Revelation
1:4-8
4 John to the seven churches
that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is
to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus
Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the
kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his
blood, 6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to
him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 7 Look! He is coming with the
clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account
all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. 8 "I am the
Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to
come, the Almighty.
Mrs. Flowers was one of those kinds of teachers you read
about in children’s books. She had a full helmet of wiry, red hair. She had a
high, nasally voice, but we all agreed when she laughed it sounded a bit like a
goat snorting. She tended to wear stirrup pants (long after they were
considered cool, but before they made a fashion comeback), and since this was
in the days before every classroom had dry erase markers and white boards, she
tended to always have several chalk-dusted imprints of her right hand on her
backside. She taught my fifth-period pre-algebra class at Coppenville Junior
High (where every seventh grader in the Enterprise City School system went).
I remember one day in particular in Mrs. Flowers’s class
when, after the bell rang and we all settled down, Mrs. Flowers asked, “Can any
of you come up to the board and draw a line?” It seemed such an easy request
that just about every hand in the class went up. Mrs. Flowers called on one boy
towards the front of the class, who got up, walked to the chalkboard, took a
piece of chalk from the tray, and then, in one smooth motion from left to
right, he swept the chalk across the board about two feet making what appeared
to be a fairly straight line. He put the chalk back in the tray, and with a
slight air of confidence, he walked back to his desk and sat down (I half
expected him to high five the boy sitting next to him!).
Well, whatever confidence he had in his artistic,
algebraic abilities was soon dashed, because Mrs. Flowers gave her goat giggle
and walked over to the freshly scratched line and, as she erased it, said,
“Wrong. Does someone else think they can draw a line?”
We were all a bit confused, so it took a second or two
before more hands came up. This time Mrs. Flowers called on a girl who walked
up to the chalkboard with an expression on her face like she had a secret the
rest of us didn’t know and she couldn’t wait to blurt it out. She took a piece
of chalk in her hand, and then, standing on her tiptoes, she reached up and
drew a straight line from top to bottom. She dropped the chalk in the tray like
an M.C. who just won a rap battle and walked back to her desk (I swear I
thought I saw her skip).
Again, however, Mrs. Flowers snorted as she erased the
vertical mark from the board. “One more try,” she said, “Who thinks they can
draw an actual line for the class?” This time, only a few hands were raised: one
or two who actually thought they knew the answer and those who just like the
attention of standing in front of the class. Mrs. Flowers called on a boy I was
sure had it figured out. He walked to the chalkboard, picked out a sturdy stick
of chalk, walked to the far left end of the board, and then he put the chalk
right up against the boarder and proceeded to drag the chalk all the way across
the board to the other end. He placed the chalk back in the tray, and as he
walked back to his desk, we were all holding our breath in anticipation of what
Mrs. Flowers was going to say, because surely this was the answer to her trick
question. Sadly, though, it wasn’t (and if you know you’re Algebra, you
probably already know the answer).
Mrs. Flowers
erased the boy’s valiant attempt at answering her riddle. Then, she took her
own piece of chalk in her hand and drew a short dash across the board but with what
looked like arrow points on both ends. As she wiped the chalk dust off on the
back of her pants, she explained to us that every attempt we had made was not a
line, but a line segment, for in algebraic terms, a line is infinitely long in
both directions and can really only be illustrated in the way she drew it for
us. It was the first time I think I ever actually contemplated the idea that
something could go on forever.
Sure, in
arguments I might have said something like, “’not it’ times infinity,” but I
had no idea what I was talking about. To be honest, I’m not sure many of us
quite know what we’re talking about when we talk about infinity or forever or
eternity. Most of us, I think, can only see, only imagine a segment of the line
that is eternity. We are finite people. We
can’t quite fully comprehend the concept of infinity, of eternity. We see
things as having a beginning and an ending. Sure, there are really old things,
things that last for a really, really long time, but as sure as those things
had a beginning, they also have an end. It is how this world seems to work.
Perhaps that’s why we struggle so, why we worry about things, why we fight
amongst ourselves. We can’t see the reality of things, that what we strive so
hard to hold on to is only temporary, that the grief we feel is fleeting in the
face of forever, that whatever we think is so pressing, so important, so worth
fighting for today, is so small and unimportant in the grand view of eternity.
We worship a God who simultaneously created and resides in the eternal, and I
don’t know about you, but I have to stop and take that in every once in a
while.
I think that’s
one of the reasons John in his revelation from Jesus goes out of his way to
describe God in such eternal, infinite terms: “Grace to you and peace from him
who is and who was and who is to come… to him be glory and dominion forever and
ever… ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and
who is to come, the Almighty.”
This God in Christ isn’t some new creation, some new divinity on the
scene of the universe, and God hasn’t disappeared, slipped behind the veil of
the cosmos, leaving humanity on a spinning blue marble to figure out how the
whole thing works, waiting until a good time for an “end” to stop the whole
mess. God is not some fad, some latest thing to come along to provide excuses
for things like floods, famines, and fights, nor is God some handy
justification for one’s own prejudices, an invisible being whose name can so
easily be invoked when seeking to justify the hate and the closed-mindedness of
the day. God was, is, and is to come. God was then, is now, and will always be.
God is eternal, and that means the fullness of God is truly beyond our knowing,
and it can’t help but stretch our minds and humble us a bit to reflect on the
eternal reality that is God.
I think about this sometimes whenever I face something new, something
strange and uncomfortable, like when the plane touched down in Amsterdam last
August. It was the first time I had ever left the country by myself, the first
time I had ever been in a place where my language wasn’t the language of the
people, where my money was the local currency, where I didn’t know where things
were, where I didn’t know anyone. I was supposed to be in this strange place
for two weeks, all by myself. I remember when I walked off the plane my heart
beating faster and my mind racing with all sorts of questions like “Where do I
go now? How do I get out of this airport? Which way to the place I’m staying?
