Awash in bad news about the world around us, we are proclaiming good news – God’s Good News – as our Lenten journey to the Cross moves forward. Here’s what our Sunday Scripture lessons have declared already: God’s good news is so good that it catches us by surprise!
And God’s good news is great love for neighbor! This morning, the good news is that, together with God, the impossible is possible!
In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus and his disciples head to a deserted place, perhaps anxious for some peace and quiet, but folks from the surrounding towns tag along. Instead of turning them away, Jesus expresses compassion and launches into some impromptu teaching. As the day goes on, the disciples have logistics in mind and urge Jesus to send the people back into the villages so they can feed themselves.
Instead, Jesus charges his followers with a seemingly impossible task: “You give them something to eat.” Dumbfounded, the disciples fret over the limitations and financial constraints of Jesus’s suggestion. Yet when they “go and see,” their meager provisions multiply, and thousands are fed.
Theirs is a network of collective care that meets people’s immediate needs. Jesus models a way to live in community by coming together and sharing what we have, dispelling myths of perceived impossibilities, revenue shortfalls, and supply-chain shortages. The good news empowers us to believe in the miracles made possible through the power of community.
Jesus said, “Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile.” He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn’t even have time to eat. So they left by boat for a quiet place, where they could be alone. But many people recognized them and saw them leaving, and people from many towns ran ahead along the shore and got there ahead of them.
Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things. Late in the afternoon his disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go to the nearby farms and villages and buy something to eat.”
But Jesus said, “You feed them.” “With what?” they asked. “We’d have to work for months to earn enough money to buy food for all these people!” “How much bread do you have?” he asked. “Go and find out.” They came back and reported, “We have five loaves of bread and two fish.”
Then Jesus told the disciples to have the people sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of fifty or a hundred. Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, looked up toward heaven, and blessed them. Then, breaking the loaves into pieces, he kept giving the bread to the disciples so they could distribute it to the people. He also divided the fish for everyone to share. They all ate as much as they wanted, and afterward, the disciples picked up twelve baskets of leftover bread and fish. A total of 5,000 men and their families were fed from those loaves! (Mark 6:31-44)
Much of modern society ingrains in us the idea that we have to fend for ourselves, and tending to the needs of an entire community feels like too overwhelming a task. But compassion is the energy source for collective care. The good news is, the disciples’ limiting beliefs don’t limit what God does. The good news is, everyone is fed.
An award-winning short documentary follows a farmer, Adam Wilson, who was given $500,000
to purchase a farm and use it to feed his neighbors for free. The film explores radical neighboring through the provision of healthier food and how generosity and shared resources can reshape the way communities live together.
I’m reading to you from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians –
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)
God doesn’t start with the problem. God starts with what we all have. Please pray with me –
Holy God, we could press our ear to the page, hoping to hear you more clearly. We could silence all the alarms and notifications, hoping to catch a murmur of your voice. We could still our beating hearts, and still we might miss your voice. So today we pray, open up space in our hearts, in our spirits, in our minds, to feel your presence among us. With you, anything is possible. We believe. With your Spirit, help our disbelief.
Amen.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on the Third Sunday of Lent, March 8, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Lisle Gwynn Garrity and Lizzie McManus-Dail inform the message.
This morning’s Lenten Good News from the Gospel of Luke fundamentally connects the loving of God and the loving of neighbor: You simply can’t have one without the other.
The Word that God has spoken begins with a member of the self-righteous religious elite inviting Jesus over for supper. Customarily, such a host would greet his guest with deeds of hospitality: the washing of feet soiled by dusty roadways, an anointing of oil as respite from the day’s heat, a physical embrace of welcome and friendship. But Simon, the host, provides his guest, Jesus, with no such amenities – a social miscue that doesn’t go unnoticed.
