The Parentheses

Revelation 1:4-8
Christ the King
November 21, 2021

John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace 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 faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.


I’m glad that Andy Kepler is the liturgist today. Thirteen years ago, I traveled with Andy and Donna to a Greek island named Patmos. When you get off the boat, you proceed up the mountain on a long, winding road. You will pass a few cafes, a series of whitewashed Orthodox churches, and a couple of monasteries. On the hill you find the Cave of the Apocalypse. A priest will meet you, hand you a brochure, and point you down a series of narrow steps.

You descend inside a small stone dome. The aroma of beeswax and incense mingle in the air. Icons lean against the wall. Then your eyes notice a large diagonal crack in the cave wall. According to tradition, this is where the prophet John heard the Voice of the Risen Christ. When the Lord spoke, tradition says it cracked the wall.

This was the spot where John had a series of visions that comprise the Book of Revelation. This final book of the Bible is stuffed full of fantastic visions. He can picture strange beasts and hear warnings of woe. He finds himself surrounded by the heavenly choir. They are singing Easter hymns at the top of their heavenly voices. This is a dazzling book, bewildering to many, intoxicating to others. The Book of Revelation tends to divide the Christian house – either you avoid it like one of its plagues or it’s the only thing you read.

Yet the singular message is clear: God rules over all. Jesus Christ is king.

The book was composed as a circular letter, sent to seven churches in uncertain and dangerous times. The original name of the document is the "Apocalypse," which means a disclosure. In the Bible, an apocalypse is a moment when God pulls back the curtain that hides heaven from earth. The Revelation offers glimpses of a holy reality which is normally hid from human eyes.

Today we hear a voice from heaven announcing, "I am the Alpha and the Omega." That unusual expression appears three times in the final book of the Bible. Each time the voice speaks, we learn something about God that is crucial to our faith and life.

The first insight is a simple observation about language. When God announces, "I am the Alpha and Omega," all the fraternity boys sit up straight in their pews. God connects to two letters from the Greek alphabet. In a Bible full of words, God says, “I am revealed in human alphabets.” Letters combine into words. Words are spoken. God's speech makes a world. That is how it was in the beginning, and how it shall be in God's new creation. The Creator’s primary tools are words. Whenever God speaks, something happens.

Reflecting on his life, the author Frederick Buechner affirms how the power of God creates each new day. It is a creative, holy force expressed through words. As Buechner writes,

Darkness was upon the face of the deep, and God said, "Let there be light." Darkness laps at my sleeping face like a tide, and God says, "Let there be Buechner." Why not? Out of the primeval chaos of sleep (God) calls me to be a life again . . . To wake up is to be given back your life again. To wake up is to be given back the world again and of all possible worlds this world . . . Waking into the new day, we are all of us Adam (and Eve) on the morning of creation, and the world is ours to name. Out of many fragments we are called to put back together a self again.[1]

Every morning, the word that puts us back together is the same word that spoke the world into being. If God has been around since the first day of creation, God has seen it all, heard it all, and spoken it all. God does not speak any new words.

As scholars point out, there is no new word spoken in the book of Revelation. In the 404 verses of this book, there are 518 allusions to earlier passages of scripture.[2] The prophet John points to the books of Exodus, Daniel, Zechariah, and the Psalms, among others. John does not simply string together words from other books. He points to the one Word that holds together all other words. Beginning on the first page of Genesis, God speaks a lot of words. By the time we get to the book of Revelation, only one Word captures all God has to say, and that is the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. As one of our confessions declares, Jesus Christ is "the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death."[3]

Yet there’s something more. Alpha and Omega are more than mere letters in the alphabet; they are the first and last letters. No sooner does God say, "I am the Alpha and the Omega," then a voice in a vision goes on to say, "I am the first and the last" (Revelation 1:17, 22:13). It echoes a passage from the prophet Isaiah's poetry where God says, "I am the first and the last" (Isaiah 44:6). The point is simply this: God alone speaks the first and last words on human life. No other person, power, or principality can say what God alone can say.

We are created by the Word of God and re-created each day. And the Word claims us as well. I think of that every time we stand over there at the baptismal font. If baptism is merely water, it’s an excellent bath. That’s why somebody once told me to splash a lot of water – it is a symbol of the washing away of sin.

