Beginnings And Endings

"Beginnings And Endings"

Revelation 21:1-6a
November 1, 2009

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had
passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among
mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself
will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”
Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me,
“It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I
will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

Today is All Saints Day, the day that we as the church universal, celebrate those who
have gone before us, the saints of the past. It’s always been a favorite of mine, only
because it’s one of those days where we honor those people, our friends, family, that
have gone before us, and who it is believe still inhabit the room in some way, and are
actually present with us as we gather for the worship of God every Sunday. There is
something about the idea of my friend Timothy being in the room at this moment, or
maybe the saints that we have lost recently—Beth and Olga and Barb and Marion and
Charlotte and Arnold, Rita and Ken, and of course so, so many others we have lost
before these most recent deaths. In over 150 years of people naming this place as
their spiritual home, we have most certainly lost many, many people to the next world,
to the next stage of their journey with God. I know that I’ve brought death up a lot
lately, mostly because of the sermon series we just came out of, where Wayne Muller
asked us to live our lives in light of the knowledge that we too will one day die. But I
also think that these most recent deaths of member and friends, and what they meant
to so many of us, and certainly to their family, has put the issue of death—and life—
and the afterlife right before us.

And so, perhaps, it is appropriate that on this day we do a bit of rumination, of thinking
about what death might mean for us Christians, as people who follow after the way of
Jesus. And yet, I also want to think about the meaning of the deaths of those who are
not our fellow travelers spiritually, perhaps because they are people of a different faith,
or no faith, like my own father. I remember having a conversation with a fellow
clergyperson one day last year on this issue, and he got quite angry with me because I
personalized something, which was his understanding of hell. “Because my father was
not a Christian, not a believer, is he burning in hell now?” I asked him, perhaps a bit
angrily as well. And so this preacher was furious with me because I dared ask him that
question, because it was unfair on my part to ask him that, to make it about someone in
particular, rather than allow it to be a disembodied theological belief how God punishes
those who don’t believe as this preacher believes or what he believes God believes.
To some degree, this minister was right: it was unfair to put him in that position,
because he was not my father’s judge, but I just simply wanted to show him how
disconnected his actual theology was from real life, how easily he could just ignore the
ugly implications of his belief system—that those who did not agree with him about who
God is or who simply did not believe in God would be damned for all time, burning and
burning, in some sort of eternal torture chamber God created or God allowed to be
created. I think he needed to see the kind of ugly God he said he believed in, and
worshipped and loved, though I suspect he could never love a human being that
allowed the eternal torture he believed God was allowing to be done to my father or to
the Muslim woman who raised me as a child. You know, when people get angry about
you putting a human face to what they believe, you know they are very disconnected
from what they believe, very distanced from the beliefs they claim to be true. I cannot
imagine being able to go to sleep at night, or being able to enjoy heaven, if I thought
others were being tortured, or, as some have argued, from hints in the New Testament,
if I thought that others had been annihilated, wiped out because they did not believe in
Jesus, or that some sins were simply unforgivable.

And I don’t want me, or even us, to be distanced like, disconnected, from what we do
and do not believe about God, especially when it comes to eternity, about what has
happened to our relatives, our church members, our friends, believers and unbelievers
alike. I know that may put me in the unorthodox camp on this issue, this skepticism I
have about hell, perhaps a heretic when it comes to this issue, perhaps in conflict with
the very few passages that have little to say about hell but then, if that is the case, you
also label me that way for believing that genocide is always wrong, despite the fact
there are passage in Joshua that seem to imply that God commanded the wholesale
slaughter of men, women, children, even animals, then you can go ahead and count
me in the heresy camp. Or you can label me that way because I believe that women
are equal to men, despite what the Old and New Testament seem to imply, or because I
believe that slavery is wrong, despite what the Old and New Testament seem to say
about it, that it’s morally acceptable, or that marriage is a gift from God, a place of
learning and love and goodness, despite what Paul seems to imply about it, that one
shouldn’t get married unless one can’t control one’s sexual desire, as if marriage was
some sort of sexual safety valve—if believing those things, and setting myself up
against Scripture—not God, but Scripture—then count me in as a heretic.

