April 24, 2016 Sermon: "Happily Ever After"

Stephen Baldwin

NT: John 13.31-35

NT: Rev. 21.1-6

Happily Ever After

            I know a woman who reads books backwards.  Sort of.  Every time she starts a book, she reads the last chapter first, and then goes back to the beginning.  Do any of you do that?  She says it’s interesting to know where it ends and then try to figure out along the way how it eventually gets there. 

            We all have our own ways of doing things.  How do you eat an Oreo?  Do you eat cookie first, icing first, or the whole thing together?  How do you eat a cupcake?  Icing first?  Cake first?  Do you take cake off the bottom and make a sandwich of the icing?  What about pizza?  Crust first or tip first?  Everybody has their own way of doing it, and we all think our way is the best and only way.  What if the same is true of our faith? 

            Picking up where we left off last week, let’s think about the afterlife.  We normally think about where we go as individuals after we die.  Like heaven and hell.  You can also think about the life you leave behind after you move on.  Like the saints of our lives that have taught us how to live better.  Then you have Revelation 21, which throws a monkey wrench in the whole thing.  Sort of. 

            Presbyterians sometimes get picked on for not preaching on Revelation, so let the record show that I am a Presbyterian preaching on Revelation on April 24, 2016!  Now, Revelation is a…strange… book.  Casual Bible-readers often mistake it as a blueprint for the end of the world.  Biblical scholars see it as a hopeful vision of what God intends for the world.  So which is it? 

            If you’ve ever tried reading Revelation on your own at home to figure that out, then bless your heart.  It’s a tough book!  It’s confusing and confounding and sometimes just plain crazy!  That’s because the guy who wrote it, John, was probably imprisoned on an island serving time doing hard manual labor when he wrote it.  His writing shows the limits to which his mind and body were pushed by his captors. 

            So let’s talk about it.  We typically think of Revelation as an apocalyptic vision of the end of the world, right?  When everything is going down the drain and all hope has been lost, right?  When this place is no longer of any value and everyone who means anything to God has gone on to live with God elsewhere. 

            But then we read today’s passage, which speaks of a new heaven and a new earth where God lives with the creation.  It almost sounds…hopeful.  And pleasant.  And comforting.  You could almost insert the phrase, “Happily ever after,” and no one would give it a second thought.  Because by the end of the passage, which is almost the end of the Bible, the world is as it should be.  As it was created in Genesis.  No separation from our Creator; we live together in harmony.  No more death.  No more pain.  Happily ever after. 

            When you’re late for work or your loved one is on the way to the ER or you’re wallowing in shame for something you know you shouldn’t have done, it’s easy to lose site of the end of the story.  But the end of the story has not changed.  God will make all things right.  And this passage at the end of the Bible tells us exactly why. 

            Because God wants it that way.  God says, “It is done!  I am the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.”  When you’re a child and your parent tells you that’s the way it is because they said so, you have no choice but to accept it.  We have no choice, praise the Lord, but to accept that it is done.  God is the alpha and the omega, and God knows how the story will end.  God will make things right.  Some people call that the end of the world, some call it the afterlife; Revelation calls it a new heaven and a new earth, where we live with God in harmony once again.  Doesn’t that sound…heavenly?        

            I think knowing the end of the Bible’s story changes the way we read the rest of the book.  The way we live our life.  When we realize that God’s in charge and God intends to redeem the creation, then we have but one choice.  Join God.  Participate in the redeeming of the world.  

            Revelation is a story about perspective.  While we would all love to know every detail of the life after this one, we don’t.  We simply don’t know.  We do know how the Bible begins.  God lives with humans in the Garden of Eden.  And we know how it ends.  In exactly the same way.  God joins us.  Will you join God?  Amen.