Revelation 16-22
It is finished! I know that is a Good Friday line, but it seems so fitting for today! We have reached the end of the New Testament! What a journey it has been! I want to give it some time before reflecting on the whole experience--and so today I am just going to reflect on this last section!
Reflect!
It just keeps on coming! I still don't know what is going on--even after the reflection! With the way that so many have used this book to further their own agenda, I was just a bit perplexed why Al Gore hasn't seized on Chpt. 16 as a prophesy about global warming! See, this is what is so surprising. People of a more progressive (was going to say moderate, but that whole admonition to Laodicea stopped me!) theological bent have chosen not to use scripture. They/we tend to use other methods of discussing our faith-based values, and as a result are branded as heretics, liberals (and some are!) or just plain wrong. Maybe we need to get over our aversion to scripture and actually read it--or listen to it! I have been surprised, and bothered, by what I have heard. But at least knowing it would allow us to "be Greek to the Greek," to speak the language that others might understand.
As this book and the whole experience closes, it comes with the reassurance that in the end God wins. Even in the darkest of days--when the dragon is eating newborns and mothers are driven into the wilderness; when scorpions and plagues come on the earth; when children continue to be deprived basic necessities and religion is perverted into hate-based rhetoric and actions--even and especially then, we need to remember that God is the beginning and the end, that in the day when God's kingdom is realized every tear shall be wiped away.
That is Saturday hope--waiting hope. Until that day we wait, hoping and praying, "Maranatha. Lord come quickly" even to us.
2 comments:
Amen and amen. Great ending. I liked the trailer music too - nice touch. I think Revelation was my fvorite book of this audio drama - but probably because Revelation sounds like theater to me. I agree, Don, I would see this musical! Can you imagine how great the costumes and effects would be?! Some very similar to what I recently enjoyed when Wicked was performed in Greenville.
I know you say you plan to apologize to us for suggesting we do this for Lent. Don't! Like any work, it was worth the effort. I for one am glad I participated. Thank you, Pastor, for your diligence in blogging through travel, wedding planning, funerals, etc. as life threw them your way.
Amen and amen.
I "amen" Lynne's "amens." :) What a long, strange trip this has been! But I'm glad to have been on it with such great traveling companions! And I don't mean just you two beloved friends, but also God. Yes, Revelation and some other books have made me scream in frustration and kept me awake at night with troubling anxieties. Others have led me to weep with gratitude at the ways in which God has been revealed to me.
What I am left with after Revelation is what you have said so well, Don: It all begins and ends with God. During some of the more troubling passages of the New Testament, I found myself listening afterwards to Dr. Goodman's lectures from our NT Studies class on those same passages. It was comforting to me just hearing him talk about them, even if he didn't say anything to make them easier to take, because I knew and loved Dr. Goodman. And I've finally put it together that in the end, even the really troubling parts of scripture are not deal breakers for me because I know (at least to some degree) and love God. Who God is for me changes the way I hear scripture. There are those, I know, who would tell me it should be the other way around, but I don't think so.
Maybe I will, like Don, have more to say about this whole experience after I have reflected some more. But right now what I am thinking is that in a way, this Lenten discipline has helped me reclaim scripture for myself. You're right, Don, that as liberal/progressive/moderate/whatever-we-are Christians, we have too often abandoned scripture to "the other side" (though I dislike such us vs. them language) who use it as a weapon. Many times I am embarrassed to quote scripture for fear of being seen as a proof-texting fundamentalist. But this book is part of my heritage, too. These words have been encouraging and convicting and comforting and confusing my spiritual ancestors for centuries. It has been a powerful communal experience to listen to these words along with so many others at Providence and all over the CBF each day, discussing them on the blog, at Sunday lunches, Friday night drinks with the girls, and on Facebook with friends on the other side of the country. The Bible is, or should be, one of the things we have in common with all Christians across time and distance. Even though we interpret its meaning in often vastly different ways, this is our family story, our roots. I'm thankful for the way You've Got the Time has reminded me of that, and brought me back to the power of scripture to move me to think, believe, imagine, and act as one of God's people.
Along with Lynne, I thank you, Don, for blogging your impressions without fail six days a week for all of Lent. That took a lot of discipline! Thanks for giving us a place to dialogue in a spirit of openness and honesty where we didn't have to fear charges of heresy, no matter how crazy our thoughts may be! (Okay, maybe those were mostly my thoughts.) It has been a difficult journey, but the ones worth making almost always are. I'm so very glad we made this one together -- all of us and God. Amen.
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