Please do not be afraid that the morning’s reading comes from Revelation. It really is not a book to be feared or avoided. We have been taught, based on bad movies and bad teaching, to treat Revelation as if it was a Stephen King novel…filled with images and stories whose purpose, it would seem is to keep us up at night and to fill our dreams with nightmarish images of a painful scary end of the world. So, we worry about the sign of the beast and who the anti-Christ really is. This book and this passage are not about fear. Revelation it is about reassurance and promise. It lets us know what it will be like when peace and justice reign in the world and everything is as it should be.

There was a time early in the life of the early church when to be a follower of Jesus Christ was to be considered a treasonous criminal. To say that "Jesus Christ is Lord", instead of "Caesar is Lord" put believers on the wrong side of Roman law and justice. It was time of persecution and sometimes execution of believers. It could have been a hopeless time, but it became a visionary time. That is why it is called "Revelation" or "The Apocalypse". All that word apocalypse means is to give a first person account of a vision. That is what we have here.

In the spiritual battle between good and evil, the good that God does and leads will be triumphant over the forces of evil. In other words, God’s people win.

Do not be afraid, this is God’s story and it is our story in God. There is a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. We pray each week that God’s will be on earth as it is in heaven. When we do, we are praying for a time of renewal in our lives and in the life of the church, and in that renewal, we see a glimpse of heaven and of the life God intends. And if we listen carefully we will hear some promises from God. I hear four and in this first of the last four sermons I will preach as you pastor, I want to encourage you with these promises.

The first promise is of a reunion. There is a man named John, in exile on an island called Patmos, totally surrounded by water, perhaps in site of the mainland and the church and people he loves.

"It was in fact the sea that separated John and his beloved communities of anxious Christians. But for the sea, he would be there personally to speak the word of encouragement he must now communicate in writing, and be with them during the great ordeal they must endure. The new world coming will mean the removal of all present barriers to human relationships. Yet ‘sea’ has a deeper meaning in John’s understanding of God than this aspect of his personal circumstance. Throughout Revelation, ‘sea’ has represented the chaotic power of un-creation, anti-creation, the abysmal depth from which the dragon arises to torment the earth, the very opposite of the creator God. Driven back at creation and held at bay during the periods of history, in the new creation ‘sea’ will vanish forever. Evil, even as a potential disturber of creation, will have been irrevocably overcome" (Interpretation. Revelation. M Eugene Boring. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1989, p.216-217).

The island is a reminder to him and to us of the ways in which we are separated from God. We are separated from God by our own selfishness – insisting on our own way with no regard for anyone else; by our anger that leads to abuse and violence, both physical and emotional; by hopelessness that tempts us to give up and not even try; that takes away our will to seek and do justice and that leads us to give up on things that matter to us. It is as if we are separated from the love of friends and family, from the peace and confidence that helps us understand and express anger and other deep feelings in a healthy way, it is as if we are in a hole so deep we cannot feel the air or see the light over head.

I am not talking about depression which is a clinical, emotional, physical illness. I am talking about that spiritual condition that almost leads us to believe that God is not even present to us. But, we are people who live with a promise of reunion. There is a new heaven and a new earth. It is what we read about in Isaiah 43 (19), when exiles came back from Babylon to be reunited with the land and people God gave to them. In Revelation, Rome is the new Babylon, and John writes to the church to encourage them to be the people God has called them to be, to be the beloved community so that they will celebrate Jerusalem and not be afraid of old Babylon.

They are encouraged because in God’s realm, the sea is no more, there is no longer any separation because the presence of God has made a spiritual bridge from that island to the mainland. And not only will there be a reunion, but the site of the reunion is set. The New Jerusalem, the city where the Temple sits, the city where people from all the world gather will be that place. John writes about a city. He reflects that "early Christianity quickly became an urban religion, a faith that had to do with establishing justice in the gates and witnessing to the faith in the marketplace with all of the complexities of social, economic, political life. John does not write to individual Christians who have withdrawn from public life, or to groups of Christians in retreat centers, but to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, and today even to Columbus, all churches in large cities.

"A city is the realization of human community, the concrete living out of our interdependence on others as the essential nature of human life. In our individualistic ideal, each person is independent, self-reliant, doing everything for himself or herself. In a city the tasks of life are divided up, each one does a part, and the beauty of life is not a solo but a symphony. As community, a city is not streets and buildings but people.

"The advent of the heavenly city does not abolish all human efforts to build a decent earthly civilization but fulfills them. God does not make ‘all new things’, but ‘all things new’ (Boring, 219-220).

It occurs to me that while John talked about a new Jerusalem, today we are talking about a new church. The city of God bearing witness to a new heaven and earth is now the church of Jesus Christ called to be particular in that it names the name of Jesus as its reason for being. It is inclusive, beloved of God, holy, and active.

So it is the church that receives the other promises from God and the second promise we hear is the promise of presence. We hear the voice of God as John did. "Listen", God says. "I will make my home with humanity". It reminds me of John 1.14, where God becomes one with us, and lives among us. God will be with us. God will be our companion in life, hanging with us when it’s good, and hanging with us even more when it’s bad. Our God will be the kind of God who is as close as our own breathing.

The third promise is of consolation. Crying bitter tears? God can dry them. In our isolation from God, the grief and pain we know in life grows greater. Even with God among us, being with us as our God and we as God’s people, we will still know loss and disappointment. The Christians of John’s day certainly did and we will not be spared either. But here is more good news. In God’s city, in the new Jerusalem, that place of spiritual healing and wholeness, death is done, pain is banished, and mourning is what we used to do. We can live now with that promise, we can begin to live into it now, living in these days in the hope and promise God holds for us. And in the promise of a future life we can claim and live into the one God has given us now.

We can live new lives because the old things are gone, no persecution then, no self-defeat now. Courage in the face of death then, courage in the face of uncertainty now. Hope then, hope now; God making and doing new things then, God making and doing new thing now. It is possible for us.

There are too many stories of people getting a fresh vision, seeing opportunities to do a new thing to pass us by without so much as a glance. God is with us creating new possibilities born of God’s consolation for us.

The last promise is that of fulfillment. In Jesus Christ, God fulfills the promises of consolation, presence, and reunion. The one who lives, who is our comfort and the embodiment of God on earth is with us, and that is good.

We are coming into a time of change and transition here and in order to stay healthy spiritually and physically, we will have to believe that Jesus Christ is present among us.

There at the beginning, with us to the end, God through Jesus Christ will be true to the promises made to us. "God promises to dwell with us, to ease our pain and wipe tears from our eyes. Dare to trust, for God accepts us as we are, that we might become all we are meant to be. God grants us the opportunity to repent. It is a gift that leads to new life. Accept God’s offer of new life in Christ.

"God has called us to a ministry of service: water for the thirsty, comfort to those who grieve, healing for ones in pain, acceptance for persons who have not accepted themselves" (Gathered by Love. Lavon Bayler. Cleveland: United Church Press. 1994; p.95).

We will need to believe that if we can defeat the demonic spirits of self-doubt, and powerlessness, we will be both successful in the next stages of our lives and ministry and in receiving the promises of God. We will be made new on earth and will begin to live on earth as we pray to live in heaven. We will be God’s people, and God will, through Jesus Christ, be the source of our new and renewed life. Thanks be to God. Amen.