Living Between the Alpha and the Omega
Rev Dr Mark Porizky
Revelation 1:4-8
4/15/07
John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, every one who pierced him; and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen. "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
Some of you might remember the great detective mystery programs once on
television. Back in the black and white era of TV, there was Perry Mason
with Raymond Burr playing a detective type lawyer. More recently, we had Murder
She Wrote. Angela Lansbury plays a writer of mystery novels who had the
happy knack of solving crimes that had the police baffled. Then there was Columbo,
the seemingly slow-witted and untidy detective who solved the most difficult
cases. These were very popular shows
One wonders what it was that made these programs so appealing. Each
episode was so predictable. Although the crime committed might have been
perplexing, you always knew that, by the end of the trial, Perry Mason would
figure it all out and the perpetrator would blurt out, "Yes, yes, I did it.
I killed her because I hated her …." And at the end of Murder She
Wrote and Columbo there was always the gathering of possible suspects
and the explanation how the crime had been solved.
Maybe the appeal in these programs was that evil was always punished; no
perpetrator ever got away with anything. That satisfies our sense of justice.
Maybe we like these kinds of stories because the ending is predictable and we
are not left with a feeling of being left up in the air like some more recent
movies when we go away wanting to know more and wondering what happened next. We
like a story that has a conclusion. I’m
still upset after watching Jennifer Anniston and Vince Vaughn in The Break Up.
I mean I paid $6 to watch them fight and not work it out?
I could do that at home!
I loved Arnold Schwarzenegger movies for this reason….
We want to know how things end.
The book of Revelation tells us about how things will end, how the story
of the world’s history will end. Everything will come to an end, Jesus will
return and those who trust in him will be resurrected to a new life in heaven.
And we all know how the story of our lives will end. There is nothing
more predictable than our own death.
But the interesting thing for us is how will the story of our life unfold
between now and that day. Between
now and then. Between the Alpha (the
beginning) and the Omega (the end). And
like many of you I’m constantly asking, “What is in store for us in the
future?”
For the
young people here they may or may not have any idea of what they would like to
do when they leave school. Will they go on to university? Get a job? What kind
of job will they look for? Where will their jobs take them? What will they be
doing in 2, 5 or 10 years time?
Perhaps
there are some who looking toward retiring. How much time do we have left to do
the things we want to get done? Where will we retire? Will we have good health?
Will we travel?
What will any of us be doing in 2, 5, or 10 years time?
We may know
where we would like to be and what we would like to do in the future, but there
is no guarantee that our plans will be fulfilled. If we look back over the past
year I’m sure we would be able to say that things happened that we hadn’t
planned. Maybe an operation, a death, a tragedy, or just small things – like
having your car at the smash repairers, a disagreement with a neighbor, the
unexpected arrival of a grandchild, the sudden death of a friend.
As I said, we know how the story of our lives will end but what events
will fill our lives between now and the day we take our last breath can be scary
stuff.
Like the crime mystery TV programs, we know how all this will end, but
it’s what will happen between now and then that worries us.
For instance, I have no real fear of death, but I am quite afraid of the
dying process.
Christians in the first century were not a great deal different, except
that they had even more to fear than we do, or ever will.
"How will we survive what happens between now and then?" –
that was the question that was foremost in the minds of the early Christians who
read the Book of Revelation the first time.
The Roman Emperor Domitian had launched a full scale attack on the
Christians, mercilessly torturing those who would not recognize the emperor as
god and renounce their allegiance to Jesus Christ. He had killed as many
Christians as he could in all kinds of horrible and cruel ways. Those early
Christians knew that Christ would come again soon and lived in the hope that his
return would be sooner rather than later, but in the meantime they must have
wondered how they were going to see their way through this present terrible
time. Would they have the stamina and the courage to remain faithful to their
Savior? They needed as much encouragement as possible.
To help those suffering, Jesus appeared to John who himself was exiled on
the
When things are uncertain and dangers are lurking ahead that will
threaten and hurt us there is nothing like knowing that there is someone who has
control over all the events of history, who even has control over those things
and people that are menacing us, in the case of the early Christians, the
emperor and his deputies. John writes, "Grace and peace be yours from
God, who is, who was, and who is to come, … and from Jesus Christ, the
faithful witness, the first to be raised from death and who is also the ruler of
the kings of the world."
He reminds those who are living between now and then, between the Alpha
and the Omega, between the creation of the world and the second coming of Jesus,
he reminds us that God is eternally present, always there to help his people;
that Jesus himself is witness to the fact that evil has been defeated;
that he is more powerful than death itself and he will raise those who die
between now and then just as he himself was raised from the dead; and that Jesus
is the King of kings; he is lord even of those rulers who hate him and his
followers and do their utmost to eliminate the Word of God from this planet.
You can see what is happening here. The early Christians and Christians
of all times who have worried and have wondered how they will survive the
troubles between now and the return of Christ, can rest assured that God
Almighty, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of all things, will always
be there to strengthen, comfort and encourage. Jesus promised, "I am
with you always to the very end of the age." That means that
even when the going gets tough between now and the end of the age, and all the
things that Jesus said will happen during these last days do threaten us, he
will always be there. He has the power to help.
Of course, the power of Jesus isn’t quite what we normally think of
when we think of power.
When you hear the word
"power," what images come to mind? Do you think of the president
sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, signing bills into law? Or when you
think of power, do you think of something like an aircraft carrier, loaded with
more firepower that many whole countries have? Or does the word
"power" cause you to think of the mushroom cloud that forms after a
nuclear weapon is set off? Or when you think of power, do you think of a
hurricane, with its torrential wind and rain? What
does that word mean to you?
On the whole, we human beings are fascinated with power. We love to see
power and get close to it. Even more, we love it when we're in a position to
take hold of power and to use it ourselves.
How different that is from what we normally think of when we think of
power. Usually we think of power in terms of someone like Arnold Schwarzeneggar
appearing on the scene, shooting a machine gun, lobbing hand grenades, and
blowing away all of his enemies.
But that's not the kind of power that Jesus showed us. Instead, Jesus
gave his very life to show us what God's power is all about: that it's a power
that's meant for love and for mercy.
Martin Niemoeller was something of the Billy Graham of
But as time went by, Niemoeller realized that he wasn't really afraid of
dying. Rather, he said that what he was most afraid of was that when they went
to put the noose around his neck that he would say to his Nazi executioner:
"There is a God in heaven, and he is going to get you." Niemoeller
said: "If I had said that, how far my death would have been from that of
the one that I call Lord."
What Jesus showed us, through his life and through his death, is that God
is not the enemy of our enemies. God isn't even the enemy of God's enemies.
Instead, more than anything else, God wants to show us that God loves us and
that God forgives us.
Back in the 1950's in
The girl said: "I was praying, `Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they're doing.'"
That’s what Revelation is
about. Between the Alpha and the
Omega we are to trust that God is with us and we have nothing to fear from the
enemies of life, including the enemy known as death.
To live like that is to live with far more power than the Ancient Romans,
or the modern Americans, ever displayed.
Grace
to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the
seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful
witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To
him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a
kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for
ever and ever. Amen.
Look! He is coming with the clouds;
every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him;
and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.
So it is to be. Amen.
‘I
am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is
to come, the Almighty.
In him we trust.
Will you pray with me now?
St.
Andrew Presbyterian Church, Groton,
Web Site: WWW.SAPC-CT.ORG
Office Email: OFFICE@SAPC-CT.ORG
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