Among Minnesota’s supposed 10,000 lakes is the one named Itasca. Its glacially formed, finger-like geography pokes the forested wilderness in rough form of a lowercase “H.” Sandwiched between the city of Bemidji and reservation of the White Earth Nation, the otherwise-ordinary Lake Itasca holds a grand distinction: headwater of the mighty Mississippi River.
At its start, however, the Mississippi River really isn’t all that “mighty” – definitely worth a photo to capture its modesty, but certainly not much to write home about. Itasca’s clearwater burbles across a low dam of smooth boulders to form an easy stream across which you easily can wade without getting your knees wet. A pair of agile legs likely would propel an athletic body from one bank to the other. In northwest Minnesota, Old Man River is still a little boy, and the bully will scoff: Seen one stream, seen ’em all. Maybe so. Nonetheless, you’re gazing upon the humble beginning that culminates in a majestic finale some 2,340 miles downstream.
That image of the Mississippi River’s Lake Itasca alpha and Gulf of Mexico omega is a helpful lens through which to read this morning’s Scripture lesson from the final chapters of the New Testament book of Revelation. Drawing on the image of a river’s modest beginning is what the author of Revelation is doing.
The New Testament prophet John actually is recalling the vision of the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. In his chapter 47, Ezekiel is brought in a vision to the Jerusalem Temple, which by God’s assurance one day will be rebuilt and refilled with God’s glory. Ezekiel spies a trickle of water running from the Temple – a little rivulet of clear liquid coming from who knows where in that otherwise arid climate.
The Spirit of God and Ezekiel then begin to track the dribble, and in a few hundred yards they discover the waters rising ankle-deep. The mystery only deepens – literally! A bit farther on, and the water is up to Ezekiel’s knees. And then soon waist-deep! In the blink on an eye the one-time trickle is now a vast, un-wadable river that you’d have to swim. Its deep, free-flowing water gushes toward and into a desert, making fertile the once-dry ground and making sweet once-salty water. And along the vibrant waterway’s broad-shouldered banks grow astonishing varieties of fruit trees – their branches providing nourishing produce for human consumption and leaves for medicinal healing.
Let your mental pictures of trickles becoming torrents help you drink-in the beauty of John’s vision: “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near” (Revelation 1:3).
And in the spirit an angel carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. …
I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day – and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 21:10, 21:22-22:5)
The vision staggers the imagination: A trickle dribbling from the Temple that swells to so-vast a waterway of life. Perhaps something like that is for us on display at the Lord’s Table. Whenever you come to the Table of God’s supposed plenty, all you get is a cube of bread and a shot-glass of grape juice. “Not much to it,” someone once remarked. And yet, as another observes, from that trickle of juice – from those trickles of blood that came from Jesus’s mouth after a Roman thug’s punch split open his lip, from the blood that poured from his body on the Cross – from all the Lord’s hemorrhaging will finally spring a river of life to engulf the whole of Creation.
The New Creation – the arranged marriage of heaven and earth – culminates Christ’s sacrifice and his saving work. What started as just a trickle now nourishes all life in God’s good Kingdom. And at the center of it all is God and the Lamb of God, radiating life and light. The sheer holiness of it all – and the awesome power of that river of life and of the tree of life it nourishes – will mean that sickness and sadness, corruption and violence, poverty and want will be no more. There just won’t be a place for such things because flourishing and delight will be all in all.
No wonder, then, as John recorded earlier, that angels and elders fall on their faces before the throne and worship God with loud songs and hymns of praise: “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” (Revelation 7:11-12) Yet such effervescent joy is not always the way of our ordinary, work-a-day routines, now is it?
So must we hush any complaining about the rubble of a broken and fearful world, fix our gaze upon the sweet bye and bye of heaven, and let current sorrows just melt away? No! Are we supposed to feel impatient with our current situation as we eagerly hurtle toward this better place in ways that might also make us discount the life we now possess? No! Are the plans of God in the vision of John just too remote, too pie-in-the-sky to do much of any good for the time being? No!
No, no, and no!
Knowledge of the joy that awaits should not squelch the lament that rises from the moment, nor should it scold those expressing their deep wish for a little more heaven in the here and now and a little less of the hell on earth that chokes the headlines more days than not.
Indeed, knowledge of the joy to come should generate hope: true, biblical hope that is no opiate, no excuse for passivity, no reason not to rage appropriately against the machines of injustice, poverty, corruption, crime, and violence. The hope of John’s Revelation is what animates us to lean into and live toward the vision for abundant flourishing that John sketches. Revelation hope is what gives us the steel and the grit to soldier on for the truth, to preach the Gospel, to denounce the sin and evil that Christ died to end – anything and everything that will not have a place in God’s New Creation.
Hope is what got Mother Theresa to bathe the putrid flesh of lepers in Calcutta. Hope is what made Martin Luther King, Jr., and the others walk across that bridge in Selma. Hope is what let Nelson Mandela get out of bed every morning across long years of unjust imprisonment.
Hope is what moves every soup-kitchen volunteer to ladle out bowls of chicken and rice and griddle up toasted cheese sandwiches for the homeless. It is not the hopeless who open hospices, establish Ebola and AIDS clinics in remote parts of Africa, or stand in the breach when rival drug gangs threaten to shoot up whole neighborhoods.
Hope is what adds the secret ingredient to the bubbly casserole shared with an ailing neighbor. Hope is the thread woven in every tied-fleece blanket that warms body and soul of the cold and lonely. Hope is what makes eye contact with the unseen so instinctive, what makes sharing a smile with the pale and downtrodden so automatic, what makes a deep, heartfelt hug the natural way to embrace the weak and the weary.
It is the hopeful who perform all these acts of grace and peace precisely because they even now serve a risen Savior who also right now has all the power to accomplish what will fully come when the vision of God through John becomes each creature’s everyday reality. John’s vision is as much about today as any tomorrow we could ever hope to experience. And in this moment, the hopeful are gathering their voices in song –
I absolutely love what that woman said: “The everyday acts of deep love and courage that I see my neighbors, my community members taking, that’s the world that we want, and we’re practicing it every day here.”
That is the passion of John’s vision – the passion of the One who came into this world to begin his life changing, Creation-redeeming work. That is the fire of Revelation – the fire of the Holy Spirit who is poured out upon this present-age Church to steamroll the Gospel across the face of the whole wide earth. Yes, the love of God – and our love for each other – will carry us through.
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, February 8, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. It is adapted from the scholarship and reflection of Scott Hoezee and informed by work of John Rottman and Christopher C. Rowland.