“Come, Lord Jesus”

The Reverend Victoria Millar

Covenant Presbyterian Church, Racine, WI

Sunday, May 16, 2010

The last words of the last book of the New Testament.

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

12 Jesus said:  ‘See, I am coming soon;

my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work.

13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.’

14 Blessed are those who wash their robes,

so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates.

16 ‘It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches.

I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.’

17The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’

And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’

And let everyone who is thirsty come.

Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

20 The one who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Last week’s New York Times Magazine had an article called “The Moral Life of Babies,”

about Yale University psychologists who study the capacities and inclinations of infants.

From that article: 

“[Tracing back to] Sigmund Freud, psychologists have long argued that we begin life as amoral animals.

  One important task of society, particularly of parents, is to turn babies into civilized beings —

 social creatures who can experience empathy, guilt and shame;

who can override selfish impulses in the name of higher principles;

and who will respond with outrage to unfairness and injustice…

[However] a growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense

from the very start of life.

With the help of well-designed experiments,

 you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling

even in the first year of life.

Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone...

 Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands.

            The boy had just seen a [three] puppet show.

in which puppet #1 played with a ball…

 sliding the ball to puppet #2 who would pass it back.

But each time puppet #1 slid the ball to the third puppet,

puppet #3 would run away with it.

[In other words, #3 was the jerk puppet.]

The puppets were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler.

   Each was placed next to a pile of treats.

       At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet.

Like most children in this situation, the boy took [the treat] from the pile of the “naughty” one.

                But this punishment wasn’t enough — he then leaned over and smacked the jerk puppet in the head.”

That was the word the researcher used:  smacked.  It must be a technical term.

The more I think about it, the more I like the word “smack.”

   It strikes me J that smacking isn’t random--it’s provoked, it tried restraint but failed, it thinks it’s justified.

And today’s text, the last words from the Book of Revelation,

is the end of a book heavy on violence in response to injustice.

But it is an example of a literary form which always has a smack.

 Like the book of Romans was Paul’s letter to the church at Rome,

   so the book of Revelation is also a letter from an exiled leader named John to not one but seven churches.

              But there the similarity ends.

                 In Revelation, John describes a dream-like vision received/revealed from God.

                      Dreams and visions are often bizarre and this one does not disappoint including

                           angels, demons, plagues, wars, martyrs in white robes and dragons.               

Even if you’ve never read Revelation, several common images and phrases are borrowed from it such as:

§  666 as the mark of the beast[1]

§  the grapes of wrath[2]

§  the four horsemen of the apocalypse, (three are war, famine and death[3]), and

§  Armageddon as the ultimate battle between good and evil.[4]

But Revelation is not as unique as it seems.

    In the same way that Aesop’s fables have a style featuring talking animals and a moral at the end,

       Revelation is but one example of an ancient Jewish style of writing that lasted about 200 years.[5]

That style, called apocalyptic writing, divides time into two ages--the present evil age

and the age to come when God alone will reign. 

    This style of writing often features angels, demons, monsters, wars, famines

and enormous suffering.

      Nature also is in distress like the sun and moon darkened and stars falling.[6]

                                    When the world cannot get worse, God intervenes and heaven comes to earth.

This is the shape of Revelation and many other apocalyptic writings[7]

            all of which encourage the faithful to endure.

For centuries, literalist Christians have interpreted Revelation’s images, symbols and codes

to predict their own end times.

But the Presbyterian way to read this book

is to insist that the bizarre images were intended to make sense to John’s community, not ours.

               For us, this book is not a code to predict modern atrocities or God’s coming victory.

                Instead scholars find this type of surreal writing emerged from faith communities

undergoing periods of pain and terror.

The book of Revelation likely coincides with the Roman empire’s

slaughter of Christians who refused to worship the emperor.[8]

In John’s day, Christians were easy scapegoats because the Romans considered them suspicious and disloyal.

     From the Roman historian Tacitus:

“Emperor Nero falsely accused and executed…

those people called Christians…

first those were seized who admitted their faith,

and then, using the information they provided,

a vast multitude were convicted,

not so much for the crime of burning the city,

but for hatred of the human race.

          And perishing they were additionally made into sports:

they were killed by dogs by having the hides of beasts attached to them,

or they were nailed to crosses or set aflame,

and, when the daylight passed away, they were used as nighttime torches.”[9]

No wonder then that John’s vision/dream reflects the anguish of his people.

Revelation Chapter 17 is this nightmarish scene and this interpretation:

A bejeweled and drunken woman with the name “Babylon” written on her forehead.

        personifies Rome.

                        She rides a scarlet beast, the image for Satan or evil.

                                    She lifts a golden cup

 from which she drinks the blood of the saints and witnesses to Christ.[10]            

And if you are wondering why this book is worth considering, worth keeping,

            it’s because it also has beautiful and sweeping descriptions of God’s power

                        an imagination, albeit surreal, that we often lack.

Revelation moves between scenes of conflict on earth and majesty in heaven.

Chapter 7 is one of Revelation’s six worship scenes in heaven.