Meanwhile, in an act of embolden love, a townswoman of ill-repute seeks out Jesus. She audaciously enters a privileged place that’s off limits to people of her ilk; she tenderly bathes Jesus’s feet with expensive perfume and adoring kisses. Her love will not be limited; the cynical judgment of others matters not a whit. And through it all, Jesus proclaims good news about forgiveness, grace, and extravagant love.
Please join your hearts with mine in prayer –
Good news God, speak louder than the news updates. Speak louder than our mental distractions. Speak louder than our anger, louder than our fear. Lord Jesus, speak loudly to us today, because we long to hear your Good News once more. With hope we pray, in and by the Spirit.
One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table.
And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.
Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him – that she is a sinner.” Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” he replied, “Speak.”
“A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” And Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.”
Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”
Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.” But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7:36-50)
Call me a skeptic! Call me a cynic! But this whole thing feels like a set-up!
I do not understand why Simon – part of the very religious establishment opposing Jesus – would invite the Lord over to his house. Equally head-scratching is why Jesus is treated so rudely upon arrival – with disrespect no guest should have to endure. It’s as if Simon and company are trying to get a rise out of Jesus – a test to see if this “holy” teacher who’s all the rage will pitch a fit and make a scene because of Simon’s social slights.
Then this woman “with a past” somehow slips into the house of a holy Pharisee who could no more afford to be seen in her company than any of his fellow synagogue leaders. It happens: a few years ago, some crafty gate-crashers finagled their way to a White House dinner. So, yes, it happens, but not often. And probably not at Simon’s place that fateful night. Everyone there, starting with Simon, knows of this woman’s gaudy reputation and size her up with quick glance. So please don’t tell me that the doorman admits her to the party totally in the dark about who it is whom he’s letting in the front door.
Call me a skeptic! Call me a cynic! But this whole thing feels a set-up! This woman has got to be a “plant,” a ringer they bring in to gauge Jesus’s reaction. And Jesus flips the script, following his gracious form and forgiving the woman; he welcomes her repentance and absorbs her lifetime of pain. Jesus is so full of Good News that it’s impossible for him to become unclean by merely contacting the unclean. With Jesus it’s always the other way around: His holiness “infects” the other, cleaning up him or her once and for all, right then, right there. That’s what love is!
And as with the woman at Simon’s party, the one who has been forgiven much has much for which to feel grateful, and therefore is far more likely to be full of love, than those who think they need little to no forgiveness. Bottom line, Simon is a not-so-very-nice person who carries in his sin-sick soul at least as much infectious pus as that unfortunate woman ever did. Yet Simon feels no pressing need for pardon. He’s a self-made man on the Pharisee Plan and remains gratefully and stubbornly accountable to no one – not even Jesus. That’s what love is not.
As it turns out, the kingdom of God – and the Gospel of loving forgiveness that it embodies – hold the greatest appeal to and wield the mightiest impact upon those who know they need grace and mercy the most. Then as now, society’s high and mighty are usually the last to feel so strong a need for forgiveness as one who’s been so lavishly forgiven.
So the scene ends with Jesus turning away from his dirty, rotten, scoundrel of a host, and with Jesus beaming the very grace and compassion we all need toward that woman alone, while the religious elite wag their tongues, shake their heads, and point their fingers – over the tawdry scandal and blatant heresy of it all.
That’s sad. And so also does it warn any of us who even yet feel that forgiveness is needed more for some folks than for us ourselves. We all must pine for that loving glance from Jesus! It’s never something that somebody else needs more than you and I do!
Not long ago, a major nationwide study gathered people’s attitudes about forgiveness. The study found that 75 percent of Americans are “very confident” in God’s forgiveness for their past offenses. Such high confidence surprised the researchers, especially since many of these same people were not regular church-goers. Still, three-quarters of the people surveyed had few doubts about God’s desire to let bygones be bygones between heaven and earth.
