May 12, 2013 – Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
Grace for All
Seventh Sunday of Easter – May 12, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
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Now that’s a catchy jingle.
When you think extermination in Winnipeg, you think Poulin’s,
‘cause there’s no foolin’ with Poulin.
They’re in the extermination business, and they mean it.
No foolin’ with Poulin.
That’s their tag-line. That’s what they’re known for.
The jingle has branded them well.
What would the church’s slogan be, I wonder? How is it branded?
What should the tag-line for our congregation be?
What would you want people to think of when they think of First Lutheran Church?
If you could sum up our core identity in a jingle, in just a few words, what would that be?
What you might say, and what people outside the church might say,
are probably two totally different things.
I remember reading a note in Marcus Borg’s book The Heart of Christianity a few years ago.
He’s a university professor, and when he asks his unchurched students to write
a short essay on their impressions of Christians, they consistently describe Christians as
literalistic, anti-intellectual, self-righteous, judgmental, and bigoted.
Whoa. Is that how you’d describe the church?
Would you write a catchy jingle incorporating those words?
Probably not.
Interestingly, you’ll notice that the people who put together the lectionary omitted a verse from
today’s reading from Revelation, verse 15.
[the other omitted verses charge people with not adding or
subtracting any words from what John has written].
Probably they were thinking that if they included it,
people might think that Christians are, well, self-righteous and judgmental.
Verse 15 says that outside the city gates of the New Jerusalem are the dogs and the sorcerers and
fornicators and murderers and idolaters,
and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
Well, you have to admit: it does sound a little self-righteous and judgmental.
Yes: it’s true: there is judgment involved in God’s plan for mending the universe.
But we have to hear that as good news.
In the end, God will not tolerate evil and injustice.
Please, God, we all cry, please may it be that the evil within us and the evil around us will
in the end be defeated and put to death.
In God’s plan for this world, whether in the New Jerusalem or the New Cleveland,
there is no place for what Ariel Castro did for the last 10 years.
Outside the New Jerusalem, the New Cleveland, and the New Winnipeg, God will leave
everything in us that would use people as sexual objects for their own gratification
(which is what fornication means),
everything in us that would wish someone dead or kill them (which is murder),
everything in us that would fear, love or trust anything above the triune God of
all mercy and grace (which is idolatry).
That is good news: there is no room for that crap in God’s mended universe,
and we are deceiving ourselves if we do not think that
we are not implicated in any of that because we are church members.
This is not about “us” and “them,” the good guys and the bad guys.
This is about “all of us” (and when the New Testament says “all” it really means “all”),
and if it is not really about all of us, then it is not really about any of us.
The great call of Revelation is a call out of the evil we are all implicated in.
The journey John takes us on in Revelation is a massive exodus from a violent empire based on
exploitation into a realm where the slaughtered but standing lamb reigns
in mercy, forgiveness, and self-giving love.
In a key verse to the interpretation of the whole book, John calls for us to “come out”
the empire so that we too do not partake of her sins [Revelation 18:4].
You have to remember that the seven churches John is addressing were far from perfect:
they were not the good guys while the Romans were the bad guys.
In his revelation John doesn’t just reveal the goodness of God and the evil of empire:
he also reveals the not so great things about the church.
Some of the churches were luke-warm about their faith and commitment.
Some were watering down their faith and commitment.
Some were actually doing things contrary to their faith and commitment.
It’s to these not-so-perfect people John is making the invitation to come out,
come out from the realm of death into the realm of life,
to the place where Jesus reigns in mercy and love and grace.
Come out from anger. Come out from cynicism. Come out from the need to acquire.
Come out from addiction. Come out from the desire to use others.
Come out from cynicism. Come out from guilt. Come out from despair.
Come out from apathy. Come out from cruelty.
These things are doomed in any case, John affirms.
The victory over them has already been won in Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.
Leave these things behind: there is no future in them:
the future belongs to God and to God’s goodness.
I was speaking with one of you this week about leaving behind the old order of death,
about leaving behind an addiction and all the hurtful behaviour that went with that.
“Leave it in that closet over there,” a counselor advised in his office.
“Just leave it in there and don’t open it up again.”
Leave it, and walk in newness of life: there is such promise and hope in that.
The thing is: the book of Revelation doesn’t end with judgment.
It doesn’t end with all the bad stuff within us and around us outside the city’s walls.
You have to keep reading to the end, the very end of the Bible.
