Revelation 21: 1-6
Choices, human choices, are interesting to say the least…. Just take for example, American actor Rob Morrow. He may be best known for his role as a New York doctor exiled in Alaska in the US TV series Northern Exposure and for his current role in the US TV drama series Numb3rs. Those choices are not what interest us however; rather it is his daughter’s name. The actor and his wife named her … Tu. Tu Morrow.1
An interesting situation exists in southwest Ohio, an American state in the Midwest, with its village called Morrow. It was named for Jeremiah Morrow, one of Ohio’s early governors. However, the Morrow name has provided grounds for humor, especially when someone wanted to get to Morrow tomorrow.2
I simply point to these illustrations because not only do they illustrate human choices, but also to introduce today’s theme. Tomorrow in biblical terms is far more meaningful, than a couple playing with their last name or the public finding humor in the name of a town. Tomorrow in the Bible is not simply what happens 24 hours later … tomorrow is the future, God’s unfolding plan, the time that has not yet arrived. Fundamentally it is the assurance that the present is never the end of the story. Tomorrow proclaims that the darkness of today will not survive.
It is also the stuff of prophecy. “The days are surely coming when ...” proclaimed the Old Testament prophets. Such biblical prophecies were often uttered during dark and dismal days when not only the present but also the future looked bleak; “Tomorrow” was God’s word to the prophets to be proclaimed to keep faith, hope and courage alive.
Understanding this Biblical sense of tomorrow is thus, one of the keys for understanding Christian faith. When we embrace the way of Jesus Christ, we enter the kingdom of God, which is already here in some ways. But we also inherit the hope of the kingdom to come, where God’s love and power will have full sway, where all wrongs will be righted and where there will be neither sorrow nor suffering anymore.
Just for contrast, let me compare it to the classic Buddhist understanding of the future: the concept of Nirvana. Nirvana is not the same as the Christian concept of afterlife nor is it similar to the meaning of the Biblical “tomorrow” rather as a Buddhist priest explained: “The Buddha said all forms of life are unsatisfactory because of birth, sickness, and old age; eventually you will end up suffering if you’re alive.”3 Nirvana he adds is “the end of suffering while you're alive and the end of rebirth after you die.” In short, one key difference between Buddhism and Christianity is the understanding of the meaning of “tomorrow.”
Let’s examine our Christian understanding of “tomorrow” using today’s reading from Revelation. Our passage comes from the final book of the Bible. A book that in many ways is similar to the prophets of the Old Testament. The days are surely coming when “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”4 This passage not only resembles the Old Testament prophets but what we most often hear, when we are personally facing sorrow or pain that seems insolvable. “Don’t lose hope,” we say. “There is a better world coming.”
In addition, this passage gives us a visible image of tomorrow which is otherwise mysterious, using the image of a city a “new Jerusalem,” fleshed out later in Revelations. This image of a future city is to help us as we struggle with the complexities of the present.
To be honest, however, this promise of God’s kingdom “tomorrow” while it engenders faith, hope and courage in some people turns others off to Christianity. Critics respond, “Christianity is based on a someday hope instead of immediate solutions.” Tomorrow is the refuge of people who cannot accept reality. Christianity is primarily wishful thinking whereas Buddhism for example struggles with the realities of the present.
Of course, in a sense, the critics are right. Christianity does have a wishful-thinking element. Where we differ with our critics, however, is on what wishful thinking can accomplish in our reality. Sometimes, tomorrow is the channel of positive, if not immediate, change.
Let me share an illustration. In the early, dark days of World War II in Europe, England was ill prepared to defend itself. Night after night, warplanes repeatedly bombed London. Many of the city’s children were sent to live with relatives out in the countryside, and the people who remained, lived under daily threat. British flyers seriously outgunned and piloting outdated planes, took to the air to defend the country. Many did not return. During this difficult time, one of the most popular songs in England was “The White Cliffs of Dover,” which proclaimed words like these in it lyrics: “There’ll be joy and laughter / And peace ever after, / Tomorrow / when the world is free ... Tomorrow / Just you wait and see.”
The mood of that song was not unlike what we read in today’s lesson from Revelation, the “tomorrow” of the prophet, but it also highlights that tomorrow is not just an eternal one. It was a tomorrow that was possible within the lifetime of that generation, of our generation, and of the generation that may follow us. Although the “White Cliffs of Dover” is not a Christian hymn it is a symptom of this thinking this “tomorrow” that engenders hope and courage.
This “tomorrow” does not remove us from reality. In the late 19th century, many Christians looked ahead to the 20th century with hope and optimism, believing that our world was making progress, scientific, mechanical, etc, toward becoming a more just society. Those Christians had an enlarged vision of what following Jesus meant. They no longer limited their work to bringing people to Christ and making disciples, but were active in society as well, taking on such problems as poverty, warfare, injustice and other human ills. Those Christians saw themselves as helping to establish a new social order that would be a place of peace, justice and well-being --- the sort of things we expect in the kingdom of God. Some people went so far as to say the world was about to enter a century that would be Christianity’s own. Many today continue in that vein.
However for many others, two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Holocaust and other 20th-century happenings eventually convinced many who touted what was called “Social Gospel” that they were not about to see the dawn of the earth’s version of the kingdom of heaven after all. Some commentators are even suggesting that the contemporary trend of people searching and developing their own inner “light,” their own inner “divine” is partly in response to this prior “social,” outward, gospel. Instead of the Kingdom of God being a social progressive movement, this tomorrow in our reality is now an inner event. The Kingdom of God of tomorrow is in you now! Other commentators have pointed to the trend among some that this Kingdom of God is to be found in your pocketbook or purse. The Kingdom of God of tomorrow is prosperity now.
If anything, our lesson points out however the when kingdom of God arrives it will be because God has acted to make it so. In other words, our world will not evolve or progress into the new heaven and the new earth on its own. It will not come by our doing, whether in prosperity or a focus on our inner selves.
Nonetheless, our Christian faith, our courage, our hope and our faith in tomorrow drives us to work for the good not only people’s souls, their “tomorrow,” but also of our whole beings now, today. We cannot expect to establish a time when their “will be no more tears;” that will be God’s doing. But neither should we assume we can have no responsibility for our present reality. Just because we cannot change everything, in society, or in our selves, it is no reason to think it is a wasted effort to change some things or at least try to.
Instead, this work is to find tomorrow today. This concept of “finding tomorrow” is found in the Old Testament, the Hebrew is: “tikkun olam,” translated in different ways but generally meaning “repairing the world.” It is also within our lesson today. Because of Jesus Christ, finding tomorrow happens today. They are the nearer tomorrows, those tomorrows that we “find” in God’s kingdom that has come now. “I am making everything new! (I am finding tomorrow today --- I am repairing the world). Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.’”
Because of Jesus Christ, “finding tomorrow” does not only come in death. It comes throughout time from the beginning to the end, the Alpha and the Omega, in hope when getting out of bed seems impossible. It comes in forgiveness when we are forgiven and when we forgive. “Finding tomorrow” comes when we have lifted in prayer not only our joys and sorrows but the joys and sorrows of others. It comes in incongruent ways sharing a cup of water, food, to sacrifice and obedience. “Finding tomorrow” comes in countless ways.
Because of Jesus Christ, we are promised that the darkness that we may see today will not survive. That does not free us from the reality of today. Rather it helps us “find tomorrow” today and gives us faith that tomorrow will come. Amen.
1 http://www.tv.com/rob-morrow/person/29885/biography.html
2 http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/genInfo.php?locIndex=17179
3 http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma/heaven.html
4 Revelation 21: 4