But the picture of earthly ties that bind wasn’t so rosy. When it came to interpersonal relationships, only about half of the surveyed claimed that they were “certain” of having forgiven others. Most admitted that, whereas God is a galaxy-class forgiver, ordinary folks struggle. Indeed, it’s difficult to forgive another with whom you are angry. It’s oftentimes even difficult to forgive yourself! But where forgiveness does take place, the study found a link between such mercy and better health. Apparently the more prone you are to grant forgiveness, the less likely you are to suffer with stress-related illness.
Literally and spiritually, forgiveness is where we live.
Do we know that? And celebrate that? So share Jesus’s own eagerness to pass along the love of forgiveness to all who spend their days literally crying for release? Will the sweet, extravagant love of Jesus flow in and through you and me? Jesus issues the summons in Matthew 25 –
“Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’
“And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:34-40)
Loving God, loving neighbor: You can’t have one without the other. Heaven’s love knows no bounds, and nor can ours. For where there is charity, where there is service, where there is forgiveness – there is love.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on the Second Sunday of Lent, March 1, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. It is part of his Lenten series, “Tell Me Something Good: Grounding Ourselves in the Good News.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Brian Blount, Lisle Gwynn Garrity, and Scott Hoezee inform the message.
In the early Church, Lent was the season when fresh converts to faith prepared for baptism on Easter Sunday. Their lesson plans throughout those 40 days arose from the cornerstone of Christianity – Jesus Christ: his life and ministry, his death and resurrection; his widespread hospitality and his care for the vulnerable; his nourishment for the hungry; his nonviolence in the face of injustice.
“Repent of your sin” was his invitation. “Love and serve the Lord your God with all your heart” was his command. And with his next breath, “Love and serve your neighbor as you yourself would want to be loved.” Love like your life depends on it. Because it does – in this world and the next.
As another Lent begins here in this place, so also will Jesus Christ be our guide – for us who gather in worship and leave to live our faith, for a group of young people preparing to confirm their baptismal vows this Easter. Together with those first saints and sinners of the Church, let us rediscover what lies at the heart of Jesus: freedom, love, mercy, grace, and peace – all undeserved blessings that intend to be very good news for us all.
And the Good News doesn’t end there: Emulating Jesus and embodying his teaching and example ground us in who and what God created us to be. God’s Good News really is good news! Joyful! Effervescent! Like fine wine saved for the climax of celebration. Which is how John opens his Gospel: Not with the ashy-ness of Lenten repentance and 40 days of desert temptation but with an intoxicating miracle of face-saving proportion. Indeed, news of this Kingdom of God’s Heaven is so good that it catches us by surprise.
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it.
When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”
Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. (John 2:1-11)
It’s hard to wrap your head around the image: Jesus standing in a sweltering banquet hall, a Red Solo cup dangling from his fingers, cooling off after dancing the Macarena, the Electric Slide, and the Beer-Barrel Polka. The One whom we at Christmastime proclaimed the Prince of Peace – Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God – as it turns out has got the moves. Boogie, oogie, oogie.
The party is at its tipping point, at that moment when one of two things will happen: Either the exhausted revelers call it a night and head for home, or they find their second wind, and the party really gets lit. On the dance floor, the high-heeled shoes come off; Aunt Bernice busts those moves she hasn’t used since college, and the first notes of the Chicken Dance bring everyone to the dance floor.
But instead, something terrible happens. Horror of horrors, they’ve run out of wine. And in steps Jesus to the rescue. And why not? The essence of Jesus’s ministry is true goodness – beneficial, delightful, celebratory. And the Lord’s first miracle of John’s Gospel unfolds purely to keep the good times rolling. What good news! There’s still more! Even better than we imagined! For us and for our family, friends, and neighbors! The good wine has been saved until last. And God’s love is so good – the Good News is so great – that the taps will never run dry!
Because that’s precisely who Jesus is. He doesn’t have to begin with defeating evil – Jesus well knows that ultimately evil doesn’t stand a chance against a God who loves disco and line-dancing. Evil doesn’t stand a chance against a God who is not only not afraid of scarcity, but equally so a God who laughsin the face of scarcity. Evil doesn’t stand a chance against a God who absolutely will never let an empty cistern or full tomb have the final word.
