Des Moines, IA April 24, I Feel Fine

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1 Revelation 21:1 6 Corinne Ellis Des Moines, IA April 24, 2016 I Feel Fine Today we get to dive into the book of Revelation, this book that looms large in our cultural imagination. Six-winged eagles and seven-headed dragons, beasts with horns and crowns, lakes of fire and eternal damnation, this book is like the best fantasy literature out there combined with the perfect blank slate on which to plaster all of our anxieties about God and salvation and the future. It s no wonder the film and literature worlds have borrowed this story so much. We often hear Revelation described as a prophecy about the end of the world. But there s a funny thing about biblical prophets. We might think of prophets as magical fortune-tellers, but these prophets were more like perceptive truth-tellers. They observed the world around them and told the members of their community what could happen if things kept on going like they d been going. At the time Revelation was written, Christians were being persecuted by the Roman Empire, and there was conflict within the Christian community about what to do in response. Some Christians wanted to adapt to Roman society so that they might practice their religion and keep on living life as they d been living it. Other Christians wanted big changes. They wanted to push back against the injustice and oppression of the Roman Empire. They wanted a world that looked more like the kingdom of God that Jesus talked about.

2 That world that kingdom-of-god-like world looked amazing to lots of people. But for some, especially the people in power, that world looked like a rejection of everything they held dear. It looked like a shift in everything that made them feel safe. The book of Revelation is all about our structures of power and assumptions about the world getting turned upside-down. So maybe Revelation isn t so much about the end of the world just the end of the world as we know it. In the spring of 2014, I began to plan a move. You see, there was this congregation in a city I d spent all of 3 days visiting that wanted to call me to their Transition into Ministry program. I had been preparing for ministry in a formal way for about three years I d done a whole bunch of internships and read a lot of books on the subject and I was ready to start doing it. Leading up to the big change, I was excited. My imagination ran wild. Who would my colleagues be? What would it be like to have my very own office? Were Iowans really as nice as everyone told me they d be? I was running full speed ahead with all of my excitement, so it didn t hit me until a couple of days before the move. Grief. Sadness. I d spent three years cultivating community in divinity school and now I was going to have to start over again. I had a church in Illinois that I d called home for twenty years, and now my church home was going to change. I had a rhythm to my weeks: reading, reading, and more reading, with dinners and trail runs and chapel services sprinkled in there. Now I was going to have to find a new rhythm. I realized, with just a hint of melodrama, that this move would be the end of the world as I knew it. In the Christian tradition, we celebrate new life. We find good news in the resurrection. We find hope in God s promise that all things can be redeemed. And this vision that we read about in Revelation is good news too. A new heaven and a new earth. Death and mourning, crying and pain, all of it will be no more. God will quench our thirst with the water of life. Peace. Joy. Abundance. What we don t talk about very often is what precedes new life. You can t get there without death. There is no Easter without Good Friday. For the new heaven and the new earth to arrive, the old heaven and the old earth have to die. The old ways have to die. And even though the new thing is beautiful, to usher it in means the end of the world as we know it.

3 Friends, change is inevitable. No matter how much we wish things could stay the same forever, our lives are constantly in flux: relationships begin and end, we welcome children into our lives, those children move from one school to the next, they grow up. We get new jobs. We move to new cities. Change can be welcome and invited; it can be a surprise; it can be devastating. And it is the only way that we are able to grow in love of God and neighbor. It is the only way for us to build the kingdom of God on earth, the kingdom of God that the writer of Revelation envisioned, this world where suffering and death pass away and joy and love enter in. To create an environment where this kind of change is possible, we have to let go of the way things used to be and make space for new life to enter in. Which is totally easy if the old things are unequivocally bad, but that s not usually the situation. The old things might be wonderful things. They might be comfortable things. They might be the way we ve always done things. But if it s time to let the old things go, it means they re not the right things anymore. It s time to let the new things have a chance to grow and flourish. Three days after graduating from divinity school, I made the move that had been looming so large in my imagination. And I wondered here, in the midst of transition, what good this new life might bring. I had before me this directory full of names and faces, an empty calendar, and a quiet office. The old things had passed away, but the new things hadn t quite taken yet. Often in the church, new ministers are left to cope with this change alone, and a lot of the time they re in rural congregations, with no one nearby to answer their questions or offer support. Doing a new thing is much, much harder when you re left to do it alone. As a congregation, we strive to grow in love of God and neighbor, and that means we are called to do a new thing each and every day. We are called to change the way we interact with others. We are called to change the way we think about the world. We are called to change the way we live our daily lives. Doing a new thing is not easy. Grief is inevitable. Even if we re certain the thing at the end is going to be good even if that thing is love the process can be painful and messy and feel impossible. To deny that pain is to deny a crucial truth about life and about God: change is beautiful and necessary, and it hurts, and yet God s promise is to be with us through the growing pains. We are not left to do it alone.

4 We are reminded of this in our reading from Revelation. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. God is in our beginnings and our endings. God calls us into co-creation of new life by shepherding us through change, transforming our brokenness and confusion and grief into hope and joy and love. If that sounds abstract, that s because it is, but I m going to make it really concrete right now. God incarnate is with us in community. We are able to do the new things God calls us to do as a congregation because we do those things together. Bolstered by the love and care of this community, we have the capacity to be God s hands and feet and heart in the world, with and for one another. New life requires the fertile ground to help it grow, and that fertile ground is the life we share together. We are not left to do the work of growing in love alone. Here in this place, the grief was real. There were days when I indulged the melodrama. I insisted that it was the end of the world as I knew it. But, to quote REM, It s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. Starting out in ministry, I do feel fine. I don t live with the illusion that I know everything there is to know about this work. There are parts of ministry that still give me butterflies in my stomach or that send me office-hopping to my colleagues, asking question after question. But I haven t had to do it alone. The community here, the community cultivated by the Transition into Ministry program and the community created in every corner of this place has made new life possible for me, and I ve seen the new life this community cultivates in the world. I have seen new life in high school students sharing deep truths about themselves they ve never shared before at circle on Matins tour because that group is a safe and loving space for them to be themselves. I have seen new life at hospital bedsides, in prayers and hope at times that felt terrifying and hopeless. I have seen new life in the faces of third graders opening up their bibles for the very first time, beginning a lifelong journey of discovery. I have seen new life in children playing together downstairs in the gym, some who have a place to call home and some who do not, but who know instinctively the power of shared life together. I have seen new life in soulful music and powerful sermons and all the beauty that is worship here at Plymouth Church. As I prepare for the next big change, I thought it might be easier this time around because of the ways this place has trained and prepared me. But this time, too, the grief is real. I am sad to say goodbye to Plymouth Church, even as I know that it is time, and that this new thing will be good.

5 This time I carry the witness of new life in this place, and the assurance that just as I have witnessed God working through each one of you, so too will I experience God work through the members of my new community. Maybe you are in the middle of a big life change. Maybe life is just settling down after a series of transitions. Maybe you are discerning how a change might bring new life for you and for the world. Wherever you are, God reassures us that we don t have to do this thing alone. You have shown me what it looks like to do a new thing together, and all I can say is thank you. Amen. Plymouth Congregational Church United Church of Christ 4126 Ingersoll Avenue Des Moines, Iowa Phone: (515) Fax: (515) cellis@plymouthchurch.com