While I don't usually have a particularly high opinion of recycled matter being posted to blogs, I've decided to include here the sermon I preached on Revelation a few weeks back. I hope you enjoy it. It recieved a good response from my parish, but I am interested to hear how a wider audience takes it...

I saw Jesus the other day. Or rather - I heard him. It wasn’t anything my senses could perceive, or that those around me could witness. I guess I should explain...

I was seated Wednesday night, a week and a half ago, at the circulation desk of the seminary’s library, mundanely filing books on the shelving cart in precise decimal point order. My co-worker Monica and I were anxiously awaiting the closing hour, when we could tear people away from their exhaustive study of incomprehensible Greek manuscripts, and cast them out into the scholastic wilderness until morning. The night was black; the day was long; I was tired. I felt a slight buzzing in the back pocket of my trousers and was startled out of my rote analysis of book bindings and plasticized labels. There was a note on my cell phone, letting me know that I had missed a call, and that I had a message waiting for me. I caught Monica’s eye, let her know what I was up to, and dashed out into the cold for a short bit to discover what secret was waiting for me to dial it up.

Standing there, on the steps of the Ernest Miller White Library, I punched star - eight - six into my keypad and heard the voice of my dear Aunt Nancy wishing me a "Happy Easter." In her dulcet tones rang a note of healing, a note of recognition, a note of joyful triumph. In that 30 second message, I heard the voice of Jesus because I experienced the power of hope, resurrection, and wholeness that is promised in the Book of Revelation. I could sense the second coming.

Now, healing, resurrection, and wholeness have not always been the images associated with the Book of Revelation, or with Christ’s second coming. Sadly, this particular portion of Scripture has been abused and twisted to instill a thirst for destruction in the practitioners of Christianity. Eschatology, or the study of the end-times, has been misused to further an agenda of death within Christian discussions of what-is-to-come. However, over the course of the Revelation, we see (just as in the resurrection) that destruction does not have the final word.

In order to understand our passage this morning, we need to understand a bit more about the genre in which it was written. The Revelation to John is an apocalypse. You all have probably heard this term banty-ed about in pop culture. Originating as a genre of Ancient Mid-Eastern literature, it has come to popularly encompass any work of art or expression that demonstrates a dooms-day like vision of the future of humanity. It has been applied to warnings of nuclear holocaust, big-budget blockbusters like "Waterworld," and other strange and fearful images that can dominate our ideas of what may be on the horizon.

In it’s original context, an Apocalypse was a piece of literature, written by powerless minority populations, that used fantastic and mythical imagery to give voice to a sense of discontent and oppression within it’s contemporary context. A series of violent and gruesome scenes eventually cede to a vision of God’s triumph within history and the creation of a new, harmonious society. The voice is set in the recent past, so that concurrent readers can associate the "things predicted" with events that have already occurred. Apocalypses use a lot of highly symbolic, dream-like imagery to villain-ize those who are in power at the time, provide emotional support to the oppressed communities that create them, and speak to the importance of
hope in the face of adversity. They were documents created to sustain communities who felt that their very existence was endangered by outside authorities.

Revelation finds itself well within this apocalyptic tradition. Our passage this morning is from its introduction. John begins in with the standard greeting "Grace and Peace to you," which he credits as coming from God, Jesus, and "the seven spirits." As seven was a number denoting wholeness, the "seven spirits" are probably included to represent all those credited as being already with God. He then continues to proclaim God’s dominion over the earth and all it’s rulers, and declaring that upon Jesus Christ’s visible return, everyone will recognize him in his glory and will mourn over the damage they have done to Christ. This section then concludes with the statement that God is the "Alpha and Omega" - the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, representing fullness and completeness. By stating "I am the Alpha and the Omega," God is stating that all that is finds both its beginning and its end in God. Ultimate authority and power lie with the divine..

It is at this point that the visions begin to take on traditional apocalyptic format. John is called to by Jesus, taken up to the sky, and given messages for seven of the churches in Turkey (again, seven representing that the church in its entirety is being addressed), and after castigating the churches for their weaknesses and celebrating them for their strengths, John is ushered into another region of heaven where he witnesses Jesus, imaged as a Lamb, taking the throne in heaven. Scrolls are presented and opened, and with them, carnage is ravaged upon the earth. A series of surreal images of destruction follow, including blazing stars, giant locust/scorpion hybrids, angels wielding sickles, and all manner of near-hallucinatory plagues ravage the planet. The world we love, and the homeland of the writer John, is desecrated beyond recognition.

