I'll See You Soon - Revelation 22

Revelation 22:12–14 NRSV

12 “See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” 14 Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates.

Revelation 22:16–17 NRSV

16 “It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” 17 The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let everyone who hears say, “Come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

Revelation 22:20–21 NRSV

20 The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! 21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.

Today’s text is an ending. These final words of the Christian Scriptures mark the closing of John’s Revelation and the final hopeful promise of God’s enduring kingdom, coming soon and very soon. When we hear God’s name as the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, we know that this is the Omega space, the point of terminus, the end.

How do we wrestle with endings when it seems so often the end is so far from sight, so distant, and we are so overwhelmed with the unceasing pains of this present moment?

What we have found in this study of Revelation is that it is a picture of the hope we hold within us, the hope of God’s final word, which is not death, it is not suffering, it is not despair. Rather, God’s final word is a promise. It is a direction, it is a grace. What we hear in these final words is an invitation — Come. And it echoes back through all time and forward into the promised future. The Spirit of God and the bride, the church, says “Come.” And then it starts to reverberate out, as the ones who first hear then echo, “Come.” And the ones who are thirsty, come, drink from the life that flows from the city of God.

Today we have to think on a whole creation story scale, a metanarrative. Because we cannot hear this text of invitation apart from the consistent invitation from God to creation which says: Come. Come to the waters, come to the table, come to find refuge, come to be known, come to share love, come to receive grace. Come.

If we think about this in the scope of the grand narrative of Scripture, we hear the invitation from God to the first people, Adam and Eve, come, be known, be in my presence. And while we know the story of the disruption of God’s relationship with humanity, we consistently, again and again, hear God’s voice inviting God’s people to come, be in the presence. The invitation goes out to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs of the Hebrew religion. Come, find a land and a home in God’s love. The people wandering in the desert wilderness from Egypt of Palestine, they follow the pillars of fire and smoke and hear the call from the Creator — come.

Through the times of the judges and kings, the cry from God continues to be “come. come to me. put not your trust in princes, but rather come and dwell in the house of the Lord.”

The prophets cry “come” as they lament the waywardness of the people. Come back to God, come close once more, repent and come home.

John the Baptist echoes this prophetic call, saying to the people, Repent, Come to the waters of life, come out of your sorrow and your collusion with the empire — come!

And we all know, Jesus invites us, come. Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Have you not heard, have you not seen, friends — Christ invites us to come to him, to be in his presence and he, with us.

We pause for a moment to acknowledge the interlude in this story, the place where Christ has met with and offered grace and life to the people and then stands upon the mountain to say his farewell. Remember, today is about endings, alongside the invitation.

Let’s hear the story of Christ’s ascension, as we celebrate it this week, and remember his invitation to us to go into the world and continue to speak out the call to all people, come home to where you belong, come to the Christ.

Hear the words from Luke 24 as we remember the story of Jesus’ final words to his disciples and ascension to heaven.

Luke 24:44–53 NRSV

44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” 50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52 And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53 and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

The story goes on — the people go back to their lives and begin to spread out and issue the call — come!

Those who hear the story and the call, through the New Testament, begin to invite others to come, gather, worship, and live life in community, sharing what they have, inviting others into that shared life, seeking justice for the poor and the oppressed, standing up to the powers of the empire. Come, they say, come to the waters of life. Do you hear it? The echo through the whole story?

The call from God, the invitation, which says Come, continues to reverberate.

We hear it in the reordering of society and life under the authority of Christ, our head, our guide, our north star. Hear as well, the words of Paul to the church in Ephesus, reminding them, encouraging them, continuing to call them — come.

Ephesians 1:15-23 says...

Ephesians 1:15–23 NRSV

15 I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18 so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. 20 God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Do you hear the way God is reordering all things into this good way of loving authority and offering humanity this inheritance of grace? Come, Jesus says. Come to me. Reorder your life, set aside those things which have kept you at distance, come to me.

We hear this long arc of invitation from God, come to me, and we expect, that as we reach the end of things, that there will be some sense of arrival, like we’ll have finally made, looking back on how far we’ve come. Like we’ll achieve glory and show up at the city we’ve been journeying toward for so long. Like we’ll find the destination.

