Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 Commentary

The Bible’s closing verses that make up this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson offer a virtual embarrassment of theological riches. Preachers who wish to explore some of those themes might refer to earlier commentaries on the CEP website from 2o22  and 2016.

But among the most prominent themes of these select verses from Revelation 22 is that of “coming.” It, after all, features prominently in three of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s verses. What’s more, those verses use some form of the Greek word erch (“come”) six times and imply it in one more instance. That helps make the theme of “coming” something around which the Spirit might help preachers to construct a message.

As I was growing up, the concept of Christ’s coming haunted me — but not because I doubted that God had saved me by God’s grace that I’d received with my faith. No, the concept of praising God for not just ten thousand years, but also an infinite number of years after that spooked me. What, I sometimes asked myself, especially in bed at night, would I do for an infinite number of years?

As I reflect on that anxiety now, I still sometimes wonder what we’ll do for ten thousand ten thousand years. But I’ve come to realize that the depth of our longing for (or anxiety about) Christ’s coming is strongly related to our current circumstances. When I stayed awake nights as a child wondering how I’d spend eternity, I had virtually everything I needed: a loving family, good health, Christian friends, and material security. I, frankly, couldn’t imagine needing anything more than that with which God had already graced me.

However, both many of John’s original and current hearers experience something vastly different. The apostle’s original audience was largely made up of people who were suffering intensely for their friendship with Jesus. What’s more, they may have sensed that things would deteriorate further for Christians in ways to which John alludes throughout Revelation.

Yet things haven’t improved much for God’s adopted children across large parts of our world. Christians are suffering deeply for their faith in parts of west Africa, the Middle East and both south and east Asia. For them Revelation isn’t some mysterious puzzle to solve. It’s many of Jesus’ friends’ daily reality.

We can understand, then, why when Jesus’ persecuted followers hear the risen and ascended Christ in verse 12 say, “Look [Idou*], I am coming [erchomai] soon [tachy],” they answer, “Come [erchou], Lord [Kyrie] Jesus [Iesou]” (20). They, after all, don’t just share our need for Christ to return. God’s dearly beloved but persecuted people also know they need Christ to come again.

Verse 12’s Idou (“Look” or “Behold”) may serve a couple of purposes. It’s perhaps a kind of “Pay attention!” “Look!” that may serve as a kind of literary italics or underline that highlights the supreme importance of how John closes Revelation. In fact, he even underscores that summons by using it earlier in verse 7. However, Idou may also be a kind of summons to Jesus’ friends to be on the lookout for Jesus’ return. It may serve as a call to a holy kind of watchfulness.

“Look!” seems like a particularly timely call to Jesus’ 21^st century followers. After all, while John heard Jesus announce, “I am coming soon!” Christ has not yet returned, nearly 2,000 years after he made the promise. Of course, he has come for his individual friends who have died and passed from life to Life. Yet Christ has not yet come for the  whole creation and its creatures. That wait may be fertile soil for the growth of Christians’ complacency about Jesus’ coming.

So how might preachers help our hearers think about Jesus’ promise to come “soon”? We might note that he could return at any time, not just for the whole creation, but also for his individual followers. What’s more, we might also point out that a holy watchfulness for Jesus’ return includes living a life of faith that persistently and deliberately loves God above all and our neighbors as ourselves. God’s adopted children seek the Spirit’s help to live, in other words, as if we knew Jesus’ “soon” means he’s returning tonight or tomorrow.

In fact, the Jesus who is coming soon seems to reinforce that call to a holy lifestyle by insisting to John, “My reward [misthos] is with me, and I will give [apodounai] to each person according to what they have done [ergon]” (12b). Preachers can admit that since this seems to advocate for a kind of works righteousness, we don’t fully understand what exactly Jesus promises here. The Message paraphrases verse 12b as Jesus saying, “I’ll pay all people in full for their life’s work.” Some scholars think that the work of which Jesus is speaking is the positive or negative response to the gospel’s summons.

Yet as we continue to think about what it means that Jesus is coming “soon,” his friends also profess that Jesus is, in one sense, always coming to us by his Spirit. The preborn child the angel called “Immanuel” (Matthew 1:23) is the one who also grew up to promise never to abandon us for even a moment. The Jesus whose Spirit came in full force at Pentecost is the Jesus who never slumbers or falls asleep on us.

