PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Revelation 22:12-21                                                                         A Hopeful Returning
Sermon May 16, 2010:  People’s United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

            The lectionary gives churches four scripture texts for each Sunday of the year:  we use two of the four.  The third lesson every Sunday during Eastertide is taken from the Book of Revelation.  If we had been using the third lesson every Sunday since Easter we would have been reading from the Apocalypse.  I’ve tried to preach the third lesson in years past, and to my surprise, after the first sermon there wasn’t all that much more to say:  the Apocalypse has one grand message.  It is summarized pretty well in a little story about a boy who had been reading the Bible with his father, and one day he said, “Dad, I took a peek at the end of the book, and guess what?  We win.”  That is the message of the Book of Revelation.  The Second Coming of Christ is “a hopeful returning.”  Now how many times in seven Sundays can I use that as my sermon theme? 

            I’m not going to delve into all the scary pictures, the frightening symbolism, the war and destruction and death we read about in this last book of the Bible.  We know it’s there—we see it happening all around us:  in the poverty of Nigeria and Haiti, in the pollution of the environment, in the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the Great Recession our economy is still trying to climb out of—it’s all there, just as it has been there in every century since the book was written.  I’m not going to chase so-called “prophecies”—Who is 666?  Who is the “beast”?  I’ve studied the Book of Revelation with some pretty good scholars, and all those details make for interesting term papers.  But we’re not in church to write a term paper:  we’re here to worship God and to receive some modicum of inspiration for living through the week that’s before us.  Can the Book of Revelation help us with that?  I think so.  And it comes down to Christ’s “hopeful returning.” 

            We hear the voice of Jesus speak in verse 12:

And then in verse 14:

By the way, the “white robes” in the Book of Revelation refer to the kind of outer garment the common people wore in 100 A.D.—the man’s robe looked a lot like this alb I’m wearing:  that’s what a minister’s alb is supposed to remind us of—the white robe in this book of hope.  So Jesus says to wash our robes.  Of course this isn’t literal—it’s a symbolic statement.  How do you “wash your robe” the way Jesus is talking about?  You live a life that is faithful to God and ethical with your neighbor.  This is how you prepare for the establishment of the Kingdom of God—you live in this world the way you will live in the kingdom.  Your life becomes a kind of promise spoken before others about what God wants of us all.  In other words, Jesus says he wants us to do something. 

            Notice in this Lesson, there is not one word about beliefs.  You come down to the end of the Bible and there is nothing there about believing in a Triune God, nothing about how Jesus could be both fully divine and also fully human, nothing about whether the bread and wine of Holy Communion actually get transformed or stand as symbols of Jesus’ body and blood, nothing about anything that’s in your head.  When Jesus was calling his apostles, do you remember what he said to each one?  He didn’t say to Peter and Andrew, “Come believe I am divine.”  He didn’t say to James and John, “Come get the facts about creationism.”  Jesus did teach, but what he taught was mostly about how to live.  And that’s the word of Jesus here at the end of the Book:  “I am coming to repay according to everyone’s work”, and “wash your robe.”  Just as he taught in the synagogues of Galilee, and on the shore of Lake Genessaret, and in the courtyard of the temple in Jerusalem--Jesus says he wants us to do  something.  What does he mean?

            Our daughter Beth had a couple of rough years in high school, but she came through it stronger as a person.  She lived at home her first year in college, but by her second year she really wanted to get away from “Ma” and “Dad,” and be her own person; so she moved into a second-floor apartment with five other students, a very large dog, and a lizard.  In order to pay her way she worked in a bagel sandwich shop.  She left home completely—we weren’t paying for anything for her:  she did it all on her own.  Her third year she moved in with another woman in a apartment out in the suburbs, with four cats; and she worked in an upscale Yuppie restaurant.  All this time she was taking courses in sociology, anthropology, religion, art.  She struggled with one required course in math—but she came by that honest:  I’m not great at math either.  Harriet is the one in the family who can change grams into centigrams and cc’s into dosages.  In her senior year in college Beth left the restaurant and started teaching English as a Second Language—and she was really good at it.  Before she graduated, the headmaster of a private school out in the suburbs asked her to become a teacher on staff and work with foreign students, so she did that.  The next year, without graduating, she was promoted to head the English as a Second Language program in the school, and she also began teaching classes to junior-high aged students:  American history, world religions, English.  The other teachers discovered that she had the nerve to stand up to the school administration, and she became their front-person in disputes.  The next year she designed the English as a Second Language curriculum, arranged for student interviews, mother-henned the foreign students, worked with the other teachers who had foreign students in their classes, designed and published a brochure advertising the school’s program—finishing college sort of got forgotten.  Then one day she was visiting on the college campus and her former sociology professor asked her if she ever graduated.  She said “no,” she lacked one sociology course.  He got on the phone, and within a couple of days her diploma arrived in the mail. 

            I’m proud of Beth, of course—I’m her dad: but I’m not telling this story because I’m proud of her.  I’m telling this story to illustrate what I mean when I say that Jesus wants us to do something.  She had those talents, and she used them.  Now—years later, and light-years from teaching English as a Second Language in a private school, she worships in a church where she can use her artistic talents and her knowledge of religion to resolve stress; and she’s working as a yoga instructor.  Now none of this could be called “religious work,” and her beliefs are certainly not what could be called “orthodox.”  But she is doing something.  And that “something” blesses other people. 

            What you do in this world, in the middle of your life, in the company you keep—what you do is sort of the point, isn’t it.  You don’t have to be a super church-person:  you have to be yourself, doing something and blessing other people. 

            We’ve all heard jokes about these two guys die and show up at the pearly gates and Saint Peter asks some silly question, and the joke unfolds.  Well this isn’t intended as a joke like that, just a scene like that.  Two men were in a terrible accident and both died.  One was a fundamentalist and the other was as liberal Protestant.  One was a Republican and the other was a Democrat.  Through the years that they had known each other they had never agreed on anything.  Now, sitting in the waiting area outside the Pearly Gates they’re still arguing when Saint Peter calls their names.  They stand up and step forward to face the Judge.  Before he can say anything they both start jabbering about what they’ve stood for, what they have believed, how orthodox or how creative their lives have been.  The Judge lets them rattle on for a minute or so and then holds up his hand to quiet them.  And then the Judge says, “I don’t want to know what’s in your heads:  I want to know what you’ve done.” 

            He’s not talking about doing something grand, and he’s not even talking about living a perfect life.  He’s talking about taking what you’ve got—your mind, your heart, your hands, your feet, your loves and your fears, and making something of them that’s a blessing.  Is that so hard? 

            So this is what I want to do with the Book of Revelation:  I find in it, not a scary story or a warning that God is out to get you.  I mean—after all, God’s purpose in human history has been redemption, not condemnation.  The Book of Revelation concludes the Bible with “a hopeful returning.” 

            So I conclude with those verses I’ve quoted so often from the First Letter of John (I Jn. 3:2-3):

            This is how we wash our robes, so to speak.  You’re already at it!  Thanks be to God.

AMEN