For some reason, it has been weighing on me more and more, this disconnection
between people’s actual theology, or their selective and literal reading of Scripture,
from their real, actual lived lives. It’s so important, I think, to live as we believe, and if
we don’t live like we believe, then we need to ask ourselves the real question about why
we are so disconnected from what we say we believe. Don’t get me wrong—we all sin,
we all fall short personally, and we all fail our words and our best values—but that’s not
what I am talking about. It’s about living in a world where we say we believe that some
people are going to heaven and some people are going to hell and then not being
haunted by that reality, that division of life and love, wondering whether or not the
person who just handed you change at gas station will not be spending all of eternity
screaming out in pain forever. If that does not drop you to your knees in horror, and
pain and worry and continuous sorrow—how could we enjoy heaven knowing that
others are being tortured by this creature that God seems to have allowed to run
rampant in this world, the devil.—if that does not drop you to your knees in pain, then
you need to ask yourself whether you actually believe that to be true, or whether you
are simply cold and heartless, and simply without human compassion, a compassion
that you cannot even allow God to inhabit.

Now, I know that’s harsh…but I’m in a mood, but one that I think is prompted by the
Spirit of God, one that wants us to take our theology, our thinking about God, and the
Christ, as seriously as we take some of the other important things we hold to be true. I
want to match my life with my beliefs—and I think most people want that, and I think we
do, we as this congregation—that’s why we took the stand towards inclusivity, despite
thousands of years of tradition, and some verses in Scripture. What we actually
believed didn’t seem to match up with what we actually practiced, that we weren’t a
judgmental people, that we didn’t think that some people were automatically not
welcomed by God because of who they loved in this world. And so we became an
Open and Affirming congregation, the first ONA Christian church in this county,
because we wanted our actual experience to match up with what we say we believed.

And for me, and I think for a lot of people, it’s time to think through our beliefs, those
things we say we believe about God, but don’t quite, not really-wink, wink, and all that.
Part of the journey of faith is drilling down, drilling down to the core of what we believe,
and then naming it, saying that we believe this, but not that, that is true of us, but not
that. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to be troubled by things that challenge us,
doctrines or beliefs that push us a bit, but if it’s not true for us, in our hearts, then we
ought not to bandy it about, spewing it forth because its expected of us, because we
are of this faith, or are supposed to believe this or that doctrine The time for us to get
real about our God and our faith, and whom we claim to follow is now, and I’m up for the
ride, and I hope you are too, because, if there is anything that all this loss we’ve
experienced of late should teach us, is that we don’t have forever to get it right, to get
our lives aligned with our hearts, our hopes aligned with reality as we see it.

And I think the text before us today is one that calls us to think deeply about what it
means to believe in eternity, the world to come, and to ponder what has happened to
those we love. In the book of Revelation, this book we studied a couple of years ago in
the Adult Bible Study, we see a vision of a new heaven and a new earth, a vision of the
end, and an ending that includes God being with us, like Christ was with us, and with
God. In ancient Jewish thought, some believed that a replica of Jerusalem existed and
was in some sort of perfected state, was in the heavens, awaiting only the end to be
revealed, and to be a placed when that bridge between God and human would be fully
repaired. What I love about this passage is that beautiful intimate moment when God
wipes away our tears, the human tears, the ones that have been shed for so long, for
so many things, and for so many reasons. Death will be no more, so the visionary of
Revelation—that ender of all things, the ender of us, so it seems—it will be no more,
there will be no more endings, at the end of all things, ironically enough. The old world
has passed, and a new world is upon us—in a prayer that I often say at the end of
funerals, I say that the person who has died has not died, but death has died in them,
has ceased to be, and here, in this text, we see that being spelled out, named as true.

