There's a new chapter in the Harry Potter saga . . . I know, just
when you thought it was safe to go back to the movies, right? Anyway, this one is called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and
apparently it's about, uh . . . fantastic beasts and, you know, how to locate
them, but without even settling foot in the theater, I can tell you where
there are a lot of them, and that’s in the Bible, of course. From the ginormous whale that swallowed up
poor old Noah to the Leviathan of Job to four-faced, eye-covered babies (aka
cherubim), our scripture is chock-full of fearsome critters. And I think the folks who saw these things—whether in person or in
a visionary dream—used things they know to describe things that were beyond our
words, especially that eye-covered baby.
Sometimes, the author put it in words,
like Ezekiel, who said he saw “something like four living creatures” or Peter,
who saw “something like” a sheet lowered down from heaven, crawling with
unclean animals. Ezekiel and Peter both
know it wasn't really four creatures or
a bedsheet they were seeing, but you have to describe the indescribable some way . . .
And I think that’s what’s going throughout
much of Revelation as well. But although
there are plenty of fantastic beasts,
our lesson this morning is from the last chapter of that book, which makes it
the last book of the Bible. All the
pageantry, theology, revelation and history come together right at this point,
they converge on this beatific vision of the future. We're right in the middle of John of Patmos’ final
vision, where he imagines the fulfillment of the kingdom of God as a place to
settle down, a place to live, symbolized as a glittering city, a new
Jerusalem. And though it isn’t a beast,
it's pretty fantastic nevertheless. An
angel is showing him around, and in the passage right before this we're told
the city is fifteen hundred miles wide and fifteen hundred long and the same in the vertical dimension. That’s sure one big city, and whoever heard of
one in the shape of a cube, anyway? And though it's made of gold, like heaven in
the children's stories, it's not golden colored,
it’s “transparent as glass.” And it's
clear that it's an incredible sight, in the fullest sense of the word, because John
cannot credit it, he cannot register it in his mind. So his mind falls back on what it knows, and
likens it to a fabulous town.
And now, as our passage commences, we harken
back to the very beginning, in the , beginning, where water flowed out of Eden,
to water the entire earth. Only here
it's the river of life, bright as crystal, John says, and has anybody here been
to San Marcos, Texas? Perched on the edge
of the Hill Country, a stream with wondrously clear water, that flows from a
lake where there are glass-bottom boats, the water is so clear, and when I read
this scene that's what I imagine, the river of life, flowing pure and
crystalline, containing all the bounty of the waters of earth, bubbling with life,
all the aquatic life of all the long eons of their planet, teeming in life’s
river, and the waters flow through the
Tree of Life, the same tree of life that got us in trouble in the first place,
in the beginning, but now, here at the end—the end of the Bible, anyway—here at
the end, it’s here for us in our shining abode, and that's the thing it's
twelve kinds of fruit nourish us from here on out, to fill us, and there will
be no more hunger, no more famine, because far from banishing us from the
garden, the fruit of the Tree of Life will
sustain us all our days.
And
he leaves of the tree will heal the nations, there will be no sickness,
toil or danger in that bright land, and after all the face-melting, apocalyptic
Hollywood endings, John’s vision sees the end of the world, as actually a new
beginning, where abundance reigns and
everybody has enough to eat, and our bellies will be too full to practice war
any more. And we’ll be sitting around
with all the leisure in the world, plucking on harps—we’ll all magically know
how to play—and maybe plucking one of those fruits from time and popping it
into our mouths like big, fleshy bon-bons.
And I’m thinking “that's ok for the first thousand years or so, but what are
we going to do after that? I
mean, even though Couch Potato is my middle name, it sounds a bit of a bore. There
oughta be a library or something, or at least
a Wal-Mart Supercenter . . .” Then I
remember that it's a vision, a dream, that it's not to be taken literally
like the John Hagees and Hal Lindseys of the world do. And like our own dreams, it's symbolic, where things in the dream are associated
in our minds with concepts, and with that in mind, there’s something about a
river, something—among many—and that is that it goes somewhere. It is not static.
And even though John’s vision is of universal wellness and great plenty,
a river runs through it, and this new Eden—which we're welcome in, this time—is going somewhere as well, it is moving
forward into an unimaginable future.
And why not? I don't think God, who so meticulously
created us for moving forward, who inspired an entire book that chronicles our progress, would some day up and say “ok, that’s enough, y’all
stop moving now,” and we wouldn't like that too much, would me? I mean, humankind is always on the move—some would
use say on the make—always looking forward, straining its collective neck to
see what’s around the bend.
The French scientist and priest Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin called this “the Omega point,” and regarded it not as a static
ending but the beginning of a new phase, like how the Apostle Paul might put
it, a new creation. And that name, Omega point, is particularly
apt for this morning, in this season of Advent, because of course, it comes
from Revelation, as well . . . and whatever happens, we can be sure that
Christ, who is after all the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, will
be with us, will be in it, all the way.
Amen.
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