Revelation 21:1-5
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”
And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
I just got back from vacation. We flew to Europe to pick up our daughter Grace, who had
been doing an exchange program in Germany. So, we went to gather her up and took in as many pretzels and schnitzels and castles and museums and churches as possible. It was wunderbar.
We bumped along through thousands of years of history. There were joyful stories, ringing out like church bells. There were courageous stories, cast in bronze statues. And there were painful stories. Ones too heavy for words. Stories like the Holocaust, told in the silence of 2,711 gray slabs in the heart of Berlin.
And all along, the land itself spoke through winding rivers, towering Alps, and meals passed hand to hand. Story was everywhere. Told in many ways. No one museum or format could possibly contain it all.
Which brings me here… to this story. The one tucked in the book under your chair. The Bible. It’s a long one. About 1175 pages, give or take. We often read it in little pieces. This verse, that chapter. We split it into “Old” and “New.” And over the next few weeks, we’ll take time with different parts.
But at its heart, the Bible a single story. Told in many ways. Hymns. Poems. Architectural drawings. Letters. Crowded tables. Land. And people. And the better we know the story, the better we are able to make sense of ourselves and our world especially when the world feels like it’s losing its mind.
So, today, I want to try to tell you the whole thing in 15 minutes. Those of you who want to time me, and I know some of you will, you can start now. If I learned anything in Germany, it’s that there is a 1:1 correlation between churches and clocks.
Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.
The Bible opens with the Spirit hovering over the formless void. And then God speaks.
God speaks days and nights into being. Then pine trees and antelopes, stars and whales. And finally, humanity. And God pronounces it all good, very good, in fact. And then, after all that creating, God takes a deep, holy breath. Because noticing the goodness matters too.
One of the most common questions I get about this book is how to reconcile this creation story with science. And the best answer I can give is: This is not a book about how creation happened. How is not the question the Bible is trying to answer. It’s a book about why creation happened and who God is and who we are as a result.
We come to see God as the One who breathes life through relationship. And suddenly we realize this is a love story. A love story that quickly moves from the universal to the intimate.
To a garden, a garden with God and the first people, Adam and Eve. Adam means human, from the word Adamah, which means dust or earth. And Eve means life. God gives them everything they need, and just one boundary: there is one tree that is not for them. And this is where we first hear that ancient hiss: “You could have more. Know More. You don’t have enough.”
Maybe the best definition for sin is that hiss, that space that opens up between us and God, when we think we know better. And from that space flows fear and shame, scarcity and hiding. And then so much violence. Only four chapters into the Bible, Cain kills his brother Abel.
This is our story too. We are not always our brother’s keeper. Now, God could have called it quits right then and there. But God doesn’t. Instead, God begins again.
This time in the story of the flood. Once again, Noah and the Flood is not a story about how… like how two specific zebras were chosen but not dinosaurs or how Noah dealt with the 40-day animal stink factor. It’s about why. Every ancient culture has a flood story about God’s wrath, about how humans should do better, but our story is unique, in that it ends with a rainbow.
Not just a promise we make to the gods, but a promise God makes to us. A promise set in broken light and so much color saying that this creation is still good, very good, and that our future is not destruction.
Then the story drops into a particular family. God calls to Abraham, an old man with no children, and says: “Leave everything familiar, and go to a land I will show you.” In his day, that was not what people did. They stayed with their tribe. They stayed in one place. They assumed life was a circular pattern and things did not change. And yet, Abraham begins again. And God’s promise takes on language of blessing, Abraham is blessed to be blessing. God’s goodness is meant to be shared.
But we do not always trust the promise nor share the blessing and so comes a dark time. A time when God seems absent. And the people are enslaved by Pharoah. And the people ask big questions: Do the powerful always win? Is suffering the whole story? Whose side is God on? Can anything break the chain of oppression? And that’s when God calls Moses, and in one of the most important stories in all of history, God leads people to freedom. God sides with the burdened and subjugated, the broken-down, the beaten and bereaved. And sets them free.
But the exodus story is also a warning. That God always hears the cries of suffering people. And if you bully people, if you traffic in cruelty, if you imprison and intimidate and deprive people, your days in power are numbered.