How am I going to change money? What if I can’t find my way?” It wasn’t until I
stopped, took a deep breath, and remembered something I tell myself often in
situations like that: “You’ll get to where you need to be. You’ll do what you
need to do, and before you know it, you’ll be back home talking about this as a
memory.” It calms me down every time, to think in the big picture, to know this
moment, this instance of panic, fear, frustration, joy, disappointment,
doubt—to know this moment is just that, a moment, a fleeting fraction of
forever. That always seems to bring me a
bit of peace.
I think that’s why John begins this cryptic, often scary-sounding letter
with these descriptions of a God who was, is, and is to come, to remind his
readers who may be facing the temptations to assimilate into a pagan culture
that doesn’t value the teachings of Christ, those who may be even facing
persecution at the hands of other, local religions, even those who may be
glorying in their own faithfulness, that while these trials, temptations, and
glories may seem enormous now, in the scope of eternity they will pass, and
what will be left is what has always been—God.
I think that is a truth we need to hear now just as much as those seven
churches in Asia Minor needed to hear it then, because I hear the same news you
do. I hear the stories about people who’ve been out of work for years, who have
all but given up finding a job. I hear the stories about the children who have
been rejected by their parents because of who they are. I hear the same stories
about violence and fear driven by those who know better. I see the images of
young children with guns in their hands, of young mothers holding their dying
babies, of crowded, unwashed masses huddling together in an attempt to keep
their dignity, and I hear the ignorance that always follows such stories, the
excuses that come after such seeing such images. And my heart breaks; my
stomach turns; my eyes well up, and my fists clinch. But the words of Scripture remind me that I
worship a Christ “who is and who was and who is to come.”
Then I get a phone call from a friend, who tells me the biopsy showed
cancer. I learn that another friend lost a baby at birth. I hear about pink
slips and layoffs, another miscarriage, a lousy interview, bounced checks,
pressed charges, divorce, foreclosures and repossessions. I listen to another
mother tell me about an addicted child while another one drops out of school.
There’s another school shooting in the news or another teacher sleeping with a
student. Then I wake up one morning unable to breathe through my nose because
of the yellow filth that has blanketed the land, and I’m ready to throw in the
towel, to scream at the top of my lungs, to run out into my front yard shaking
my fist at the sky demanding an answer from God…
But then I remember: "’I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says
the Lord God.” All of those heartbreaking stories, all of that
frustrating news, all of the minor annoyances of life that pile it on, day
after day, week after week, they all fade to nothing in the light of an eternal
God and the truth that that very same God lives in those stories with me. That
very same God—who was, is, and is to come—lives in those moments with me, with
you, with those newly diagnosed friends, with those outcast children, with
those refugees, with those going through all kinds of hell, even hells of their
own making—Christ lives with them even in those moments!
Easter, Christ’s resurrection, has shown us that God is not some figure
way up “there,” beyond the clouds on some untouchable throne, manipulating
humankind with a swirl of his finger, or watching it unwind like the spring in
an old clock. No, what Christ’s resurrection and the eternal reality of God
have shown us is that (in the words of Clarence Jordan) “[t]he resurrection of
Jesus was simply God's unwillingness to take our 'no' for an answer. He raised
Jesus, not as an invitation to us to come to heaven when we die, but as a
declaration that he himself has now established permanent, eternal residence
here on earth. He is standing beside us, strengthening us in this life. The good
news of the resurrection of Jesus is not that we shall die and go home to be
with him, but that he has risen and comes home with us, bringing all his
hungry, naked, thirsty, sick prisoner brothers with him.[1]”
In other words, the actual good news of Easter is that Christ has risen
in and is still “Emmanuel.” Jesus is still “God with us.” That hasn’t changed!
The eternal, Alpha-and-Omega, forever-and-ever God in Christ is still with us!
God in Christ is with us in those moments that may seem earth-moving to us,
though they may amount to next-to-nothing in the grand scheme of eternity. God
in Christ is with us even when we let self get in the way of what the Spirit
calls us to, when we strive to hold on to our selfish, comfortable ways because
we think they’re somehow “holier” than those ways that have come before or will
come after. We worship the eternal God in Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit, for
whom our lives are but a blink, a flash in the pan, a quick breath—and yet that
same God is with us still!
Let us find joy in that! May we find comfort in knowing that even when
life seems to be going to hell, the God who was, is, and is to come is there
with us, knowing we’ll make it through, loving us through it, walking alongside
us knowing that there is always something greater to come. May we find courage
in knowing that when the way seems dark, when we don’t know what tomorrow
holds, we serve the Christ who is the Alpha AND Omega, a Jesus who has been
through the grave and out the other side and calls ever forward on a journey he
knows will bring us heartache and pain, but a journey that leads towards
salvation and life-everlasting. May we find hope in the assurance that the God
of creation, the Christ of the cosmos, the Eternal Spirit of God, is far
greater than any trouble we may ever have, that God is not an excuse for hate
or a scapegoat for injustice, but an ever-living Presence calling us deeper and
deeper into a wonderful, mysterious, and life-giving relationship. May we live
as if we truly believe in the reality of Easter Sunday, in the Good News that
the Eternal God has risen from the grave to prove that that same God dwells
with us, even in these fleeting moments we experience on this side of eternity.
May we find hope in the God who was then, is now, and always will be. Amen.
[1]
I’ve read and shared this quote so many times, yet I am unaware of its origin
in Jordan’s works. Here is one place where it can be found, though it is not
fully cited: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/750187
(accessed 4/2/2016).
