The end, and what comes before that

 

Revelation 21:1-8

There are dragons that need slaying. Monsters that need defeating. 

There is chaos unleashed on the earth.  Sometimes we can pretend we don’t see it. We can make our lives small and our walls high and pretend calamity won’t touch us. Some of us can get away with this more easily, or for longer stretches of time, than others.  But right now is not one of those times. Not for any of us.  Right now – ironically – it feels like the world is more unified than ever, if only by shared turmoil and upheaval, and the sense of instability. At the moment, we are an entire species anguished and crisis-weary.

Chaos, like the Hebrew people saw symbolized by the wild, thrashing seas, hovers on the edges every day, in nearly every moment. It seeps into the cracks of our daily errands, and washes over the rooftops of crumbling institutions.  It ruptures our confidence in each other and erodes our trust in our leaders, and dumps all over our plans for the future, even the tiny, little, unimportant, nonthreatening plans that shouldn’t be a problem for anyone. Chaos keeps wrecking those too.  
 
And there is evil, real evil, that seems so often to have the upper hand. Sometimes it’s bold and appalling and devastating. But often it slippery and sneaky. 
When you break it down, instead of one big hellish plan of destruction, evil tiptoes in through little, imperceptible lies, small selfish motives, momentary thoughtless decisions, modest breaches of trust and betrayals of confidence, and it spreads and grows. 

And there are villains. Actual villains. Diabolical villains to be sure. But so often the villains look like us. Are us.  We are victims and villains. It merely depends on which story we’re in, and who’s telling it. 
 
All of this is messy, and unsettling, and exhausting. 
We so much prefer our on-screen dragons and monsters. We like our battle lines definitive. Our victories complete.  We want our heroes pure of heart, and we’d like to give evil a face that we can watch whimper in defeat when it’s vanquished and crushed.  We want to gorge ourselves on decadent vindication.  Hope for justice, longing for goodness, these things can feel naive and impossible in the tangled turmoil of this life, especially at the moment.
 
Enter Revelation in all it’s fantastical metaphor and story and imagery.  The book of Revelation is an ancient movie, a radio theater hour, a play in four acts. It gives evil concrete form and then destroys it.  
 
Apocalyptic literature was a popular genre at the time, and Revelation is longest piece of apocalyptic literature in the bible. Apocalypse doesn’t actually mean dramatic end of the world, it means revealing, unveiling, peeling back the curtain for a peek of deeper truth. The language of apocalypse is metaphor, pictures, story. Truth is conveyed not by being told directly to you, but because underneath what is being told to you, the prelingual essence, the elemental substance of you hears a message that can’t be told in words, and your heart or gut screams YES. THIS. 
 
A few weeks ago in a session meeting we discussed nudity. I’ll explain. Each time session gathers, we read scripture together and reflect on it, and we let it inform our work. A couple months ago we began with the first day of creation, and every two weeks when we meet, we read the next day of creation. In lovely, poetic language we had painted for us a picture of this relational God abundantly pouring out creativity into matter, giving goodness concrete form and then celebrating it.  And then each movement of creation ends with God pausing to take it all in, stopping to delight in the wonder and joy and harmony of what now exists.  And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.  And when God creates humankind in God’s image they are “naked and unashamed.” They live freely as beloved by God and connected to all other beings.  So, what’s easier, we wondered, being buck naked in the backyard where your neighbors could see you, or being completely open and vulnerable?
 
Reading slowly through the beginning this way together reminded us that God holds it all, God loves it all, God is present in and through it all, and there’s no rush, in fact, pausing is an essential part of the divine ordering of things, and that God wills goodness and joy for the earth and its creatures.

So when we turned to the chaos of our lives and our world, and this trying to do church one week at a time like we have been for two years, it helped us to remember whose church, whose world, whose lives, these really are.  We are learning that remembering the beginning helps us navigate the middle.
 
But so does premembering the end.  And Revelation tells us where it’s all headed.
In the beginning God created, loved, rested, enjoyed, and made us live freely as beloved by God and connected to all other beings. And it was good. And in the end – God creates, loves, rests, and enjoys, alongside us, along with us, and ensures we will live freely as beloved by God and connected to all other beings. And it will be good.  That’s where it starts and that’s how it ends. 
 
But the middle, oh, the middle, the middle is filled with suffering. Along with the goodness is evil and chaos. Mourning, division and pain, lies and struggle fill the middle.  
 
So comes Jesus Christ, God with us, right into the middle to share middle with us. Instead of rescuing humanity out of life, God joins us here, and infuses this mess of a life with the holy. Right inside the suffering, conflict and loss, God brings hope, joy, connection, and salvation.  
 
And from the very end, redemption leaks backwards into the middle.  Every experience of wonder is a taste of the end that mirrors the beginning.  Every time we pause and delight in the goodness of this life, or marvel at the beauty of this world, we are foreshadowing what is to come, and recalling how it all began. Every moment spent relishing the simple fact of existence, or opening our heart vulnerably to another person, peels back the veil on what will be, and echoes how it all started.  
 
This is a story suspended from love to love. 
 
And so the end also promises that everything from the middle that divided us from love, all the monsters around us and the villains within us, the dragons looming over us, and every possible way evil got a foothold and turmoil took over, will be powerfully obliterated.  All that separates us from God and each other will be permanently destroyed.
 
In light of all this, I would like to suggest that true Christianity is vulnerability - a choice to live without illusion and defenses, (naked and unashamed, one might say), recognizing reality and our place in it. This is faith’s role. Faith is not believing we have extra armor against dragons, protection from monsters, or a secret weapon against chaos. Faith helps us live vulnerably in light of the final reality. Faith is trusting we are held in this life between a beginning in God’s love and an ending in God’s love.  Chaos will not prevail. Evil will not win.  
 
Knowing what is coming, what does it cost us to see and share the pain of another? What do we risk to live boldly and joyfully?  Why not join in where redemption is unfolding?  What do we have to lose? That no matter the turmoil or monsters the moment, Jesus is here with, among us.  And that in the very end, God will deliver us completely and finally.  This is our apocalyptic insight that, if we let it, can resonate in our bones and raise our courage. This awareness can make us sing, and weep, and live, and die, as honest, open people who celebrate goodness, practice justice, love mercy, and live freely beloved by God and connected to all other beings. 
 
Amen.