The lectionary doesn’t give us passages from the book of Revelation very often, because it’s truly a little terrifying and can be tricky to interpret. But today, we’re going to hear from the very end of the book – the second-to-last chapter – which offers us a vision of what God intends eternity to look like.
Scripture: Revelation 21:1-6
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And 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;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.
I have a confession to make: I spend way too much time on the internet. I’m a millennial. That’s what we’re famous for, right?
I tell you this because on the internet, I found my favorite meme of all time. A meme is an image that gets turned into a worldwide running joke. The meme I’m talking about is actually a cartoon.
In this cartoon, there is a cartoon dog wearing a hat, sitting at a table. You can see a standard house in the background – a cabinet, a doorway, some carpet. There is a cup of coffee on the table.
The dog is looking off into the distance with wide, slightly glazed eyes and a grin on his face. The little speech bubble above his head reads “this is fine.”
Meanwhile, everything around him is on fire. The carpet is on fire. The table is on fire. The doorway is blocked by fire. There is a thick cloud of smoke on the ceiling.
But the dog’s face never changes: “this is fine.”
As it grew in popularity over the course of a decade, this meme became a way for folks to share the stories of the ways we’ve just carried on in the face of absolute chaos. It was, as I remember, especially popular during the pandemic lockdowns when it felt like everything was on fire but we were all sitting on Zoom meetings nonetheless.
Today, I want to talk about two different kinds of hope – but before we get too nitpicky, I need y’all know that when I say ‘hope’, I do not mean the “this is fine, everything is fine” kind of dead-eyed optimism. That is not hope.
Hope is the courage to believe, even in the worst of circumstances, that there is more. That the worst is not the end of our story.
The first kind of hope is ‘here and now’ hope. This is the courage to believe we can change – ourselves, our communities, our nation, our world. This kind of hope demands something of us. It looks like planning, organizing, setting goals and going after them, working together with others.
I really enjoy this kind of hope, to be honest. I love a good project, with deadlines and tangible goals and real results.
This is the kind of hope that drives direct action campaigns like the Civil Rights movement and the Poor People’s Campaign, it drives nonprofits like Kids Food Basket and Love Your Neighbor. It’s what drives people like us to bring all of these Harvest Bags to just give away. This here-and-now hope says “I see what is wrong, what is missing, what is not okay – but I’m going to do what I can to change that.”
This kind of hope is vital if we are to be God’s people in this world, here and now. This kind of hope can make saints out of all of us.
But there is a hard truth wrapped up in this here-and-now hope. We go into every one of these projects knowing that even the best plans, the most organized groups, the purest of intentions may not be enough to make our end-goal a reality – at least not in the way we envisioned it.
That’s what makes it ‘hope’ and not a guarantee.
This doesn’t mean we don’t try; it doesn’t mean we stay home and say ‘ehh, I’ll wait for Jesus to fix it.’ We are still called to do the work of loving God and neighbor in the here-and-now, even if we can’t do it perfectly.
But for us, there is a second kind of hope we can rest in when the here-and-now feels like one giant dumpster fire: our eternal hope. This is the hope we find at the end of Revelation – not just that we’ll get out of here and leave this sorry world behind, but that God will truly make everything new. God will wipe every tear from every eye. There will be no need for desperate prayers, because God will be with us and death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more.
This hope – this new life in the kingdom of God – is not ours to plan, to make happen, to organize or run around like little chickens trying to pluck it out of the sky.
The eternal kingdom of God is entirely God’s work, in God’s time. It is fully and truly a gift of God to God’s beloved people, and there is nothing we can do or need to do to make that happen.
Because we know this, because we trust in the hope of God’s eternal kingdom, because we know how the whole big story ends, we can use our time, our energy, our resources in the here and now to do as much good as we can in the time we have.
This is precisely what Paul means when he writes to the church in Philippi from prison, saying “for me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
The question before us on this All Saints day is not “where do we go to find any semblance of hope in this world?”
The question is “what is mine to do, here and now?” What has God prepared you for, and to what is God calling you?
God’s got the end of the story – it’s the middle that’s up to us.
And that is precisely why we gather at this table on a regular basis. This little meal is meant to be food for the journey – both spiritual and physical – and a reminder of our eternal hope. It’s a little taste of the banquet that awaits us when we gather, with all the saints from every time and place, in the kingdom of God.
