Generous Resurrection

Text: Rev 22:1-6, 17

Focus: Resurrection

Function: Mercy

Form: Story Telling

Intro: I am almost always reluctant to preach out of the book of Revelations because of all the dogma around the book.

So let me give you a little bit of history about understanding the book from my personal perspective.

At about 12, I began to be serious about studying the Bible and Theology. By this time, my father had had a heart attack and was not pastoring a Church. So, we attended a church in the city, a Missionary Church. A block away a new church was built. It was a Missionary Baptist Church, which is an historic black denomination.

For all the wrong reasons, that new Church in the neighborhood caused a problem in my church. But it opened my own questions. I saw Missionary, and I was just recently baptized and I wondered why there were two of us a block apart from each other.

Now, the Missionary Church was essentially an evangelical Mennonite denomination. And for those who study theology, the Mennonites followed the teaching of salvation from the perspective of Wesley -from the Methodists- and Joseph Armenius. It was called Wesleyan Armenian theology.

I want to bog you down with the details, but Wesleyan Armenians, among conservative theologians are almost the polar opposites of the Baptists, even though they both baptize believers instead of infants.

And my very simplistic understanding was that Baptists, who followed John Calvin believed that once you got saved, you could do anything you wanted to, and God was obligated to save because a contract had been made. I was wrong, but that was my understanding at the time.

So, I asked if they were true Christians, to which I heard this: “well, we will see them in heaven, but there are things about them that just aren't as good as what we believe.”

“Hmmm,” I thought, “the possibility of who was a Christian was bigger than I had previously imagined.”

I looked into it to see if maybe they were indeed, the ones who were better. It wasn't that I disagreed, or didn't trust my father and my church, it just made/makes sense, to know more and more.

After a while, I came to the conclusion that although there were others who were truly saved, we were probably the ones who got it “the most right.”

it is no biggie that this happened and I am glad that I was given the freedom by my father to explore and challenge my own understanding and that of others.

I became fascinated with the history of the Church's teaching on salvation. Of course, at that time, salvation meant that when we died we went to heaven instead of hell.

As my understanding has grown, I realize that I missed a bigger part of sodzo, The Greek word for salvation. Jesus said: “I came that you may have life to the fullest.”

Salvation is restoration to God and others through God's love. It's a healing. It's a welcoming back to God and it doesn't start when we die, it starts now.

But, I didn't understand that at the time. I was thinking only of heaven and not going to hell.

I remember the gratitude, and I guess, pride, that God had brought me into the very best church.

However, there was something else that I thought I learned that really shocked me.

It was the discovery that up until about 1830, nobody “got saved.” My mom, who also didn't understand, believed that somehow from the time right after the New Testament had been written until about 1880, no one was being born again, saved, people didn't ask Jesus into their hearts to save them so that when they died they would go to heaven. (And for good reason, by the way, because the Bible doesn't say that).

Now again, when I asked Jesus into my heart, I felt Him come in. He did that.

But, I didn't question this lack of a true Church that it got it best until many years later when, I realized that God has always had a Church full of God's faithful men and women who knew and loved God since the Church began.

This is a Child's understanding of faith development from my unique perspective. When I realized that Mennonites and Brethren gave their lives and property for their faith, when they lost everything to help fight slavery, I had to adjust my understanding.

So, what happened in 1880 that changed things?

A theologian named John Darby came along who had a different explanation of the book of Revelation based on a new system of theology called Dispensationalism.

Again, I am not going to bog us down with the details except to say that for better or worse, the doctrine of the end times that was popularized in the Left Behind series of books is a relatively new doctrine.

Now, I am not going to discount it because it is new. Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit will continually work in the Church to help us see more and more what God wants.

We see that growth probably most clearly in the way that the Church was the biggest opponent of slavery and the Church effectively worked on the conscious of governments and people in power to make it illegal everywhere in the world even though slavery is not condemned in scripture.

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit will continue to reveal God's truth to us. God's people, following God's Spirit caused that to change by teaching the value of every single person regardless of sex, race, religion, culture, wealth, or education.

But I do hesitate to preach Revelation because the book itself gives a warning about adding to it our own doctrines and, the interpretations about how this world will all end are so varied, that inevitably, I am going to miss something.

However, on September 11, 2001, I was pretty sure that the Rapture was soon to take place.

As I overcame my anger toward our nations enemies and started obeying God by asking God to bless our enemies and truly love them, I realized something really big.

God wants everyone back. Everyone.

In my own prayer time and spiritual disciplines, it felt like I was actually seeing into the heart of God and I realized just how much God agonized over and loved the people in Islam.

Did you know that a valid case can be made that Islam grew out of Christianity?

Maybe Darby was right and the modern understanding of Revelation is correct and all of that is the way it will happen and God just keeps delaying it because God knows that just a few more will trust God and join God's family. Maybe God is waiting for more to come in.

And that leads me back to the last verse of this morning's passage: ¹⁷The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!”

Everyone who hears this must also say, “Come!”

Come, whoever is thirsty; accept the water of life as a gift, whoever wants it.

I realize something else about this passage.

John describes a Revelation, a Vision, that Jesus gave him when he was praying one day.

And when I see the tree, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, I realize that this is not at all some description of a future event at this point of the vision.

John sees what is already happening in heaven.

Right now, God has a tree in heaven whose leaves are given to heal whole nations and the only real way to get to it is to come.

It is both a future revelation and a description of what is currently happening.

And again, that theme, LET EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO: COME!

Oh for the day when men and women will gather in the city of God and enjoy God's grace.

Oh God, in us, Let that be today as well.