“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; 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.” –Rev. 21:3-5

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” (V.6a).

If the lectionary had included the second half of V.6, you would have heard, “To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.” Wow, most people think of Revelation as being the scary book of the New Testament, but what a powerful reassurance this is: “The home of God is among mortals! He will dwell with them as their God.”

The one seated on the throne is who? It’s Jesus! And he says, “See, I am making all thinks new.” And these words, we are told, “are trustworthy and true.” How amazing is that? Because some days are days in which we could really use to have all things made new. Especially when we’ve heard the 57^th nasty campaign ad on TV, or when we are trying to get a service technician for rapidly leaking hot water heater on Saturday night.

If there’s one kind of time that takes the cake for wanting things to be made new again, it’s the time we spend grieving over the death of someone we love. Young or old, expected or by sudden surprise; it’s so tough because the material separation between you and your beloved is final, there is no putting things back the way they were. There is only moving through the grief and discovering what else your life still has to offer until that grand day in which you meet again, utterly transformed in a spiritual realm that is so beyond our understanding, we can scarcely believe it exists.

And it is precisely for such a thin time as one in which we mourn that this breathtaking assurance from the Revelation of John is meant to bring comfort. It’s a no-brainer that God exists in the realm of God’s own self, and as Christians, we believe that those who have died in Christ also exist in the realm of God. However, to be reminded that God dwells with us mortals here in both sorrow and joy, making a home with us and wiping the tears from our eyes…now that brings a wholly different level of comfort to our struggles with grief. I’d like to address the issue of what happens to people who die who are not Christian. This is a very personal question for me because I spent a long time as teenager in a deep panic after the death of my great grandmother. We were very close, and when she passed, I was terrified that she would be either burning in hell or just be totally zapped from existence because she was not a Christian. It took me a long time to develop a mature understanding of who God is and what is likely to happen to people when they die. If our God is the God of steadfast love, can you imagine that anyone would be excluded in the realm of God? The question of who is a member of the Body of Christ is different, and a very important one to answer in a pluralistic world– in a world that is often not even humane. So I’d like to put this one to rest right now. Following the Way of Jesus is a roadmap for living well while we are on this side of the veil. Following the Way of Jesus if for making the Kingdom of God manifest on this world. Being a Christian is God’s way of redeeming human potential to serve as Christ’s hands and feet in the here-and-now of human existence. When we leave our bodies, we will be held in the arms of the ancestors who are gathered under the wings of The Almighty, All Loving Maker of us all. All of us! What happens in this world is a choice. My great gramma did not choose to follow Jesus because she was Jewish. But I have absolutely no doubt who my God is and that my great gramma was welcomed into the company of the Great Cloud of Witnesses, along with both the best and the worst that humanity has made of ourselves during the time we each have on God’s beautiful Earth. Once we become transformed, oh, we’ll get wisdom, and then we’ll understand the realm of God. But the gift of God Incarnate in Jesus– that is for us while we are here. That is why we are here in a church. I hope it’s not because of what you fear will happen when you die, but rather because of what you love while you live.

So what might that mean, that “death will be no more?” I don’t think it means that everyone ever born will live in the flesh for eternity. A basic understanding of ecology and the carrying capacity of the Earth would quickly make that implausible. I think God’s amazing assurance in Revelation means that death is not the final word, and it is not eternal separation from those we love. It means that there’s something else that God has in mind for us, and we are just not able to understand it on an intellectual basis while we live in our earthly flesh. So that’s where faith comes in. We are to trust that death is not to be feared but to be overcome, and we have God’s promise that we will overcome it, even though we have no clue what that will look like. And that’s why these words are so important: “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” Those first things are the things that you are living now and they are going to pass away. And just to make sure we believe it, God says, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

So for now, here we are, and we‘re living in a world where God tells us to pay attention, “See I am making all things new,” And God is using us to do it: the Body of Christ on Earth!

 Death is not the final word and if you are willing to allow it, God will make all things new. And in due time, you will learn just how trustworthy and true these words really are,

Bartimaeus, a bind beggar and son of Timaeus knew who Jesus was and had such faith in him, that he called out, not only knowing that Jesus had the power to help him, but also knowing that Jesus was a son of David! How do you suppose he knew that?

Do you think it’s strange that Jesus responded by saying, “Call him here?” The guy was blind. I’ve always had questions about this story, and maybe it’s because the Holy Spirit is still prompting the, to teach me things from the story. So here are a couple more questions—maybe you wonder about these things as well: Marks tells us that, “Many sternly ordered him to be quiet,” so who are the many that were trying to shush Bartimaeus? Was it many of the disciples? Many of the bystanders in the large crowd? Whoever had tried to talk him down, once Jesus said, “Call him here,” they changed their tune and encouraged him to come to Jesus. How did he know precisely where to go? After all, Mark doesn’t say that anyone helped him to find his way to Jesus, but not only did he successfully go to Jesus, but also he apparently was so ready, so excited that Mark says “he sprang up and came to Jesus.” Don’t you think it’s amazing that he called Jesus “My teacher?”

