"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more...I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb...And the city has no need of soon or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb...And he said, 'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.'"
--Revelation 21: 1, 22-23, 22: 13
Recently I started a garden. My dad, he's gardened before,
but he can tell you I'm not really the gardening type. Still, with some help, I've planted a few
things in my back yard--blackberry bush, wild flowers, tomatoes, peppers,
carrots, hoping maybe I can make the yard a bit prettier. I have no idea what
God is going to do, whether anything will actually grow, but I'm optimistic
that God will do something. Now, though,
I enter an in-between time, a time of hopeful expectation.
We, the Church, have entered an
in-between time. We had the Feast of the
Ascension last week, and next Sunday we will celebrate the Feast of
Pentecost. But right now, between the
moments of Jesus going back into heaven and the Holy Spirit coming and giving
birth to the Church, we find ourselves, like the apostles, in this period of hopeful
expectation, and we wonder: what is God going to do?
I'll be honest with you, I'm not a very patient person, so
in-between times are a bit of a challenge for me. I get anxious, nervous, my mind races with
questions and I usually brace myself for the worst possible outcome. Hopeful expectation isn't always my strong
suit; shoot, I'm a Cleveland Indians fan, and our hopes have been getting
dashed year after year after year after year. My dad wasn't even born the last
time the Indians won a World Series.
We've been waiting a looooong time!
`
What was it Tom Petty said?
The waiting is the hardest part?
Ain't that the truth?! Whether
I'm waiting for something to happen in my garden, or you're waiting to go to the beach or to your mountain home for summer, the in-between times can be pretty vexing. They can be especially vexing if we are in-between
jobs, in-between houses, in-between relationships, or in-between moments of
stability. Our spirits can go to very
anxious places, and those expectations which may have started out as hopeful
start to fade. I know what it's like to
start to lose that hopeful expectation, and I'm not talking about my baseball
team. I've been in-between school, jobs,
relationships; I've had expectations for each, made plans for each, and I've
seen those expectations crumble. Some of you may be in your own in-between time,
and maybe you feel like the trapeze artist between the bars. Maybe hopeful expectation is something you
can't quite grasp right now. I suspect that was how the apostles felt during their in-between time. After
witnessing Jesus' Ascension, they went
back to Jerusalem and to their homes, and for 10 days they experienced a period of total uncertainty.
They had no idea what was going to happen on the Jewish festival of Pentecost. They didn't know that the Spirit
was going to come and shake up their lives and give birth to the Church.
They must have been scared, unsure about the future, trying desperately
to hold on to the hope that God was still working and would still do something. Still, their in-between time--like ours--must have been fraught with anxiety and fear.
Those in-between moments are, in fact, a microcosm of our Christian journey. We Christians live in a
constant in-between time, in a period of already and not yet. The Kingdom of God has already come in the
form of Jesus, who showed us God's love, God's mercy, and God's dream for this
world. But the Kingdom of God has not
yet come, not yet reached it's culmination, which will happen in that moment
that has many names: the eschaton, the
2nd coming, the day of resurrection. We
are living in that time, and there are many Christians who live in it with fear
and anxiety. Still, our faith teaches us
that God has already won through the death and resurrection of Jesus and that
God will win in the end, too. So there
is no need for such fear and anxiety.
The last few weeks we have been from the Revelation to John on Sunday mornings. While some may focus on the more graphic and dramatic parts of Revelation, whole of that story is really tied up in the final section, where the new heaven and new earth have come together
and all of creation is one with God, and
we hear those reassuring words, "I am alpha and omega, the beginning and
the end.". John wrote to the seven churches, not to
frighten them with tales of wars and famines and disasters--these were merely
allegories for the difficulties they were facing at the time--instead he paints
for them this picture, a picture of a world in which God wins, in which all the
fears and anxieties of the present time are gone, and Jesus' great hope is fulfilled, and all people are completely one. This is why Revelation is so important. It fills us with hopeful expectation during our anxious in-between times.
Whatever uncertainties lie ahead of you, whatever anxieties you feel, whatever fears you have about the future, know that God has not stopped and will not stop being present in your life, and may you find peace and strength in that fact. Whether the flowers bloom or not, God's still present. Whether those things you're anxious about work out in the end or not, God's still present. Hanging on to that fact can be enough to give us a hopeful expectation, even during those uncertain in-between times. They can be full of anxiety, and the waiting can be really difficult, but as John reminds the seven churches, God wins. Always So as we enter this final week of Easter, as we sit in hopeful expectation of the Holy Spirit's arrival, and as we ponder our own moments of in-between-ness, may we have the grace to remember that God is with us, in our beginnings, ends, and all points in-between.
