Revelations 21:1-4 What if God Was One of Us?

Revelations 21: 1-4 What if God Was One of Us?

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. [2] And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. [3] And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; [4] he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."

What is happening in this scripture? – The apocalyptic is often written in times of great distress and despair, to give hope to people, hope for justice, hope for restoration, hope for a new day. This passage from Revelations is a good example of this. The writer speaks of the New Jerusalem, prepared for marriage as a wife is adorned for her husband. The visionary continues to speak of a loud vice from a throne, saying, “See the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them…the writer continues to say that God will wipe every tear from the eyes of his people; death will be no more, the awful grief and pain being suffered will be no more, for first things have passed away.
During the time of the birth of Jesus, it was not uncommon for those in power to write amazing stories of the divine births of their leaders. Indeed several Caesars claimed divinity for themselves and encouraged legends about their divinity, including their divine birth stories. In contrast, Luke writes of another divine birth, that of a peasant Jew, who would fulfill the prophecies of a Messiah, sent to save his people. But the importance of Luke is that the message is this: It is not Caesar’s world. It is not the rich and powerful who will inherit the earth. It is not the Roman emperor who is the true king of the world. It is, rather, a peasant child, with not even his own bed, who will usher in God’s new kingdom, the New Jerusalem. It is this child who will make his home among mortals, dwell with them, wipe away every tear from their eyes, and overcome death itself.
When we celebrate Christmas, we are enacting the age-old drama of the coming of a new hope. This mystery is in the warp and weave of our Judeo-Christian heritage and part of the American archetypal core of our identity as a people.

How is this happening in the world today? – What a shame and a sham we have allowed our contemporary Christmas to become. We have taken a sacred story of new birth, designed to make the rough places smooth and the crooked places straight, and as we always seem to do, we have perverted it into a time of excess and gluttony in the midst of those who have little. We make glancing contributions to the “less fortunate” in order to temporarily pay off our own guilt, as we crowd the malls and burn up the internet with our shopping and gorging. We have even taken the simple sweet story of the birth of the Christ and polished it up into a cutesy little glossy version of a story that is much too comfortable and “pretty” to ring authentic for most of us living in this dark and challenging world. But I think we do this because we long so much for a tangible sign that a new hope is coming; that we are not a lost cause, and that as the new year approaches, maybe this time we will make it real. What we fail to realize is that it already is real. God has already blessed us, and Christ stands in our midst, here and now, calling us into communion with him. We shop with intensity, we celebrate a little too hard, because we are trying our best to comfort ourselves against a story that we only half believe in. God with us, just as we are. No, can’t be. We are not worthy for one thing, and we might have to change for another. Emmanuel. No, it’s a nice idea but not realistic. This world is too hard to believe that. We’ll be eaten alive and at the very least, laughed at. Our tears wiped from our eyes? The conquering of death itself? How could that be! It’s a nice thing for a few weeks in November and December, but the harsh reality of January, credit card bills and tax time awaits us on the other end of the holiday.

How is this story our story?

But what if…all of those stories really are about us? What if God really knows who we are, loves us, and dwells among us? What if he really wants to save us, from Caesar and from ourselves, just because he loves us? O come, o come, Emmanuel, and ransom us, for we were slaves in Egypt, and we still are. May it be so. Merry Christmas!