12th Sunday after Pentecost              

Revelation 21:1-6

Then, I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And, I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And, I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals.

God will dwell with them;

they will be God’s peoples,

and God will be with them and be their God;

who will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away.”

And, the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also, he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then, he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”

Revelation 22:1-5

Then, the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But, the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And, there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

KPop Demon Hunters

This is our last week with Revelation, which may or may not be a relief to some of you. It’s certainly not the easiest book of the Bible to deal with, but you can’t say that it hasn’t been interesting. We have a reprieve this week from the monsters and the destruction and the beasts with many eyes. We have come to the end. We have received our reward. The war is over; God is with us and has made all things new. The River of Life flows through the city, the Tree of Life, with its healing leaves, is full of fruit, and God will reign forever and ever. This is what comes after the trials and the tribulation. The Lamb has won.

It was funny, thinking this week about our journey through Revelation, because I just saw a movie that some of my friends recommended to me called KPop Demon Hunters. Now, I had heard of this movie already, but I didn’t really pay any attention to, because it just didn’t sound like something I would be interested in. For those of you who don’t know, K-pop is pop music from Korea, and demon hunters are…demon hunters, so while I had no idea what the plot line of this movie was or how good it was supposed to be, I figured I knew the general premise, and I just kind of wrote it off as some silly kids’ movie. On top of that, it was released directly to streaming on Netflix; it wasn’t even released in theaters, so how good could it be? But, I watched it, because my friends seemed really excited about it; one of them even went to a special sing-along screening that they had last week, at the theater, and the movie actually turned out to be really good!

KPop Demon Hunters quickly because the most-watched film in Netflix history, and four of the songs from the movie’s fictional bands reached Billboard’s top ten, the first time this had ever happened for the soundtrack of a film. But, I’m not here to tell you how good KPop Demon Hunters is. I’m talking about it because it’s a story about the apocalypse, and we’ve been going through our own apocalypse story as told in the Book of Revelation.

It surprised me when I realized how many similarities there were between the two stories. There’s the grand battle between good and evil, the big bad that wants to destroy everything, and the heroes who come along to save the day. Apologies ahead of time for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, and wants to; I will try to keep the spoilers as minimal as possible.

The main character in KPop Demon Hunters is Rumi, and she, Mira, and Zooey, are the K-pop trio known as Huntr/x, popstars by day, and demon hunters by night, and they are constantly fighting off the demon king Gwi-ma, and his hoard of demons trying to take over the world. Rumi is the lead singer of the group, and she’s been keeping a very big secret from everyone, for her entire life. One of the most common reasons that people keep secrets is because of shame. Shame eats away at us; it prevents us from deepening our relationships, sometimes from forming relationships at all. It prevents us from building trust with the people who are closest to us. Now, this is bad enough in our regular day-to-day lives, but just imagine if you were a K-pop demon hunter. Every day, it’s just you and your two best friends trying to save the world from the demon hoards who want to destroy everything, that shame and that lack of trust is a liability.

Rumi spends almost the entire movie holding on to this secret, until it’s exposed against her will, and she loses the trust of her fellow demon hunters. It’s not until she accepts herself, and fights back despite the shame that she used to have about herself, that she is able to win back the trust of her friends and ultimately, save the world. The old way was gone, and a new day had begun.

And that, ultimately, is the theme of readings from Revelation today. “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. And the one who was seated on the throne said,…I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of life.”

As we’ve been going through Revelation over these last six weeks, it’s been all but impossible to avoid drawing comparisons between what we were reading, and the things that have been happening in the world around us. The centerpiece of this vision that John is having are the monsters coming to oppose God and the angels and the saints, much like Rumi, Mira, and Zooey find themselves facing off against Gwi-ma and his demons. It is a huge world-engulfing conflict, war and strife. People are terrified and suffering. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that it feels sometimes like the world has gone absolutely mad, especially here at home, in the United States of America. The values that we have held dear for decades are under attack, and it feels like everything is crumbling around us. It’s like a runaway freight train, and the brakes are broken.

That is the story of Revelation. Impossibly scary things are happening, things no one could have ever imagined. And, it can feel hopeless sometimes, just like the hopelessness we sometimes feel lately whenever we look at the news. But, our God is a God of hope. When we think about the Book of Revelation, we think about end of the world, but that’s not what Revelation means. Revelation means to reveal, to uncover, to bring into to the light. It’s the same thing with the word apocalypse. We’ve talked about this before; the word “apocalypse” comes from Greek, and it literally means “a lifting of the veil.”  Things may seem hopeless right now, but what God reveals to us in the Book of Revelation is that hopelessness is a lie.

“For the first things have passed away…See, I am making all things new.” In the end, after it’s all said and done, there will be no more war. Fear and jealously and shame will be no more. Hunger and pain will be no more. There will be no more arguing with our neighbors, there will be no more oppression, or bigotry, or hatred. When we see the things that are going wrong in the world, we know that isn’t the way things are supposed to be. Jesus taught us what the world is supposed to look like. Jesus taught us to share and to heal, to comfort, care for, and lift up. In the new world, there will be peace. There will be light and love and joy. There will be singing and dancing and praise. And, we will all be happy together, in the loving embrace of our Creator God, for all of eternity. That is the promise of Revelation. That is the truth that is being revealed to us. That is the hope that we are supposed to hold onto.

Some people fear that in order for the new world to come, the old world has to be destroyed. But, that doesn’t have to be true in the literal sense. Old ways of knowing and understanding can die, and be replaced with new ways of doing things, new traditions, new understandings, new knowledge. We don’t have to destroy our entire culture for that. But, we could certainly say that the old ways are dead, and that the new ways have taken their place. A country can fall, and a new one can rise up in the exact same place. But, it’ll be the same mountains and rivers. It’ll be the same fields and flowers and trees. It might even have the same cities and towns; they might even get to keep their names. It could be the same people.

But, abrupt change, even when it’s good, can still seem scary. We are creatures of habit. We like to be comfortable; we like to be in control. When we look at the Book of Revelation, it seems like the way things are going to end, the way things are going to change, is going to be obvious and sudden, catastrophic. When you see a beast rising out of the sea with seven heads, you know it’s time. But, I’m pretty sure that’s a metaphor, and the more I think about these things, the more I think about the scale and the timeline that God operates on, I just don’t think it’s going to be that simple.

When we see a caterpillar turn into a chrysalis and then suddenly one day it emerges as a butterfly, it seems like something that happens all at once. But, inside of the chrysalis, it’s a process. It’s a slow transformation from one thing into another. And, I think that is more likely what all of this is going to look like. It’s an in-breaking…an in-breaking here, an in-breaking there, God’s realm slowly but surely transforming the world that we know into the world that it’s supposed to be. And, we are the vectors through which that in-breaking occurs. Whenever you show kindness to someone, that is the in-breaking of God’s realm into our world. Whenever you stand up for someone who’s being bullied, or oppressed, or taken advantage of, that is the in-breaking of God’s realm into our world. Whenever you treat God’s creation, our world, our neighbors, the plants and the animals, the soil, the water, the air, our human family in every nation with respect and dignity, that is the in-breaking of the Realm of God into our world.

It’s going to happen in little bits, here and there, in what might look like fits and starts to us. But, God has a plan, and we are a part of that plan. So, let the first things pass away, live into that hope, be a part of the new thing, and be the in-breaking of the Realm of God into the world.

Amen.

~ Rev. Charles Wei