Part of the problem, I believe, is that it is a form of literature we don’t run into much. For instance, if we pick up a mystery, we know how to read it – we expect to be introduced to some characters, the plot will be kicked off my some mysterious event, and the rest of the book will involve the unraveling of the mystery. If we pick up a biography, there may be a focus on a critical event in a person’s life, followed by flashbacks that fill in the earlier life of the person, then a discussion of the critical event, followed by a retelling of the rest of that person’s life and their legacy. If we pick up a fairy tale, we know to expect “Once upon a time” in the beginning, and “they lived happily ever” at the end, and in the middle a plot involving the triumph of good over evil.

The Revelation of John is cast in the form of what was known at the time as apocalyptic, meaning, revelation. It was a first person narrative in which the author relates a vision about the future, often a future involving the heavenly world. Often the author would use insider language, code words, both as a way of concealing the meaning from those who would persecute the group, but also to impart a sense of community to the insiders.

The challenge for us is to imaginatively enter into the world of John and his readers, and to see whether by doing so the Word of God might be heard by us, in our time and place and circumstances.

Two ninety year-old women had been friends all of their lives. When it was clear that Rose was dying, Barb visited her every day. One day Barb said, “Rose, we both loved playing women’s softball, and we played all through High School. Please do me one favor – when you get to heaven, somehow you must let me know if there is women’s softball there.”

Shortly after that, Rose went to her eternal reward. At midnight a few days later, Barb was awakened by a blinding flash of light and a voice calling out to her, “Barb, Barb.”

“Who is it?” Barb asked, sitting up suddenly. “Who is it?”

“Barb – it’s me, Rose.”

“You’re not Rose, Rose just died.”

“No, really, it’s me,” the voice insisted.

“Rose, where are you?”

“In heaven,” Rose replied, “and I have some really good news and a little bad news.”

“Tell me the good news first,” Barb said.

“The good news is that in heaven,” Rose replied, “there is women’s softball. Better yet, all our old buddies who died before me are here too. Better than that, we are all young again. Better still, it’s always springtime, and it never rains us out, and we can play all we want, and we never get tired.”

“Thanks fantastic,” said Barb. “It’s beyond my wildest dreams! So, what’s the bad news?”

“You’re pitching Tuesday.”

Would that all good news/bad news situations were so humorous. A fellow pastor tells of visiting a young man in prison, a frightened 19-year old on death row for murder, bad news in anyone’s book, who greeted him,”Hey preacher, what’s the good news?”

What is the good news for a young man sentenced to death for taking another’s life? What is the good news for the child dying of cancer in the hospital? What is the good news for the woman whose spouse walked out on her after twenty years of marriage? What is the good news for the senior whose retirement account has plummeted in value these last weeks? What is the good news for the parents taking in an adult son once again after his release from the State hospital for heroin addiction, parents forced to empty the house of alcohol, lock their prescription drugs in a safe, hide their money and even spare change less their son take it to buy the fix which will send him spiraling out of control once again? What is the good news for the young couple when one has lost their job and they can’t make the mortgage payments and eviction looms and they can see no way out?

What is the good news, what can we say in the face of the many forms of devouring death which assail us on all sides?

Listen to this vision from John’s astonishing revelation. In the end, the Lamb, who of course is Jesus Christ, the Lamb who knows what it is like to suffer, to be humiliated, to be condemned to death, and to die, this Lamb now sits upon the throne. This Lamb, once pushed aside by the powers of this earth, now rules in power over all from the very center of heaven. All “blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might” belong to this Lamb.

Therefore we do have good news. We, who suffer just as Christ suffered, we, who face the powers of death just as Christ did, we have this good news: “Salvation belongs to our God . . . and to the Lamb.”

At the end of all things, when we have moved beyond this earthly vale of tears, the Lamb, our God, moves towards us. Towards those who hunger, towards those who thirst, towards those who are weary, towards those who are lost, towards those who weep. And “they will hunger no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

In the vision John received and passed on to us through these words of Scripture, we get a glimpse of heaven, the curtain is drawn back a bit and we get a foretaste of what is beyond our full understanding and wisdom. As Paul the Apostle says elsewhere, it is as if we see through a mirror, darkly. Even Jesus could only help us imagine heaven, speaking in parables, saying “The kingdom of heaven is like….” The disciples didn’t get it, and Jesus would say to them, “But weren’t you there when I healed the sick? Weren’t you there when I restored the marginalized to family and community? Weren’t you there when I cast out demons? Weren’t you there when I angered the religious leaders by reminding them that law without love is dead? Weren’t you there when I told you about forgiveness that goes beyond human reckoning, about compassion that causes the father to cast shame to the wind and take off down that road to meet the undeserving son? Weren’t you there when I raised a man from the dead? Weren’t you there when a life-long thief turned to me on the cross and asked to be remembered by me – and I told him that that day he would join me in paradise?”

God has gone to extraordinary lengths to have us. When God made covenant after covenant with us, when we stoned God’s prophets and ignored God’s laws, when we turned away and would have nothing to do with God, God ripped up the playbook and broke all the rules, taking on our earthly existence, taking on our human lot, coming to us as one of us, suffering as we suffer, dying as we die. All to have us. All to have you. All to have you, Bob, and you, Priscilla, and you, Lauren – each one of us, and all of us.

You may have memorized John 3:16 way back in church school: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” The same God who created the world, who brought it into being, wants to save and redeem that very same world, and God will have God’s way. God is nothing if not a big old softie, a moon-struck teenager with an impossible crush, a parent uncontrollably drawn to her infant. God is like Motel 6, the chain that promises to keep the lights on for us – except better, not a motel but a resort all-inclusive, and one that you don’t drive to but God flies to you, you just have to want to check in. God has the whole world in his hands, to quote that old hymn, and those hands are tender hands, hands to caress and hold, to uphold and buck up, to soothe and to heal.

In John’s vision, this God does not hang out on high, a sort of cosmic groundskeeper for the women’s softball team in the sky. No, in John’s vision heaven comes to earth; God comes from heaven to earth bringing heaven with him, making all of earth as God intended it to be.

Jesus came to us because we could not come to God. As Jesus preached, it was his core message, the kingdom of heaven has come near, and so rescues peoples from all the powers and forms of death we here experience. The Christian life, properly understood, is not simply a waiting for the pie in the sky in the sweet by and by, it is about seeing and seizing and embracing eternal life in the here and now, in this life, in this place, in this moment. It is a passing from the powers of death to the powers of life now, about being with God in whatever place we find ourselves and then being prepared to go with God wherever God would lead us.

Friends, the kingdom of heaven has drawn near. Turn from your old ways, the door is open, and enter into new and abundant life.

That by friend, is the good news, good news which triumphs over whatever forms of bad news afflict us, good news for us, good news for all the saints, good news for the whole world.