John 18:33-37; Revelations 1:4b-8
Charles Shultz, beloved author of the Peanuts Comic Strip, once remarked that we shouldn't worry about the world coming to an end today, since it's already tomorrow in Australia…
- In one of his comic strips, Charlie Brown is listening to a friend
interpret a nursery rhyme, saying "The way I see it, the cow jumped over the
moon indicates a rise in farm prices…and the part about the dish running
away with the spoon must refer to the consumer…do you agree with me
Charlie Brown?"
"I can't say," Charlie Brown answers while walking away… "I don't pretend to be a student of prophetic literature."
Someone once said: "Time is nature's way of preventing everything from happening at once." Part of the reason that Revelation can seem so daunting to the reader is that everything happens all at once – at the same time. That should be a clue to the discerning reader that John is no longer talking to us about the categories of time – rather, John is preaching and speaking about the categories of eternity.
John claims not once but twice that God and Christ remain the same from the past through the present and into the future. "Peace from him who is and who was and who is to come," John begins his writing – and then, he repeats that God is "the Alpha and the Omega" – the beginning and the end of all existence – all of life is finally the very life of God given freely to all.
The evil we see so prevalent in our time and through history can rob us of hope by giving the illusion that history and eternity are not connected – that circumstances rule our lives and God is absent from, or at least not intimately concerned with our lives. Evil, in some respects, can be described as the product of folk living their lives in time, and acting out their fear of time. We want, we desire, we grasp, we are contentious, we argue, we fight, we resist, we strive to overthrow and overwhelm – we use the power at our disposal to serve ourselves, and as a result, we injure others. John's writings destroy this illusion by giving a different framework of time. In Revelation, John sets history against the vast backdrop of eternity, as if history were a grain of sand thrown into the ocean of eternity. Yet, in the Gospel of John he reverses the process, placing eternity within a finite moment of history, within a single human life, as if one grain of sand had absorbed the entire ocean – which is the church's confession of Christ.
Ironically, Jesus faces evil with an absence of power – not as a conqueror, …but as one who allows himself to be conquered. Eternity dies on the cross, expressing its power through resurrection, not retaliation. Revelation's ironic use of power exposes what G.B. Caird calls, "the self-destructive power of evil." God's use of power, in effect, is to allow evil to act unchecked, destroying God's creation but not God's purpose, for God's purpose is ultimately made known in the resurrection and in a new creation – in the new life of Christ and in a new heaven and earth.
As human beings, we get all wrapped up in ordering the grains of sand of history and time on the small stretch of beach that represents our lives, our history, our tradition, the way we have always done things and the way we expect things to happen. As Christians, we are being counseled by John to embrace the ocean that made the sand, shifts the sands, erases our works as if they were castles of sand, and ultimately, finally, inevitably, carries off our lives in its ebb and flow to rejoin the ocean from which we were birthed.
As Christians who strive to have a mature and living faith in Christ, we learn to reject the truths that claim to offer us stability and comfort within the framework of historical or temporal time. Instead, we learn to embrace the truth that the very God who first breathed life into the creation, is the very God that sustains the creation with the breath of life, and will be the very God offering new life to the creation when it draws its last breath.
Most people speak about the kingdom of God and eternal life as if it is an "afterlife," or "life after death." Revelation announces that the great mystery of the spiritual life – the life we live in the presence of God – is not something that we have to wait for – it's not something that happens later. It is the indwelling Christ that is eternal life. It is the active presence of God at the center of our living – the movement of God's Spirit within us gives us eternal life, and the power of that life has already overcome time and death.
In other words, when we live in communion with God, when we belong to God's own household, there is no longer any "before" or "after." Death is no longer the dividing line. Death has lost its power over those who belong to God, because God is the God of the living, not of the dead. Once we have tasted the joy and peace that come from being embraced by God's love, we know that all is well and all shall be well, for Christ is King.
(Comments to Michael at mphillip@epix.net.)