“No More Darkness”

Revelation 21:10, 21:22-22:5

Once again I’m opening the sermon with quotes, this time from biblical scholar N. T. Wright and scholar and writer Eugene Peterson. Why? Because they’re worth repeating and serve as a framework for the sermon.

First from Dr. Wright: “No Temple, no sun or moon, and no uncleanness either. A world without evil is, to us, as inconceivable as a world without sun and moon… In the new creation, reality will be transformed so that wickedness is as impossible as sun [and] moon [are] unnecessary.

Images of the future are vital to beckon us along the way. But they do more: they work backwards, as it were, towards us, shedding light on our present darkness. Jesus promises a peace which nothing in the present world can provide, a peace which comes from, and points to, God’s future.”

And now from Dr. Peterson: “[John the elder] was a pastor to a praying people who were engaged in the hard task of discerning the action of God in the seductively fraudulent commerce of their cities, picking the word of God out of the blasphemous words of politics and religion that daily bruised their ears. His vision of heaven answers to the first table of petitions in the Lord’s Prayer: he shows us God’s name being hallowed, his kingdom coming, his will being done ‘on earth as in heaven’… We are now able to look upon the events around us not as a hopeless morass of pagan deception and human misery, but as the birth pangs of a new creation and a beckoning to participate in God’s remaking of God’s creation.”

Let’s think about all that. No more darkness. No more evil. No more wickedness. No more of anything that desecrates God’s creation. The perfect peace of Christ finally becoming the rule of the day: a peace defined by security, openness, and the lack of fear. We are again presented with a vision of a new creation the likes of which we can’t even begin to imagine. The New Jerusalem is so positively contrasted with the Sodom-like cities of this world: ancient Babylon, Nineveh, and Rome; modern New York, London, and Paris – Washington, D. C. and its suburbs.

Yes, let’s think about all that. I don’t know about you but I really need such a vision to lean on right now. You’ve heard the expression T.G.I.F., thank goodness it’s Friday. Well I’m having a T.G.I.S. moment, thank goodness it’s Sunday. Granted, I’m thankful for Sunday for all of the obvious reasons. I am, after all, a Christian. But there’s another layer of thankfulness this morning. Sunday, thank goodness, is the beginning of another week.

Personally most of last week was a bummer: a respiratory infection and finding out that we lack willing candidates for the new class of elders and deacons. More generally speaking, there’s devastating flooding in Tennessee, a giant oil spill off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and an increasingly frail European economy. Oh, and by the way, our own stock market steadily declining. Add to that the insane leaders in North Korea and Iran and a bunch of Islamic ding-dongs who think it’s their God-given mission to kill us all.

Yes, I’m ready for a new week. The good news is that it has arrived. The bad news is that most of last week’s bad news is now this week’s bad news. And it just might get worse. A colleague wrote in her blog last week that evil seems to be ratcheting it up a notch: in the world, in the church, and in our personal lives. A new week isn’t much of a cure for that kind of darkness. Such darkness necessitates a stronger cure. Thus Revelation 21’s vision of the New Jerusalem is a word of hope we all need to hear.

The commentary of N. T. Wright and Eugene Peterson expand the parameters of this hope to include the present as well as the future. Dr. Wright reminds us that images of future hope work backwards to bring light into our present darkness. The source of that light is the risen Christ. In him we find a peace that passes all understanding.

This peace is what enables us to live in a world defined, in the words of Dr. Peterson, by fraud, blasphemy, pagan deception, and human misery. And again referring to Dr. Peterson’s commentary, it is this peace that enables us to see in the chaotic events swirling around us the birth pangs of a new creation. This new creation hasn’t arrived yet, but in Jesus Christ we know that it’s coming. Evil may very well be ratcheting up its level of warfare on the present creation, but God’s Word in Revelation tells us that Jesus will win that war. And the overall message of Scripture is that in Christ the war has already been won. Evil can kill us. It can’t destroy us.

That knowledge is what really makes today a T.G.I.S. moment. Thank goodness it’s Sunday not because it’s the first day of a new week, but because it gives us another opportunity to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. It gives is another opportunity to reflect on and celebrate the New Jerusalem that lies just around eternity’s corner. Thanks to John the Elder’s vision we can see it just ahead in the mist of history. It’s almost close enough to touch, just barely beyond our grasp. It is there waiting for us; even now it is being readied to receive us. Evil may more and more ratchet up. Hell’s fury may roar and thunder. The Devil may be on a rampage. If we are in Christ none of it matters.

Why? Because God’s new creation, God’s New Jerusalem, awaits us. N. T. Wright had more to say about this New Jerusalem: “This city will truly be that for which Israel longed through her years of groaning exile. Imagery from Isaiah, Micah, Zechariah and, above all, Ezekiel swirls around [it], though in each case transcended… it is the focal point of a world which will finally see God’s light and discover his healing.”

And some day all God’s saints will go marching into that city. All who are in Christ will enter it. Paradise lost will finally be paradise regained. With that in mind, I’ll close the sermon with these words from the hymn “Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand:” “Ten thousand times ten thousand/In sparkling raiment bright/The armies of the ransomed saints/Throng up the steps of light/’Tis finished, all is finished/Their fight with death and sin/Fling open wide the golden gates/And let the victors in.”

And the victors, not the survivors, the victors will enter in. Amen.