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"How Strange! How Wonderful!"
It was 70 AD. General Titus was on the way and those
Christians who had not yet left the city of Jerusalem
had to go now. John led his party out of the city as
fast as he could. Among them were several fellow believers
and of course Mary who had been in his charge for almost
40 years now.
They traveled north and east, maybe they traveled on foot,
but perhaps they enlisted the aid of a ship or two. Finally
they arrived at the great city of Ephesus. Here in this
city surely they would experience some peace and certainly
here they would have the chance to continue to teach about
the work and salvation of Jesus Christ to all those who
sailed in and out of its great port.
In the years that followed, John became the bishop of the
church there, but somehow peace eluded him. Some years
later another emperor came to the throne in Rome. His name
was Domitian and Christians who did not offer incense would
suffer greatly under his reign. One of them was John. He
simply would not give in and so finally he found himself
exiled to the nearby island of Patmos.
It was a terrible day for John, but such a blessing to
you and me. Out of all of John’s suffering, God was
bringing about something good. For there on Patmos,
God gave him the words of our Epistle lesson and so
many more. There on Patmos, in the midst of all of his
struggles, God gave John the words of the Revelation
with its final message: Jesus wins.
We had the chance to visit Patmos on our recent Greece
trip and I almost got in a little trouble there. You
see, tradition holds that John received Revelation in a
small cave. We visited the cave, which is a Greek
Orthodox Shrine today. The rules are: you may visit,
but you are not allowed to say anything. I thought
“to heck with that!” We had traveled several thousand
miles to be there and we were certainly going to read a
few of John’s comforting words while we were there. So,
I gathered our group and to the horror of our tour guide,
I read a couple of verses, verses from our epistle in
fact, and then we prayed.
It was a meaningful moment for all of us and I wanted to
share it with you. It almost seems strange, doesn’t it,
to find hope in a book that so many view is filled with
so much fear.
But that is the truth really. Revelation is a strange
book. Look at our Epistle. John describes an almost
unreal place that is so strange to us. He sees a place
with no temple because there is no need for God to hide
himself there, He and the Lamb Jesus Christ Lamb are
its temple.
John describes a place that has no need of the sun or moon,
for it gets its light from the Lamb, the Light of God. He
writes of a place with gates that are never shut and where
night never falls. It is a place where all nations, kings,
and people live in the glory of God. It is finally, a
place where no one who is deceitful or shameful may
enter. In other words, it is a place where there is
no sin.
No wonder it seems so strange to us, this vision of heaven,
for it is totally foreign to our experience. Not one of
us has ever been in a place where there was no sin. And
frankly it sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
Won’t it be wonderful, to be in a place where there is
no sin. Week after week you come here into our church
and like it or not, you know that the preacher is sooner
or later going to get around to talking to you about
your sin. And like it or not, you need to hear it,
I need to hear it!
Like it or not we know all about those shameful and
deceitful things that John is talking about. Our
careless words, out thoughtless actions, our secret
motives and desires leave us feeling shame before
our God. And I truly believe that honest Christians
spend a good bit of their time trying to get them
out of our lives.
We attempt to think before we speak. We do our best to
avoid situations that will lead us into familiar traps. We
spend hours in prayer about the secrets that we all hide
deep in our hearts. Yet still we just cannot conquer
them. And if we really think about it, trapped in our
sin, there is no way that we will ever be able to enter
that strange and wonderful place that John describes.
The only ones that will get in are the ones whose names
are written in the Lamb’s book of life. And there is no
way that we can ever write our names there. But Jesus
can. And He did.
It took a long time. In order to write your name and mine
in the book of life, the Lamb of God had to make right all
that we have done wrong. To write our names in the book He
made the journey from heaven to earth, from a manger to a
cross. To write our names in the book of life, the Lamb
of God had to give his life as a sacrifice for you and me.
He gave his life on the cross. Onto that cross he carried
our sin, our deceitfulness, our shame onto the cross until
under their weight his life was crushed out. Still all of
this would not have been enough, for indeed Jesus death
didn’t yet win the victory. That is until God the Father
raised him again to new life.
The Lamb of God lives. He lives and in his living he
announces once and for all he was, is and always will
be victorious over sin, death, and the devil. In his
victory he erases our sins in his own blood, in the
sweet words of forgiveness that come to us again and
again in the word and the sacraments, in our baptism
which writes our name in the Lamb’s book of life. Sweet
words that we hear again today: your sins are forgiven.
The importance of this can never be over-estimated. Having
our sins forgiven means that shame and deceit are gone and
now we may enter in to the strange and glorious heaven that
John so careful describes to us.
It is this message of hope that God gave to John so many
years ago on Patmos, it is this message of hope that falls
like a life-giving rain onto the desert of sin.
In heaven we will indeed live a place with no fear, or
sadness, or crying or pain. On this All Saints’ Day we
remember that in heaven we will see again those who have
gone before us and we will join them in basking in the
light and peace of the Glory of God forever.
I believe that John’s experience gives us one other thought
of hope that we should not miss this morning. John suffered.
No matter what he did, no matter how far he traveled, the
problems of this life seemed to find him. Yet in the middle
of all of his suffering, God was a work giving to the church,
giving to you and me to indescribable picture of what waits
for us one day.
I think this might have a little to say to us in our time of
suffering and stress and pain. In the middle of all of that,
in the middle of whatever you may be dealing with today, God
is at work. He never leaves us alone, and he will bring good
out of our experience even if we don’t live to see it with
our own eyes.
In the middle of you pain, remember the central message of the
great book of Revelation. Jesus wins! Or put another way, He
has already won!
John calls us to imagine an incredible place today. It is a
place where there is never any more night or fear or uncertainty.
He calls us to imagine a place where the gates are never locked
or even closed, because there is no longer anything to shut out.
John calls us to pause this morning and imagine this wonderful
place for just a moment this morning. Then he calls us to
imagine that we will live there one day. Because we will!
In the Name of Jesus’ the Lamb of God who has written your name
in the book of Life! Amen!
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