The Surprise Ending (Fifth Sunday of Easter)

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Long, long ago – when I was in Confirmation class! – we somehow managed to convince the Pastor to take us to see a movie as one of our Confirmation classes!  The movie was called “The Late Great Planet Earth”, and it came out in 1978 and was based on a book written by Hal Lindsey in 1970.

Basically, it was doomsday movie based mainly on images from the Book of Revelation, in which the authors interpreted every image and vision in Revelation as a thing or an event in the 1970’s.  I don’t remember all of the stuff, but they decided that the stars around the head of the woman in Revelation were a reference to the European common market, the moon turning to blood was the way the moon would look in the sky after nuclear annihilation, and the “mark of the beast” was the emerging UPC code!  For a few months, it was a popular movie and it seemed very current because it basically predicted that the end of the world would arrive sometime early on in the 1980’s, if not before!

Yet because it was a “religious” movie, we got the Pastor to take us to see it.  And afterwards, as we all wondered about how accurate this all might be, I remember the Pastor saying, “well, they took quite a few liberties with the interpretation.”

And indeed they did!  The thing is, the Book of Revelation is full of all kinds of images which seem really strange and confusing to us.  They’re strange and confusing because we’re not first century residents of the Roman Empire, for whom some of these images would have been obvious.  And because, let’s face it, most Christians don’t read the Old Testament enough to realize that most of the strange images come directly from books like Ezekiel and Daniel, or one of the other prophets.

But even so, most of Revelation is filled with stories about plagues and beasts and dragons and cosmic battles.  It’s no wonder it’s fascinated Christians for 2000 years and that people make silly movies about it.  There’s lots of good material there!

But those things are really not the point of the book.  And in today’s second reading, we reach the surprise ending.  Finally, after all of these plagues and battles and all the death and destruction, we might expect that God finally raises a few faithful people to life and brings them up to heaven for an eternal life of spiritual bliss.  And honestly, that’s how many people interpret life after death.

But here’s what happens.  Rather than people being raptured up into heaven (and you should remember that “rapture” is not a word that appears in the Bible!), John says,

“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;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;'”

Rather than people having to find a way to God, God comes down to them.  God renews the heavens and the earth, and everything bad is wiped away, including death.

Actually, this shouldn’t be a surprise ending, because this is how the story of Jesus begins – God comes down from heaven, takes on human form and dwells with us.  And in John of Patmos’ Revelation, this happens again, only in a bigger way.

And we read all these excerpts from Revelation during Easter partially because too many people get hung up on the dragons and the plagues.  But the point of Revelation is the “surprise ending.”  And the point of that “surprise ending” – both for the early Christian community and for us, is that:

• God wins! I remember a pastor buddy of mine years ago who, when asked what he thought the Book of Revelation was about, simply responded “God wins!”  And it’s true!  If you didn’t know otherwise, you might read the whole book up to about chapter 21 and be really depressed – the world is full of evil people; the devil is running amok; there are plagues and wars and you’d expect everything just to blow up and be gone.  But that’s not what happens.  Evil is vanquished – even death is conquered – and God comes down to be with us.  And so the point of the whole book is not to lose heart or give up no matter how bad things get.  Things may be bad, and may even be getting worse in life, but the end is never in question. God always wins…

• God’s victory happens without any human help – in the book of Revelation, people are continually called to faithfulness and to resist being part of the evil in the world around them.  But there is never the thought that by their faithfulness or resistance they can fix the world or bring about the righteousness that can only come from God’s intervention.  And after all, this is what happened in the Resurrection as well.  God raised Jesus from the dead without any human help, even though many of the disciples themselves fled and denied Jesus.  The disciples didn’t even need to roll the stone away to give Jesus a hand! God’s new life – and God’s victory over death – happens purely through God’s grace and doesn’t depend upon us, which is another reason not to lose heart and give up…

• Faithfulness and resistance to evil, while they don’t bring about God’s new life, are both signs of – and participation in – that new life even now and even in the midst of horrible things that we can’t control or fix.  One of the interesting things about the “surprise ending” is that God doesn’t give up on his creation. You might think, after reading about how evil and terrible things are in the world, that God would say, “Wow!  That was a great experiment, but I’ll never do that again!  Instead, I’ll glean a few faithful people from the world and bring them up to a mystical heaven.”  But instead, a new Jerusalem comes down from heaven and there are so many people included in this re-newed creation that no one can number them.  And so the call to faithfulness is also not in vain because caring for the creation right now and caring for the people who inhabit it right now are already signs of the new life we know is coming at the end of all things…

And so we read Revelation during the Easter season to remind us of the same things we found out when God raised Jesus from the dead.  And those things are also not about dragons and plagues and cosmic battles.

Instead, we’re called to remember that no matter how things are going in this world or in our own lives, God’s love and promise of salvation always wins, even if it might not seem like it at the moment.  We’re called to remember that God’s ultimate plans can’t be thwarted by the dragons or the demons, or even by human failure or unfaithfulness.  And most of all, we’re called to faithfulness, not because it will save us or bring about God’s righteousness, but because by being faithful in an unfaithful world, we can be a sign and a foretaste of the new life yet to come.

Amen.