Evil is predictable, but the Lord our God loves a surprise, and the plot twist is always the same: God’s expansive goodness overflows. Every. Single. Time.
If all of Cana’s nuptial impropriety and biblical inebriation offends your sensibilities, then let me try this another way. “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field,” Jesus declares in the Gospel of Matthew. “It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown, it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31-32)
Like a mustard seed, Good News grows from the smallest seed into the tallest tree. Like an unruly weed, or fine wine saved for last, the Good News is abundant and cannot be contained. Even if images of weeds and wine make you uncomfortable, trust that you can take them to heart, because the Word of the Lord is always deeply rooted in goodness and love, and they are always worthy of celebration.
Celebrate with some high-schoolers in Ohio, as they respond to the question, “Share something good that’s happened today?”
Can we be Good-News people in a world heavily burdened by bad news? Let’s give it a try! Let us be good news for a world desperate to hear, see, and taste what is good. Pray with me, please:
Holy One, it is easy to see the mustard plant and forget to marvel at the seed. It is easy to taste good wine and not appreciate it. It is easy to miss the holy that is in our midst. So as we move into Lent, getting ever-closer to the Cross yet anticipating the Empty Tomb, we ask that you surprise us. Speak to us. Move through us. Draw us closer to your Good News. We wait with bated breath. Amen.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on the first Sunday of Lent, February 22, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by T. Denise Anderson, Lizzie McManus-Dail, and Lisle Gwynn Garrity inform the message.
“Coming soon!” The phrase, though timeworn, feels timeless in generating excitement.
“See, I am coming soon,” begins this morning’s Scripture lesson. “Let everyone who is thirsty come,” echoes from its ending. Come, Lord Jesus! “Surely I am comingsoon. Amen!”
That’s a haunting truth to consider – maybe not so much because you doubt that you’ve been saved by God’s grace and grace alone. But maybe more so in the eternal reality of praising God not just for 10,000 years (as amazing lyrics of grace propose), but praising God for the infinity of all time and space. To my heart, that prospect of never-ending divine adoration in the very presence of God and the Lamb feels at once incredibly exciting and, well, a little spooky.
When pondering the return of Christ, perhaps one’s depth of longing for (or anxiety about) that moment strongly correlates with one’s current circumstances. If you essentially possess everything you need – good health, financial and material security, loving family and friends, a faith community in which to abide, it’s frankly hard to imagine requiring anything more than that with which God has already blessed you. But many of John’s original and current hearers experience something vastly different.
In the prophet’s first audience were large numbers of disciples who suffered intensely because Jesus was their Lord and Savior and because his example was a lamp unto their feet and hands, heart and mind. These good folks well sensed their already-sad situations further deteriorating in precisely the nasty and sordid ways to which John alludes throughout the book of Revelation: The oppression of rampant lust and greed, the wickedness of widespread corruption and violence, the senseless brutality of plagues and other calamities, the outbreak of war and rumors of war.
So also today, for God’s adopted children across large swaths of this world, the faithful suffer deeply for their belief and practice in parts of west Africa, the Middle East, south and east Asia. For these beleaguered saints, the frightening dreams of John’s Revelation are not mysterious puzzles that need solution. Such utter sin and evil are their daily reality; it is out in the open and on full display – literally in front of God and everybody. Which stirs the human groans of an obvious daily prayer: “Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come!” Come sooner rather than later, to make all things new!