And yet, that’s not entirely what happens, that’s not really what we see happening here.

While all along, Christ invites us to come, be, receive God’s presence, come into the city of life, while this invitation has echoed out, it goes further as we close here. While we are invited to come, instead, God runs to us, comes to us, welcomes us by dwelling among us.

God’s holy city, God’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven, comes to us. As Eugene Peterson so beautifully paraphrased in the Message, the end of the story, the way God personally inhabits space and time with us, is that God “moves into the neighborhood.”

Surely, I am coming soon, Christ says.

And the people say, Amen, Come, Lord Jesus!

You see? All along, we’ve been beckoned to come to God. And yet, in the end, it is God coming to be with and dwell with us. God makes creation God’s home. It has always been and always will be God’s place of dwelling — with us. So friends come, come to where God meets us, here now, anticipating a final resting and glorious community that gathers for this same purpose — to be with God and God with us.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

In a world so fraught with sorrow, God comes to dwell with comforting presence and the power to bind up our brokenness. Jesus, our root, our bright morning star, comes home to us and dwells among us.

When?

When does this happen?

You’re likely sitting there, wondering if this Revelation is actually going to give us a sense of when God’s reign begins or when the tears will be wiped from our eyes or when injustice will be broken and healing will meet us.

Christ says, “I’ll see you soon.” Surely, I am coming soon.

And we wonder, after all of these stories, after all of what feels like an unending prologue, when, how, where is Christ going to come? When is this all going to arrive at the end point?

And while we want to have the assurance of a perfect end and the rest that is promised, we miss the point if we look too firmly for a sense of finality or arrival.

Instead, we become the manifestation of this coming way right here and now. The “coming soon” that Christ promises happens when you and I step into Christ’s way and begin living as little Christs ourselves, start offering the same grace and waters of life to our world that Christ has offered us.

There is a theological idea that the prophecies of the Revelation and much of God’s movement throughout the Scriptures is held in a tension between what already is, and what has not yet come to be. The already and the not yet.

And so we hear these words of Christ’s invitation, come, within this framework. I am coming soon — and I am already with you.

Remember, Christ sent out the disciples before he ascended — go be to others as I have been to you, go share the good news of restored life. And at the same time he promises to come home to dwell among us.

What if the arrival, the terminus, the resolution of all of this, takes place in us — in our actions of grace and forgiveness and service and justice here and now? And what if that arrival is always just a taste of what can and will be the final resolution?

Here is where I see all of this beautiful promise, this hope of what is and what is to come, drop into reality with us.

Friends, we live in a world filled with so many endings. We live in a world filled with death, sadness, dissolved relationships and severed hope.

These past two weeks, we have seen the finality and despair of death front and center. We have all of this longing for Christ’s coming, Christ’s presence here and now with us, and yet the only thing that seems to speak a word of resolution and finality among us today is death. Dead children. Dead worshippers. Dead grocery shoppers. Dead dreams. Dead ends on how to make anything better.

When we look for the arrival, for the promise of what is to be, we have to hold that longing with the certainty and immensity of death.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the Scriptures ended smartly with a little bow, all tied up and clear?

Yet, haven’t we realized that the endings, the finality, that it is the way of death? Death offers certainty, finality, terminus.

But instead, Jesus says, I’ll see you soon.

How do we get a sense for this? How can we keep waiting?

I’ll draw us to a pause, a breath, not quite an end, but instead, a beginning at the end. A promise, a hope, an anticipation.

And better than trying to put a final bow on this, to draw the ending to an end, I’ll close with with an opening, a reading from the final words of C. S. Lewis’ The Last Battle.

Aslan, the lion and God-figure in these stories, stands amongst the children at the end their long journey. They emerge from a great dream to find their home in Aslan’s country, a dwelling place much like what we hear about in this story of the Revelation. And Aslan speaks to them so beautifully...

[Read end of The Last Battle]

And so it is with us — the promise is that our stories keep unfolding, our journey keeps opening up, our work of being as Christ to all creation keeps moving forward, onward in service and love and restoration, now and to the end and onto the beginning.

Amen.