Coming Attractions

Revelation 21:1-7

February 26, 2017 • Mount Pleasant UMC

In the days before the internet—and yes, kids, there was a time before the internet, Google and smartphones—one of the things I loved most about going to the movies, in addition to seeing the movie I had paid to see, was the “coming attractions.” I didn’t know then they were called “trailers,” and I’m still not sure why or how they got that name. I just knew that it was sort of exciting to see what might be coming out soon. Today, they show too many trailers and none of them are surprises since you can see them online even before they hit the theaters. But in those days, you really didn’t know what was coming out until the trailers played before the movie. Coming attractions, the introduction would say, and that’s just what they were. They were designed to give you just enough of a taste of the film so that you would come back for the newest attraction.

And that’s just what the Bible does when it comes to last things and to an explanation of our belief about the afterlife. If anyone tells you they have it all figured out, or if they tell you that somehow the last book of the Bible, Revelation, gives a clear picture, don’t believe them. They’re lying to you. Part of our problem when we approach this final part of the Apostle’s Creed is that, in modern American Christianity, we get more of our theology about last things (eschatology) from Dante, Tim LaHaye and Hollywood movies than we do from the Bible. The Scriptures do not intend to tell us everything about what lies ahead, what heaven is like, or how all of this will wrap up. Rather, the Bible gives us hints and glimpses—a coming attractions trailer—and calls us to have faith in what we do not yet see or understand.

For the last several weeks, we have been exploring and affirming our faith as described by the Apostle’s Creed: we believe in God, the Father Almighty; we believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord; we believe in the Holy Spirit; we believe in the church and the communion of saints; we believe in the forgiveness of sins. Today, we come to the final two phrases of this Creed, this ancient statement of faith: “I believe…in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” This part of the creed, coming at the end as it does, has to do with what’s ahead, with the hope that the Christian faith proclaims, a hope that sets us apart from most every other faith on the planet today. We believe that we are not just finite beings; every single human being is an eternal creation and will live forever. The choices we make now, in this place, in this time, however, determine for us where we will spend that life everlasting.

But to talk about eternity, we have to talk first about death. In a world where we are deeply divided—politically, socially, economically, religiously—every single human being on the planet has one thing in common: death. That is the one shared experience of all human beings. “We will bury people we love. We will wrestle with our own mortality” (Hamilton, Creed, pg. 148). We will stand beside graves and wonder if this is all there is. And we’ll look to the sky and ponder what might lie beyond. We are not unique in that experience. When I was in Egypt in 2012, I was reminded of how death-centered that entire ancient culture was. We went there to marvel at the pyramids, which are really large burial vaults. We visited place after place where the culture of death shaped the people’s response to life. The mythology of the people all focused on death and how to get into whatever afterlife might await. Egypt was not alone in that ancient fascination, nor is the ritualization of death something confined to ancient times. We spend so much time and money in our world trying to cheat death, put off death, and even when someone dies, we spend thousands of dollars to make them look alive. How many times have you been at a funeral home and heard someone say, “They look almost alive”? We fear death because, even with our faith, in our deepest selves we’re not quite sure what might be on the other side. Take a listen to this conversation from the film Brooklyn, when a young immigrant woman learns her sister has died back in Ireland.

MOVIE CLIP - Brooklyn

What we believe about death determines how we face life (cf. Hamilton 164). So when the Creed calls us to affirm a belief in “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,” what is it we’re affirming? Let’s take the second phrase first because above all else what we’re saying is that there is more to life than what we see around us. This life is not all there is; there is a life that is beyond this life. In the final book of the Bible, Revelation, the Apostle John gives us some of the best hints of what that life will be like. You most likely have heard this passage many times before; I read it at nearly every funeral I do because there is no better description of our hope. John is, tradition tells us, very late in his life. He is in exile on the island of Patmos, sent there as a punishment for preaching about Jesus—and lest you think of him as being stranded on a deserted rock in the middle of the ocean, let me assure you Patmos was and is a beautiful place in the Mediterranean. The worst part of this exile would not have been the surroundings but being separated from his family and his church. During some part of that exile, on a Sunday (the Lord’s Day), John receives a vision which he says he was given because he was “in the Spirit.” Now, this is not a lesson on Revelation, but suffice it to say this book has perplexed generation after generation of Christians because it’s so different from the rest of the Bible. Those who say they have found a linear map in the book that describes the end of time misunderstand what this book is about. The very first verse says it clearly: this is a revelation of Jesus Christ. This book is primarily meant to tell us more about Jesus, and help us see him more clearly, and so when John nears the end of this mind-blowing experience, he sees the point of all the visions. The hope and the promise of life everlasting is wrapped up in this truth: God will be with us (21:3). We will be in the presence of God, our creator, our redeemer, our sustainer. And that’s when John writes these beautiful words to describe what that will be like: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (21:4).

