The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. – Revelation 21:23

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 10, 2018): Revelation 21

The opening words of the Bible are written in a poetic form. Don’t panic. That does not mean that the words are not true. I have never met a poet who lies. But poet’s see the world differently from the rest of us – and they describe things with words that some of us would have never imagined. A good friend of mine recently penned these words -

            Oh, midnight hour you savage beast,

            upon my soul you tear and feast.
            Begone, begone from west to east,
            CHRIST rose again to chain you Beast.

                                                 Malcolm Cochrane (2018)

Is the midnight hour a beast in the way that a lion might be? Not really. Does this hour feast on our souls like a dark character from a Stephen King novel? Again, probably not. Does this small portion of poetic expression lie to its readers? No. We understand the feelings that give rise to the poetic expression. Each one of us knows the battle that we do with the midnight hour (Or maybe the 3 A.M. hour). We have felt the sense of hopelessness that seems to attack us when we are tired. It sometimes feels like some kind of a monster is tearing at our very souls. We know the truth of the words even though the author has chosen to express them in poetic form.

Unfortunately, there seems to be few of us who read poetry anymore. It is the reason why few seem to enjoy Shakespeare, for at the innermost core of William Shakespeare lies the heart of the poet. What we want is literal truth. So we look at the six days of creation, and we want them to be six days. It is a literal interpretation of the words, even though the words were written by a poet. So on the first day, God separated the light from the darkness leaving day and night, even though the sun and moon do not come into our creation narrative until day four. From a literal standpoint we have to come up with an answer. So sometimes we argue that Christ is the light on the first day of creation so there is no need for a sun (if that is true, then I don’t want to even get into a discussion of what is happening in the night in this advent story of our universe.) But to the heart of a poet, and I am convinced that Genesis 1 is an ancient poem, this all makes sense. There is a great poet dualism in  our Genesis narrative that perfectly matches Day 1 with Day 4, Day 2 with Day 5, and Day 3 with Day 6.

John takes us back to the Genesis 1 problem as he begins to close Revelation. The New Jerusalem does not need a sun and a moon because it is lit by the Glory of God and by the Lamb. But again, we need to understand the words with the heart of a poet. The words of John go much deeper than just a lack of celestial bodies in the New Jerusalem. The poetic truth is that this will a place of pure worship. All of the things that we employ here to help us worship but sometimes also seem to distract us from our worship, such as buildings and music and sound systems, won’t be necessary. In the New Jerusalem, God will be physically present with us, and worship will be automatic. Our focus will not be on what has been created, not even on the sun and moon which has been created by his hand. Our focus will finally be solely on the Creator, and we will worship as we have never worshipped before.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Revelation 22