But words surround the washing. Remember some of them? Turn from the ways of sin, turn to God. Who is your Lord and Savior? Will you be his disciple? Will you hold these promises in covenantal trust until the little shaver can confirm them at his confirmation? At the heart of the paragraphs and promises, what does it all mean? That we belong to God. No matter what happens, no matter how far we wander, no matter who we discover ourselves to me – before everything else, after everything else, God is our Sovereign Lord.

His sovereignty rules over all tenses – past, present, future. Or rather, “who is, who was, who is to come” - present, past, and future. God will say it a second time, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last" (Revelation 22:13). The faithful church lives in this promise. While Revelation is full of unsettling visions and disturbing pictures, the first word is identical to the last word. The beginning and the end are the same.

As the writer addresses this book to the church, he greets them by saying, "Grace to you, and peace from him who is, and who was, and who is to come" (Revelation 1:4). As the book ends, the last words are, "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints." In between there is much in this book that unsettles a sensitive stomach. But the first word and the last word are the same . . . and the word is grace. It is a word that God alone can say.

Like all the words God speaks, grace is the word that describes how God is relentlessly inclined in our favor. According to our text, Jesus is the "faithful witness" who points to the truth of God's love. He is "the firstborn of the dead," who opens the way of resurrection. Jesus is ruler over the earth's royalty, exalted as King of kings and Lord of lords. He is "the One who loves us," and "the One who sets us free by his blood." He is coming so that every eye will see him.

And the work of grace is not finished yet. We live in a world enchanted by its own destruction. Yet for a few moments this morning the curtain is drawn back, and we catch a glimpse of how God pursues us through the love of Jesus Christ. Thanks to such grace, we belong to a God who has set us free and will never let us go.

Yet one thing more must be said. God speaks the first word, "I am the Alpha and the Omega," and promises to make all things new. God alone speaks the last word, which is a surprisingly gracious word. The third time God says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega," he affirms, "I am the beginning and the end" (Revelation 22:13, 21:6). This is our greatest hope: that God will be both our source and our destination. Through the grace of Christ our king, we trust the God who gave us birth will complete and finish our lives.

Daily crises can blur our vision. When caught up in illness or trouble, we may forget the One who made us. When a kid gets arrested for shooting a military-grade rifle, we wonder, "What's this world coming to?" Listen: every day is full of enough hassles and horrors to shake up the strongest soul. Each one of us needs a place to stand and a promise to hold.

Some days all we can do is hang on by our fingernails, and trust the One "who is, who was, who is to come." We hope for God and remember God. We remember God's saving history and hope for God's final victory. As one of the great hymns of the church sings the essence of faith,

Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come;
'Tis grace has led me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.

I remember the story of Joachim Jeremias, the German New Testament scholar of the last century. He was the son of a Lutheran missionary in Jerusalem. Hitler came to power, and the relationship between the German people and the Jewish people became hostile and painful. After the Holocaust, Jeremias wished to return to Israel. He wanted to see if anybody remembered him as a young person, and could say to him, "Joachim, we forgive you."

He said, "I knocked on door after door. I couldn't find anybody. Finally a man opened the door. I remembered him, he remembered me. The man said, "Please come in. It is good are here. We are celebrating the feast of tabernacles. Come into our back yard."

The family had erected a tabernacle of brush. The family tradition was to enter through a small door and recount the stories of Israel's life in the wilderness. Professor Jeremias noticed a little piece of paper clipped to one side of the doorway, and another piece of paper clipped to the other side. Jeremias asked his host, "What is written on the papers?"

The man sighed and said, "That is a summary of Psalm 139: 'Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast'" (139:7-10).

Jeremias said, "I’m not following you." The man said, "Well, that word on the left is 'from God.' This word on the right is 'to God.' In between, we live from God . . . to God."[4]

This is the parentheses around my life and your life. We live "from God to God." Our destination is to return to our Source. We will return to the God from whom all things were made. In between, we have a promise to claim. We belong to God, the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

And before the beginning, after the ending, and all the time between, Jesus Christ rules over all.


(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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[1] Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace (New York: The Seabury Press, 1970) 21-22.
[2] Eugene H. Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988) 22-23.
[3] Barmen Confession
[4] Thanks to Fred B. Craddock for the story.