The most amazing part of the story is what happens next. First Jesus tells him to go, and then he doesn’t tell Bartimaeus, “I’ve been merciful to you because you have faith,” but instead he hands Bartimaeus his own agency and tells Bartimaeus that he made himself well through his own faith. Bartimaeus possessed the power to become well, and that power is what we all have access to when we go to God with faith and determination to follow Jesus on the way.

“Bartimaeus immediately regained his sight and followed him on the way,” Mark tells us. And that was his own choice; Jesus had already given him leave to go. You see, given the choice to follow on the way of Jesus was a no-brainer, once Bartimaeus’ eyes had been opened by his own faith.

So what does it mean to be made well? It’s important to understand what makes us whole may be as much a matter of the heart as of the flesh. And some biological things reach a point that they cannot always be fixed. But that is not to say we don’t possess amazing capacities to heal our own bodies, because we do. And the role of our hearts and minds is to work in cooperation with our bodies. We are complete beings, and when we are not in harmony head, heart and flesh, it’s very difficult to reach our full potential to be whole– to be well. We can feel kicked down to the point that we lose the will to get up again. And that is when we need faith the most. So what the heck is faith? Because it may be something different than what you assume it to be. Religious institutions would have you believe that faith is belief in doctrine. And that is NOT what it is. Faith is trust or confidence in someone or something. The people who have trust and confidence in the power of God, spring up when Jesus calls, even if they can’t see where they’re going. It’s the faith itself that reveals the way. Do you see how counterintuitive that is? We plan the itinerary, make a plan and then set out, confident because we planned it out first. But it’s invoking that faith first that gets us to well in the first place. When you can summon up faith that God will help you to navigate whatever path it is you must follow, you WILL find your way there, and you will be truly well.

You may be thinking that no matter how much faith you have, God is not going to heal whatever serious illness from which you suffer. So I want to be very clear, that God never punishes us with illness or injury, nor is it God’s intention that we suffer, but rather it is God’s intention that we live fully aware of the abundance and mercy around us, just as we must also be wary of the evil and destructive elements that are also present in the environment. Being well is being confident—having faith– that there is a hard-wired source of power and peace that that you can draw upon and be made whole even if your body can’t do that for you.

There is a saying from my martial arts training that is deeply written upon my spirit. It’s a Japanese proverb, “Nana korobi ya oki,” and it means “fall down seven times, stand up eight.” Faith is the certainty that on the seventh time down there is a hand reaching out to help you up, so you can be on your way. The hand of Jesus is freely offered, and like Bartimaeus, you are not coerced to follow him once your eyes have been opened and you find yourself standing. But why wouldn’t you follow, springing to your feet when he calls?

A prophet isn’t a fortuneteller, but rather a person whose eyes have been opened to reality in ways other people may not see. The prophets can see danger ahead when others do not, and they are both brave enough to speak up in the face of injustice and compassionate enough to provide the words of assurance that keep hope alive when its light seems to be fading.

Prophecy is a gift that not everyone has, but prophets are a gift for all– they speak on behalf of God, which is a dangerous job. No wonder there are so few prophets these days, because while God’s mercy can be counted upon, our ability to be merciful is often pretty unreliable. To my reading, nowhere in the Bible is that message brought home more clearly than in Isaiah 53:4-12.

Most Christians are familiar with this passage from Isaiah because Handel drew from it in his famous oratorio, The Messiah. You have to read it with care because, like every author whose words are in our canon, Isaiah must be understood within the context of time and cultural location. It’s important to know that he lived during some pretty turbulent times when Israel was under threat from Assyria. The Assyrian king, Shalmaneser V conquered the northern kingdom of Israel by destroying its capitol, Samaria in 722 BCE. For twenty years after that, the southern kingdom of Israel, which we know as Judah, hung in there, but the Assyrians finally invaded, and Judah fell twenty years after that. Judah had made some unwise political alliances against which Isaiah warned vigorously, and these choices emboldened the subsequent Assyrian king, Sennacherib to invade Judah, and the people responded as humans often do when we are under threat– fell to their own baser and more violent instincts, essentially preying upon one another to gain whatever safety they could under the occupying Assyrians.