And maybe so also for us, here today, in the many spaces and locales of hell on earth where you and I wrestle with notions of justice, and with expectations for renewal, and with hope of righteousness. From our fearful, ever-present realities, the prayer like a global chorus repeats in endless loop: “Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come!” Come sooner rather than later, to heal the nations. Now listen to the Word that God has spoken through the New Testament prophet John –
“See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
“It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let everyone who hears say, “Come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift. …
The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen. (Revelation 22:12-17, 20-21)
Revelation, in effect, reminds God’s adopted children that their Father in heaven isn’t just constantly doing good things for everything God creates. The Lord also is somehow actively straightening-out even the most crooked of people, events, and circumstances, thus bending glory unto the Lord God, thus showering his people with justice, renewal, and righteousness. Revelation insists that God is persistently working to save everything that Father, Son, and Spirit created. And pray for the gift of humility: No one whom God adopts as a precious, beloved child is ever a completely finished product. And God longs to make each and every one of us more like Jesus.
Of course, God’s efforts to fashion us more and more like Jesus battle a fallen Creation’s determined efforts to stubbornly put themselves in direct opposition to the Lord and his work. Which is why we gather for the work of weekly worship: To glorify and praise God, to confess how far short we’ve fallen in being who and what God created us to be, to relish in the assurances of the Gospel’s Good News, and to abide in Revelation’s hope of a new and exponentially better world to come. In worship we remember that Jesus is “coming soon.”
Care, anguish, sorrow melt away, Where’er Thy healing beams arise. O Jesus, nothing may I see, Nothing desire, or seek, but Thee.
This Christ Jesus who is coming soon invites by the Holy Spirit the weak and the weary, the pale and the downtrodden, to come to him and accept God’s grace. This Christ Jesus – the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end – welcomes those dying of spiritual thirst to his side for the forever quenching of their thirst. Come, Lord Jesus! “Indeed I am coming soon!”
Anticipation of the Lord’s return intends not to scare or frighten any of God’s dearly beloved – nor should John’s Revelation prompt wild guessing about the exact day and hour of Christ’s return. No, what Jesus through John wants is for us to stay alert – well aware of who and whose we are, well awake to what God in Christ is doing, well empowered by the Spirit’s equipping to be the hands and feet of Jesus in carrying out God’s work.
Through the book of Revelation, the Holy Spirit invites God’s people to a kind of quiet attentiveness to Christ’s coming again among us – not just at the end of measured time, but also every day in the here and now. John isn’t just talking about the future; he’s also talking about the present – a time when God infuses the earth with the glimpses of the bright, watery future that God has in store for you and me. Coming soon, and hopefully very soon!
May the patient grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s holy people. Amen.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during morning worship on Sunday, February 15, 2026. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Doug Bratt, Stan Mast, and Christopher C. Rowland inform the message. It is the last installment in Pastor Grant’s series on Revelation. Find earlier installments at FirstPresWaukon.com/sermons.
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.
When you’re flying at 30,000 feet, you look out the jetliner window and catch the general contours of the earth below. The details are lost to altitude, but you still get the lay of the land – a general sense of where you are. Even if the navigational aids are small, you nonetheless sense that you’re headed in the right direction, and your confidence lies with the flight crew to get you safely where you need to go.
That’s been the essence – these recent Sundays – of our short, high-altitude trip across the New Testament book of Revelation. Our panoramic, window-seat view of the Bible’s last book is majestic with deafening praise lifted to God, stunning with Good News about the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, awe-inspiring with the assurance of evil’s final defeat. Here’s where we’ve been, and peek at where we’re headed –
For these last few Sundays of our high-flying adventure across Revelation, let’s slow down a bit and circle over John’s final chapters about the marriage of heaven and earth. “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.” (Revelation 1:3) I’m reading to you the opening verses of chapter 21 –
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children.
“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:1-8)
Most of my life has been spent living near mighty rivers and great lakes. So impressive bodies of water are somehow woven into the fabric of my being. And Lake Superior – to my eyes, anyway – is the most splendid of them all.
Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and the third-largest freshwater lake by volume. It is better described as a freshwater “sea” – an entity unto itself, a force to be reckoned-with. Capable of producing its own weather! Superior is the glory of God writ large: In gentle waves lapping warm summer sand, in freezing torrents splashed against ancient red rock. How great is our God!
