From A to Z

From A to Z (November 23, 2003)

“ I am the Alpha and the Omega,' says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” Revelation 1:8

If you say that someone knows something “from A to Z” then you are saying there's nothing on that subject that person hasn't mastered.

Today is Christ the King Sunday and that's exactly what is said about Christ on this day: he is Lord of life and death, there's nothing in all of life and death of which he is not the master. He was there at the beginning – he existed before all time – and he is there at the end.

The Bible used the words “alpha and omega” – the A and Z of the Greek alphabet. In our reading today they come from the book of Revelation from the Lord God himself – ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega”. Later on, in one of the last chapters it is Christ who says “I am the Alpha and the Omega”. Scripture says God has made him both Lord and Christ and has put all things in subjection under his feet. The Greek letters alpha and omega are one of the ancient great symbols for Christ and his work.

Years ago an Anglican bishop named John A. T. Robinson wrote a book with the title “In the End, God”. He said that just as the Church has spent a lot of time talking about the first verse of the Bible: “In the Beginning, God” and sometimes have a fruitless argument with science. But the church has neglected to proclaim with equal fervor what the Bible clearly proclaims about the End: In the End, God. In other words, we've talked a lot about “A” but not enough about “Z”.

This is the last Sunday of the church year and next Sunday begins Advent and the Year starts anew. This is like picking up an Agatha Christie murder mystery and sneaking a peak at the last chapter when Poirot stands in a room surrounded by all the suspects and reveals all.

Actually, every time we say the Apostles' Creed we proclaim what we believe about the last chapter. “He shall come to judge the quick – that is, the living -- and the dead.”

We should note one major difference in our 21 st century perspective and the Bible's perspective. People today want to know “when”. I have a book written by a radio preacher with the title 1994? The author thought there was a good chance the End would come then. I think he missed. Jesus himself said it is not given us to know the times or the seasons. But people will not be discouraged by that and they still want to know when and they go hunting through Revelation for it. It's not there. But what is there in Revelation is the answer to a different question: when times are tough, or when despair seems ready to set in, or we really worry about our world, how are we to make sense of it? and, will God be faithful?

It is wise to not to try to say too much about the future or go beyond what the Bible tells. As someone has said, we should not be speculating on either the furniture of heaven or the temperature of hell. Nor should we be overly concerned on who is going to be rewarded and who punished. Instead, as the theologian Shirley Guthrie has written, we can confidently look forward to a time when the way of the world's Creator and Redeemer and Sustainer – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – will prevail once and for all – from A to Z – justice will finally triumph over injustice, humanity over inhumanity, and the Kingdom of God over the kingdom of evil.

But there is still judgment, that is clear.

Jesus' kingdom isn't a military one, but a spiritual one, and in that spiritual kingdom those who do evil, or trample on the poor, or ignore the homeless – as in Jesus' own great parable of the Last Judgment, will be judged harshly and those who do good, who feed the hungry and clothe the naked, who witness to Truth, will be welcomed into the kingdom.

God is faithful, that is the message of Revelation and of all Scripture. Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the End.

When Jesus had his discussion with Pilate about kingship certainly it appeared that worldly power represented by the Roman procurator held all the aces. Before Pilate stood an impoverished Jewish preacher from the hill country of Galilee. But today 2000 years later Pilate is remembered only because of Jesus. And Jesus is worshipped as Savior and Lord by millions and millions in every corner of the world. What would have been the odds that anyone then, even the disciples, could possibly have figured that.

There came various times after Jesus' resurrection when Christians were driven to despair, persecuted, driven underground. It is hard to assess accurately the full extent of these persecutions. But it is clear that the last book of the Bible, as well as a few others, such as the gospel of Mark, and I Peter, were written to encourage people of faith. No matter what happens, or what the world dishes out, or how often it appears that evil and wrong are in charge, yet we know who is King of Kings. He was in the beginning - A – and he is at the end – Z.

No, we're not in the same desperate situation as the early Christians. But a word I've heard recently a lot is the word “unsettling”. Especially this week as the news has come from Turkey, is that these events, perpetrated by evil people who care not at all for innocent human life, who have clearly no shred of civilized morality to them – these events are “unsettling”. They are bound to be. And civilized people must take every step to unite against such barbarism. And here is where a book like Revelation is so helpful. Events then were far more than “unsettling”. But John's vision is of the Christ, the true and faithful witness, seated on the throne and saying as the voice of the Lord God himself, “I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, who is, and who was, and who is to come.”

The poet James Russell Lowell wrote a poem, which became a much loved hymn, “Once to Every Man and Nation”. One verse goes: “Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong. Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong. Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown, standeth God within the shadows, keeping watch above his own.”

In Protestant churches you will always see an empty cross and the message is clear. Evil had done its worst, but Christ rose victorious over death. Evil did not have the last word then and will not have the last word at the end.

When Nelson Mandela came to the U.S. after 27 years in Robbin Island prison off Capetown in South Africa the congregation of Riverside Church greeted him by singing that hymn by James Russell Lowell. It was so wonderfully appropriate. I watched it on television and was really moved. We think what Mandela went through. How often it must have seemed to him that the evil of apartheid would triumph. But in the end it did not. It fell, just as Soviet Communism fell, and just as terrorism will fail, because of God.

On a cold November night in 1940 the city of Coventry, England, suffered one of the worst attacks of the Blitz. Its beautiful cathedral was destroyed. This certainly seemed to all the residents of Coventry and all of Britain as an act of evil. In the spring of 1962 a new cathedral was opened next to the burned out remains of the old cathedral. I visited it just a few months after it opened and I remember how moved I was to by the huge tapestry, woven in France and designed by Graham Sutherland, hanging in the front. It is of Christ, robed in white, and seated on the heavenly throne. It is called Christ in Glory. And the message is simple and straightforward. Evil had done its worst in World War II and that November night in Coventry, but Christ is King. And here this new cathedral exactly epitomizes his triumph over all kinds of evil.