Isaiah’s prophecy is a wonderful example of the “both/and” nature of life in which there are both tough consequences for bad decisions AND hope to be found in the steadfast love of God. When you get a chance it is so worth reading the entire book of Isaiah, not only because of the stunning portent of what is to come with Jesus’ ministry, execution and resurrection, but also because Isaiah has so much to teach us so much about our own selves– the human condition– and the assurance of Gods loyalty if we can abide in God and keep covenant with our divine author.

Let’s focus on two take-away messages from this prophecy. First: “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:4-5). Do you see how even back in Isaiah’s day, people blamed God for disease and affliction? “Struck down by God and afflicted.” But look how Isaiah reveals what really will happen to the servant of God in the next line: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”

Over time, theologians to come to some ghastly conclusions that God punished Jesus for our sakes. We’ve used the language of sacrifice to try to understand the meaning of the cross, but why in the world would God demand a treasured son to be a sacrifice– a death offering to expiate our sins and to make us whole?

This take on the crucifixion of Jesus is precisely why it is important to understand the context from which a prophet is speaking. When you know the whole of Isaiah, you see that he prophesied repeatedly against violence. Listen to this from the very first chapter: “’What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?’ says the Lord; ‘I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more;’” –Isaiah 1:11-12

Isaiah was also the guy who said: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox… They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” – Isaiah 11:6-10.

No more predators, human or animal! We are talking non-violence here. And that is the same book that talks about the chosen servant who, “by a perversion of justice…was taken away.” It is that voice that paints a portrait of peace and hope who also warns against killing and scapegoating and sacrifice, who teaches us about the servant who will come to bear the sins of many “and make intercession for the transgressors.” – Isaiah 53:12. When we kill, when we pervert justice to our own ends, we end up destroying the very angel, or servant or prophet whom God has sent to help us.

The final point I hope you will take from this brief look at Isaiah is this: hope isn’t free any more than grace is cheap. The cost of both is our commitment to abide in God and walk away from sacrifice. In twenty-first century language, we have to stop throwing other people under the bus, however much we think it might protect us. Perhaps we’ve grown cynical in the twenty-first century and we might doubt that God is still speaking to us. But I imagine that God might want to say quite a few things to the Body of Christ today. Things like, “I don’t want empty ritual from you. The sacraments are to bring you closer to me– they don’t exist for their own sake. Don’t wound one another—rescue one another in my name. Salvation is now and forever– it’s not rescue– it’s the fulfillment of your destiny when you abide in me.” Rescue is what you do for one another, and justice is its name.”

God is not done speaking with and through us. Study the prophets, read their call stories and take note of how they responded to the challenges of their days. If we listen to God’s promise spoken through Isaiah, that “the righteous one, [God’s] servant shall make many righteous” and that Jesus’ shoulders are big enough to bear our iniquities, then we have the key to holding both the sorrows of our times and the promise of salvation in Christ Jesus now and forever.

“The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). The author of Hebrews is not talking about the Bible here. The word of God, living and active is that very same word that was here in the beginning with God. The word through which “all things came into being.” The Gospel of John tells us “without him, not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:3-5). That light is the word of God living and active, and of course, we are talking about Jesus here.

If the word of God is living and active, why do you imagine that some people struggle to see the activity of the living word? You might reasonably ask, “Is the word in code that only some people can decipher?” Or you might ask, “Well, why would God keep secrets from us? Why would God use code?” Why indeed? Does that even sound like a God whose property it is always to have mercy? God has always been straightforward with us. It’s we humans who dissemble.

Maybe it’s easy for you to see the word living and active, but maybe not. Maybe in hard times it only seems like we can’t see it because it’s our own selves that are making the word seem dead and long inactive. Maybe the word of God is not only active but also interactive? After all, we enjoy interactive media, why wouldn’t God? The Word of God must be living and interactive. Look at how it changes everything it touches?

God interacts with all of creation…the sky and sea, the sun and moon, my awesome dog Comet… and with all of us. If God came to live among us clothed in the skin of a human being, then that word, the word that is Jesus, might not have been a word we could have understand had he not arrived as a man—as one of us. We might not have known how to interact with him. As the writer of Hebrews says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are…” So we get Jesus, the word who was with God in the beginning, interacting with us on two levels first in the very human flesh that constituted his own body, and with other people in his own day and in our time with us. The word of God, Jesus Christ was living and interactive. So if you are willing to try out that idea and it fits, then perhaps we can ask: if we don’t see the word as living and active, is it because we are unwilling or unable to be the other half of the interaction with that word?

People and especially institutions like predictability. We like a God that we think we understand so we can please and avoid angering someone that is as powerful as our God is described to be. Our notions of who God is are often based more on the collection of stories that are two thousand years old than upon our direct experience—our interaction with God. Of course we want a dependable God—one whose property is always to have mercy and one we can love. But if the Word of God is living and active, it would be unthinkable for God not to be teaching us new things. And it would be just as unthinkable that we wouldn’t be eager and delighted to learn what God has to say to us.

