Our Sunday Message

The Sea Will Be No More: Revelation 21:1-6
Rev. Dr. Carol McCall Richardson
May 20, 2007
Ascension Sunday

  This morning may our focus be on this one verse in Revelation. I know it’s generally not wise to pull just one verse from a text, but this verse seems to be so full of meaning, echoing as it does all the rich passages in Scripture where the sea is a scene of watery chaos, a scene of death, a scene of destruction. It might be that here among us today are some who are adrift on this sea. Apparently the psalmist knew this seaward journey when he cried out to God, Your waves and your billows have gone over me (Psalm 42:7).
  It may be where the young mother is who has just lost her husband and is now left with three children to rear. It may be where the young woman is whose life lays before her so full of promise when she hears the diagnosis of a potentially debilitating disease. It may be where the young husband and wife are after hearing the news that their second attempt at invitro fertilization has failed and their funds for trying to have a baby of their own have run out. It may be where you are when life just seems to wash over you and you say to yourself, “I’m going down for the third time. I’m drowning.” It’s the image of being swallowed up in a watery grave.
  The sea—the image of chaos, of life-threatening destruction. In Scripture, it is also a place of judgment and above all the sea was the place out of which the beast in this apocalyptic book of Revelation emerges to threaten the eternal destiny of humanity. Job says that the sea is constantly pushing at the boundaries that God established for it at creation (Job 38:8-11), like a wild stallion ever pushing at the gates of a corral, yearning to break free. Maybe this is why Israel never had a navy. They preferred the solid ground of the promised land to the sea in ships. Let other nations go down to the sea.
  Come back with me, back to the beginning when God began to create the world, all the way back to Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Stand with me on the edge of the universe. Peer out into the darkness of space and see the earth without form and void. The Hebrew word for this sounds just as it is—a dark, swirling, watery chaos. It is tohu wabohu. And then we hear a voice, the voice of creator God, speaking to this formless void the words, “Let there be dry land. And it was.” And God called the dry land, that which was left after the dark, watery chaos was pushed back, “good.” God, the one in whom Paul says, all things hold together, is the one who pushes back the sea and keeps it back.
  And so, creation began when the sea was pushed back. And yet we have only to read a few more chapters in the book of Genesis where we find that the dark waters gush forth. They break free. They are let loose. We know this in our history as the Great Flood, where every living thing was totally obliterated from the face of the earth as the rains came down and the sea rose up and washed over and under. All were destroyed expect for those on the ark. Once again we see the water subside and move back into its place and there again is the dry ground and the rainbow appeared with God’s promise never again to let watery chaos overcome us. And yet…while life for us may go along smoothly for awhile and things seem pretty good, from nowhere comes that one dreaded phone call in the night saying, “I’m sorry to wake you. I’m afraid it’s bad news.” Now it’s your turn to feel like you’re going down for the third time, like the watery grave is about to swallow you up and life is chaos.
  It doesn’t take much—only a teaspoon of water—for one to drown. Only a little water in the wrong places and it’s deadly. People have drowned in their own bathtubs or it could be an underwater eruption of such proportions that on December 26, 2004, the billows and waves of the sea swept over a continent, 13 countries in all and
   • over 390,00 houses were reduced to rubble.
   • Between 1.77 and 2.8 million people were displaced.
   • Over 1.5 million people lost their livelihoods.
   • Over 230,000 people were killed with women and children killed at a ratio of 3:1 over men.
  It was again for millions of people an earth without form and void—tohu wabohu.
  On this sunny Sunday in May, all seems to be going well for us, smooth sailing, calm sea. I pray they are for you. But as William Willimon, the Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry at Duke University, reminds us, if you’ve lived this life for very long, you know how quickly the sky can turn black, the wind can pick up out of nowhere, and the waves rise; it’s like we live our lives on a thin crust of order and stability. The sea bubbles forth and we begin to sink.”1
  His words remind us of the story of Jesus and his disciples in the little fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee. Out of nowhere the storm blows in and the once calm waters are now the raging sea. The tiny boat is tossed to and fro and the lives of those on that little boat are threatened to be swallowed up, obliterated.
  Today’s text is from the last book of the Bible, the Revelation. It tells us about the end of God’s work in the world, the final act of the play, the last chapter of the story, God’s salvation story. John, the writer, paints a picture of creation that is now brought to completion. God’s work, begun in Genesis, is finished. There is a new heaven and a new earth. The former earth, a place of mourning, tears and heartache, will pass away. And for John, one way of describing this new earth is, the sea will be no more. The sea—that dark, foreboding watery grave—will be dried up. The land, always threatened by a flood of raging water, will subdue the sea. We who have lived launching our little boats out on the sea will be secure and will hear as Jesus’ disciples heard that day in the midst of a sea gone mad the words, “Peace be still,” and the winds and the waves obeyed his voice.
  It is these words that I seemed to hear that day when our daughter Ellen, a young physician of 32 years of age, called to confirm our worst fears and her suspected diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. In an instant, my life became that raging sea, that watery chaos. I could hardly breathe. I felt like I would drown. But it was her voice that for me became the voice of Jesus as she said, “it will be O.K., Mom. It is not a life-threatening illness. Nathan and I can still have a family. I can have 20 years or more of a near normal life.” But, I responded, “Why you, Ellen, why you?” And her calm assuring voice came back, “Why not me? It was you who taught us that ‘the rain falls on the good and the bad.’” Laughingly, she added, “I just hope that I’m in the good category.” And then through an email she sent us the profound words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” And then she added, “I guess we’ll just find out what lies within us, huh? That is the kind of thing that shows us what we’re made of and I think we’re made of good stuff.” [And I say, “I pray that we are.”] And so through the words of this child, whose faith roots are deep, I still continue to hear those words as if the words of Jesus, when the sea threatens again to break loose—“Peace be still.”
  And the good news is that God is continuing to create. God continues to push back the dark chaos that threatens our lives and continues to come to us, as Jesus came to those early disciples on the Sea of Galilee that day with the words, “Peace be still.” Today’s text from Revelation is the promise that one day God will finish that creative work. And the sea will be no more.
  What a good word for us to hear during this Eastertide. For you see, Easter is not just a one time event that happened to Jesus and not to us. Easter was just the beginning of the last scene in the drama with our creator God and God’s beloved still continuing the work of creation. When Jesus was raised from the dead, God then began the final work of creating the world, bringing it to completion.
  And this has great relevance for us where we live. For when life threatens to engulf us and all that we love, God’s grace in Christ keeps pushing back the chaos, keeps defeating that which would swallow us up. And one day, according to the promise made in Revelation, the sea will be no more; all those things that threaten to defeat us, to overwhelm us, to engulf and submerge us will be defeated! For the risen Christ is the first act of what God plans to do for us, for the whole world. One day, by the grace of God, the sea will be no more.
  Remember this, live by this when you are threatened with the possibility of drowning—that nothing, no evil that we or the world can commit is against God’s power to redeem, to defeat the powers of darkness, of chaos, to bring good out of bad. For what lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us…the Holy Spirit of the Living, Creator God! And we can say, “THANKS BE TO GOD.” Amen.2


1 William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Vol 29, No. 2, May-June, 2001
2 This message from this text was inspired by William Willimon, Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry of Duke University, and Ellen Edens, our daughter, who knows intimately the risen Christ and his power to redeem.