When you think of eternity, what images most come to mind? For most of us, it’s probably golden streets, angels’ wings, an angel choir, playing a harp on a cloud. John sees none of that here. In this vision of eternity, he sees one thing: God himself will be with his people. God, the creator of the universe, the very giver of life itself, the one who holds it all together, the one who owes us nothing—that God will stoop down and wipe the tears from our eyes. Remember when your kids or your grandkids were little and they would fall down, maybe skin their knee or stub their toe? And the tears would start, right? What does a good parent do at that point? “Suck it up, kid, you’ll be fine?” No, of course not. A good parent wraps their child up in their arms, quiets them down with words of assurance and wipes the tears from the child’s face. That’s the image there: God himself will wipe away every tear we have ever had. It is “an act of utter gentleness and kindness to be performed not by some junior heavenly official but by God himself" (Wright, Revelation for Everyone, pg. 190). Does that not blow your mind? Even in the end, he is still our tender Father God, our Abba, our Daddy.

There’s another detail tucked in this passage that we often overlook, don’t notice or ignore because we’ve always had this idea that heaven is someplace “up there” we go to. We even sang about that this morning in our opening hymn: “When I die, hallelujah by and by, I’ll fly away.” But the vision John saw shows heaven coming down to us. Jesus himself preached about a coming “kingdom of heaven” and even told the Pharisees, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, not will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst” (Luke 17:20-21). Here in Revelation, the vision John is given is this: “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (21:2). Just as Jesus came down from heaven to earth, became human for our sake, the goal of creation and what God is working toward is the day when heaven and earth become one. When John describes “a new heaven and a new earth,” he’s not talking about scrapping the old one, throwing it away and starting over. It’s not like God is saying, “Well, that didn’t work, let’s try again—heaven and earth 2.0.” The word John uses there really means “renewed.” He’s not describing something that never existed; he’s describing something that is being remade, made the way God intended it to be from the beginning. All traces of sin and decay are gone. Heaven and earth are joined together for eternity, the way God wanted it from the beginning (cf. Wright 188-189; Mulholland, Revelation, pg. 315).

So what will it be like? I mean, that’s the question we all want the answer to, right? In Revelation, John only gives us glimpses and hints. We are told there will be worship there, and singing. So those of you who avoid singing here, you might want to get started because it’s something that will be doing in eternity. In fact, a friend of mine who had one of the worst singing voices I ever heard told me he was counting on being able to sing beautifully in eternity! We’re told there are angels there, but contrary to the “It’s a Wonderful Life” theology, we do not become angels when we die. Angels are created beings, like you and me. There are no wings handed out when bells ring; sorry to disappoint you! Beyond that, we don’t know a whole lot, but there is an old story that, for me, gives me a sense of what our attitude toward the life everlasting should be. Back in the days when doctors made house calls, one doctor usually took his dog around house to house with him. The dog would sit out on the porch while the doctor made his examinations. At one particular stop, the doctor took the man’s vital signs and knew it wouldn’t be long before the man was at the door of eternity. As the doctor was preparing to leave, the man asked him, “Doc, what is death like? What’s on the other side?” At that moment, the doctor heard his dog whimpering and scratching at the door outside, and he turned to the man. “Do you hear that?” he asked. “That’s my dog. He’s never been in your house. He doesn’t know what it’s like in here. What he knows is that his master is on the other side of that door, and if his master is in here, it must be okay.” The doctor paused, then looked in the man’s eyes. “Our Master is on the other side of death’s door, and so it’s going to be all right” (Hamilton 158).