These are turbulent times for many people, and one might be tempted to ask why God let’s them roll on. Why have we let them go on and on through the ages? Why do we let greed and violence, indifference and spite continue? Why does love of self so often dominate love for one another in this world?

Consider this: At the time of Jesus, the word of God was living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. The religious authorities and local officers of the Roman Empire felt threatened by the word, so he was crucified, died and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. So where is that word, living and active and active now?

It’s right here. We are the Body of Christ now, so we are the word of God, living and active in our own day. If we don’t live and we don’t act, how will people come to know the word is still here? “…We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Because we are the word—living and active; we are the Body of Christ.

Justice is very expensive because it requires those who have resources to share them with those that don’t. And while there are saints among us, even here at Saint Alban’s, there are plenty of people out in the world who don’t want to share those resources with others in need. Not everyone recognizes that to hoard more than one needs for an imagined rainy day is a crime against humanity, but it is. It’s the worst kind of injustice, and it tears at the fabric that is supposed to be the Kingdom of God.

That’s the very injustice that ate at the soul of the wealthy young man Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, later to be known as St. Francis of Assisi. He became so sympathetic to the plight of the poor that he renounced his wealth, his father and inheritance, living as an impoverished monastic.

The hoarding of resources that you may not even need causes terrible injustice against the people who actually produce material goods and services for people of means. And this kind of injustice has existed throughout recorded history. Our faith history is full of examples. That’s why the prophets arose to speak truth to abusive power, and to warn the powerful of the dire consequences of exploiting the poor. All of the prophets reminded Israel that their future was a function of how righteous they were, and righteousness, as we discussed last week, means acting in accord with divine or moral law. That’s what prompts us to seek justice, because abiding in love is abiding in God. And that is righteousness.

Jeremiah’s prophetic words back this up: “Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord.” (Jer. 22:15-16a)

Francis understood at a deep level that justice and righteousness are inextricably linked. Everything in the universe is deeply entangled, from the material to the behavioral. As my favorite poet, Francis Thompson said:

All things by immortal power, near or far, hiddenly to each other linkèd are, that thou canst not stir a flower without troubling a star”                                      —The Mistress of Vision by Francis Thompson (1859 – 1907)

Everything you touch in the material realm propagates an effect that is felt everywhere else. The Earth and all of the other planets in their courses are affected by everything we do. It might not be over time and distance that you can observe, but what we do to one another and our planetary home matters in ways you cannot imagine.

Change is inevitable as both we and our planet co-evolve because evolution is, by nature, dynamic. But our changes don’t have to be destructive because we moved into the future thoughtlessly. We don’t aim to reduce dependence on fossil fuels because they’ll run out, or because we should be independent of foreign traders or because these fuels are too expensive to produce or to buy. We aim to reduce that dependence because their combustion has and will continue to change the chemistry of our atmosphere in such a way that temperatures will keep rising, and rain will continue to become more acidic. That has changed the way rock and soil weathers, pouring chemicals into our rivers that empty into our oceans and destroy their primary productivity.

These planetary changes are inextricably linked to the exploitation of poor and otherwise marginalized people who cannot fight back against the placement of toxic waste dumps, the abandonment of appropriate environmental safety precautions, and the deregulation of big agri-business whose primary goal is to make money off of corn by keeping people addicted to high fructose corn syrup—people of every economic stratum.

Our hunger for the latest and greatest products or the bling we expect as a token of love, has enslaved poor people, who stay poor, often working in back-breaking labor to mine or manufacture the things that people of means want to buy and the titans of industry want to sell, all so they can feel wealthy and somehow better about themselves.

It does not have to be this way, because if the people of means are willing to pay a little more for products and services and the titans of industry and agriculture are willing accept a little lower and fairer prophet, then the people at the bottom of the economic ladder can have a prayer of escaping the crushing weight of supporting the entire system that sits on their backs.

If we can really see the “Woe [that visits] … him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages;” then we will understand what Jeremiah meant with his prophecy. When we really know, like Francis Thompson knew how we “canst not stir a flower

Without troubling a star,” on that day we can come to God in prayer as Saint Francis did, recognizing the relationship between righteousness, God’s amazing creation, and justice for all our brothers and sisters:

Praised be You my Lord through our Sister, Mother Earth who sustains and governs us, producing varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

Praise be You my Lord through those who grant pardon for love of You and bear sickness and trial

Blessed are those who endure in peace, By You Most High, they will be crowned. No second death can do them harm. Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks, And serve Him with great humility.                                          — Canticle of St. Francis