Thus I have a hard time wrapping my soul and spirit around the prophet John’s claim that, in this new marriage of heaven and earth, the sea is no more. It doesn’t jibe well with an adjacent claim: “Behold I am making everything new.” Think about it! The sea is part of the Creation’s “everything,” and the sea was one of the wonders of Creation in which the Creator God took such delight – in both making the sea and then also filling its water to the brim with creature and fish to exceed imagination.
So, as another suggests, if the divinely arranged marriage of heaven and earth does not include every God-created thing ever made, then we’re conceding defeat to the devil – whose goal all along has been the ruination of God’s handiwork. The redeeming and re-creating of every created splendor proves beyond a reasonable doubt that in the end God wins and evil loses. That just seems right.
So, why does John dream of “no more sea”? Probably because “sea” is bible-speak for “chaos,” for the dumpster-fire of creation run amok after its fall into sin. In Scripture “sea” refers less to geography and more to anarchy, bedlam, and disorder: forces that wield the power to end life, not create and sustain it.
Largely landlocked nations like ancient Israel feared the ocean. Its horizon looked like the end of the world, the fatal place where you could fall off the face of the earth forever. The chaotic oblivion of the sea was to be avoided at all cost. But as God’s created splendor, oceans – the vast majority of the earth’s surface – surely the sea must be preserved and renewed, too!
Indeed, in the New Marriage of Heaven and Earth, the seas in all their splendor will remain, but all chaos and offense will be flushed away. That’s exactly what we proclaim with an ancient creed: “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” That just seems right, too.
No one likes judgment, of course, and it’s tempting to turn away from John’s foul-smelling talk of hot-sulfur lakes consuming a rogue’s gallery of ne’re-do-wells. And yet, for a lot of people in history and who live on this planet right now – but maybe not necessarily you and me, a longing for justice stirs in their long-crestfallen hearts. It simmers alongside a craving to know that God won’t merely wink at or casually wave off evil and the chaos it generates. For these saints, such confidence in God’s meting out of final judgment is part and parcel of their hope for a renewed and flat-out better world – preferably sooner rather than later.
It is simply not enough for God to wipe away the pollution of Creation like a window-washer squeegees away unsightly streaks. No, those who murder the innocent, those who exploit and terrorize the vulnerable, those who lead people astray in evil schemes calculated to bring suffering — these vile and noxious beings must be confronted, held accountable, and rightly punished. God in the crucifixion of Jesus cannot be a God of justice and true righteousness if all the wrongs of human history are not one day thoroughly and completely righted.
Let’s not pretend that the prospect of God going toe to toe with the unrighteous and the unjust cannot be of a piece of Revelation’s vision of God making all things new. One without the other would be incomplete. And whatever else the New Creation will be, it most certainly will not be unfinished. That, too, just seems right.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, February 1, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. It is part of his current series on the book of Revelation. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Anthony Hoekema, Scott Hoezee, and Fleming Rutledge inform the message.
Perhaps it’s a human symptom of troubled times: Hearts and minds more and more wrapped in thoughts and feelings of nostalgia – sentimental and often-romanticized yearning for the past. When you’re nostalgic, the fond pleasure of precious memory mixes with twinges of sadness for times, places, or people that cannot be recovered.
When the term was coined in the 17th century, “nostalgia” diagnosed a medical condition – “homesickness.” But it’s now understood as a complex emotion that fosters identity, belonging, and meaning. Nostalgia is a double-edged sword that offers emotional benefits like reduced stress and improved mood, but also can it be a burden when longing for the “simpler times” and good ol’ days prevents engagement with the present and stymies assurance of hope for the future.
Nostalgia’s ability to cut to the quick and slice open festering wounds of the past is why the New Testament prophet John wants little do with gazing in the rear-view mirror of past life. In his lead-up to this morning’s Scripture lesson from the book of Revelation, John’s only passion for the past is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And John is singularly focused on the Lord’s cosmically bright future.
