Revelation 21:1-6
“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 as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
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.” -NRSV
I grew up at the height of post-apocalyptic young adult literature and the many movies and TV series that went along with it. Every year, another series featuring teenagers facing deeply flawed socio-political and economic systems seemed to rise to the top of the bestseller lists. The Hunger Games, The Divergent series, The Maze Runner, The Uglies series are just a few titles that stick out in my memory. Although a central theme of these series is always the fall from perceived utopian society to dystopian nightmare, those that reached the broadest audiences all seem to have one thing in common- they all take place after some world-altering event. In many cases that apocalypse was some kind of world-wide war, and in other cases it was a devastating environmental collapse. In some cases, the apocalypse constituted both. To exist in a post-apocalyptic world has come to mean a world of emptiness, of social stratification and oppression of difference. The apocalypse has become synonymous with the end of the world as we know it, and the world that remains is one that is hostile to life and human thriving. By our own socially accepted definition of post-apocalyptic, the country we live in now, still ravaged by pandemics of both the viral and racist varieties and impacted by ongoing shortages of material goods and low-wage labor, qualifies for the setting of the next popular novel or TV show in the genre. It feels incredibly appropriate that we have circled back to the Biblical text that has inspired both fear and fascination with the end of the world, when our world feels so very upside down right now.
The Book of Revelation contains the record of a vision John the Divine, a persecuted follower of Jesus and prophet who was exiled across the sea from his family of faith to the Isle of Patmos. John put his vision into words and sent it to his friends and fellow Christians with very little interpretation of his own, emphasizing the work of the Spirit in both his experience of the vision and the understanding of his readers. We read it in place of an Epistle because in reality that is what the book of Revelation is- a long letter to fellow believers just like the letters of Paul and his students. John shared it with his friends, and it has been shared with us, as a message of hope and a vision of salvation. The other name of this book is The Apocalypse of John. The word apocalypse means “unveiling” or, as the name of our text, revelation, revealing. And what is revealed is not a barren uninhabitable wasteland or a dystopian oppressive society. Revealed to us is the new heaven and the new earth, no longer divided by the waters of chaos as they have been since the dawn of creation. The holy city, the place in which God makes a home among mortals and dwells among us as one family, is no longer a historic ideal or a far off cosmic dream. This world we live in is not destroyed, but transformed.
The end of days depicted in the Revelation to John has often been dramatized and artistically rendered as a horror, a nightmare, something to be feared. The imagery and symbolism and cosmic conflict in the Revelation are vivid, and at times violent, even scary. And yet, nestled in this short epilogue to our sacred texts, one of the most beautiful promises in scripture shines like a beacon. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more. See, I am making all things new. See the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. The world after the apocalypse is a world without fear, without death or separation or grief. When John says that the sea is no more, that is the sea that separates him from his home in his island exile, the seas of water and of land and of strife that separate us from one another. The chasms between us will be no more. The veil through which we see will be taken away, and we will behold with our own eyes the light of God and hear with our own ears the voice of the one who breathed us into being. Our post-apocalyptic world is a world worth hoping for, a world worth striving for and building in the here and now. That is the real meaning of post-apocalyptic, a world after the unveiling. It is a renewal, a return to the very good creation God has envisioned for us from the beginning. See, God is making all things new. These words are trustworthy and true. Thanks be to God.
Mother A Writes 