There is perhaps no more hopeful text in all of Scripture than the 2nd Reading appointed for All Saints Sunday in the Year of Mark: Revelation 21:1-6a. This text is packed with images of God's eternal and blessed reign and love. God is making all things news. It will be the preacher's great privilege to preach this wonderful word on this All Saints Sunday.
(The following questions are not meant to be exhaustive, but are best used with other sets of questions regarding the narrative, rhetoric, and other concerns. The goal of these questions is to unearth the function of the Word in the text, a fundamental concern of Law and Gospel preachers. For more on this method and on Law and Gospel preaching in general, see my brief guide, Afflicting the Comfortable, Comforting the Afflicted, available from wipfandstock.com or amazon.)
1. How does the Word function in the text? This text is pure gospel. It is wholly what God is doing. God is the subject, the beginning and the end.
2. How is the Word not functioning in the text? There is no word of law here, no word that calls us to repentance or shows our need of a Savior. All is satisfied here. Perhaps All Saints Sunday is a day, like a funeral, when the Law speaks without being spoken, for death is present in a very real way. Perhaps on this rare occasion, just a reminder of the reality of death is enough in the preaching.
3. With whom are you identifying in the text? We are the ones addressed here, the ones who know death and mourning and crying and pain (i.e. the 'former things'). We are the ones who receive this good news.
4. What, if any, call to obedience is there in this text? There is only one command in this text, and that is in verse 5: "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true." Clearly this command comes to the author who received this vision, but this could be a call to us all to be witnesses to God's vision of a new Jerusalem.
5. What Law/Gospel couplet is suggested by this text? Several couplets are present in the text: death/life, mourning/wiping away tears, things passing away/all things made new.
6. Exegetical work: A small detail in the first verse would certainly have been significant to early readers, where John writes that "the sea was no more." If we look through NT stories of the sea, we see that most of them revolve around storms or problems at sea. This is no coincidence. As scholar, Bruce Metzger points out, for Jews the sea is "a symbol of separation and turbulence. Throughout the Bible it symbolizes restless insubordination...and in Revelation 13:1 it casts up the system that embodies hostility against God's people. Naturally, then, there is no room for it in the new creation." (Breaking the Code, p. 99). M. Eugene Boring concurs in his commentary: "Throughout Revelation, 'sea' has represented the chaotic power of un-creation, anti-creation, the abyss-mal depth from which the dragon arises to torment the earth, the very opposite of the creator God... Driven back at creation and held at bay during aeons of history, in the new creation 'sea' will vanish forever. Evil, even as a potential disturber of creation, will have been irrevocably overcome." (Interpretations series, Revelation, pp. 216-217). Boring also points out that Rome's proud claim to be the Eternal City is now laid to rest as the truly eternal city is announced to be Jerusalem. (Ibid., p. 214).
7. Consider the insights of the pioneers of the New Homiletic? Fred Craddock was the master at engaging the listener so that they could experience the text, not simply learn its content. This would be a glorious Sunday to strive to help people experience the joy and wonder of this text.
Blessings on your proclamation!
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