John sees the communion of the saints, the one holy catholic and universal church that is never alone, never without powerful forces guarding it.
John sees the prayers of the saints as precious incense filling up golden bowls, reminding him and now all of us that no prayer is ever lost, no prayer is ever forgotten, no prayer is ever anything less than the most precious commodity in the cosmos, fully worthy of the opulent bowls that hold the prayers.
And above all, John sees the Savior who is both Lion and Lamb, both the powerful Ruler of All and the humble creature who bears all over himself the marks of having been killed.
In the deep mysticism of faith, somehow the death of this One created a whole new reality that just is the one Church of Christ, the communion of the saints, the ones now known as the Kingdom of God who serve this God forever.
See and hear the vision of John, as he continues his prophesy of the coming times for all God’s people. “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)
After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:9-17)
I’ve never attended a Pentecostal service, but the pictures and videos of such over-the-top, pedal-to-the-metal worship glimpse how I imagine the scene that John describes. Freed from the “great ordeals” of earthly existence, God’s people are under the influence: tipsy with boundless joy and inebriated with endless thanksgiving. Their drink is the wine of salvation, drunk along verdant shores of God’s crystal steam. For the Lord’s drying of tears, their loud praise is deafening.
Apparently, in heaven, praising God is an entirely different kettle of fish altogether. Worship in that place of eternal rest is measured in terms of seismic quakes and volcanic eruptions. And under no conceivable circumstance can such worship be anything other than what it is!
As the psalmist declared earlier in our service, the whole of Creation is in on the act of worship: Sun and moon, sea and sky, fire and snow, Holstein cows and white-throated sparrows, old men in walkers and children who still haven’t taken their first step.
Their praise is not chiefly a matter of saying anything, because most of Creation doesn’t deal in words. Instead, the snow whirls, the fire roars, the milkers bellow, the old woman watches the moon rise. Their praise is not something that at their most flattering they say but something that at their truest they are.
“We learn to praise God not by paying compliments but by paying attention,” suggests another. “Watch how the trees exult when the wind is in them. Mark the utter stillness of the great blue heron in the swamp. Listen to the sound of the rain. Listen how to say ‘Hallelujah’ from the ones who say it right.”
Worshiping with such zeal might feel impossibly hard – and maybe even ridiculously embarrassing. But that’s what the Holy Spirit will enable, when God wipes away every pain of your past – even unto wiping away completely your troubled memory of such ordeals, and you’re finally, once and for all freed from the temptation of nostalgia’s aching shadows.
For now, though, we struggle with the bane and blessing of wistful remembering. Which sometimes makes it emotionally challenging to gather on Sunday mornings. Because the wildly powerful forces of worship confront us with the emotional memories with which we do not want to deal. But please remember this: You often must weep before you can rejoice. For Jesus to wipe away tears, you first have to cry.
For now, though, here in this place, worship should hold safe and sacred space to do both: to cry and to rejoice. You’ll remember that – won’t you? – when you’ll soon come to the Lord’s Table. The invitation is for you to gather around the Table with teary eyes, lumpy throats, shattered dreams, and achy-breaky hearts. Yet the feast really is joyful when you remember – won’t you? – that Christ has died! And that Christ is risen! And that Christ will come again!
Most assuredly in Christ Jesus – then, now, and to come, you must taste the bitterness of tears before you can savor the sweetness of resurrection. Now is the time: Come and let wounds be healed, come and let your souls be fed. In Jesus’s name. Amen!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, January 25, 2026, which included celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The message is part of Pastor Grant’s current series on the New Testament book of Revelation. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Frederick Buechner and Scott Hoezee inform the message.
If you are-now or ever-were a little kid, do you ever get so excited about telling a story that your words tumble from your mouth like an endless string of run-on sentences? And every one of them begins with “and”?!
“And I was walking home from school, and I saw this big fire truck, and its sirens were loud, and it was going really fast, and there were firemen standing on the back, and … .” Your still-small voice suddenly caffeinates as you feverishly describe this mysterious, and exciting, and breathtaking moment.