John goes on to fill verse 17 with references to “coming.” There he reports, “The Spirit [Pneuma] and the bride [nymphe] say, ‘Come [Erchou]!’ and let the one who hears [akouon] say, ‘Come’!” To the Alpha and Omega (13) who has promised to come soon, the Spirit says, “Come!”

We might imagine this is the Spirit’s response to the Spirit’s glimpse of the saints’ reward as well as the misery evildoers cause. The Spirit’s invitation may also be part of the Spirit’s response to the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End’s promise to come soon.

But it’s as if the Spirit’s plea to “Come!” isn’t enough. John after all, invites “the one who hears [akouon] to say, ‘Come’!” The apostle then goes on to add his own invitation to “Come,” not to the Root and Offspring of David (16), but to Jesus’ beleaguered friends. “Let the one who is thirsty [dipson] come [erchestho]; and let the one who wishes [thelon] to take [labeto] the free gift [dorean] of the water of life [hydor zoes] [come].” So at the heart of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson is John’s invitation to faithfully come to the One who is coming.

One can hardly hear verse 17’s invitation without thinking about the account of Jesus’ exchange with the Samaritan woman at the well. There, after all, Jesus speaks at length about the water for which we thirst. He refers to the water he offers as both eternally quenching thirst and welling up to eternal life (John 4:13, 14).

Preachers want to echo John’s invitation of both “comings.” We remind each other that the Jesus who is coming soon invites us to come to him by receiving God’s grace with our faith in him. The Jesus who is coming soon invites those who are spiritually dying of thirst to come to him to have that thirst quenched forever and ever.

Some preachers may be unaccustomed to such unabashed invitations. They may seem to us to smack of religious arrogance and insensitivity. But we might let the Spirit remind us to what the coming Jesus invites us to come. It’s not first of all a “get out of hell free card,” but an invitation to the most meaningful, purposeful life we’ll ever have. Jesus graciously summons people to come to the life for which God created us, a life of love for God above all and our neighbor as ourselves.

Those who have by God’s amazing grace come to that life can’t, then, help but respond by joining the Spirit and the Church in begging Jesus to come. Jesus’ followers join together to beg Christ to come to heal what’s broken, mend what’s torn and give life to that which is dead. To Jesus’ “I am coming soon,” we gladly respond with “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (20b).

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In the December 17, 2013, edition of the New York Times T. Rees Shapiro wrote an obituary for Harold Camping. In it he noted “That life on Earth continued after May 21, 2011, was a “crushing disappointment” to Mr. Camping, his legion of devout followers and millions of listeners on his Family Radio network.

After all, “Mr. Camping had told NPR in early May 2011, ‘There is no Plan B.’ In his deep, gravelly voice, Mr. Camping told listeners that Judgment Day would begin with a tremendous earthquake. The true Christians, he said, would experience a rapture. In all, he predicted that 200 million saved souls would ascend to heaven. Awaiting their salvation, many of Mr. Camping’s followers sold their homes, quit their jobs, and depleted their savings accounts to help finance his end-of-the-world campaign.

“After May 21 came and went, Mr. Camping emerged from his California home in the following days flabbergasted. He called May 21 an ‘invisible Judgment Day’ and said his calculations had been off by six months. The real Armageddon, he said, would come on Oct. 21, 2011.

“Did his wrong May prediction affect his reputation among followers? ‘A moot point,’ he said. On ‘October 21 of this year, the whole world is going to be annihilated and never be remembered. So what legacy am I going to leave to anybody?’ Mr. Camping told the online religion magazine Killing the Buddha in 2011. ‘The only thing is that I hope that there are people who are listening that will begin to plead with God and begin to cry out.’ When that prediction did not come true, Mr. Camping retired from his radio work.”

What The Times article doesn’t mention is that Mr. Camping had told his followers that since Satan had taken over the institutional church, they should flee it. Some Christians, including attenders of the church I pastored, took his words to heart. They no longer worship corporately, but as individuals and households via media.