“Grace and peace to you from the God who is, who was, and who is coming.” John begins his letter to the churches of Asia Minor with this powerful and meaning-packed greeting. And he has chosen his words very carefully, for John, more than any other writer of the New Testament, is dealing with matters of life and death. To refresh our memories, John was writing to churches in the Roman province of Asia who were facing possible persecution at the hands of the Roman government. The Emperor Domitian, mad by any estimation, demanded that he be worshipped as “Dominus et Deus” — Lord and God. Although there is no evidence that the Romans actively sought out Christians for persecution at this point in history, we do know that if Christians were brought before the Roman authorities by those who wished to be rid of them, those of the Christian faith faced a terrible ordeal. They were given two options: offer incense to and worship the emperor and renounce their faith in Christ, or suffer exile (as John was experiencing on Patmos) or torture and death. Which fate Christians suffered if they were faithful to Christ depended on the whim of the Roman official hearing their case.
So for those early Christians, the presence, involvement, and power of God were more than matters for speculative thought and academic debate. Where God was and what God did while they and their loved ones suffered unspeakable horrors were faith questions of the utmost significance. And to such persons John says at the very beginning of his letter – as a part of the traditional greeting found in all correspondence – that God is the one who is, who was, and who is coming. Now let’s take a moment to unwrap these words and their significance for the Christians in Asia Minor.
Did you note the order of the verb tenses? Not past, present and future. That order is what we would expect. That is the order we find in the description of the Greek god Zeus by Pausanias: “Zeus was, Zeus is, and Zeus will be.” But here John, as he so often does in his letter, departs from the expected. The first thing he wants those struggling, vulnerable, frightened congregations of Asia Minor to know is that God is – God is present and active right now, even in the midst of their pain and suffering. And furthermore, their time of trial and faithfulness, of struggling and anguish is not for God a footnote in history – not a speck of time to be washed away by the onrushing of “greater” world events. God is – the God who is present eternally in every here and now feels their pain, embraces their struggles, and is at work redemptively even in a world where madmen call good evil and evil good.
But even more than that is said in these words. Though the stress is on the present, the past and the future are not forgotten. The God who is eternally present embraces and redeems all time. One of the most marvelous and mind-boggling truths expressed in Revelation is that somehow God redeems the past. Time, relationships, the wonders of creation, the spectacular achievements within the arts and sciences, the glory of humanity and creation are kept by God and are destined for healing, redemption, and wholeness. How that shall be, neither we nor John are told. But the God who embraces all time can be trusted to redeem the past.
But what about the last part of this faith statement regarding God? The One who is coming? Scripture maintains that the past will be redeemed and the present will be transformed by the coming of One who makes all things new. Unlike so many religions, Christianity is open-ended. We confess that the future Kingdom of God will be in the likeness of Jesus. God’s promises and our most noble dreams will find their place in that future. But God the Coming One confronts us from that future day after day, shaking the foundations of what we perhaps hold so precious but which keeps us from obedient and joyful discipleship. The Coming One invades and unmasks our present so that God’s truth can march on to glory and God’s grace can overcome our prejudices and vested interests, freeing us for maturation and compassionate living. God the Coming One prunes our lives and our institutions of that which denies community, obstructs justice, and fosters greed. God the Coming One shatters every idol we would give our hearts to as we seek security from the paper lions and identity from the bankrupt role models masquerading as our saviors and friends. Those early Christians in Asia Minor were met in their ordeals by this Coming One who is determined to make all things new. And thus they knew that the only way to be prepared for a New Heaven and New Earth fashioned according to God’s heart was to embrace the ways of that Coming One here and now.