In doing so, the writer is providing a vivid description of the havoc we wreak upon ourselves. Metaphorical, fantastic language is used to elucidate the disease, warfare, and pestilence that results from our abuse of each other and the world. Indeed, it is the powerful and the dominant, those most guilty of this abuse, who are most afflicted by the nightmarish turns of events recounted throughout Revelation. Those who are faithful, the weak and powerless, are affected as well, but the church is portrayed as having the strength to maintain itself and it’s belief even as those who have grasped power in the world spectrum are brought down by the events that occur. The church is able to survive, and grow, even as the world around it falls to its knees.

It is this section of the Revelation narrative that has fed the thirst for destruction among some of it’s interpreters. There is a school of thought that disregards the nature of Revelation as a metaphorical narrative to support the oppressed, and instead sees it as a calendar of events to be fulfilled in the future. You may have run across their theories in one of the "Left Behind" novels or the movies based off of them. Because they have invented a concept of "the Rapture," in which those who already believe are taken from the earth before the events of Revelation occur, these thinkers emphasize the destruction of revelation as a meet reward for those that ignored the Christian truth. They celebrate the desecration of their own environment as just retribution for a world in transgression. This is a reading filled with vengeance, which ignores the message that lies central to Revelation, a message of hope in the midst of turmoil

It is in the last two chapters of this disturbing vision that we find the return of Jesus Christ to the earth itself, as predicted in our passage from the first chapter. With Jesus’ arrival, a new heaven and a new earth are ushered in, and we are given a vision of Christ’s dominion which was declared in the opening verses.

This New Jerusalem is said to need no sun nor moon, because it shines so bright that the nations will walk by its light. There is a constantly flowing river of life, which feeds a tree whose fruit is "for the healing of nations." That which had been destroyed and ravaged by the plagues in earlier chapters has been restored and healed into something unimaginable before. The very earth itself is formed into a land defined by its ability to bind up the wounds of others. Healing, wholeness, and resurrection have become a vivid reality. What a glorious vision for the world! What a fantastic celebration of Jesus Christ’s work of reformation!

I’ve got some news for you my friends. This second coming has already happened. We celebrated it a few weeks ago. The power of the resurrection is in its ability to show that death and destruction do not conquer all. Revelation shows us that, although we may see vividly the ravages caused by the worldly powers condemned through the book, these powers and their abuses are not the end. Rather, we must recognize the New Jerusalem in our midst. We must see how Christ has, is healing our society. We must deny our defeat by destruction, and rather recognizes that wholeness is right here. Such a vision may be difficult to see sometimes, but it is real if we live into it.

Let me return to the story of my aunt, who called with that Easter message, that message which rang to me of the New Jerusalem.

It would be inaccurate to say that my Aunt Nancy and I had a strained relationship - rather, until this time last month, we had no relationship at all. My father’s older sister, Nancy moved to New Mexico when I was in fourth grade, and I had seen her once since then 10 years ago. About a week and a half into March, I found myself with a free day in the midst of a committee meeting in Santa Fe. I called her, she drove up from Albuquerque, and we spent the day together, becoming acquainted with each other for the first time in my adulthood. She spoke of the silence within her and my father’s birth family, which had spurred our own lack of communication. She showed how she had fallen victim to the destructive cycles that dominated her relationship with my family. However, she ended the conversation - "We need to stay in closer contact. 10 years - 2 years - is too long. From now on, we must change and act like the family we are." In that moment, my aunt embraced that resurrection and wholeness that came Easter morning and is illuminating the world we live in. She negated the power of corruption and desecration, and instead embrace our ability to live as transformed people.

Indeed, I don't need to go to New Mexico to see the New Jerusalem. I see it every Sunday morning. I see the city descending when those who have been cut out of the church refuse to give up their faith, and still worship the God they know. When I join my pew-mates on vigils for peace or immigrant rights, I taste of the tree whose fruit is "for the healing of all nations." When I drink the wine of communion which restores our community, I am guzzling down the water of the River of Life. I experience the second coming on a regular basis.

May we all discern, as well, ways in which we can recognize and realize the New Jerusalem.
Thanks be to God.