Sun, May 19, 2019 Epiphany, Spartanburg
Easter 5 05/20/2019: Epiphany Spartanburg
Opening
Not very often in my ministry have I paid special attention to the last book of the Bible, the Revelation to John – or using the Greek term of the title the Apocalypse of John.
I have shied away from preaching on the text in part because apocalyptic is not well understood by many and by many it is misunderstood. I end up saying something about apocalyptic when Advent arrives because one of the characteristics of apocalyptic is end times and end times is a theme during the season of Advent. It is the end of the year. Christmas marks a new beginning and so on.
But there are a number of other typical characteristics about apocalyptic. One of them is the use of fantastic, colorful, imaginative imagery. It’s not bland and is more like the kind of thing going on in amusement parks than in museums.
The Revelation to John is, then, a little like an amusement park themed conclusion to the Bible. It’s really great when you know what you’re getting into.
Revelation to John
Some years ago, at the encouragement of a Bible Study group at my church in Honolulu, I set about trying to teach about the book for a month or two.
I read several books and commentaries. I worked through some workbooks that were available at the local religious book store. I learned a lot. But I was most struck by one thing in particular. The book of Revelation can be best understood as an elaborate, colorful, description of a worship scene set in the sanctuary where God himself sits. (In heaven?).
Examples of worship in the book
There are sounds – the sounds of choirs of angels singing anthems. We’ve heard several of them during these past few weeks as we have had readings from Revelation.
The Book of Common Prayer includes some of them in its prescription for the Episcopal Church:
- A Song to the Lamb Dignus es
Revelation 4:11, 5:9-10, 13
Splendor and honor and kingly power *
are yours by right, O Lord our God,
For you created everything that is, *
and by your will they were created and have their being;
…
And so, to him who sits upon the throne, *
and to Christ the Lamb,
Be worship and praise, dominion and splendor, *
for ever and for evermore.
Then, after the singing, there is a description of the sanctuary. It begins:
- Ch. 5 Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. 2 And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” 3 But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. 4 I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. 5 Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” …
- The voices sing again in chapter 7, 15, and 19. And then we get the final scene of this spectacular, cosmic, worship service, before the closing. 1 the text from today’s Eucharist. We hear "He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’”
I am making everything new.
They will know we are Christians by our love, …
What do we mean by these words, “making everything new.” I think we’re not meant to think of it the same way we might say, e.g., “my parents got me a new dress for Easter!”
Have you looked into the eyes of someone who was utterly and totally in love? They see everything around them with new eyes. The whole world is new for them – is it not? And together those two lovers are out to discover the new and wonderful world that has opened up before them. I think John is talking about something more like that. Jesus opened the eyes of the blind so that people could see the world with new eyes – make it new.
The other day I was made aware of a little boy who was able to see the world with new eyes and in the course of it he made the world new. His name was Matthew Joseph Thaddeus Stepanek. His mother’s name is Jeni Stepanek.
Her son was a celebrity, the little boy poet with the devastating rare disease who earned a following around the world. Fighting that same illness—and now, a constellation of other afflictions—the Rockville resident looks back on what a brief but wondrous thing it was to be Mattie Stepanek’s mom.
[he] bled from his fingertips when he wrote. And he was writing a lot at the end of his life, when he was one of the most famous boys in the world.
The world he lived in was an unbelievable sad world. He, his mother, and his 3 sibliings all suffered from the same rare disorder, dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy, a condition similar to muscular dystrophy. He had “published seven best-selling books of poetry and peace essays. Before his death (at the age of 13) he had become known as a peace advocate and motivational speaker.”
Jimmy Carter who delivered the eulogy at Mattie’s funeral said of him, that he was “the most extraordinary person whom I have ever known”.
Mattie Stepanek made the world a new place. He took the lemons he had been dealt and he made the most extraordinary lemonade.
Julian of Norwich was a woman who lived some 600 years ago. She made the world new by the way she looked at it. The world she lived in was decimated by the black plague.
*Little is known of this extraordinary Englishwoman apart from what she recorded in the account of her mystical revelations. *There she recorded how she had prayed in her youth that she might be granted three graces: recollection of Christ’s passion; bodily sickness; and the spirit of contrition, compassion, and longing for God. At thirty her prayer was answered when she fell grievously ill. While gazing on a crucifix she experienced sixteen revelations concerning Christ’s passion, after which her sickness left her.
In these revelations she vividly experienced Christ’s passion. Though his sufferings were terrible, she perceived that they revealed the depth of God’s intimate love for humanity. This vision yielded further reflections on a range of issues, including the value of creation, the power of atonement, and the impotence of evil. Though creation amounted to no more than a hazelnut in the hand of God, its value was measured by the price God paid for it in blood. And in the end God’s suffering became our joy with the realization that we are “soul and body, clad and enclosed in the goodness of God.”
Perhaps the most famous quote from those Revelations of hers is: “All shall be well. And all manner of thing shall be well.”
Closing
Jesus’s command to his followers was to love one another. I think what he meant by those words was something like what these followers did when they made their world new. They looked and saw with new eyes. That is a profound gift we can give to one another. And it is enough to transform the world, to make it new.
Jesus commands his followers to love one another. Our reading from the last book in the Bible suggests to us that the Gospel – the Good News – of this command is that we are to “make all things new.”
This means that though there may be decline and chaos, nevertheless we are about the business of making all things new – so that what we see is a new heaven and a new earth.
It’s not a pipe dream. It’s very real if we have eyes to see.
Flipping what we see, looking at the abundance rather than the scarcity. As an example, let me close with one of Mattie’s poems:
When I Die (Part II)
When I die, I want to be
A child in Heaven.
I want to be
A ten-year-old cherub.
I want to be
A hero in Heaven,
And a peacemaker,
Just like my goal on earth.
I will ask God if I can
Help the people in purgatory.
I will help them think,
About their life,
About their spirits,
About their future.
I will help them
Hear their own Heartsongs again,
So they can finally
See the face of God,
So soon.
When I die,
I want to be,
Just like I want to be
Here on earth.
Notes
The Fifth Sunday of Easter Color: White Assigned Readings Lesson 1: Acts 11:1-18 Psalm: 148 Lesson 2: Revelation 21:1-6 Gospel: John 13:31-35
Themes:
- The way, the truth, and the life
- Peter and his vision, salvation to gentiles
- Revelation: vision of a new heaven and a new earth … making all things new
- John: … Judas had gone … I give you a new commandment, love one another
Revelation 5 records John’s vision in heaven just before the Lamb opens the scroll containing the seven seals of judgment to be poured out upon the earth. Revelation 19:1-6 comes after these judgments, before the return of Christ to the earth to wage war against His enemies (last week’s passage.) It opens with the praise of God for condemning the “great prostitute,” Babylon, which was seen in Revelation 18. Babylon historically is thought to be the empire of Rome. In the future Babylon is believed to be the world system in rebellion against God. bible.org ↩︎
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