The Apocalypse of St. John the Divine is the course reading for the second lesson through all the Sunday’s of the Easter season. The text is an unfolding vision given to John the seer in worship on the Lord’s Day (Sunday) while exiled for his faith to Patmos, an island off the western coast of Asia Minor, Turkey today. Images from this vision have been the subject of Christian art for centuries. Portions of the text are familiar in our Sunday liturgy. Still much of the Apocalypse, or Book of Revelation to John, is loved and mined for its particularly vivid language to support one’s theological bent, or avoided for fear of association with “that radical” group of believers.

            Sadly it is seldom remembered that the Apocalypse is a single vision given during worship to St. John to disclose God’s grand purpose. Like all writing, it had a special and clear meaning to its readers at the time it was first distributed, a meaning that became less distinct over time but is still powerful in its ability to stir the imagination and strengthen the resolve of God’s people. Since the revelation came during worship it has particular in the context of worship where it was regularly read. It is not an added nicety that the vision came to John during worship, for it is a product of worship. It does not just use liturgical elements for dramatic effect; the worship of the earthly Christian community matched that of the heavenly order from which it was derived. The liturgical structure familiar to us is quite apparent. It opens with a ministry of the word in which correspondence between Christians is read along with the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ, followed by an exposition of that story intended to encourage believers intermingled with the prayers of the saints. It culminates in the sacred banquet in which all God’s people join in communion.

            In times of social our cultural anxiety people often turn to the Revelation to John seeking new information about how God’s grand purpose is to unfold. But there is nothing particularly new here. Rather like a dream it relies on images and information already in the minds of the people of the Bible. Its very familiarity was a strengthening tonic in difficult times, just as our weekly worship provides to us.

            I’ve mentioned the beginning of the vision. These past Sundays’ readings from the Apocalypse have drawn us as one people, the living and the dead, into worship within the realm of heaven, giving praise to Almighty God and to his Son, Jesus, the Lamb of God sacrificed and glorified. Today we’re transported to the end of the vision. This is not to avoid the struggles and persecution of God’s people and the judgment on those who live in the world as though this is all there is so “grab all the gusto you can get.” Rather it is to declare God’s final word.

            God speaks, not through an intermediary, but now directly to John the seer, that all things are being made new. This is the Easter message founded in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It echoes God’s prophecy through his servant Isaiah, Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?....I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise (Isa 43:18-21). Those words encouraged exiles in Babylon five centuries before Christ. They had been oppressed and enslaved by foreign invaders. They were deprived of homeland, culture, freedom to worship. But the day was coming soon when all that would be reversed and their lives restored.

The apostle Paul picked up the theme in reference to those who committed their lives to the way of Jesus. He says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come (2 Cor 5:18). The newness is a cosmic thing. For Paul life in Christ resulted in a totally new person and a new worldview in the midst of an all too unchanged landscape of public life. As one author puts it, “Easter is God’s great remembering. Told right, it is the story that does not invalidate all those threatening stories, but that does assure us that no enemy, not even death, is stronger than our God.”[1]

            The vision given to John is for the entire community for Jesus came to redeem all people. So in describing God’s final word the faithful on both sides of death are united. In the beginning when God created the world and its inhabitants all was good, good and very good. Sin corrupted that work, but God was always restoring the intended purpose. Now as a new heaven and earth are evoked, a restored Jerusalem is the emblem of a dwelling for God’s holy ones. But it is no normal city as we see in today’s reading and over the next two Sundays. John takes a second look. The New Jerusalem is a bride prepared to meet her husband. God declares, See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his people and God himself will be with them (Rev 21:3). Barbara Rossing says, “Contrary to popular apocalyptic thinking, there is no “rapture” or a future snatching of Christians from the earth in Revelation. Instead, God is “raptured” down to earth to take up residence among us. Revelation declares God’s commitment to the earth as the location of salvation.”[2]

This is everything Jerusalem of old was supposed to be, and that the Holy of Holies in the temple symbolized. But the temple had been destroyed twice and not rebuilt again in John’s day. What a glorious promise that God’s presence no longer depended on a building, but on a personal relationship, one as intimate and enduring as the love of husband and wife. The relationship in the Garden of Eden, broken by sin, is restored at God’s initiative. The seal of God’s mercy and loving-kindness is affixed for all eternity. Gone is fear and suffering.  Sorrow and tears are wiped away. Death is no more and with it all forms of separation are banished. (Rev 21:4) A drink from the spring of the water of life (Rev 21:6) is offered as confirmation of God’s sustaining grace and in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. It is the very life-giving water Jesus promised the woman at Jacob’s well in Samaria (Jn 4:10). It is done!

            This marvelous passage from the Apocalypse is enhanced, if that is possible, this morning by the story from the Book of Acts in which Peter learns what it means for Israel to be a light to the nations. That light was not the Olympic torch signaling the sports competition of selected athletes, but rather the light of God available to all in Jesus who illumines the path of each person serving God in daily life. Peter’s vision drew him to see God doing a new thing. The former food restrictions that separated Jews from Gentiles were to divide God’s people no longer. Peter discerned even more, If then God gave [Gentiles] the same gift [of the Holy Spirit] that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?(Acts 11:17) A new day had dawned and a wider horizon for the mission of Christ had been declared.

            In John’s gospel, at Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, the culminating act of fellowship he shared with them, Jesus is glorified because his ministry of obedience to his Father’s will is fulfilled. Here the depth of purpose of communion is revealed. Hardly one of the disciples understood all that Jesus conveyed to them throughout his ministry in teaching, healing, his miracles, his training in prayer and service. Yet in John’s gospel Jesus washed the feet of every disciple in the room, even Judas who would betray him. He taught his followers to pray for their enemies and do good to those who would abuse and misuse them. His example became the standard and a sacrament for his disciples; an outward sign of whose they are. Following him they would glorify God, loving others as he loved. Following Jesus’ example they would demonstrate the ways of God to a broken world and be effective agents in changing that world.

            The old phrase that Christians are in the world but not of the world may seem trite. For we look around and wonder whether human nature has advanced much. But for all the brokenness that pervades any human institution, we must still admit that we endeavor to talk through problems rather than wage war indiscriminately. At considerable sacrifice and expense people have created hospitals for the physically and mentally ill, orphanages and schools, advanced research to cure diseases, striven to improve water and air quality, and controlled the unrestricted harvest of the resources on land and in the oceans God meant for all.

            With the resurrection of Jesus the new day of God dawned. We are not perfect yet, nor are we individually and collectively the same as we were. That is because God’s Holy Spirit is at work in [us], both to will and to work for [God’s] good pleasure (Phil 2:13). May we take comfort and strength from the promise that God is doing a new thing in our midst, and that our lives find their fulfillment in Christ whose intimate love holds us dearly.   Following his example of service for others we discover ourselves and glorify God. Therein John’s vision in Revelation is completed.