When I was fourteen, in the spring semester of ninth grade, my mom was working as a full-time, tenure-track professor, finishing her doctorate, and writing a textbook for elementary-level math. I didn’t get to see her as much as I would have liked. She was, and has always been, a busy woman. But this time was some of the most difficult and busy times of her whole life.
In my house bedtimes didn't exist on weekends and in the summer. As long as I was quiet and didn’t bother anyone, I could stay up indefinitely if I wanted. It was one of those 3 a.m. Friday nights, when I was up playing games on my family's computer and a game I wanted to play wouldn't load, wouldn’t run.
Keep in mind, at this point in my life, I knew nothing about computers. Pretty much just where the power button was and how to play a couple of games. I knew nothing of substance.
But I found myself looking through the game's troubleshooting guide, looking for ways to make it work when I saw a solution that caught my eye - “insert the computer's recovery disk, and select reinstall.”
If you, like me at the age of 14, didn't know much about computers, this sounds like a fairly simple solution to what seems like a complicated problem. But if you do know about computers, like I do now, you know that this is not a simple solution, that it spells really, really bad news, and you are probably squirming in your seat, knowing what comes next.
So what does come next is this: the computer restarted and I was greeted to a brand new, blank computer screen, a computer that had been completely. and. utterly. erased.
Four things you should know in order to understand the gravity of this situation:
1) My mom used this computer to work at home.
2) She had used this computer to write her math textbook and it was due in just about a month - if I remember right.
3) She is the kind of computer user that keeps all of her files on the desktop - if there is room for another file on the desktop, something is missing. And now,
4) There were now no icons on the desktop. Everything was blank. Her work was gone and, worse, her book was gone.
I just went ballistic. I immediately panicked like I had never panicked before. I began using the search function to pointlessly search for all the files from the computer, my mom's work, her book, anything. It was all gone. All gone.
And I cried.
Like a baby.
Fourteen years old, 3:30 a.m.,
crying like a baby over a - recently erased - laptop’s keyboard.
I think I spent about another half hour fruitlessly trying everything I could think of to undo my mistake. But it was done and there was nothing I could do.
So around 4 a.m., I crept into my parents' room and got about four inches from my mom's face and whispered, "Mom, wake up, I did something terrible and I have to tell you about it."
So I did. I told her all of it - tears and all - I told her all of it. And she said something like this, "You are more important than this. There is nothing you could do that would make me love you less."
There is nothing you could do that would make me love you less.
In this morning’s passage, in Revelation, we get to the end and find that Christ says to the people: come to me everyone who hears and, come to me all who are thirsty, and come to me all want to take the water of life as a free gift.
What a way for such a weird book to end. I’m going to level with you: I actually do think Revelation is weird. It’s filled with images of monsters and horror. We have no idea who wrote it. Although, as early as the second century, we read Justin Martyr claim it was written by the Apostle John. Justin Martyr was mentored by a man called Polycarp. Polycarp, himself, was mentored by the Apostle John. So what he said should hold some weight. But modern scholars think it was written far too late in the first century to have been written by the Apostle John. Most of us just call the author John of Patmos. Also weird is that while a majority of early Christians accepted it as scripture, many didn't. It was one of the last texts to be accepted into the Bible - in the year 397 at the council of Carthage. And weirdest of all is that I’m not convinced that anyone can reasonably explain exactly what John of Patmos was trying to say. It is like everyone projects his or her own story onto Revelation. So we have two millennia of people reading their own agendas into Revelation. The one thing everyone seems to agree with is that Revelation is a story about the future, the time to come.
Today we read the end of Revelation. The last few lines. And They seem predictive. They seem to say that one day, Christ will lift the curse of sin and death and tell the whole of creation, “come.” One day, all will be different, all will be changed, all will be forgiven. One day.
But what if Revelation isn't about one day or someday? What if we decided to read it as a story about a God, a Christ, who is currently whispering, “come,” who is currently making things different, and who is currently forgiving. And who is calling us to do the same. What would happen if we read Revelation in the present tense?
I get stuck in these theology ruts in which I can scarcely think of anything else. Right now the concept I keep coming back to is that lives matter, bodies matter, healing matters - now matters. At Family Camp a few weeks ago, I was teaching about the resurrection of Tabbitha, from Acts, and I asked the people there to ask themselves, "if everything about Christianity is pointing toward the afterlife, then why is Tabbitha not angry at being raised from the dead? I think that it's because lives do matter. God has things for us to do here and now. The problem many have when they look to Revelation, is that it is easy to say something like, "When God steps in, things are going to be a lot different." Or, "When Jesus finally returns, we'll finally have peace." “When Christ steps in, I’ll finally be able to forgive.” Those are nice thoughts, but it lets us off the hook too easily. God has things for us to do to bring about his kingdom now. God means for us to live in a way that brings peace now. God wants for us to live in a spirit of grace and forgiveness, now.
Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek, the mega church outside of Chicago, recently interviewed Bono, the lead singer of the band U2 and well-known humanitarian. He interviewed him on issues of faith. At one point, pastor Hybels asked Bono about the Lord’s Prayer and Bono said that he resonated most with the part which says, “Thy Kingdom come... on earth as it is in heaven.” He said that he thought that was our purpose - the purpose for Christians is to bring about the kingdom here and now- not some pie in the sky futuristic vision, but to bring the kingdom of God to earth now.
I would like to tell you that after I told my mom this horrendous thing I did, that she got up, got out of bed, pressed a few computer keys and everything was fine. It wasn’t. Everything was gone. Forever. Even the people whose job it is to recover deleted files were unable to recover them. And more than that, there were only backups for about half of the chapters of my mom’s book. I would love for this story to have had a “phew, that was close” ending. But the reality is, I had made a huge mistake. But here’s where a different kind of happy ending emerges. My mom forgave me immediately, saying, “There is nothing you can do that will make me love you less.” And after resigning herself to the reality of the situation, she never mentioned it again. I know it cost her months of work. I know there must have been many long hours spent re-doing work I had ruined, adding to her immensely huge workload, but she never mentioned it again. She never said things like, “don’t use the computer; remember last time!” Or any kind of reminder of my mistake. In fact, she encouraged me to learn more about computers, to actually learn what I was doing. Nearly twenty years later, I am still amazed by that forgiveness. Forgiveness like that costs something. It cost her hours and hours. And Forgiveness like that changes things. I know I was changed by that forgiveness. How could I not be graceful and forgiving when I was given an amazing gift of grace and love - from her forgiving spirit.
But it’s hard to be that kind of person. In Revelation, we get this picture that in the end everything will be restored to what it was supposed to be, what God meant it to be and, sometimes, because we don't quite fit that picture, because we aren't perfect, because we haven’t learned to forgive yet, we might feel that we can't participate in that restoration. But that isn't the picture we get in Acts, the other scripture reading this morning.
In Acts 16, we find Paul and Silas traveling in Philippi, in Macedonia, most likely attempting to preach the gospel - that is what Paul tended to do - when a servant girl, possessed by a spirit, began following them around, shouting, "these men are slaves of God most high; they proclaim to you the way of salvation."
This kind of situation always captures my imagination. In my head, I see Paul, just about to hit the high point of his street sermon, or whatever it was that he was doing. And just at that crucial part, this girl would scream louder than him, "These men were sent by God to teach you the way of salvation." I see her doing this over and over. Acts says she did this for days. And, as a result, Paul heals her or her possessed spirit. You might think that Paul had compassion or pitied her, but you would be wrong. The scripture says that Paul was annoyed with her and he healed her almost out of spite.
In this story, God uses one of Paul's more base instincts, annoyance, to bring grace into the situation, grace into the life of this girl. We don't see Paul healing this girl out of his own grace - I often wonder how much different this story would be if he had healed her from a spirit of mercy instead - but we don't see him heal her out of his own mercy; we see God using Paul’s negative feelings to bring about the end that God wanted all along. God wanted this girl to be healed and used Paul, in his imperfect state, to get the happy ending. God wants creation healed and changed and God will use us to make it happen if we let it happen.
What would happen if we read Revelation in the present tense? I think the answer is: Thy kingdom come... on earth as it is in heaven. That’s what would happen. Isn’t that the message of the gospel? The love of Christ changing the world one life at a time? If we read Revelation as a futuristic story, we don’t have to live the life Christ offers, now, we can place our obligations out into the unknown future. But if we really want to live Christ, we live Him now; we open ourselves up to Him now. If can we let ourselves be changed and shaped by Christ’s telling us, “you are forgiven - there is nothing you can do that would make me love you less,” then God’s kingdom can be here, now. When we let go of our hurts and shame and accept that there is nothing we can do that would make God love us less, God’s kingdom can be here now. And when we open ourselves to others, telling them you are forgiven - there is nothing you can do that would make me love you less,” then God’s kingdom can be here now. Amen.