Now what does all this say to us? The fact is, there are many rabbits we could chase quite profitably from John’s insight. But for now, we shall chase only one single bunny. One of our greatest needs in life is to know that we can begin again — that life need not be strangled by the limitations of time and circumstance – that we are not destined for bitter tears over what might have been or over what is or over what will be. We need to know that greater than the insanity of Caesar, greater than the consequences of our sin, and greater than the ruthless advance of the calendar, are the grace and compassion of a God who can make all things new. The couple struggling to keep their marriage alive when the relationship seems dead on the vine – those whose marriage has ended in failure and hurt – the husband or wife who buries the spouse and feels the heartbreaking pain of absence – the parent whose child is lost to death (or something that may seem even worse) – the worker losing a job after years of loyalty and achievement and knowing exactly how little he or she has been appreciated –- that individual who has faced mutilating and radical surgery and struggles to feel whole – those who find themselves on the abyss –those who have made some wrong decisions and have perhaps no one to blame but themselves and who have suffered losing all they now know was precious to them – those caught in a rat race they know deep down that nobody can win and finding themselves alienated from God, their loved ones, and even their deeper selves – all of these people need to know that life can begin again. I think that about covers all the bases, doesn’t it? Is anyone left out by these words? At some point, and perhaps more often than we would like to admit, we all need to know – to feel deep down where we hurt and dream – that life can begin again.
And to address that need, John points us to the God who is (the One who is with us right now feeling our pain and working for the best possible in our present circumstance), who was (the One who labors to redeem our past – even that part of our past too painful and perhaps too horrible even to bring to consciousness), and who is coming (the One who will make all things new, including us, as the goals of the Kingdom are relentlessly pursued.)
Will Campbell, one of my favorite Southern writers, wrote a novel entitled The Glad River. This was the story of a remarkable friendship which was nurtured among three men who met and survived World War II. The relationship among these men went far deeper than mere friendship. They became a community, a deep fellowship of sharing. One of these men, nicknamed Model T, was hideously wounded in the war. His face was grotesque – even monstrous – after the explosion which marred him for life. But his inner wounds because of that war and the treatment he had received before and after the war were even greater. You see, Model T was a half-breed – a nobody’s nothing in states like Mississippi and Louisiana in the forties and fifties. In spite of his valiant efforts to overcome his wounds, Model T found that he was too deeply scarred by the tragedies of his life to find peace and joy. But he never surrendered his hope in the power of God to make a difference – to make all things new, even his pitiful life. And whenever his friends would make statements about themselves, others, or conditions in the world which seemed to indicate hopelessness, Model T would say, “Now fellows, watch your verbs!!”
For Model T, no person or circumstance would be ultimately limited by the judgments of humans – certainly not by the tense of a finite verb. To dismiss any part of God’s creation as finished, hopeless, or done with was a denial of the God who raised Jesus from the dead and who promises to make all things new. According to Model T, God operated with a different kind of grammar – a grammar of grace and truth which turned what seemed to be dead ends into horizons of surprising newness as the Almighty redeemed all of time in the image of Jesus.
Eventually Model T was charged with brutally killing a white woman. From the novel we never know if Model T snapped and killed the young woman. Years later I heard Will Campbell in an interview say that he himself didn’t know if Model T was guilty. At any rate, it took an all-white jury two shakes of a lamb’s tail to find him guilty and send him to the electric chair. His friends were loyal to him to the very end. After his death they tried to console one another. Kingston said to Doops, “Model T was honest, good, and loving. He was our best friend.” The other member of this renegade church responded, “Was, Kingston? Was? Remember – watch your verbs!”
You see, there is no was to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – no was in the sense that all is lost, hopeless and beyond redemption. The One who is, who was, and who is coming can make all things new – from the heavens and the earth to the hearts and lives of common people.
I do not know what the next year will bring for you or me. Perhaps some of us feel that whatever it brings, it will be an improvement over the last horrible year. Perhaps others of us who have escaped the tragedies of life and the pain of having loved and lost harbor a fear that this may be our time – our luck of the draw to experience difficulty. And perhaps others of us see no difference in our lives regardless of what the calendar says.
Whatever the case, it strikes me that a healthy admonition to keep in our minds, and hearts comes from the lips of an unlikely source – a half-breed who may or may not have been a murderer, but whose heart, as much as he could steer it, was directed toward the light. Together this year, as we deal compassionately with ourselves, one another, and our world, let’s watch our verbs, trusting the One who raised Jesus from the dead with the seasons of our lives.
