The Lesson                                                                          Revelation 21:1-6

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 and be their God; 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.

Sermon Text

 Ideally in life, we would always have stories with proper endings. There’s nothing worse than reading a book, and usually a nice long book, only to find out that it throws everything out at the very end. For many people, I was not one of them, there was a huge cultural moment when George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones series was turned into a television show. The series eventually reached a point where they went beyond where the books had been written. And when the ending finally came, all those eight years of fandom and success terminated in a series ending that everyone, almost universally, hated.

We were all almost always run into some story that does this to us. Mine was the sequel series of Star Wars. It started so promisingly with The Force Awakens, moving on to the apex, I think, of good Star Wars movies, which is The Last Jedi (I’ll fight you on it,) and then terminating with the movie that was made only to make people on Reddit happy… Diatribe aside, I think we are, as a species, worried that, at the end of the day, our own story is going to have an ending that is unsatisfying, an ending that ultimately doesn’t make the story work.

When we look at life, whether it’s our life or human history, a profoundly painful story unfolds. Hegel, a philosopher, once proposed that history is working towards an end. He narrativized history in saying that, as we keep moving and moving, there is an eventual and definite ending. As everything we do follows patterns, those patterns have to lead to a conclusion. Others like Marx would pick this up and propose definite endings to their history – whether that is in Proletariat Revolution or if that’s in the full freedom of humanity through some other means. But the thing about any of these stories that are told about our history is that they’re often stuck in the assumption that the patterns that currently exist will keep on going. That we will keep going down the drain until we finally hit the bottom.

We in the church proclaim something different because we believe that history was interrupted. When Jesus Christ was born, it was a disruption of history. Everything that was leading up to Christ being born is different than everything after Christ being born. In Christ the fullness of God entered into the physical world in a way that had never happened before. God, who we know is largely content to allow the world to spin by the laws of physics and all other things which God has ordained for it, suddenly interrupted it in the most startling way God could – by becoming a physical part of the story. When the author of a story puts themselves into the story, things have to change. You are no longer dealing with narrative, you are dealing with meta-narrative, a story that is commenting on itself and on the idea of the story at all. When Jesus came into this world, God was saying definitively that regardless of whatever rules there were physical or otherwise, God had a different plan for the world than the one the world had for itself.

In terms of physics, the world has only one ending. This universe will eventually run out of usable energy and when that usable energy ends we will experience something called “the heat death of the universe,” where nothing can happen. There can be no new creation, there cannot be anything, because all there is, is useless heat with no kinetic or chemical energy left. If we go over to a historical perspective, then the only thing that we have in front of us is a succession of national powers. One empire rising and another falling, until eventually one wins out or everyone is killed off. If you look at our history, I believe our extinction is a more likely consequence of our own action than the triumph of any one party. If we as human beings are allowed to keep acting the way we do, we will kill ourselves. We will destroy this planet and everyone. That is the culmination of humanity in their sinful existence ever since Cain killed Abel.

So, what does Christ coming in and offering something new to us achieve? We, of course, in this Easter season proclaim the fact that Christ has risen and in that resurrection has defeated death For those who choose to follow Christ, there is no end to life only its brief interruption, followed by the overwhelming joy of an eventual and bodily resurrection. But what does that resurrection mean in a cosmic sense? What can we understand about how this entire universe is changed by Christ redeeming it?

You see, when Christ took on human form, Christ did not just take on the fullness of humanity – although that was his primary work – Christ also definitely combined himself with the very matter of the universe. Christ was made of protons and neutrons and electrons, Christ was made of atoms and molecules, Christ was real and physical in every way that matters and therefore all of creation is redeemed through the work of Christ.

We can infer from this that matter itself is in some way resurrected through Christ. The eventual heat death of this universe is no longer our necessary end. Christ will make a world in which entropy does not exist, in which we as humans and, indeed, the universe itself do not have to see degradation as a necessary thing, Things will be allowed to exist in perpetuity. There won’t ever be a time where something cannot exist and exist in abundance.

As for our human history, we are told in a latter part of Revelation that the work of God is so complete that the Tree of Life, the thing that was forbidden to humanity in the garden of Eden because of our evil, will be freely available. We are told that the leaves that grow on that tree are for the healing of the nations, that the healing of all of the people of the world is complete in the work of God. We are no longer separated by where we were born, how we were born, or the conditions of our birth, but united in the work that God has done to bring us into the Kingdom which has begun by Christ.

