Revelation 21:1-6
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.
There is much in the book of Revelation that is frightening, much more so than what we hear on Sunday mornings. The cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, dragons and creatures and angels and beasts, tongues of flame and trumpets and seals and scrolls, legions of saints and martyrs singing and celebrating—it reads like the dream that it was, or perhaps at times like a nightmare. But as with all apocalypses in scripture, there is a spark of hope at its center, a light at the end of the long tunnel of history.
John the Divine saw a new heaven and a new earth, he tells us, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. That bit about the sea may seem out of place, but if we remember our creation stories, it is significant. In Genesis, God forms the universe and the worlds within it out of chaos, separating the waters of the sea from the waters of space and placing the sky as a dome between them. In ancient cosmology, the sea represents chaos, a fearful place of unknowable depths, unpredictable violence, and the potential for destruction and death. For the sea to be no more, for John, means that God has forever saved us from chaos. The new heaven and the new earth are one, with no waters or barriers separating one from the other. By bringing order to the chaos, God frees us. But God doesn’t stop there.
See, the home of God is among mortals, he will dwell with them as their God. This could also be translated more literally as “See, God pitches God’s tent among mortals and lives with them as their God.” God makes a dwelling among us, makes camp, makes a home. Just as God came and dwelt among us as one of us in the incarnation, again in the new creation God will come to us. The direction of God’s movement is always toward us, in the midst of us, always coming closer. We are promised that in the end God will always come home to us and make us a home with Him, not as guests but as children, as true community. See the home of God is among mortals. And God is our true home.
And what does it feel like to dwell in that home?
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. God will come close enough to us to dry our eyes and tenderly wipe our cheeks clean of the salt that stains them. God will honor the grief born out of chaos, even after that chaos is no more. The trauma, the loss, the sense of separation, the fear of change will not go unnoticed by the God who makes camp among us. The tears of sorrow, of grief, of depression and anxiety, of loneliness and heartbreak, will be tended to by God’s own gentle hands. We will know what it is to touch the hands that saved us from death, to look into the eyes that have always looked on us with love beyond measure. Sharing a home with God will be like this, like tender nearness.
And when the chaos is gone, with it will go finally the last sting of death. Death will be no more. The separation that we feel now, the loss and the missing, will end forever. Even as we know that death is already defeated, even now, we know the heartrending reality of the separation. Even as we affirm our faith that it is temporary, that something better is to come, we grieve now. We miss people now. We miss our parents, our partners, our siblings, our children, our friends. We miss the ones who died after a long life and the ones who died suddenly and unprepared. We miss the sound of their voice, the way they laughed, the words they gave us when our own voices faltered. We can know and believe with all our hearts that we will see them again someday, but this does not take the pain away, at least not completely. But in the new creation, in the time when God will make a home among mortals, mourning and crying and pain will be no more. The separation, the loss, the missing will pass away, and the hole in our chest and the pit in our stomach will be healed. The tears will be wiped away and with clear eyes we will see the ones we love in the light of God’s presence, and we will never have to say goodbye again.
And God will say “See, I am making all things new.” Including you. Including me. Including the person we hate and the person we can’t forgive and the person we hurt and don’t know how to make amends with. See, I am making all things new, including the hearts of stone and the minds that have wandered beyond reality and the bodies that knew nothing but suffering. See, I am making all things new, including our tears and our pain, transformed forever as the first things pass away. The new heaven and the new earth are not simply new editions of the first things. God does not say from the throne “See I am making all new things.” But rather, I am making all things new. I am making new the heavens, I am making new the earth, I am eliminating the separations and barriers and setting up camp right in the middle of you. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, and you belong with me and I belong with you. I am your home, and my home is wherever you go. This is the promise of Revelation- home. Home with God, home with those we love and see no longer. This is the promise of our faith, our Easter hope, the door thrown opened within a closed tomb. See, the home of God is among us. Thanks be to God.
Mother A Writes 