And in this scene, a great assembly too numerous to count robed in white holding victory palms

stand before the throne of God and the Lamb crying:

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb.”

And the angels and all the court of heaven fall down before God singing:

“Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor

  and power and might be to our God for ever and ever.  Amen.”

The white robed ones…“have come out of the great ordeal;

they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”—

            (an interesting conundrum, white in the blood).

John writes.

  “Then I looked,

and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne

and creatures like seraphim

             and the elders;

countless thousands,

singing with full voice.”

Then John heard all nature join in

every creature on earth below, and under the earth and in the sea, singing:

‘To God, seated on the throne

and to the Lamb

be blessing and honor and glory and might

for ever and ever!’

And the four seraphim said, ‘Amen!’

And the elders fell down and worshipped.

It is the ultimate crescendo of praise, cascading from heaven to earth and returning to heaven. 

The Lamb shares what belongs to God—blessing, honor, glory and power.[11]

And this picture was radical, insisting this is the true Lord and the true throne,

surpassing in every way the Roman emperor's claim to be divine,

the emperor who surrounded himself with crowds who literally sang his praises.

This picture was subversive, insisting the Roman force would fail against this God so great.

And so today’s text is the last words from The Book of Revelation,

           after Jesus on a white horse with the armies of heaven smacks Satan and his armies[12]

after the new Jerusalem comes down from heaven

   and the river of the water of life flows from the throne of God and the Lamb, bright as crystal,

                    after the tree of life bears leaves for the healing of the nations,

                        after the people worship God and the Lamb and his name is on their foreheads,

                            and there is no more night, no light of lamp or sun

                                because the Lord their God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever.

Then today’s words, outside of the story, the epilogue, John writing to his people in their present suffering

words of comfort and promise from Jesus:

12 Jesus said:  ‘See, I am coming soon…

13 I am the Alpha and the Omega…

14 Blessed are those who wash their robes,

so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates.

16 ‘It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches.

I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.’

17The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’

And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’

And let everyone who is thirsty come.

Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

20 The one who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.

Thus, the whole Bible ends with this wild, complicated yet sacred book and the words “Come, Lord Jesus.”

Back to the New York Times Magazine and the “Moral Life of Babies.”

            The researchers conclude “babies possess certain moral foundations

— the capacity and willingness to judge the actions of others,  

            some sense of justice, gut responses to altruism and nastiness.”

Yet the “morality we start off with is primitive…and incomplete.”

I am fascinated with the baby studies about the start point of morality.

            But I’m even more interested in the end point. 

                        I’m even more interested in the question:  Do we make progress as a species?

                                    And I think we have to separate out different strands of what we call progress.

                                    Without question, we have made technological progress.

                                                You and I live in a gadget-filled paradise.

                                    The flow of communication and information is mind-boggling.

                                                We almost take scientific advances for granted.

                                                     Our educational opportunities are enormous.

If we graphed our progress as a species by information and technology,

it’s a steep curve.

But what if we consider emotional progress or call it a soul’s progress.

 It seems to me every child in every generation starts at square one.

Every child has to grapple with the issues of love, trust, belonging, individual identity, faith, empathy,

security, and fulfillment.

            Every child has to grapple with issues of honesty, greed, violence,

                     And it doesn’t seem to matter if the child could type on a keyboard at age 2.

                          It seems to take as much lifetime as we have.

Across our species, it feels like the graph would be close to a flat line. 

Generation after generation, we see wars and genocide and child abuse and third world dictators.

      We see addiction and corruption.

We see prisons expanding. 

How do we make progress?

As individuals we have ups and downs.

            As families and friends we have ups and downs.

                        As churches and nations we have ups and downs.

                                    What is the core, the center that keeps us strong and not regressing?

I used to visit the same group home once or twice a year.

       The easiest one to talk to there was a very outgoing resident named Patrick.

Patrick was in his forties and was energetic and chatty

and he functioned like someone much younger,

maybe grade school age.

Patrick was also a devout Christian and he liked to pray out loud.

And he would always pray for “Jesus coming again” very matter-of-factly.

            And I used to wince when he said that,

thinking Patrick had fallen into very conservative religious hands.

I think Patrick pictured Jesus as coming from the clouds, feet dangling or walking in the door

            and maybe Patrick will be right.

But if Patrick and I ever talked about this again,

            I’d say:  Jesus has come again in the Holy Spirit.

                        And maybe he’ll come again a third time or a 4^th or 5^th .

                                    Keep praying, Patrick.

The Spirit is the second coming, as surreal as that sounds.

            And I’ve rejoiced in the way Mary Steege’s Spirit-Led Life program

                        describes the Spirit with 8 C’s as the source of:

·        calm

·        clarity

·        compassion

·        connection

·        confidence

·        creativity

·        courage and

·        curiosity.

She says when we operate with those qualities, we can trust the Spirit is operating in us.

            This is our core, our center, in all the ups and downs, lifting our hearts.

                        With the Spirit, our souls will be fed by a bright stream

                                    and the darkness will not overcome us.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

   Come, Lord Jesus.   

            Hosanna in the highest.

                        Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.  Amen.