No More Night

Revelation 22:1-5

John is trying to paint a picture for us of his vision. He can’t quite describe it…it’s really beyond anything earthly…but he uses earthly metaphors…the new heaven and new earth are like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband…God coming to be united with God’s people…and like a jewel studded city in the shape of a cube, an ancient symbol for perfection and order and stability, with a crystal clear river flowing from the center, where the throne of God is, and two trees growing, one on either side of the river, bearing fruit year-round for the healing of the nations.

It’s hard to imagine what it really looked like…even when you have a picture, it’s hard to look at ruins and imagine what is has been or what it might be. That’s the situation that God’s people are in. It is around 95AD. Jerusalem was destroyed 25 years before, in 70, by Rome and lies in ruins. The suffering under the Roman Emperors, Nero and now Domitian, has been horrific.

John’s Revelation is a writing of hope, even in the midst of the destruction and oppression of the monster and dragon these vicious, malicious Roman rulers, hope in God – reaching all the way back to the beginning and casting a vision for their future. As I was thinking about John trying to capture what was impossible to describe in words, I was reminded of our tour guide when we went to Berlin. As we drove around the city, he had a book with images of Berlin before WWII, just after WWII, and then he would orient us to the same site. Thinking back on those pictures helped me imagine what it was like for John’s original readers. Nothing was the way it had been…there was no Temple, no Jerusalem…just ruins…the Holy of Holies, God’s presence on earth…gone.

John shows them pictures of what has been – in the beginning, God created – the breaking in of eternity into the temporal – last week we read in Revelation 21 that “there was no longer any sea.” The sea in ancient times represented chaos. In Genesis, the ruah of God, the Hebrew word that means breath/wind/Spirit moved over the waters, the earth was a formless void, empty and darkness was over the surface of the deep/abyss/sea, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”

Then, John shows them pictures of what will be: in Revelation 22, John describes the realm of God saying that “there is no more night.” No more darkness…no more absence of light…no more absence of God’s presence. What started in Genesis, as God’s Spirit moves over the earth in a state of chaos and darkness is complete in Revelation when the light of God’s presence is constant.

This is the hope that the Israelites sang in the 67th Psalm, “May God pour out grace, turning His face to shine his light on us. So all those on earth will learn to follow the way of God and salvation may come to redeem all nations.

May all people live to praise God. May all nations celebrate together, singing joy-filled songs of praise with their whole hearts; may every man, woman, and child on the earth praise God. God is the source of our blessings; may every corner of the earth respect and revere God.”

This is the same picture that John is painting in Revelation. The late Rev. Dr. Eugene Boring, who taught New Testament at TCU, asserted that the eternal city in John’s vision was not a static state of “eternal rest but a place of ceaseless activity,” where all God’s people worship and serve him. John’s vision is “indicative: ‘This is how it will be.’ It is already finished, already a done deal. And yet,” like all imperatives in the Bible, “the gift becomes an assignment. If this is where the world, under the sovereign grace of God, is finally going, then every thought, move, deed in some other direction is out of step with reality and is [ultimately] wasted.”

Many of you knew my grandmother, Dee, but not my grandfather. He was a private in the army in WWII in Germany. Then, he went to college and seminary and became an Air Force Chaplain, and served active duty in Korea and Vietnam. He was a steady, calm person, peaceful. When I was a kid, I couldn’t really comprehend why he had been in the military. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I truly began to understand that there is such darkness in the world, that at times following the way of God requires us to sacrifice, even by using force, for others. This weekend we honor our those who, on our behalf, fought and died for the hope of ending night for others.

Perhaps the greatest way to honor them is to look at the pictures of our hope in God – what has been and what will be. Notice the beauty and order of creation, the interwoven intricacy of the rhythms and cycles of life, the balances of nature that recycle and renew and reuse the resources of earth. Reflect on humanity. God created humanity in God’s image, blessed them and made them trustees of God’s estate to care for creation. “Then God surveyed everything God had made, savoring its beauty and appreciating its goodness. Evening gave way to morning.” Dignity. Free will. Order. Peace.
When we survey the earth today, we see the abuse, the brokenness, the ruins, wild animals roaming cities as natural areas are developed, garbage patches in oceans and seas and sewage and waste dump in rivers and streams make it hard to imagine a river flowing crystal clear, lack of pollinators make it hard to imagine trees that bear fruit year-round, wars, indifference to the life and liberty of others, instability in the systems and politics of the world and their frailty in the face of corruption make it hard to imagine no more night.

That’s why it is so hard for John to describe the new heaven and new earth. It’s hard to envision from the ruins. There’s a great story about perspective told about Robert Louis Stevenson, perhaps best known as the author of Treasure Island, when he was a child. He was up and out of bed in the night, looking out of his bedroom window. His nanny fussed for him to get back in bed, but he called for her to come and look with him, to see what he was seeing. When she knelt down and joined him in pressing their noses against the glass, Robert exclaimed, “Look, a man is poking holes in the darkness!”

Another author, Barbara Kingsolver, offers another vision, “What I want,” she wrote, “is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That’s about it.”

We can’t make the new heaven and the new earth come to fruition. We can hardly even imagine it. Kingsolver’s vision of elementary kindness isn’t enough. The world is too dark. Robert Louis Stephenson’s nanny knew she was looking at the lamplighter, making his rounds, lighting one lamp after another – holes poked in the darkness. It was not enough to end the night or bring the day, but it was enough to allow a person to make their way through the darkness.

John’s vision doesn’t come by force of the will of humanity. The Revelation ends, “Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let the one who does right continue to do right; and let the holy person continue to be holy. Look, I am coming soon!…Let the one who hears say ‘Come! Let the one who is thirsty come; all who desire to drink, let them take and drink freely from the water of life. Come, Lord Jesus!” Even as we poke holes in the darkness with elementary kindness, we await the day when darkness will never again fall. For the Lord God is our sure and certain hope. It is finished. It is already done. There will be no more night, for God will dwell with us and be our illumination.