Sermon: 22nd November 2020

Revelations and the Challenge of our Time

Gospel Reading: Revelations 22: 12-21

Dear Community of Christians,
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For most religious communities in the world, a dramatic church year is coming to an end. By living with the contents of the Gospel throughout the year, we have also arrived at the last book of the Gospel, the Revelation of John. Many words of Christ, and also of the parables, have comforted and strengthened us during the year. But the book of Revelation has a wider meaning. Here speaks not the incarnated Jesus Christ, but the Risen One, the angels, and the whole spiritual world speak to the people on earth. There is a very moving moment in this book when John, overwhelmed by what he has heard and seen, has spiritually received, falls down in prayer before the One who has told him everything. Then the One said: “Do not do that. I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers, those who herald the future and those who take the words of this book into their hearts.”

This is an unalterable promise, but of course it is also linked to the hope that people will remain truly connected to the world of the angelic hierarchies, to the Lord of destiny, of whom Revelation says: “I am the first and the last, the very beginning and also the ultimate purpose of the world.”

The church year is coming to an end, but the dramatic time of now, is probably far from over. This means that we should not underestimate the spiritual dimension of the current crisis. There is a spiritual and a social demand in what we are being asked to do. And that is the test! Can we completely overcome fear? Can we overlook the fact that we are being tested? The dark powers, visible and invisible, that work behind-the-scenes, have an effective method of enforcing their intentions. Above all through fear. There are many things about which we can be fearful. But behind all the different colors of fear stands the fear of death. Or more accurately for a languishing death, when slowly all the comfort we are used to in our personal life and in our physical body is taken away from us. And this fear is also present when we act against the restrictions, a fear that we will get punished. It holds us back from acting.

Standing against this fear is our knowledge that we are embedded in the spiritual world. We know it, because we have experienced it many times in life. But now we have to make it visible in daily life, through our conscious behavior. When we step away from fear, then we can freely offer something. Important impulses for the world. These are seeds, and sprouts of potential for the future. Within every ending is planted a new beginning.

Rev. Ute Koenig

John kneeling before Christ and the 24 Elders; from Apocalipsis cum Figuris by Albrecht Dürer (1498)