After the exodus, the people are together but they are in the wilderness. And there they learn that freedom brings with it risks and weariness of its own. But this time they carry with them a tent, a tabernacle, because now they know God goes with them. They learn that their home is not a particular land, but their home is wherever God is.
Freedom in a big, messy community takes work, so they needed lawyers. Enter Leviticus: a book few like and even fewer read, with a reputation for harm that’s not entirely undeserved.
But I’ll never forget my Old Testament professor weeping about this book, and not just because he was stuck with it. He said, “This book reminds us that daily life matters. Our actions, ethics, eating, economics. None of it is neutral to God.” A life where nothing matters is no life at all.
Eventually, the people reach the promised land. But Moses doesn’t make it. Joshua leads them in. They try to live justly, guided by judges like Deborah and Gideon and Samson with his amazing hair, interpreters of God’s law. But the people demand a king, wanting to be like all the other nations. And that’s still our struggle, isn’t it? We long for freedom, but also the comfort of hierarchy. We want community, but without the cost.
So kings come, some faithful, most not. King David is credited with the Psalms. It’s actually a hymnal tucked into the middle of the Bible, and like music does, it welcomes every feeling we could ever have and brings it into our relationship with God. But most of the kings including dear dancing David are not up to the task. They chase power more than compassion.
And that’s when God raises up the prophets … Amos, Isaiah, Micah… ordinary people with extraordinary courage. They speak truth to power, insist that worship without justice is noise.
They remind us: faith isn’t just what you believe. It’s what you do with your power, and they dream aloud of a world where swords become plows (Isaiah 2:4) and we walk humbly and do justly (Micah 6:8) and a little child shall lead them (Isaiah 11:6).
And so, with the drum roll of angels over lonely sheep fields, here comes Jesus. Our story picks up the pace and so will I. God makes a home with us, not in a palace, but in a borrowed manger. Jesus tells parables of lost things found, of grace that breaks the rules. He heals and welcomes and forgives. He sees people others overlook. He loves the Torah but also water, grain, mountains, kids, and weddings. He doesn’t surround himself with velvet wearing nobility. He gathers fishermen, tax collectors, women, the poor, the sick. He eats with sinners, touches wounds, quiets storms. He serves the last, the last and the lost.
And when the powers close in, he does not run. He even tells his friends these shadows are coming, and still he walks into them. He carries the full weight of human cruelty, every betrayal and blow, and dies a death as real as ours. But the love that held him never let go. Not then, not ever.
On the third day, that love broke the grip of death. The stone rolled back, and with it, every ending we thought was final. Resurrection wasn’t just a miracle. It was a revolution.
Because the resurrection means that nothing, not that ancient hiss, not violence, not any kind of ruler, not even death, can separate us from the love of God. It means that the crucified are not forgotten. That wounds are not wasted. That love is stronger than every oppressor. Including that voice inside us that never feels like we belong. And that God’s response to all the brokenness is not vengeance, but life everlasting and eternal.
And the story doesn’t end there. That love lights up a people again with flames and wind at their back. The book of Acts is the story of the church, a movement of ordinary people trying to live extraordinary love: feeding the hungry, confronting injustice, forgiving enemies, building communities of radical welcome, and of course falling short of that charge too.
So, the rest of the New Testament is filled with letters to fragile churches to finally answer that big question of how: How do we live together? How does love work in conflict, in suffering, in difference? And again and again, the answer comes: You are loved. You are part of one body. You are free. You belong. So act like it. Live like it. Love like it.
And then the Bible ends where it began. Revelation, for as much as people treat it like Halloween, is actually a garden, this time set in a city, with a tree in the middle and a river running through it. And it speaks of the day when there is no more death. No more mourning. No more pain. No more loneliness. Only a home. Under renovation. With God. We feel that to be truth in our bones when a baby is born or a loved one dies or some rainbow catches us by surprise.
This is the story of Scripture. But this word doesn’t just live in a book. It lives in you. It lives in how you show up, how you tell the truth, how you share your table, how you walk with the wounded, and how you carry hope into places that have forgotten it’s possible.
This word, trustworthy and true, as Revelation says, we carry it in us. We carry it, however imperfectly, and as we carry it, it will carry us all the way home. Amen. 1
1 With gratitude to Rev. Jenny McDevitt for the inspiration for this sermon and several of its power lines and for Professor Dennis Olson who taught me Leviticus.