to get, God will have the last word. The fullness of God’s vision is not yet, but it is coming, and it yet will be. And when it comes, it will be here on earth. God will be making all things new. And at the beginning, and at the end, the Alpha and the Omega, there is God. Always. Always.

Often we hear these words as pointing to the eschaton: the end of time. It points to a future life in the sweet by and by. It is an image of heaven. And those interpretations have validity.
But I believe it also points to hope for this life, when we read the paper and despair of lives lost, and more suffering, and more pain. When test results reveal bad news, and life is sometimes just downright hard. Hear this good news: God hasn’t given up on us, or forgotten us, or abandoned us, or even gotten distracted and turned away. God is still at work. God’s vision is still before us. God will have the final say and the final word, and that word is hope.
It happened once that a seminary student was playing basketball with a group of friends. He happened to notice that the school janitor, an older, uneducated man, was sitting nearby reading a book. Upon closer inspection, the student noticed that not only was the book the Bible, but that the janitor was reading Revelation. The student was surprised. The Book of Revelation was a difficult book to understand even for trained theologians. “Do you understand it?” the student asked. “Oh yes, I understand it,” said the janitor. The student was intrigued. Here was this book that baffled theologians and was the source of every conspiracy theory and end of time prediction known to humans. “Do you really understand it? What do you think it means?” asked the student. The old man looked up and said very quietly, “It means that Jesus is gonna win.”
And there it is. A word of hope. Amen.