Perhaps the most important thing for us in our day-to-day life (although I would say sociopolitical things are much more important in our current socioeconomic climate,) is that we are told that every tear will be wiped away and that there will be no sorrow in this world which Christ has created. Life is so overwhelming, and the course of human history so self-defeating, that it is no wonder that we feel like we have no hope. It is so easy to be hopeless, so easy to give in to the cynicism of the rest of the world. We find ourselves looking for politicians to save us, but they all of them disappoint. They all have to protect either their business interests or their personal interest or the continuation of the system itself, and the system will always hurt people, you can’t have a system that doesn’t.

We look to align ourselves with the most powerful parties, instead of trying to find a way that we can live together for the mutual good of each other. We have to find enemies and we have defined our allies, as we talked about last week, not by what we agree on but by who we disagree with. And most importantly, I think, is the reality in this world that always fails to deliver on good things, we will become despondent, depressed, and we begin to think maybe we should just give up.

The promise that we are given in Christ is that there is a proper ending. After all this hard work and after all the suffering we deal with, we are not going to be disappointed by what Jesus does with the end of time. We’re used to being disappointed, we’re used to being lied to, but Christ is the truth and so when we’re told that at the end of all things everything will be coming together perfectly we have to believe it. Yes, now it’s hard, and yes we need to do things to take care of ourselves – go to therapy, take your meds, talk to the folks around you about what’s going on in your heart, because you need to do that! And pray, pray, pray.

We do all of that and we put the work into making ourselves right on this side of eternity because we have the assurance that there is another side to eternity at all. This other side of eternity is much better than this one, in fact it is the perfect and proper ending to the chaos of this one.

We hold in our hands the most important truth there has ever been. Not just that God loves this universe, loves every person in it, but that God came to be a part of it. To fix it so that it could have an ending different than what it was writing for itself. There is hope for you and for me and for everything in this universe, we only have to participate in what God is doing and be willing to tell people that good news. Because the thing we’re trying to do, even as much as it is saving souls and redeeming sinners (of which we are all good company I’ll remind you,) is to bring hope to the hopeless.

In a world that is purely material, in which entropy will always create the least energetic outcome, there’s always going to be the heat death of the universe, the rise and fall of nations, and ultimately not a single source of hope. We people of God tell a different story, one that has the proper ending, let us share it and let us believe it. Things are not good now, they will get worse.  We can go through our entire life with things going wrong, but if you have faith in Christ and you seek to live in peace with one another, doing all your part to make sure this world is better than it is now… The next world is guaranteed, and it will be better. You, dear people of God, are blessed with the knowledge of God’s true story.  You can tell it. When you tell it make sure the ending is the right one. – Amen

The Gospel Lesson                                                                 John 10:22-30

At that time the Festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me, but you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, in regard to what he has given me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”         

Sermon Text

Every family, I believe, has some way to find each other in a crowd. My father has a very specific cough. I remember once I was at the state capital, for the Golden Horseshoe (humble brag,) and my mother and I could not find my dad and step-mom anywhere. Then, far away from us we hear that telltale cough, rising up across the crowd. We found him within the next five or so minutes. My mother has a very specific whistle, and when I hear it go, low and then very high, I know two things – I better hurry to where she is and exactly where she is.

Those little identifies, the things that mark us as connected. We do not have as many of them as we used to. We are a paranoid culture, we are less concerned with finding people we can relate to and more concerned with finding out if we do not agree with people. In the book of Judges, there is a story of Ephraimites and Gideonites. The Ephraimites are defeated in battle and try to flee across the Jordan river. The Gideonites are unable to determine who is an Ephraimite or a Gideonite just from looking from them. So they came up with a test, “See how they pronounce Shibboleth.” We don’t know what the difference in pronunciation would be, but it was something significant. It is like asking people to pronounce “Appalachia,” to see whether they’re from one corner of the mountain range or the other or seeing if they call a group of people, “y’all,” or “y’inz.”

In our social life, we do not look anymore for commonalities for productive reasons – but to bolster our own worldview and comfort. We mention off handedly political ideas and gauge the response of the people around us. We mention movies or controversies to see if people are “on our side,” and only after we are absolutely sure that we are in a place of uncritical normalization of our own ideas, do we allow ourselves to let out a deep breath, and tolerate the existence of the people we have proven aren’t “one of those people.”

I do not want to sound like I am oblivious to the fact that there are folks who need this sort of confirmation of safety. There are many reasons why you, especially when moving into a new area, need to check that you are in a safe place. You want to be sure that no one opposes your existence, believes you do not exist, or generally hates you out of principle. That I get. However, we then sequester ourselves further and further until we are starved for any real connection. If we define our community only by the lack of people who disagree with us, then we will never find a group of people we can truly belong to. You cannot build a community off of a negative principle – e.g. not being “one of those,” and expect anything good or productive to come of it.

