Revelation 22:1-5

Click here to view the full sermon video, titled "Healing."

 

In the classic 1984 comedy Ghostbusters, a team of paranormal scientists uncover the signs of an impending apocalypse to be ushered in by the ancient Sumerian deity, Gozer. And though the agent of this destruction may be pagan, as they explain to the Mayor of New York City, the disaster itself will be nothing short of, “biblical proportion… Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria.” 

Those are certainly some of the images that spring to mind when someone mentions this unique biblical text known as Revelation. In the popular imagination Revelation has become a cipher, a series of codes and images for people and events that will usher in the end of human history and God’s final judgment. But, of course, that is not the purpose of John’s Revelation at all. The Revelation falls into a biblical genre known as apocalyptic literature. The word ‘apocalypse’ means something far different today than what translates from the Greek. Today it is understood the way Ghostbusters understands it; disaster of biblical proportion. And I suppose that is part of it. But not really. 

The apocalyptic genre is less about predicting some kind of world ending event and more of a response to one. Or, at least, something that feels like one. Some two hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the disaster in question was the reign of the Seleucid King Antiochus IV in Judea. Among other things, he outlawed Jewish practices like circumcision, required his subjects to violate kosher food law and work on the sabbath, and even burned copies of the Torah. 

He desecrated the temple in Jerusalem by sacrificing a pig on the altar to the Greek god Zeus. As bad guys go, he was one of the worst. His reign gave rise to the Maccabean revolt which is the narrative framework for the Jewish Festival of Lights that we call Hannukah. It also produced the book of Daniel which recounts the people’s suffering under another foreign king, Nebuchadnezzar. 

The events in Daniel are meant to encourage the people suffering under Antiochus by recounting the ways in which God was at work behind the scenes during the Babylonian exile to overcome Israel’s oppression. Because what apocalypse means is not the end of all things, but the unveiling or the revealing of God in the midst of cataclysmic events, conquering evil and saving God’s people from destruction. Just as God was then, they are assured, so is God now. 

Likewise, the growing pains of the early church come against the backdrop of a foreign superpower in the form of Rome. This superpower didn’t just desecrate the Jerusalem temple, they destroyed it altogether some 40 or so years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. It isn’t as though early Christianity simply moved beyond the temple with the arrival of Jesus. At the end of Luke’s gospel, after the risen Christ ascends, the last sentence of the gospel reads, “And they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple blessing God.” The Roman destruction of the temple in Jerusalem didn’t just devastate the Jewish community, it devasted the Christian community as well- many of whom still identified as Jews. And like Daniel before it, John’s Revelation draws once again on the memory of Babylon to describe the powerful empire that is threatening the church’s existence. If the letter to the church in Ephesus declares that, “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Then Revelation is the depiction of that struggle. This is not some future event to be deciphered and predicted by radio preachers and religious charlatans. It reveals the present darkness with which we are always contending, and the power of God to combat it. 

Now, I want to stop right here and say that I am in no way suggesting that those elevated by this past week’s election, or those that voted for them, represent the spiritual forces of evil. I’m sure there are some who think so, just as I am sure there would be some who would think the same thing if the results had gone the other way. But that would be missing the point of both the imagery of Ephesians and the Revelation. Our struggle is not with flesh and blood. It is not with this candidate, or that candidate. This political party, or that political party. No, our struggle is with the cosmic power of evil brought to life by human sin. Our struggle is with what is unleashed when we turn inward, when we regard our self-preservation as the highest good, when we presume to know just who or what is good and evil and take it upon ourselves to eradicate what we think is evil in order to advance what we think is good. Sin doesn’t just disfigure us, it disfigures and distorts our perception of the world around us. It appeals to our base instinct to hang labels on people and platforms in order to erase them. It uses words like ‘racist’ and ‘illegal’ to treat another as an object of derision or dismissal rather than as one fearfully and wonderfully made in the image the God that calls them, “beloved.” I think that’s why Jesus doesn’t just affirm the command to love our neighbor, he expands it to include our enemy as well, and to pray for those we may feel are persecuting us. It’s as much for us and it is for the enemy and the persecutor. To pray for those with whom we are at odds is essential to the struggle we are engaged in against the present darkness; a darkness that is just as much in us as it is in anyone else. 

And what do we see at the conclusion of this Revelation, what is the end to which all of this is headed. Spoiler alert, it’s not destruction, it’s not annihilation. In short it is anything but what the rest of the world thinks of when they use the word apocalypse. It is nothing short of the marriage of heaven and earth as God makes God’s home not in some heaven far, far away, but with us, in the city of God whose gates never close and that needs no bouncer. From the throne of the one who makes all things new flows the river of the water of life through the center of the city. And from that living water, the water that Jesus describes to the foreign Samaritan woman at the well, from that water grows the tree of life that is always bearing fruit and whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. It’s an echo of Psalm 1. This tree planted by streams of living water bears fruit in every season and its leaves which never wither are the source of our healing. 

I know that some of us are satisfied, even pleased with the results of this last week’s election. I know that even more are sad, and disappointed, and frightened for what this will mean for those who have been branded the enemy from within. Right now, our struggle with this present darkness that would divide and destroy us feels very close and very real, regardless of who we voted for. The wounds it has created and may continue to create are as painful as anything we might experience in the flesh. Families are estranged. Friends aren’t speaking. Fingers are being pointed as we look for someone to blame for it all. Instead of digging around in that wound and making it worse, what is unveiled in the Revelation is the presence of God with us to make all things new. To pour forth a stream of living water that gives life, and supports the healing every wound we have inflicted on one another and on ourselves. To be our light in the darkness showing us what we might not otherwise see, our shared humanity, our shared vulnerability, our shared future of God’s own making and re-making, and no other. 

In the city of Coventry, England stands a relatively new cathedral. On the night of November 14, 1940 the existing Cathedral and much of the surrounding city of Coventry were destroyed by the German Luftwaffe in what was the longest air raid suffered in one night by any city in England during World War II. By morning the decision had already been made to rebuild. The west wall of that new cathedral is made entirely of glass, and etched upon it are the figures of saints and angels, who look for all the world like they are throwing a party, dancing across that great wall of glass. Beyond that wall stand the ruined remains of the old cathedral, so that the only way to see them from within the church is by looking through the images of this divine celebration. 

Like that great glass window in Coventry, John’s Revelation is the light through which we come to view all our ruined history. Assured that beyond the destruction of whatever present darkness we may be struggling with there is light, and life, and healing.