In the great apocalypse vision, “that old Snake” which has been chained up for a thousand years-that is, a long time; a time beyond the reader’s lifespan-is released to work his magic on the nations. The deception and lies work. People of the lie stream across the earth like fire ants to attack God’s people. But reminiscent of the Exodus, when the Egyptian military launched out across the divided sea in pursuit of the Israelites realizing too late that “the LORD is fighting for them against Egypt,” so once again God personally enters the fray and fights against the teeming hordes who have attacked God’s People. In the end, God’s enemies and their leaders are thrown into a final, tormenting place.

• The closing scene is poignant: nature is anthropomorphized as it begins to hand over the dead: “Sea released its dead, Death and Hell turned in their dead.” Like chips thrown in the pile in a poker game, all the players cough up their dead. It’s accounting time. All those who had lived previously now must give an account of how they ordered their life while they lived. The scene finishes with these dead being hurled into the “lake of fire” or the second death.

• In stark contrast to such a sobering scene is the vision of the new Holy Jerusalem, recreated and descending. God is now ready to finally move into the neighborhood and to live next door to God’s human creatures.

• If you’ve read through Revelation to this point in the vision/s, you can appreciate that for all of the illumination of the end times given the reader, we are not offered a detailed and particularly clear deciphering of the future. But such is characteristic of apocalyptic-the future is shrouded in mystery. As someone has pointed out, we are not offered a detailed and immediately applicable code of laws but the revelation of divine mysteries that bemuse and perplex and seem to veil as much as they reveal.

 

• John sees a new heaven and earth replacing the ones that have vanished

• The holy city-the new Jerusalem-descends out of heaven; earlier (chapter 18) we are introduced to another great city, Babylon which becomes a curse on humankind. Babylon and Jerusalem are subtly juxtaposed and contrasted; the New Jerusalem will be God-present neighborhood and thus, a blessing to all those who dwell there.

• There is a voice from the enthroned one that informs John that God’s dwelling will be among humanity. Three times in the verse it is stated that God will be “with them.”

• Whoever lives in this New Jerusalem, they are all called God’s “peoples” (in the Greek text, people is in the plural form). Luke’s inclusiveness comes to mind here-“every tribe and language and people and nation.” That’s a pretty broad description of potential candidates for God’s New Jerusalem.

• Notice what is missing from the New Jerusalem: tears, death, mourning, crying, pain, first things. No place in God’s city for mortuaries or cemeteries, and no need for Kleenex, therapists, or IRS forms. Even the “first things” are replaced by “new things.”

  

See homily on this text in the sermon section