Revelation 1:4-11a
April 7, 2013
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
We cannot physically be at two places at the same time. Sometimes we are here and sometimes we are there. If you are sitting here at church this morning then you can’t be home sleeping in. If you have something important to do elsewhere, you must leave here and go there to attend to your responsibilities. When you go elsewhere, what once was “there” becomes for you “here.” Everybody knows you can’t be at two places at the same time; you can’t be here and there.
One of my favorite TV shows is Star Trek. Sometimes, I would watch the old reruns and I heard there’s a new Star Trek movie coming out this summer. I can’t wait! I like it when Captain James T. Kirk and his crew go to the transporter room and they are energized from the starship Enterprise to the surface of some alien planet. They instantly went from here to there. But even for Captain Kirk, he can’t be at two places at the same time.
Sometimes we fantasize about what our lives would be like if we could suspend the laws of science, collapse the space between here and there, and be at two places at the same time. You could be sitting at your desk at work and also lounging on the beach. You could be sleeping in your bed there at home and also sitting here at church for us pastors to see that you are here.
After visiting our son and his family in North Carolina, sometimes I would take an early morning flight back to San Francisco before you might notice that I was away! I would see the sunrise in the East Coast and it was beautiful. And on the plane, it would still be morning and the sun is rising behind us as we zoom across the country so that when I landed in SFO, the sun is still rising up in the sky. I saw the sun rising on one end of the country and then saw the same sun continue rising on the other side of the country. Still, I was not in two places at the same time.
Patmos
Today is the first Sunday after Easter and our epistle lesson is from the book of Revelation where we see a transporting event. John, imprisoned on the island of Patmos and probably waiting a sad fate, is transported in a vision. He is caught up “in the Spirit,” as he says, and is given a vision of God’s coming, completed Kingdom. He is lifted out of his sad circumstances, lifted up and given a stunning, sweeping vision.
In this Scripture, it may be possible to be at two places at the same time, in the spirit. John says that two very different experiences happened to him at the same time. He says that he is in the kingdom in the blessed kingdom of Christ where Christ reigns victorious, and that he is also suffering, persecuted by those who want to stamp out the Christian movement.
He is in a difficult place in his life, suffering persecution now, but he is also in a blessed place in his life, in the kingdom of Christ.
John is on the island of Patmos. Two years ago, I led a group to Turkey and Greece and we visited Patmos, a tiny island in the Aegean Sea. Today it is a beautiful little place of flowers, rocks, and a blue sea. But back then, Patmos was a dreaded island prison, somewhat like our Alcatraz. Patmos was the terrible place where they sent political troublemakers. When you were sent to Patmos, the ticket was only one way. Fortunately, when we went in 2011, we had a return ticket!
John, a Christian was sent there because he was probably a threat to the government. Because of his faithfulness to Jesus, John had been banished by the Emperor.
But I want you to see that Patmos is not just an island in the Aegean Sea, not just a geographical location, but Patmos is also a frame of mind. Patmos for us is wherever and whenever you find yourself trapped, in jail, imprisoned. I know you and I bet that there is somebody here this morning who is just here in church on this beautiful April Sunday, but who is also on the island of Patmos. Somehow life has given you a one-way ticket that traps you on your way into abandonment.
John declaring upfront that he was “in the spirit on the Lord’s day.” John is in jail, in exile, far from home and far from his loved ones, but he manages to be in the spirit on the Lord’s day. In other words, he is in a place quite different and a long way from the dreary prison in Patmos.
John was both in jail on Patmos and at the same time “in the spirit.” He said a deep, dark sea surrounded him, and yet, he was also on a great, visionary bridge to God. According to John in Revelation, you can be at two places at the same time.
Sunday after Easter
If you, like John, want to be faithful in your service to Jesus, then you better learn how to be at two places at the same time. Because following Jesus is not easy. There will be times when you will suffer doubts, or times when others may ridicule you or even persecute you. Resistance to Jesus comes with this territory.
