The End of the Engagement--November 29, 2024

The End of the Engagement--November 29, 2024

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

‘See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away.’

And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life." [Revelation 21:1-6]

This is what God's victory looks like, after all.

For all the ways folks get worked up about fears of "the end of the world," when the Bible actually gets around to describing God's endgame with history, it describes something utterly beautiful, hopeful, and good.  And beyond that, it is an "ending" only in the sense that a wedding ceremony is the ending of an engagement and the beginning of a marriage.  So it is true to say that this is a glimpse of what it looks like when God "wins" at last--but perhaps what God "wins" is not ultimately a battle on a field somewhere strewn with dead opponents, but us.  God wins our hearts, like it is the culmination of a long-pursued romance, outlasting every other would-be suitor who had been vying for our attentions.  That's how God wins, in the end--with a relentless love that makes all things new.

It's that line from the Julie Miller song, isn't it?  "The only thing that doesn't change makes everything else rearrange--is the speed of light... is the speed of light... Your love for me must be the speed of light."  I've always loved that description of genuine love--the way she sings about it as both unchanging and yet making everything else different.  At first it sounds like a contradiction, doesn't it?  We expect that something that "doesn't change" should only feel worn, familiar, and maybe even old.  But love isn't like that--it makes a whole new creation.  It "makes everything else rearrange."  I don't know how else you can put it other than the way John of Patmos does here in Revelation: the God who loves creation relentlessly makes a whole new heaven and a whole new earth, in which at last Lover and Beloved are united for good.  And so it only makes sense that John the Seer describes the city of God's people "coming down out of heaven... like a bride adorned for her husband." It's an ending, alright, like the end of a betrothal that becomes the beginning of married life.  Like so many of the things we call endings in this life, it turns out to be the start of something new.  This is how our story goes.  In fact, to take the Bible seriously means that this is how the whole universe's story goes.

I wonder if we've been putting our focus in the wrong place, we Respectable Religious Folks.  All too often, we're the voices telling people to be afraid of Jesus coming again, or warning that God's ultimate goal is zapping a certain quota of people in the name of divine "justice" and "victory."  I have lost count of how many sermons and religious presentations I have heard in my lifetime that boiled down to scaring people about a god (I can't use the capital G for this, I confess!) who was eager to lob people into hell and selling Jesus merely as a sort of end-of-the-world after-life-insurance to avoid the fire and brimstone.  But when we actually let these images from the end of the book of Revelation speak to us on their own terms, we find that this is--and always has been--a love story.  In fact, it's been THE Love Story to end all love stories, and it's always been about a love that makes us into new creatures even as God has loved us precisely as we are all along.

If that's really where the world's story is heading, then my goodness it makes a difference in my life right now, doesn't it?  Instead of being constantly goaded by fear  of being deemed unworthy (and with it, the self-appointed need to judge everybody else as somehow not as good as me), John summons us to see ourselves as the Beloved of God. Instead of being perpetually provoked to make our own lists of those we don't think are acceptable and those who we think God should let into the heavenly country club, John reframes our vision to see God coming "down" to dwell with us and with all "peoples" (as in, many people groups, nationalities, cultures, and languages).  Instead of seeing the world's history as an endless battle between "us" and "them" (whom we also want to label "good" and "evil," respectively), the writer of Revelation tells us our story as a divine romantic comedy, where at the last we have been won over, and God's goodness has gotten through to our guarded, scarred, and stony hearts.

That's the victory we've been celebrating.  That's the future we are promised.  That's the Good News worth telling to someone else.

Lord Jesus, remind us of our place in your great love story, and let that be the news we share with people around us today.