And yet, there is more, the verses that follow this text become the kind that just horrify
me, ones that frankly I don’t believe. This same writer continues with a litany of people
who will not be part of that tear wiping, of that moment of deep connection with God—
the idolaters, the polluted the faithless, the cowardly, the murderers, the liars, etc, etc….
it’s almost as if he can’t help himself: if there is good news, he has to somehow try
balance it out with the bad news as well. But this where using your brains comes in, the
study, the contextualization, the actual taking seriously the study of Scripture—if we
didn’t know that the man who wrote this is probably expressing his anger and deep pain
over the persecution that his ancient Christian community has experienced at the
hands of some of the kinds of people he named, if we don’t know that, it might never
occur to us where this deep and angry and vengeful, and frankly, vicious voice comes
from, a voice that one finds all over the book of Revelation. That doesn’t excuse that
voice, because frankly, texts like this have been used to justify all sorts of earthly
persecution of those who don’t share our Christian belief system. It only explains it,
and what it does do is to push a bit, to make us ask whether or not we believe that
voice is God’s voice or a voice rooted in a very human, a very understandable pain and
deep rage.

Now, having said that, it also means that we need to ask ourselves about the good stuff
we love, the vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, the place of no tears, the God who is
with us always. If the bad stuff comes from darkest shadows of our hearts, the place
that wants revenge, we have to ask ourselves whether or not the good stuff just wishful
thinking on our part. Well, in all honesty, I can’t say for 100% certainty that it isn’t it,
that I’m not just hoping against hope that there is more to the story, and that God might
just be more forgiving, more graceful than any of us humans. But I will say this: you
can always judge a belief by what it produces, by the action it elicits from people. If a
belief system causes people to be unkind to others, or causes them them to divide up
the world, if it produces ungraceful and ungrateful people, then you’ve got to ask
yourself whether the belief, the doctrine, whatever, is one that you want to buy, so to
speak, and whether or not it is true. You know, I’ve grown tired of people associating
Jesus Christ with intolerance and hate and bigotry and a meanness of spirit that has
nothing to do with who he is and what he said and how he lived. I actually believe that
Jesus the Christ came to bring good news to everyone, sinners and saints alike,
believers and non-believers alike, all of us, every one of us.

Why? Because I can’t imagine that the ending of our lives doesn’t go right back to the
beginning, that what started with God, doesn’t actually end up with God. That is what
our text also says, “I am the Alpha and Omega,” so says God—the beginning and the
end, the “a” and “z” of the Greek alphabet. The Christian tradition is unlike many other
religious traditions—it doesn’t have an elaborate description or a detailed
understanding of the afterlife, despite what you hear many Christians speak of—its just
not there, in the Scriptures, or even, in our theology. What we do have is this promise,
this idea, this powerful hope that the one who begins our lives, the one who was there
at our birth, who gave us life, is also the same one who will be with us all, everyone of
us, at the moment of our last breath—and that this ending is also a new beginning of
sorts, a continuation of the journey, though in a very different way, one that is as
mysterious as the Scripture’s own silence hints at. Why do I believe that? Because it
seems true to me, because it has mirrored my real life experience in this world, and
because it elicits hope from me and because it has given me peace. But more
importantly, the most important thing, is that it has made me a better person, this belief
in God being my beginning and my ending, being the beginning and the ending of all of
us—it has caused me to push towards being the kind of person Jesus was—and is, I
believe—the kind of person that loves people as they are, at this moment and in this
world. And I can’t wait to see all those that I have tried, but sometimes failed, to love as
they are, as Jesus did. I don’t know how that moment of reconnection will happen—not
much is said, really about it in the Bible—but I believe it will happen—our ending will be
our beginning, and our beginning with be our ending—and so I can’t wait to see my
father, my friend Timothy, my aunt Linda, and all of those that we have lost here in the
last few months, the last few years in this place. We will end where we began, in God,
in this One who is love itself, with family and friends around us, and, then finally, we will
be most fully at home. Amen.