Here is the good news on this Sunday after Easter: Jesus can help you be at two places at the same time. You can be in a horrible fix in life because of your discipleship, but you can also be in the Spirit.
I know a woman whose husband died very suddenly. It was a shock to all of us. But at the funeral of her husband, I noticed that she had a strange look of peace on her face. I knew that she must be in terrible grief. Was she in denial?
No, I think she was physically at the funeral, fully comprehending the sad magnitude of what had happened, but she also was able to be elsewhere. At the funeral, I commented on the way she appeared to many, and she said to me, “I sat there, even in my grief, and I thought about the life that we had together, all of the great memories we shared, all the fun times, and I was transported out of my grief. I suddenly felt gratitude rather than grief.”
That was what she said—transported. She had been lifted, by the Spirit, out of one place into another place. She was here, but she was also there.
How is this possible? It is not a matter of overcoming the laws of physics, but of knowing that no matter where we are, even on the bleak island of Patmos, we are the Lord’s.
Where are you this morning? Are you on the island of Patmos, jailed, trapped, imprisoned in your fears and troubles that life seems hopeless for you? You may think that your problems are so terrible that you can never get from here to there. In the resurrection of our Lord and the testimony of John on the island of Patmos, we can profess that even in the midst of suffering, we are the Lord’s. In the spirit of God, we can be transported from the challenges of life here to the blessings of God there in the future.
The great psychotherapist Victor Frankl was arrested by the Nazis and thrown into a horrible prison camp. Most of his fellow prisoners soon died under the terrible conditions and the hopelessness. But Victor Frankl survived. How? He said that on his way out to the work site every morning, he would be composing a book, all in his mind. He would go over the book, chapter after chapter. He would form each page in his brain, imagining in great detail the grand book that he was going to write once he got out of the Nazi prison. And that kept him going. In his body, he was a slave; in his soul, he was free. He was in two places at the same time.
The Lord’s Day
Notice that John says all of this happened on “the Lord’s Day.” The “Lord’s Day” means Sunday. That is today, the day when Christian worship happens. The emperor had his day. The emperor demanded to be treated like a god. He could do anything he wanted, even send someone like John to the island of Patmos. But this day was not Caesar’s day. And it was not Caesar’s world. It was the Lord’s Day. John wasn’t in the empire, he was “in the spirit.” John knew something that Caesar, for all of his power and prestige, did not know.
So John says that he was in the spirit on the Lord’s Day. The Lord’s Day, that’s Sunday. And what do we do on Sunday morning? We gather here and allow the Spirit to take charge of the day, or more correctly, let Jesus take care of our time and our days. Jesus takes us from here to there, from today to tomorrow, from worshiping here to witnessing there, from following Christ to dying in Christ.
But when you think about it, any day can be the Lord’s Day, that day when we become caught up in the Spirit and we are lifted out of our present circumstances and we see a new heaven and a new earth. We hear Jesus saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” He is the beginning and the end. We are with Christ in the beginning and with Christ at the end. We are here, but we are also there.
So John, even though his circumstances were bleak, was able to praise God. His day, so ruined by the emperor, had been taken over by the Lord and had become the Lord’s Day.
I want you to remember this great truth, when you find yourself marooned, imprisoned on some Patmos, Jesus teaches us how to be in two places at the same time. We can be here, with all of our troubles, pain, and difficulties. But by his grace, and the working of his strong Spirit, we can also be transported there where we are with the Lord.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ, we give praise and thanks for your victory over sin and death in your glorious resurrection. In your rising you defeated all that would enslave and bind us. And yet, dear Christ, we confess that sometimes it is difficult for us to see and to believe your victory. Our world is not yet fully redeemed, not yet that new creation that you would have it be. We continue to struggle with sin and death, and sometimes our struggle makes it difficult for us to see the triumph of your will.
Therefore, we pray for a renewed sense of your victory, asking for fresh revelation of your glory, aspiring to be transported out of our present doubt and dismay and lifted up into a new heaven and a new earth, by your grace. Amen.