Bookends

Text: Revelation 21:1-6
Other texts: John 11:32-44, Isaiah 25:6-8

The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. These words open and close the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. I am, says the voice from the throne, the A to Z, the start and the destination, the first and the last.

To understand the end, we have to look at the beginning. The very beginning, the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Chapter 1, verse 1. “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” The universe was not created from nothing. It was formed from chaos, from the deep, from the cold void. Out of chaos God formed order, making boundaries between one thing and another. Making distinctions, creating meaning. Naming things. Dividing night from day, sky from earth. A story begins.

We who live in an infinitesimal fraction of all time see time as orderly and directional. Clear in the moments but indefinite in the epochs. Cosmologists postulate a moment of creation of the universe about fourteen billion years ago, but which in the end probably gets colder and slower forever, or nearly so. That is one way to talk about it.

We who live in God’s hands see time as intentional and passionate. Clear in total but only partially revealed in the moments. In this language—which is parallel to the language of physical cosmology, describing the one, same universe—the world has a beginning and an end that are both marked by God’s will and presence. There are two ends: Genesis and Revelation, not by accident being bookends to the story of the Bible in between. We start and end with God, seeing God no matter in what direction we look.

God is in the personal as in the cosmic. In this vast time we live in our own short times. We have our own Alpha and Omega. We are formed from will and love and out of the miscellaneous atoms of the earth—who knows where any of these tiny building blocks come from for any one child? And in the end we let all that substance go back into the earth for the creatures that follow. From dust to dust, we remind ourselves. Like all creatures, we are created and we die.

We are not designed to live forever in this body. Often times that is a blessing, and ashes to ashes is a blessed promise. Weariness and the burden of memories (both regretful and joyful) and the increasing disorder of our systems makes an end welcome and moves us to pray to be taken home.

But also often: not. People go before their time. Accident, disease, violence claim our moments and cut them short. And even when some persons might be glad to leave, those of us who remain grieve their loss and mourn their company. And are left deeply disturbed, as Jesus was, standing beside his friends Martha and Mary and in front of the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Jesus was angry, it says. Troubled, the way we are at the death of someone we love. Or at anyone’s death. We report how many people died from hurricane Sandy, or in a bomb attack in Syria, and hearing that, we are distressed. Today we light candles in honor and grief, and as we do, the others who watch each of us are moved because they know.

Even in the face of the Resurrection, Christians cannot ignore the affront that death is, and its sorrow. Even if the true significance of death is less than we feel, it is not nothing. Death signifies something, even if we are not sure exactly what, or how it all works.

When Jesus comes to meet Martha and then Mary, they are understandably desperate. Death is powerful and voracious and has swallowed up Lazarus. Yet their complaints to Jesus—Lord, if you had been here, they each say, Lazarus would be alive—show a realization that maybe, probably, in Jesus there is a countervailing force. They and everyone seem to be confused about what is possible—could Jesus have saved their brother? He stinks in the tomb; is it too late? Can Jesus save him still? If so, does that mean now? Or at the end of time?

It is not clear why Jesus cries. It is overdetermined. Is it because he waited? Because Martha and Mary are brought to their knees in grief? Because he put his obligations of his mission ahead of his friendship? Or because he is just plain sad at the death of Lazarus? Are these tears of shame, or frustration, or regret, or grief? As ours might be. What is clear is that Jesus is angry at death and indignant (described much too weakly in our Bibles as disturbed). Mary and Martha and we share his indignation. He is not fond of death.

The story of the Bible begins with the creation of life and ends with the destruction of death. And in between, are God’s presence and promise in the face of death. The passage we heard in Revelation quotes the passage we read in Isaiah. When the tears remain, God will wipe them away. But in the end—and the end is what Revelation is about—in the end God will wipe away death altogether. God will swallow up greedy death. No more crying or mourning or pain. Death is hungry, but God is more hungry for life. God has wished us into being and wishes us to be.

The story of Revelation is in one sense a long undo, a long rewind of the story of creation. The first heaven and the first earth made in Genesis are the story in which we now live. It is not quite right. For whatever reason, things have not quite worked out as God intended, and death brings sorrow. In Revelation, the story is played back to the beginning, to a new heaven and a new earth. But in this second version, even the chaos that existed before creation will be gone. The sea—the dark abyss—is no more, it says. There will be no evil left to seep in and pervert God’s will for creation. Not this time.

The world of the story of the Bible goes from A to Z. As in the Dr. Seuss book, it turns out there is something good beyond Z. But that seems to be another story that we only get a hint of. In Genesis, a story begins. It does not end in Revelation, but a new story begins. Heaven resides on earth, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, and God lives here, too.

Around the altarpiece here are the words—in Swedish—the words “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Marking the beginning and the end of that promise are two letters. Alpha at one end and at the other not Omega, but Omicron. In Greek, Omicron is in the alphabet just beyond the middle, as O is in English. Omega is the end. Omicron is not the end.

Perhaps this was a mistake by those who painted the mural. But perhaps not. Perhaps it it good theology—a reminder to us. We live somewhere between Alpha and Omega, in a time both of sorrow and of hope. Ours, and God’s.

The Bible from beginning to end is a long love story, about God’s love for us and for all creation. We, all of us and each of us, live in a story that begins and ends with God’s hopes and God’s promise.