May 8, 2016 – Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
Grace for All
Seventh Sunday of Easter – May 8, 2016
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Last week I was trying to find someone who worships here occasionally and
who told me they were going into the hospital for surgery.
I didn’t know the phone number for the person so I looked up the name in the phone book.
I dialled the number and someone picked up the phone.
I asked if it was so-and-so. The person said yes.
I said I was Pastor Michael from First Lutheran Church and
said I was glad he’d been worshipping with us lately.
The person got hostile and said “I don’t go to church. I don’t believe in God.
There is no God. How could God put his children in the hospital?
How could God make people kill each other? There is no God.
I don’t believe in that.”
Apparently it was a different person with the same name! Hahahahaha! Whoops!
Well, I didn’t want to get in a big long conversation with the guy and I didn’t have the time.
But I should have at least said that I don’t believe in a God who
puts his children in the hospital either, or a God who makes people kill each other.
I also don’t believe in a God who creates natural disasters and wildfires that destroy
people’s homes and makes tens of thousands homeless.
Anyway, I told the guy I’d think about what he said and said goodbye.
And I did think about what he’d said.
And what I thought was this: is that really what most people outside the church think about
Christianity?
That our God is this cruel puppeteer just pulling our puppet strings to torture us for enjoyment?
If that is the case, we have a serious branding problem.
But the truth is that many people outside the church probably think Christians think of God as
cruel, manipulative, heartless, and perhaps even indifferent to human suffering.
And they probably perceive Christians as judgmental, bigoted, and self-righteous.
And the crazy thing is, these things about God and what it means to be Christian are probably
the exact opposite of what every person in this room believes.
Clearly we need to do a better job of branding what it is exactly we believe about God and
about what it means to be Christian.
We could look to the Bible for some help – never a bad idea: when in doubt read the Bible.
The thing is, though: the Bible is not exactly an easy document to read.
It’s looooong!!!! It tells a complicated story with many asides and by-ways!
It is in fact not a single book, but a mini-library comprised of 66 books!
And those 66 books were written over a time period of about a thousand years
by 40 different authors – each with different outlooks and prejudices and sensibilities.
So, yeah, no wonder it’s hard to come up with a single coherent statement about God and
about what Christian life is all about.
And to tell you the truth: that guy on the phone?
You could find support for what he said in the Bible!
Sometimes some of the Biblical writers do in fact write that
they think God puts people in the hospital – or they wish God would.
And some of them certainly think that God makes people kill each other.
So: what are we to do? And why don’t we believe that?
and what really does sum up and brand what the Bible is all about?
Well, the best thing you can always do is not just read the Bible;
the best thing you can do is look to Jesus.
For Lutherans, the Bible is really only valuable insofar as it introduces us to Jesus.
The whole Bible’s purpose is to introduce us to a person –
a person who reveals the true living God to us.
A person we claim is God in the flesh.
A person we claim sums up the whole meaning and purpose of human life.
A person who reveals who God really is – and a person who reveals what we are for.
In Jesus we find a God who does not put people in hospital but rather
one who heals them from all that would put them in the hospital.
In Jesus we find a God who does not make people kill each other but who invites people
into a life of forgiveness and enemy-love.
In the life death and resurrection of Jesus we find a much narrower focus for
who God is and what Christian life is all about.
In the book of Revelation, at the very end of the Bible, that focus remains on Jesus.
And for as much as the guy on the phone might tell you that the Bible can be summed up
in Revelation’s emphasis on the destruction of the world and the judgment of a
vengeful and wrathful God,
if we take the time to read it we find a very different picture.
You just have to read it to the end; you have to read it to the very end.
Today we get the very end of the Bible.
And what we find revealed is that the end or purpose of the world is not destruction.
This week we have had horrific images of Fort McMurray in the news that look like what
many – including my friend on the phone – perhaps think of as what the end of the world
will look like: fiery destruction.
The flaming columns of trees, the smoke, the burnt out buildings, the suffering and the tears.
And you think: is this what God is bringing the world to?
And then you read your Bible to the end and this is what you hear – you hear Jesus saying:
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
And you hear that as such good news.
The end is not a place. The end is not an event. The end is not a time. The end is not a battle.
The end is a person. A gracious gracious person who will be with us in every difficulty and
who finally will heal us and all creation from what ails us, and who will bring us peace.
And then you keep reading to the very very end.
And in the midst of all the struggle and all the hardship that the book does acknowledge and
that its readers knew about first-hand, you hear two invitations.
And the first invitation is for this Jesus to come now with his healing and peace.
“Come” say the Spirit and the church to Jesus:
come now and bring your gracious healing.
And let everyone say to Jesus “Come,”
come now and bring your gracious peace and be with us.
And then comes the second invitation: come everyone.
Come: everyone who thirsts for life, and for healing, and for peace, and for justice.
Come everyone who is hurting and everyone who has inflicted hurting.
Come, Jesus. And come, everyone.
Come and commune with Jesus, and come and commune with one another.
The Bible ends, not with destruction, not with fire, not with cataclysm.
The Bible ends with communion, with peace and with healing, and with an invitation to justice.
And then, if you read to the very very very end, like we did this morning, you do, in fact,
get the summation of all that the Bible is about.
And all that God is about. And all that Jesus is about.
And all that Christian life – and I would say, human life – is about.
In our translation, we read the very last verse of the Bible and it says,
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints.
Now here’s the thing:
we skipped a couple verses in the reading from Revelation this morning, right?
Ironically, those verses include a warning not to add or take away from what John wrote. Ha!
Anyway, some scribe somewhere along the way did add to what John originally wrote and
how he originally ended his book.
Some scribe added the words “the saints” – because he didn’t want the grace to be for everyone,
just for the saints!
But other scribes did leave what John wrote alone and preserved what John most likely
originally wrote, which is much more expansive and inclusive:
May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen! May it be so!
With all! May grace be with all!!!
That is how the entire message of the Bible, that is how God, that is how Christian life can
best be summed up: grace for all.
Grace for all: that’s our branding.
God’s lavish favour, without condition and without limits, for all people.
That is what God is about, and that is what we’re about as God’s people: grace for all.
Grace certainly for those poor people in Fort McMurray this week who through
no fault of their own find themselves the victims of tragedy.
And grace, too, certainly for Cathy Curtis who continues to remain missing.
Grace for those among us who have died, and grace for those among us who are hurting.
But grace, too, for those who are different from us.
Grace for those outside our congregation,
grace for those in our neighbourhood who so badly need it.
Grace for Israelis, grace for Palestinians, grace for ISIS.
Grace for those we love, grace for those we don’t know, and grace for our enemies.
Grace for you when you are stretched to your limit.
Grace for you when you feel you do not measure up.
Grace for you when you feel like you have screwed everything up.
Grace for you and grace for the person you can’t stand.
Grace for all. Grace for all. Grace for all.
Come, Lord Jesus, to the table and meet us now in the midst of all the difficulty.
Come, everyone, who hears this invitation and meet the God of all grace.
Come, be in communion. Come receive this grace. Come and live again.
Come: there is grace for all here. And together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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