"You Are There!" My Sermon for Fifth Sunday of Easter

You Are There!

Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery
May 6, 2007
Revelation 21:1-6 (The Message)

Revelation 21
Everything New
1 I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, and gone the sea. 2 I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven, as ready for God as a bride for her husband. 3-5 I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: "Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They're his people, he's their God. He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone." The Enthroned continued, "Look! I'm making everything new. Write it all down—each word dependable and accurate."
6 Then he said, "It's happened. I'm A to Z. I'm the Beginning, I'm the Conclusion. From Water-of-Life Well I give freely to the thirsty. Conquerors inherit all this. I'll be God to them; they'll be sons and daughters to me.


When I make friends, when I’ve forged a deep bond with someone, I don’t like saying goodbye - especially if I’ll not see my friend for a long time. Most especially if it’s a forever goodbye. It’s an awkward moment, sometimes tearful, and reminds me of the many good friends to whom I’ve said goodbye, likely never to see again in this life. I always miss them because a friend is one with whom I have shared a gift of life - its joys and pains - of human connectedness that makes me more alive and grateful. It is perhaps appropriate that gifts of such value are not let go of easily.

Often advertising will tempt us with the idea that we can avoid goodbyes - or at least the emotional pain involved - that if we long for emotional connectedness we can simply buy it. The reproduction is as good as the real thing. Listen to what’s written on the back of a bottle of air freshener we have down at the monastery:

How often have you wished that you could capture a moment, a memory, a smell associated with something good! Airoma’s Imagine range of sense-soothing home enhancers is ambience in a bottle freeing your mind, body, and soul! Imagine standing beneath the invigorating shower of crisp mountain falls as it cascades down and surrounds you with all that’s natural. With Airoma’s Mountain Falls you no longer have to imagine - you are there!
I’d love to be free in body, mind, and soul but I don’t think a bottle will quite do it! It’s just chemicals!

Goodbyes are all around us and woven into the physics of the world. Our individual goodbyes are tiny reflections of the end of so much that was intended to last and made to endure. The great structures of ancient Greece and Rome seemed immovable and eternal 2,000 years ago but today are the crumbling ruins of their former glory - battered by war and vandals, wind and rain. Over time, like them, this church will decay. Will monks still be praying here in one hundred years? Two hundred? A thousand? Will anyone remember or know that a monastery was ever here in centuries to come? One day this valley, which was once millions of years ago probably a great river and before that, in ages past, perhaps barren and uninhabitable rock or the scene of volcanic upheaval as the continent was being molded and formed, will say its goodbye. South Africa, the Atlantic and Indian oceans, the whole continent, the whole world, which evolved through eons of fire and rain and struggle to become what we love and care for today is all temporary - only one chapter of the story - is waiting for goodbye. Stuff doesn’t last forever. I am going to die someday. What is flesh and bone, thoughts and feelings, memories and relationships today will one day cease to exist and turn to dust. Your body will cease to exist one day, too.

In the Revelation John is witnessing the ultimate goodbye of all he knows of earthly life - the very earth and sky and sea itself. It is here that the biblical story comes to a close. Having described the ultimate and eternal defeat of the devil and his demons, John gropes for language for what he sees next: the passing away of the old, the coming of the new - new earth, new sky. The story of creation, which began in Genesis, ends right here. There was a time in the past when the earth did not exist. There is coming a time in the future when it will cease to exist. In these last, moving words of scripture, as the arch of time and space as we know it dips down, as all we know of earthly life is consumed and erased, we encounter dramatically and fully the love and mercy of God. God with us and us with God. Our lives completed and fulfilled - free from pain, tears, suffering, death, evil and loss.

While we celebrate with joy the good news of new life, of the Resurrection of Our Lord from the dead on Easter Day, we know as well that the processes of decay and death, pain and suffering, are all too real and very much present. We are in a strange in-between state, a period many theologians have called “already, but not yet”. The reign of Christ on earth is the promise of the kingdom, yet we live in a mixture of its reality and mystery, its presence and absence. It’s here, I’ve seen it, it’s true, but I also have those moments when it all seems like a science fiction novel of a far away place and a distant future that’s far removed from my ordinary life. I trust finally in the promise that I am not now, we are not now, what we will be. That the story is not over, the play has not yet reached a final act. While an existence with God and in community absent from pain, suffering, tears, death - absent all goodbyes forever - seems too good to be true, that is exactly what we are promised. And God always keeps His promises.

When the kingdom fully and completely comes, when hope becomes reality, we will be delivered from all that keeps us separated and we will be fully liberated to live in Christ and He in us, to spend eternity being known and loved and knowing and loving in return. While in this age Christ gives us the sign and seal of presence in his body and blood, in the kingdom it will be his real, living, bodily presence that feeds us.

That’s great for the future, you may be thinking, but today people are suffering, crying, in pain and grief and dying. What about them? We care for the suffering and work to alleviate pain today as signs of Christ’s love and promise and in the knowledge that a future full of joy and free from all pain is coming for those who choose it. John’s vision adds life and urgency to today because as we work to ease each other’s burdens and lighten each other’s loads, we’re moving somewhere - we point to that day when all burdens and loads will be not just eased and lightened but put away and forgotten. Our life in the kingdom, which is what John is describing, is the great reunion and restoration of all we’ve known - all the joys preserved and the pains healed. This hope brings us into the present because our future is decided, a place is prepared for us. Christians never really say goodbye to one another, we say “to be continued”, because whether we see each other in this life again or not, we are members of a larger family, a grander history than time or space can contain - that outlives the very heaven and earth itself. And our home, our destiny, our hope, is to be together in one, big, joyful community for all time in an eternal “hello”.