In Jesus’s time, like ours, there were a great many sects and political parties to align oneself with. Are you a moral pillar of the community, more focused on daily goodness than strict doctrinal correctness? Then you would be a pharisee. Is worship more important than anything and the Bible limited and literal? The a Sadducee will make you feel right at home. What if your more political? The sicari are willing to kill for their ideas. Zealots, Essenes, Herodians, Hellenists, and so many more were all around.

These were the kind of folk who tracked Jesus down one day in Jerusalem. Jesus was celebrating “the Festival of the Dedication,” a commemoration of when the Maccabees won Judean independence from the Seleucid empire. The feast, and the associated miracle of oil lasting for eight days, would evolve over the next few hundred years to be what we now call “Chanukah.” In Jesus’s time there would not be dreidels or menorah, at least not the same kind of menorah used today, but the festival still celebrating God delivering the Judeans and liberating the temple from Hellenistic impurity.

Jesus, going to celebrate this moment that united his people, found that there were people interested in learning if he was the messiah, the ultimate hero of God’s people. Some did so out of genuine curiosity, but later context tells us the full scope of the questioning. After Jesus gives his answer, some in the crowd turn on him, because Jesus identified himself as one with the Father. This statement of Jesus’s divinity angered some of those in the crowd, Jesus failed to provide the right answer. He said “shibboleth,” in a way that identified him as the enemy in their eyes.

Yet, Jesus’s answer is confirmed in their rejection. “You do not believe me, because you are not my Father’s sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them.” For the people who know Christ, and whom Christ knows, then the truth of Christ’s word is self-evident. We hear Jesus, and we know that Jesus is the one who gives us life. When we hear those words, when we are truly revived in our soul – that is when we are able to fully live – only when we accept the truth of Christ and, more than that, accept that we are part of Christ’s flock.

What I cannot stand about the Church is that we are so prone to factions. We want pastors who preach exactly as we agree with and denominations that have no rough edges. We want to come into Church and get exactly what we wanted and we want to go home and go one social media and be told exactly what we already believe to be true about the world and be perfectly content to live and die in a bubble of homogeneity. We do not desire the true communion of God’s Church. We do not desire to see people of all races, nations, and creeds, gathered in the same flock. We want to create for ourselves criteria that define God’s people as nearly identical to us, and then to apply that cookie cutter definition to everyone else.

Again, there is room for discernment in find the right group of people. Churches exist that do more harm than good, and there are social groups that no one has any right being in or associating with. The problem is that we have defined our opposition to people so well, that we cannot find our commonalities. When we all hear the sound of our Shepherd, we should be able to move toward him in, even approximately the same direction. Yet we pull and kick and beat each other, just to go our own way, just to destroy whatever unity there ought to be in Christ.

I believe that the Church can find a new way of being – one that sees that “those who are not against us are for us.”[1] However, it takes a mortification on our part. We have to let go of some of those code words we listen for, to some of those indicators of one thing or another that let us make immediate judgments of who is “in,” and who is “out.” Really, unless something indicates malice or hatred – people yelling slurs or putting white supremacist or other hate signs on their body or property, abusing other people, generally causing trouble etc. – we should at least try to relate to one another on a deeper level.

When we get to Heaven, we will find people there we do not expect. I know I will. Even as hard as I try to maintain hope for all souls and an equality of grace in all I do, I have written people off that God has not. There are people who, when they hear the call of God, will make their way to the throne of grace and receive it in full. I do not believe they will be hateful people, hate cannot live alongside Christ nor can anger cohabitate with the Gospel. Yet, they may be people I cannot relate to and maybe, worst of all, who I disagree with.

If we truly believe that we are made Christians by our answering of Jesus’s call, then we need to stop coming up with other things a Christian “must be.” Because, if you read this book, really read it and try to understand it, there is much more latitude and grace than definitions and strictures. Let us listen close for the call of our shepherd, and not focus so much on the shibboleths we have prepared for war. – Amen.

[1] Mark 9:38-41

The New Testament Lesson                                          Revelation 5:11-14

Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them, singing,

“To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”

And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” And the elders fell down and worshiped.