If Ariel Castro does indeed get life imprisonment, or even the death penalty,
that won’t be the end.
There is no healing in that.
There is no healing in judgment alone.
The end is the new life that God makes possible.
The end isn’t just what you leave behind, it’s what you enter into.
Revelation is such a fitting end to the biblical story.
It ends with such a hopeful promise.
It ends with God’s promise that judgment is not the end.
It ends with the promise that the evil within us will not determine our future.
It ends with the promise that the evil around us will not determine the future.
It ends with the promise that this world is made and meant for something finer.
It ends with the promise that you are meant for something fine and filled with dignity and
purpose and meaning.
You turn to the last page,
and you hear that Jesus with his love and mercy and grace is coming soon.
That the suffering you suffer will be wiped away in the arms of a loving God.
That the tears you have shed for those you love will not have been in vain.
You get to the last page, and after all the warning and all the struggle and all the doubt,
you hear yourself saying with the people in John’s congregations,
“Come, Jesus. Come to us. Come to us now with healing and strength.
Come to us with hope. Come to us with peace.
Come to us with the future. Come to us now.”
And then you hear the final hope-filled invitation: let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let all who thirst for God’s promised future of justice come.
Let all who thirst for an end to poverty come.
Let all who thirst for an end to anger and futility and guilt and despair come.
Let all who thirst for love come.
Let all thirst for genuine loving community come.
Let all who thirst for communion come.
Let all come to the table of grace,
because that is where God’s promised future becomes a reality.
And when the New Testament says “all,” it really means “all.”
In the end, all are invited into the exodus from evil.
John’s jailers on Patmos are included in that call.
Those in John’s congregations who colluded with the Roman Empire were included in that call.
Even Caesar himself, I’m sure, was included.
See: beyond the judgment, the invitation to redemption trumps everything:
you have to read to the end.
The very end, or you won’t get that the way the Bible ends is hugely, unimaginably significant:
it ends with . . . communion.
John’s letter would have been read in the congregations he was addressing during
Sunday morning worship as the Word part of the service.
And when the reading was done, just as in our service, came an invitation to communion.
The Bible ends with an invitation to communion,
and a promise that God’s intention for all creation is for everything in heaven and
on earth to be in joyful, loving, harmonious communion.
You have to read to the end.
The end is not judgment. The end is beyond judgment.
The end is grace. In the end, grace wins. You have to read to the end, even to the very last verse.
In our translation, we read the last verse of the Bible and it says,
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints.
Sadly, despite John’s warnings not to add to his words, some scribe somewhere along the way
aApparently just couldn’t leave what John had written alone.
Some scribe added the words “the saints,” because he didn’t want the grace to be for everyone,
just for “the saints,” as if
Jesus’ grace and love and redemption were just for those already on the inside.
But other scribes did leave it alone, and they preserved what John likely originally wrote,
which is much more expansive:
May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all.
With all. Not just the insiders, not just those already in the know, not just with people we like.
With all.
Maybe, just maybe, some would be wakened by the warning and have a change of heart.
May grace be with all.
Not judgment for some. Not exclusion for some.
But may grace be with all.
And when the New Testament says all, it means all.
In God’s eyes, there is nothing, and no one, and no situation that is beyond redemption.
There is hope for all.
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all.
That’s the last sentence of the Bible: the Bible ends with a great final prayer for grace for all.
That’s the Bible’s branding, and that should be our branding too: grace for all.
That should be our jingle: someone please set it to some catchy music: grace for all.
That should sum up what our churches and our congregation is all about: grace for all.
Not extermination and death, as with Poulin’s, but grace and life for all.
“God’s lavish favour, without condition and without limits, for all people.”
(Daniel Clendenin at http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20070514JJ.shtml )
That is what God is about, and that is what we’re about as God’s people: grace for all.
In a few minutes we’ll enact those words here at our communion table,
where God’s future will invade our present.
We will invite the Lord Jesus to come with grace, grace without condition or limit for all people.
That is how the slaughtered but standing lamb reigns, right now, right here: with grace for all.
And we will invite everyone who hears to come and receive his grace and his life,
so that it might live in us and through us,
so that his grace for all might come to all even through us,
So that everything in heaven and everything on earth might take part in the great invitation to
make and exodus out of the old order of death into the new order of endless, endless
life and love and grace.
So come to newness, come to life, come to grace.
And together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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