The other glimpse we get of heaven in the Bible is that it’ll be like a wedding. John said the New Jerusalem (his stand-in image for the church) will be like “a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (21:2). In every wedding I officiate, I have a favorite moment that never fails to inspire me. After all the attendants are in place, there is that moment when the bride appears at the head of the aisle. The congregation turns around and stands as she begins her walk toward the altar, and I always turn to look at the groom. Every time, there is a look of pure joy on the groom’s face as he sees the beauty of his bride coming to him, soon to be united to him as his wife. And then there’s the reception after the wedding, when family and friends gather to celebrate and feast and extend well-wishes. Actually, we don’t really know what a true celebration is like because in Jesus’ day and culture, the wedding feast would go on for a week. A whole week! Father’s wallets are feeling the pinch all over the sanctuary this morning! And that’s a description of what heaven is like: a never ending wedding feast, a celebration of the love of the groom (Jesus) for his bride (the church). Here’s the prophet Isaiah’s description of such a day: “On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines” (Isaiah 25:6). Here’s the point: heaven is being joined to earth, so take the very best experiences you can imagine here on earth, and eternity is even better, even more glorious than all of that put together (cf. Hamilton 156-157). No matter how good it is here, it’s far better there.

A question I have been asked repeatedly in my years of ministry is, “When do I go to heaven?” Is it right at the moment we die, or is it when Jesus returns, or is it at some point in between? There are a lot of theories out there, and the Bible doesn’t tell us clearly. We have, again, only hints and glimpses. We know, for instance, that time doesn’t work in eternity the same way it does here. Peter reminds his readers, who were concerned that Jesus was taking his own sweet time (in their estimation) returning, that “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8). He goes on to remind them that God is not slow in keeping his promises; God just doesn’t work on our timetable. Paul, though, says that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, which leads many to believe that we go to be with Jesus instantly at the point of our death (2 Corinthians 5:6-8). There are others who point out that John tells us, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5), and they wonder: what if this is more than just a metaphor? What if John, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is telling us what God is really like, that God is truly light? After all, Paul says God dwells in “unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:11), and Moses, way back in the Old Testament, was told that no one could look on God’s face and live (cf. Exodus 33:20). Science tells us that as things approach the speed of light, everything slows down to a single point, a moment, the ever-present “now,” and so there are those who suggest that our arrival in eternity will be like that. Because God is light, and our ideas about time no longer apply where he is, perhaps we’ll all arrive at the same moment, the eternal now. That’s a mind-boggling concept for me to think about it, and if I dwell on it too long, my brain is likely to explode, which will just make a mess up here. So here’s my thoughts on when we arrive in eternity. Are you ready for this deep, profound thought? I don’t know. There are enough hints and glimpses in the Bible to give us just a taste of the glory to come but not enough to give us a full picture. Here is what I know: when I pass from this life, the very next thing I will be aware of is being in the presence of Jesus, whether that’s in the very next instant or a thousand years from now. For me, it will be the twinkling of an eye, and I will be safe with my savior. It will be just like when we sleep at night (another favorite metaphor of Paul’s for death), and we wake up the next morning. To us, it seems as if no time has passed; we go from night to morning in an instant. So it will be with death, and that gives me hope and peace.

But that brings us to another question, and to the other part of the Creed we are looking at today. What will I be like? What does it mean when we say we believe in the “resurrection of the body”? This is a hard belief to grab ahold of, because somewhere along the way many of us adopted this idea that we will be disembodied spirits floating around on clouds strumming harps throughout eternity. But the Bible tells us that our bodies will be raised (1 Corinthians 15:42-40 and that Jesus’ resurrection is the “first fruits” or the promise of our own (1 Corinthians 15:20). So we look to Jesus’ body after his resurrection as a hint of what we will be like. We know, for instance, that Mary didn’t recognize him immediately when she met him outside the tomb. She thought he was the gardener. So he didn’t, apparently, look exactly the way he had looked before his crucifixion. So, too, the friends walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus; they spent a long time with him, listening to him explain the Scriptures to them and they didn’t know it was Jesus. Mary only recognized him when he called her name; there was, apparently, something about his voice. And the travelers to Emmaus only recognized him when he broke the bread at dinner. So there is some continuity with the old self, but also some differences. Jesus’ new body was able to appear and disappear at will; he showed up in the middle of a locked room. He ended up in Galilee without apparently having walked there. But it was not a ghostly body; it was a physical body that he invites Thomas to touch and asks Mary not to. He eats fish, though I have to say, had it been me, I would have asked for some pancakes rather than fish for breakfast. But, whatever—Jesus apparently likes fish. The point is: he eats! There is continuity between this body and the eternal one, but the body we will receive will be made to live forever. No more aches, no more pains, no more contact lenses or glasses, no more artificial knees or hips, no more worn out parts. We’ll be given a body fit for eternity, a body Paul describes with these words: “imperishable…raised in glory…raised in power…a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44).

