Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood 6 and made us a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Revelation 1:4b-8
Look! He is coming with the clouds;
every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him,
and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.
So it is to be. Amen.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
My sermon from Christ the King Sunday (November 24, 2024) on Revelation 1:4b-8.
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So in my house there’s a large closet full of games. Some of the games are fairly simple with little cards covered in dinosaurs we’re supposed to match. Others are a bit more complex, inviting us to be like squirrels gathering acorns before winter or acting as owls trying to get home before the sun finally rises. Every game comes with its own rules that aren’t always easy to learn but help make the whole experience more fun. And what these rules do is provide a sense of order that allows the rest of the game to flow. Most of us, when it comes to games, try to hop, jump, skip, and scheme our way into a position to win. But when we try to jump into the middle of what’s going on, we sometimes end up surrounded by folks who have hotels on all their properties in Monopoly. Learning and living into the order that makes the game work is a skill we need to continually work on. And we often see this kind of order show up in other areas of our lives. Paying attention to the beginning, the messy middle, and the end we long to win provides a way to shape our relationships, experiences, hopes, dreams, and fears. It helps to ground us through all those parts of the game of life that can be confusing, harsh, fun, and sad. Knowing this order and holding to this order can provide a sense of comfort when we’re worried about what the future might bring. This order provides stability for the ways we navigate through life which is why it’s kind of interesting that in our reading today from the book of Revelation, the order that shapes our lives is interrupted by the One who put everything in that order in the first place.
Now the book of Revelation has, for almost two thousand years, captured the minds of Christians since it seems to describe the order the future will follow. It’s a book full of fantastic creatures, terrible wars, and the hope for new life. Some have tried to discover what that order might be as a way to learn when Jesus will finally return to make God’s kingdom real in our world. Yet whenever they identify a certain leader or war or a disaster that fits the order for the end of the world, life keeps marching on. I have, in the past, described Revelation as a kind of graphic novel using words to paint pictures that cycle and spiral through, and around, each other. These pictures weren’t only meant for those living when the end comes near. They were also crafted, and shared, to seven specific Christian communities that once existed in modern-day Turkey. John of Patmos was a Christian who was exiled to a small island in the Mediterranean Sea around the year 100 or so. While there, he received a vision full of angels, throne rooms, mythical beasts, and God. The communities John was told to share this vision with were all experiencing their own kinds of challenges. Some were being actively persecuted for the faith they proclaimed while others were so rich, comfortable, and complacent that they allowed those around them to define what it meant to be faithful and true. Revelation was meant to be a disordered story that could reoriented our own story towards the One who has claimed us as His own. And so, the vision John received to do this, began by reminding us who our God is. Now, in the ancient world, there was a standard formula used when describing the divine. It was embodied by the author Pausanias who described the head of the pantheon of the Ancient Greeks as “Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus will be.” This pattern fits the order of life we’re familiar with since we each have a past, a present, and a future filled with all kinds of longings and hope. If we wanted to describe something that broke through the boundaries of time, using this kind of formula makes sense. But when God first showed up in John’s vision, the description moved in a slightly different way. What defined God wasn’t that God existed through all the order that shapes our life. Rather, the first – and defining characteristic of this God – is that God is active, right now. God is present. God shows up. And it’s because God jumps into the middle of the game while we’re already playing it that ends up shaping our past, our future, and our entire world.
How God does this is reflected in who John knew Jesus to be. Rather than first identifying Jesus as the Son of God or the Messiah or the One who was there when the universe was made; John’s first words about Jesus were rooted in what he had done. Jesus is a faithful witness and to be a faithful witness meant Jesus had to do all kinds of living. Jesus wasn’t simply some divine being living far away that we had to do all kinds of things to get his attention. Jesus is, instead, someone who lived; who listened; who served; and whose entire ministry can be summed up in the phrase: “Repent! For the kingdom of God has come near.” It’s this Jesus who, as we’ll hear in just a few weeks, chose to be born; chose to be cared for; and chose to know how fragile life truly is. It’s this Jesus who learned how to have friends; who went to synagogue; who lived in a community; and who knew what it was like to be loved, valued, rejected, and left on his own. And when all the world’s might, strength, and grandeur confronted Jesus since it assumed having power over others was all that mattered, Jesus loved them to, and through, the end. When God chose to enter into the game we call life, Jesus didn’t show up at the beginning or the end. Rather, Jesus showed up in the middle because God doesn’t let us play on our own. Through his life, his words, and his ongoing presence with us in baptism, in prayer, at the His table, and those times when we suddenly realize that something else is with us too – we are transformed into something more. The order we assume we’re supposed to follow – or break on our behalf – so we chase after all the power, wealth, violence, sin, and stuff that builds chasms between us and our neighbor isn’t the only way life needs to be lived. Instead, we can pay attention to the new way of being – rooted in mercy, forgiveness, and hope that Jesus brings into our being. That doesn’t mean life will always be easy or that we won’t have moments when pain, suffering, and sorrow remind us how fragile life can be. Yet the God who was there when the universe was made and who will be there long after its over, is the same God who is with you right now. And during those days when it feels like we are destined to lose every game we are currently in, remember that your beginning and your tomorrow is with the One who is and was and will always be – for you no matter what comes next.
Amen.