Advent 2021 joy_message_12.19.21
- 2. ADVENT ~ Week 1
- 7. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, from God, prepared like a bride dressed up for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne, and this is what it said: ‘Look! God has come to dwell with humans! He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and will be their God Revelation 21:1-3
- 8. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or weeping or pain , since the first things have passed away.’ The one who sat on the throne said, ‘Look, I am making all things new.’ And he said, ‘Write, because these words are faithful and true.’ Revelation 21:4-5
- 9. …because at this point John glimpses the further future, the vision of the New Jerusalem itself, when God himself ‘will wipe away every tear from their eyes’.There is an intimacy about that promise.Yes, God is rightly angry with all those who deface his beautiful creation and make the lives of their fellow humans miserable and wretched.
- 10. But the reason he is angry is because, at his very heart, he is so full of mercy that his most characteristic action is to come down from the throne and, in person, wipe away every tear from every eye. Learning to think of this God when we hear the word ‘God’, rather than instantly thinking of a faceless heavenly bureaucrat or a violent celestial bully…
- 11. …is one of the most important ways in which we are to wake up from the nightmare and embrace the reality, and the tremendous joy, of God’s true day.
- 12. I walk through cemeteries whenever I can, heading for the oldest parts because that is where one finds biblical inscriptions on the gravestones. “In thy presence is fullness of joy,” “My soul waits in hope,” and, marvelously, “I am the resurrection and the life; whosoever believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall live” (John 11:25 42).
- 13. These are some of the soul- strengthening words I’ve seen on tombstones in my cemetery explorations. Even if we cannot be buried in a churchyard because of lack of space, we can continue to cherish the idea of a community of the living and the dead awaiting the coming of the Redeemer of the world.
- 14. Advent faces into death and looks beyond it to the coming judgment of God upon all that deceives, twists, undermines, pollutes, contaminates, and kills his beloved creation. There can be no community of the resurrection without the conquest of death and the consummation of the kingdom of God. In those assurances lies the hope of the world.
- 15. In Jesus, God gave us a human heart we could love.While God can be described as a moral force, as consciousness, and as high vibrational energy, the truth is, we don’t fall in love with abstractions. So God became a person “that we could hear, see with our eyes, look at, and touch with our hands” (1 John 1:1). Richard Rohr