Sermon Text

Today, as we gather for our service, we do so in anticipation of a baptism. Not only do we gather for a baptism but for a reaffirmation of faith and the joining of our local church by one of our newest additions to the community. Today is a big deal for us as a congregation. More than that, however, this is a day in which Heaven itself is able to rejoice in what we are doing here. As Christ says in the holy gospel there is nothing that causes the angels of heaven to celebrate more than the homecoming of God’s people, the moment that we whether we have been gone our entire life or for a season find our way back into the fold of the thing.[1]

Our scripture today looks specifically at a scene out of the Book of Revelation. If you were part of our Revelation Study then you can tell me all about the different features of this, how it ties into apocalyptic literature, and of course how the four living creatures are references to the cherubim in the book of Ezekiel. For those of us, however, who would just like to read the scripture as we’ve presented it today, the image should be clear to us, angels and archangels, alongside heavenly beings that do not have names, all are celebrating the salvific work of Christ and the wonders of the Lamb who was slain and yet lives. Sometimes in this life, so tied to earthly things, we forget the heavenly dimension of it all. We forget that you and I, here today, are part of a group of people that does not simply exist on earth in the flesh but that is made up of spiritual beings. Some are humans awaiting resurrection and some of are angels that predate perhaps even the earth itself.

This spiritual aspect of our existence can’t be overemphasized but it can be poorly emphasized. So often, you have Christians who are so concerned with angels and demons that they forget about their business that’s in front of them, the things that Jesus actually told them to worry about. So, “heavenly minded,” the saying goes, “that they can do no earthly good.”[2] But the reality is that a Christian who is heavenly minded should be invested in the earthly work that we take part in. To truly understand heaven and its workings now and the heaven that will be when heaven and earth come together at the end of time, is to truly understand that what we do now matters. Our care of the earth and each other, the care of the souls that we are given, and the souls that are around us.

I’ve been reflecting more recently on the work that we have as the church. We talked just last week, after all, about how though our message is eternal the way we tell it has to change. We can clearly see the consequence of staying the same too long. Yet, I think sometimes as we discuss the work that the church is doing we forget some of the simplest parts of it. We believe that the church is a place that people can come to find an experience of Christ and that that experience of Christ would not only change the individual but will save the individual. Salvation is more than just where you go when you die, it’s a transformation of yourself in the present, a giving away of greed and selfishness, and all evil from within ourselves. in exchange for the wonders that come from the love of God.

The scripture that we read comes after John has written for two chapters about the churches of God. The seven churches to whom he writes are spread across the ancient world, but they are congregations that, though different in time and culture, are not that different really from you and me. These are churches who are on fire for God, who are doing so well, and yet each and everyone has a problem. There are the churches with more money than they know what to do with, and they aren’t using it to take care of the poor. There are churches who are doing a great job taking care of each other, and yet have abandoned the essential teachings of the church – the incarnation of Christ, his death, his resurrection, and the call on the Christian to follow that cruciform life. In fact, the only congregation that John writes to and has no negative word for, is a congregation of whom he says, essentially, “You are good at nothing except thatt you have loved God with all your heart. Therefore, keep doing what you’re doing. Even if it is only to be good at loving God you are doing more than most.”

After he has laid out the state of these churches only then does he give him the message of hope that is the Book of Revelation. And he begins it with a beautiful stretch in which nothing happens except Christ is worshipped. When we think of our future and eternity there’s lots of things, especially questions, that come up. However, there is one thing that is certain. We will join the angelic choir, the heavenly elders, the mysterious crowd, in worship of Christ for all eternity. That worship is not something that is waiting for us to happen but something that is happening as we speak in this place.

As we go forward into the service, baptizing one man into the church and accepting another into this congregation, we know that, as Jesus said, heaven celebrates with us. In one case, heaven celebrates the fact that no matter where we come from denominationally we are still all the church and therefore we can find a home with people who are willing to live and love us together. In the other case, we get to celebrate a long work of the Holy Spirit to bring someone into the fold of the faith and to the joy that is a life in Christ. In either case heaven is singing out today.

When we gather at the baptismal water and when we gather at the table of Christ we will join with choirs of angels as we sing, “Holy, holy, holy. Lord, God of power and might,” for heaven and earth are truly full of the glory of the lamb who was slain and yet lives, of Christ who died and yet rose again, who gives life where previously death reigned. Together as we are here, today, we are able to say behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the worl,d because we see what the work of the Lamb can do in the life of the people around us. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, people of God, because today we see one of the simplest truths of what we are here to do. To bring people home into a church that they can call there own and to love them with the love of Christ first showed us.—Amen

[1] Luke 15:7-10

[2] The exact provenance of this saying cannot be determined. While some tie it to Oliver Wendell Holmes, there is no record of it in situ of any of his writings.