Children possess vivid imaginations. They create their own little worlds and populate them with imaginary friends. They wish upon a star and believe their dreams will come true. As we mature life and society tends to stifle our imaginations. We are encouraged to face reality and deal with facts and figures. Yet, much of the innovations and improvements in life are the result of someone imagining a different future. Their dream fuels their efforts to create a new reality. The Revelation of St. John is food for the imagination. The apostle invites us to see beyond what is to what is coming. He vividly paints a picture of a new reality founded on the fulfillment of all God’s promises and in the certainty that what is promised will come to be, calls us to live faithfully and work diligently until what we can only imagine becomes reality. This is what makes The Revelation to John so extraordinarily profound and powerful in shaping the church’s life and witness. If we let the words of Revelation fire our imaginations we will find new courage and strength to live each day for Christ, the Lamb who was slain, who will lead us into the realization of the new creation.
During the months of June, July and August we will explore the last words of the Bible contained in The Revelation to John. Through this series we are invited to look and listen. Revelation is a book of sights and sounds, visions and audible statements and songs. It invites us to cast our eyes on the Lamb that was slain. It calls us to see in him both the way to God and the way of God. We meditate on the atoning character of his death but also on his faithful witness in that death. We open our ears individually and corporately, to the Spirit who is constantly speaking to the church.
Revelation is also a book of hymns and liturgies. We learn from Revelation about worship and witness. Revelation calls us to offer our praise to God and to the Lamb, night and day. We pledge our allegiance to the one who alone is worthy of it. We allow our praise, and the vision of God and the Lamb that inspires it, to infect and affect everything we think, say, and do. And we tell others about that One who alone is worthy of their worship and allegiance. Our witness consists not only of words, but actions.
Revelation also instructs us in how to be in the world but not of the world. We learn how to resist the seductions of the kingdoms of this world and engage the world in new ways and on God’s terms.
Lastly, we discover what it means to follow Jesus. We follow him into a new heaven and new earth liberated from the effects of our sins and even from sin itself, alive with the perpetual presence of the living God, in whom we can be both lost and found in eternal wonder, awe and praise.
Revelation concludes the canon of scripture; it completes God’s story. It’s the last chapter that makes sense out of all that has gone before and opens the door to all that is yet to be.
