Today’s author is Prince of Peace member, Paul Sponheim.
St. John’s Bible
“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created.”
Revelation 4:11
Revelation is a book about time. The past tense, three times here in a single verse, reaches back toward the Big Bang and the beginning of what we know as time. “All things” carries the sweep of absolute beginning. And Revelation presents itself as the vision of the end of all things. So this is no small God, for this One is to be seen as Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end ( Rev 21:6, 22:13). Now Pastor Walter has us asking how this book about time helps as we try to be efficacious people of hope in this present troubled time. Scholars come together to say the book was written or its parts assembled, during a time of persecution, either that of Nero (64) or that of Domitian (81-96). I believe Christians have a stake in claims about the absolute beginning and the absolute end, though our concepts there finally fail us. But the promise of God’s victory finds its crucial focus in the travail of life within time. And the crucial claim there is that God is the Creator.
So, the middle does not go missing. Christian theology offers us the formulation of “Creatio continua’’, creation “continuing”. No exceptions here. No matter how messed up mortals may have made the situation, God the Creator will be there in the birth of this present moment. When Jesus was criticized for healing on the Sabbath, he responded by saying “My Father is still working and I also am working.” (John 5:17) God is always the Creator God. This morning devotion time can be a time when we try to discern what this means for us, that God has not given up on the present moment but has a creative purpose in mind. I hear that in the middle of the three references in this verse to God the Creator: “By your [living] will” “all things” and every present moment have God the Creator present. That does not dissolve the reality of the creaturely components. And we do have a confession of sins early in our worship services because we know how evil grows around us and in us. But the sinner cannot evict the Creator God from our lives.
And so we are people who live in hope for we believe that God is present and at work creatively. God does not insist on getting a footnote credit. In Matthew chapter 25, the disciples have to correct Jesus because he seems mixed up. After all, he had not himself been present when they did works of caring for the sick or imprisoned. Jesus links himself with the ones needing care. Perhaps a sports metaphor can serve us. In basketball, a right-hand-dominant player who also shoots well left-handed is highly praised. I know that Lutherans have spoken of God having two hands, the right (the church) and the left (the world). In Revelation chapter 4 John speaks of receiving the visionary truth when he was “at once . . . in the spirit.” (v.2) Perhaps Jesus is speaking to us as well. Could our family members and friends who are not crowding our churches, but are actively serving the needy and working for justice, could they be ‘in the spirit?”’ Maybe as we identify with what drives them, they will be able to envision spending a little time in the throneroom of our churches. That could be good for the church and the world.
So, there’s hope there. No matter what comes across your path today, God the Creator will be at work. We live in a scary time of transition where we cannot see the ending. But our faith tells us that God the Creator will be at work creatively in what comes to be.
Let us pray, O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (ELW Simplified Evening Prayer)
