The Alpha and The Omega - Revelation 1:1-8
It evokes a variety of responses…just from hearing its name mentioned. Among those responses are: “fear,” “uncertainty,” “dangerous,” “ridiculous,” and “finality;” other responses include: “hope,” love,” “victory,” and “worship.” How could the same thing bring about such different responses? What is it? It is the “Revelation of Jesus Christ to St. John.” You just mention this book of the Bible and some folks are quick to dismiss it as fantasiful or irrelevant. Others will cower in fear or try to avoid it. Some others will study it carefully looking for a secret code that will unlock the secrets of the future. Why all this confusion? Why all this stress? It is, as I mentioned in the December newsletter, I attended a Sunday school class one time at Swannanoa Baptist Church
What is my understanding of Revelation? It is that Revelation is a book of hope. It was written to provide those being persecuted in the early church with hope. It is a book that is able to provide hope for us right now. It is a book that will be able to provide hope for generations to come. I do not understand Revelation as a book of events that have not yet come to pass, simply because I do not see how that would have provided any hope or hope for relief to those in the early church who were enduring such atrocities. I understand Revelation as a work of apocalyptic literature. Now before anyone thinks I have gone off on a lone ranger type of deal, developing my own understanding of Revelation, let me assure you that I have not. The approach that I am taking towards Revelation is the approach of many Biblical scholars, including Dr. Mickey Efird of Duke Divinity School
Apocalyptic literature was a form or writing in the Hebrew and other cultures, that attempted to address the situation of why, at times, good people suffer at the hand of evil. In this understanding, there are times in history in which, during the battle between good and evil, that evil appears to have the upper hand…and while evil may have the upper hand for a brief period, God will intervene and bring relief to those who are faithful and loyal. Revelation is not written in some secret code to hide meanings that only those who posses certain knowledge can decipher, but it is laden with heavy imagery and symbolism, which, once one understands the symbolism of apocalyptic imagery, helps clarify what exactly the author is trying to convey. While not in place this week, it is my plan in the weeks to come, to provide a bulletin insert that will contain a “cheat sheet” of apocalyptic symbolism, so that we will not have to spend a great deal of time recounting it each week…and so that those coming in during the course of our journey may be brought up to speed and not feel left behind.
What would have been the need for Revelation in the time in which it was written? Why would it have seemed like good folks were suffering at the hands of evil? Why was there a desperate need for John to provide hope to God’s people? It was because the church was undergoing persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire . As we journey through the text, we will highlight some of those persecutions and exactly what was going on, and how it relates to us, and gives us hope now. Some might argue that if Revelation was written about something that happened in the past, what makes it relevant to us now? If it is not about the future then why even bother with it? It is because God’s Word is eternal…the message that the Scripture offered to God’s people then is still a message for us to hear today…no differently than the passages of Creation…the Exodus…David’s slaying of Goliath…Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Ba’al…Mary giving birth to Jesus in a manger…events of the past, relevant, through God’s Word, for us today.
The other reason for this journey through Revelation is found in verse three of today’s reading: “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near.” God’s Word is to be a blessing to His people…God’s Word, though sometimes hard to hear, other times, without a clear understanding, even scary, is not something to be avoided…in hearing and understanding God’s Word, we receive a blessing from God.
One of the first symbolic images that we encounter in Revelation is the number “7.” In apocalyptic writing, seven is represents “Maturation or completion in the sense of inclusion.”[i] Seven represents a sense of wholeness. So when we encounter this letter from John to the seven churches that are in Asia, we are to understand that the hope conveyed in this book was not just for those seven specific churches, but to the complete number of churches that were in Asia Minor, to all the churches in Asia Minor . Then we encounter this blessing of God’s grace, 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 seven spirits being the completeness of God, the wholeness of God, hence the Holy Spirit…thus the greeting would be from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the Holy Spirit, and from Jesus Christ…hence a Trinitarian blessing of God’s grace.
Where I want to key in, though, is in verse eight. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Nowhere else in the Bible, other than three times in the Book of Revelation, is God referred to as “the Alpha and the Omega.” Fittingly it is at both the beginning and end of Revelation…for Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet. If God were talking directly to us in this passage, God would say, “I am the ‘A’ and the ‘Z.’ Later on, God makes this even clearer…in Revelation 21 and 22 where God is referred to as “Alpha” and “Omega” again, it reads, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end”[ii] and “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”[iii]
What better word of hope could there be for a people undergoing persecution? God is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. God is before all things and after all things. God has the first word and the final word. The first word, “Let there be light.” The words of creation. The words of life. The last word, “Surely I am coming soon.” Words of promise, words of hope, words of presence.
The early Christians were undergoing a persecution so intense that it seemed like it would get the best of them…many probably figured it would never get any better…it may have been so bad at times that some probably could not remember anything but persecution. Think about some bad times in your life…those times where your problem seemed to be the only reality in which you lived…you couldn’t remember a time in which you were not struggling…you couldn’t imagine there would be a time where you would not struggle…in fact it seemed as if that difficult time would have the last word in your life. Maybe it was or is a battle with disease…maybe it was or is conflict at work or an inability to find work…maybe it was or is a home life in chaos…we each know those places in our lives where we feel persecuted, where we feel attacked, where we feel like evil has taken the upper hand in our lives…into that situation God says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.”
God reminds us, He is our creator…He is the one who gives us life…He is the one who designed and defined us…we are not created by, nor defined by the trouble we find ourselves in…the Alpha created us and designed us to be in His image…
God reminds us that He has the final say in our lives…our troubles do not have the final say so in our lives, even death does not have the final say so in our lives, God and God alone has the final word…no matter how bad, how difficult, how dark things may seem, they will not be the end of us…through the God who is Omega we will find our eternal destiny…
My brothers and sisters, from the very beginning of Revelation we find a word of hope… In God we have our beginning and in God we have our ending…
As we enter this new year, let us remember that hope…no matter what we are facing…no matter how dark it seems…God is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end…
As we receive this Holy Meal that Christ prepares for us…as we “do this in remembrance of Him,”…let us remember that through Christ, God has shown us that even sin and death do not have control over our lives, but that He and He alone is in control…
God says, “I am the Alpha…Let there be light…I am the Omega…Surely I am coming soon…”
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