But how is that possible for us? Jesus’ body was only in the tomb for three days—and not even a full three days! His body was still there. But ours won’t be. Unless Jesus returns, when we die our body, like those of countless Christians throughout the centuries, will decay and be absorbed back into the earth. And then there’s the matter of cremation, where the body is destroyed. What happens then? For some, cremation is a non-issue. They won’t even consider it because, they say, there must be a body for Jesus to resurrect. In my first appointment, I had a conversation one day with the funeral director as we went from the service to the committal. Did you ever wonder what pastors and funeral directors talk about during those times in the hearse? Well, on this day, the funeral director asked me a pointed question. He was a Christian from a different tradition and he wanted to know what this young, inexperienced Methodist pastor thought about cremation. Was it all right for Christians, in light of God’s promise of resurrection, to be cremated? To be honest, I hadn’t given the topic much thought, but I responded this way: “I believe that the God who created the universe and all there is out of nothing is big enough, strong enough and capable enough to resurrect us even out of the dust.” I passed the test, by the way, because he smiled and told me he agreed. Think of it this way: when my computer locks up or crashes, most of the time all I have to do is reboot the computer or sometimes I have to reinstall software to get it to run again. In recent years, the Human Genome Project has been able to map the DNA that is, essentially, the software that runs our bodies, and what they discovered is that everyone’s combination of DNA is both amazing complex and surprisingly unique. When this body is gone, would it be too much for the God who created me to reinstall my “software” into whatever kind of body he intends for me to live in for eternity? “He does not need our mortal body to raise us from the dead,” because what he has in mind and in store for us is so much better (cf. Hamilton 160). I believe in the resurrection of the body, and look forward to what God has in store for me.

So, whew, that’s a lot of theology and doctrine for us today. But what difference does any of this make? Or does it make any difference? For one, this belief gives us hope and allows us to live lives of confidence and peace. As a pastor, I’ve stood by so many caskets and so many gravesides, and I can tell you that there is a distinct difference between those who know this hope, who cling to this promise, and those who don’t. For those who know Christ and believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting, there is a peace that surrounds those gathered. Two of the hardest funerals I have ever done both centered around children. One was for a stillborn child, whom the mother had to deliver even though they already knew the baby had died, and the other was for a baby girl who lived only a few weeks. In both cases, the grief was unbearable at times, and in both cases, I was at a loss for words. Imagine that—a preacher, at a loss for words! And so, in both cases, I was able to borrow words from John, the words we read earlier this morning, and offer the promise of a place where there is “no more death, no more mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (21:3). I was able to promise that one day, God would wipe away every tear that was shed in that place, and while those words do not take the pain away, they do instill within us a sense of hope, of longing, and a renewed confidence that the worst thing is never the last thing. I love the way C. S. Lewis describes it at the end of the Chronicles of Narnia. As the children and the characters run into Aslan’s Land, into heaven, the narrator describes it this way: “All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” No matter how bad it gets here, no matter how difficult or how painful, death and mourning and crying and pain—those are not God’s final words. Life everlasting—that’s God’s final word, because the worst thing is never the last thing.

In addition, this doctrine should fuel our desire to share our faith. As I said, so many in our world do not have this hope, and it’s not okay for us to just feel sorry for them, to be glad we have this hope and to keep it to ourselves. This faith is meant to be shared. This hope is meant for everyone. That’s why God sent Jesus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). That’s the good news that then leads to the best news. When was the last time you shared that good news? When was the last time you told someone of the hope you have? There is nothing better to share, and if we really believe this creed, it ought to impact everything we do, every conversation we have, every choice we make. I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting—life which begins here and now.

So that is the creed. This is who we are. This is what we believe. And if we were to truly allow these core beliefs to grab ahold of us, we would find our own lives changed, our community changed, maybe even the world changed. The challenge is not to grasp them intellectually—in our heads—but to allow these beliefs to pour like a stream down into our hearts. This morning is your last chance to add your initials to our creed display here on the stage. We’ve been inviting you to add a wood piece to this collection as a way of saying, “I’m ready to embrace this creed. I believe.” So we invite you to write your initials on a piece of wood, along with the words, “I believe,” and drop it into the frame. We’ll be permanently displaying this somewhere as a commitment and a reflection of who we are as Mount Pleasant Church. We are God’s people, rooted in the Scriptures and living out the historic faith in today’s world. So, once more, I invite you to share in reading the creed together as we bring this series to a close. Will you stand, and declare with both our words and our hearts what we believe?

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,

Creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died and was buried;

he descended to the dead,

on the third day he rose again;

he ascended into heaven,

he is seated at the right hand of the Father,

and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting.

Amen!