It was a hard weekend for sermon-writing, but I did finally get something together for tonight’s service at Canterbury Northwestern. I’m posting it in the extended entry. . . .
Anderson Chapel of St. John the Divine, Canterbury Northwestern
Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20/John 17:20-26 May 23, 2004
No poet could have ended the Bible better: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” With such words as these, the Alpha who is also Omega promises an imperishable blessing for all who come out of the toils of self-centeredness, who disentangle themselves from the clinging to mortality. With these words, God invites everyone to share a goodness that overcomes evil. With these words — but not, precisely, with these words, because John included several words that our reading tonight omits.
The lesson from Revelation leaves out the somewhat less poetic curses that go along with the fine blessings. “Outside [of heaven] are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood,” and “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book; if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.” (When we get to the intercessions, perhaps someone will pray for the lectionary committee, who tacitly have taken away from the words of the book of Revelation.)
Those words are missing from the official reading for reasons we can only guess at. My guess involves the extent to which those verses sound exclusive, un-welcoming; perhaps they remind people too much of the Left Behind fiction. In order to produce a reading that can’t be confused for a bullying apocalyptic literalism, the lectionary leaves us with a smooth-sounding invitation. And by reading the passage without those verses I can see why they might think the literary grandeur of the conclusion more satisfactory. The lectionary committee has produced what is arguably a more elegant poetic climax to Revelation, indeed, to the whole Bible itself; but it has done so at the cost of muting John’s clarion fanfare, and substituting a vague, romantic-modern poetic aesthetic for the sharp-edged theological truth that John taught. I wonder, then, whether tonight’s version of the lesson trades off too much, especially when John himself warns us against tailoring his message to suit our preferences — after all, when you try to improve on the truth to attain beauty, you inevitably wind up with less of both. The lectionary committee invites us out on an eternal blind date with a God of whom it tells us only about the most obviously attractive side of the divine personality, afraid to tell us about what they fear we might think of as a less winsome aspect of God.
If you can’t talk honestly about God in church, though, where can you talk honestly about God? And what John says about God is blunt, but it isn’t so very outrageous. After all, John warns us against idolatry and murder and promiscuity not because he’s a spoilsport who hates to see anyone have a good time, but precisely because he doesn’t want anyone to suffer. Any moment of unwise self-indulgence that John can talk you out of, he wants to spare you, because John knows, knows with a vision seared from heaven into his heart, that there is no cruelty or greed, no hard-heartedness or falsehood that does not cost us dearly. Our wrongs matter, they matter to us and to the world and to God, and John, caught up in the Spirit that sent him these blood-curdling visions, blurts our the warning that our readings stifle: “Don’t think, not even for a moment, that we can presume to not care what sorts of lives we bring before God, when God cares about us and our lives so very, very much.”
In the end — and that is, after all, what John’s revealing to us, the Big End, the climax of all things, the fulfillment of all that we were created to be — in the end, John sees everything transformed from the shapes into which mortality and suffering and wickedness and lack have twisted them, into the image of the Good that we belong to. In that devastating transformation, the kinks and scars of our mortality, greed, hard-heartedness, even lust, are wrung out of us in order that God‘s strength, grace, mercy, and above all God’s love, may redefine who we are, always and only for the best. That new creation, makes no room for murder, for theft, for falsehood or betrayal; the water of life unites us finally and comprehensively with the God toward whom we’ve been climbing, climbing, from the depths and gloom of isolation and hostility into the glory we were created to communicate and share.
Sharing in that unity of God brings us into a new life, a true life, and John points out the way to us. But he guides us honestly, reminding us that we can’t climb to the heavens if we’re clinging to the earth, we can’t practice lives that communicate and receive forgiveness if we’re determined to continue in lives that demean, exploit, defraud and destroy ourselves and one another. The love of which Jesus speaks tonight, the love that unites God and Jesus, and unites us with them, excludes desires that grow from the self to the self, but that love shapes our longings so as always to recognize Christ in our neighbor, to love for God’s sake, to knit us together in peace and harmony.
Where clinging mortality and desire weigh us down and trap us, the Spirit and the Bride draw us out of mortality and possession; the water of life for which we thirst frees us from the addictions that kill our souls; and in the end that John reveals to us, the Lamb promises us, “Amen, I am coming soon.“ Without falsehood and without hesitation, then, listen for the refrain of affirmation ringing through all creation from the beginning of the world, and join in a final chorus: “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!”
Amen.
Posted by AKMA at May 23, 2004 09:59 PM | TrackBackThe lectionary committee would appear to be on a level with the editors of the New York Times and the producers of the Three-Headed Nightly News. A question for you: is this repression of the actuality of the sacred text a matter of theological practice (and if so, how?) or is it merely a cultural aversion instigated by the same drivers that manufacture Our Daily Spectacle in the US?
Posted by: tom matrullo at May 24, 2004 08:45 AMI have always presumed that the lectionary bowdlerizing of Scripture was designed to keep people from getting hung up on the shocking or sensational parts that would keep them from hearing anything else. On the other hand, putting them back in certainly gives us the chance to say somethng significant about them and their relevance or irrelevance. Whatever, you did a great job on your Revelation/John sermon and using it as an opportunity to celebrate both honesty and the need to cut out of our lives those things we all get hung up on one way or another.
Dick