That full-throated voice of enthusiasm this morning belongs to the New Testament prophet John. This short video clip sets up the context of our boisterous Scripture lesson from the last chapter of the Bible, the book of Revelation.
Learn more about the book of Revelation by watching the full video at BibleProject.org.
Hear, now, the Word of the Lord through the words of the prophet John – possibly the apostle whom Jesus called “beloved” – as he continues to reveal the work that God is doing in the world that surrounds seven congregations of the early Church. And so-also the world that frames the Church today! John begins with expressions of grief over the inability of God’s people to figure out just how in blue blazes will the Lord save his fearful and fallen Creation.
But the teary-eyed scene ends with rousing celebration of God’s Good News! So, indeed: from The Message translation of the Bible, “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).
I saw a scroll in the right hand of the One Seated on the Throne. It was written on both sides, fastened with seven seals. I also saw a powerful Angel, calling out in a voice like thunder, “Is there anyone who can open the scroll who can break its seals?”
There was no one – no one in Heaven, no one on earth, no one from the underworld —able to break open the scroll and read it.
I wept and wept and wept that no one was found able to open the scroll, able to read it. One of the Elders said, “Don’t weep. Look—the Lion from Tribe Judah, the Root of David’s Tree, has conquered. He can open the scroll, can rip through the seven seals.”
So I looked, and there, surrounded by Throne, Animals, and Elders, was a Lamb, slaughtered but standing tall. Seven horns he had, and seven eyes, the Seven Spirits of God sent into all the earth. He came to the One Seated on the Throne and took the scroll from his right hand. The moment he took the scroll, the Four Animals and Twenty-four Elders fell down and worshiped the Lamb. Each had a harp and each had a bowl, a gold bowl filled with incense, the prayers of God’s holy people. And they sang a new song:
Worthy! Take the scroll, open its seals. Slain! Paying in blood, you bought men and women, Bought them back from all over the earth, Bought them back for God. Then you made them a Kingdom, Priests for our God, Priest-kings to rule over the earth.
I looked again. I heard a company of Angels around the Throne, the Animals, and the Elders—ten thousand times ten thousand their number, thousand after thousand after thousand in full song:
The slain Lamb is worthy! Take the power, the wealth, the wisdom, the strength! Take the honor, the glory, the blessing!
Then I heard every creature in Heaven and earth, in underworld and sea, join in, all voices in all places, singing:
To the One on the Throne! To the Lamb! The blessing, the honor, the glory, the strength, For age after age after age.
How appropriate that the first notes of Revelation 5 let loose with sobs – which soon give way to songs of loudest praise! For doesn’t that scene precisely embody the wide-ranging swath of emotions along which you and I exist – how God’s adopted sons and daughters most generally have always lived, moved, and had our being. Sobbing-turned-singing follows the many tight curvatures through which the Lord apparently wants to move his beloved people.
Then the speech of a patriarch signals that there’s no lasting reason for such intense grief: There most-definitely exists One who can unseal the scroll that embraces God’s plan to wipe away every tear. That One is “a Lamb – looking as if it had been slain” (5:6). He is the One only able to unlock the cryptic parchment of plans for everything that God has created by the movement of the Spirit over the climate of chaos.
The One who came and pitched his tent among us; the One who befriended the outcast; the One who died on a cross, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven – Jesus Christ is the One who’s able to unfurl Heaven’s plan of confession, repentance, and resurrection. The Child of Bethlehem turned carpenter of Nazareth is the One who binds up our wounds, repairs our brokenness, and sets us free to live in the freedom of the City of God!
We are called! In Christ and by the Holy Spirit, lives are being changed!
That’s why I earlier in the service invited you to spend some time “treasuring and pondering” the announcements in this morning’s bulletin. Their humble words are testimony to grace-filled unsealing of the scroll here in this place – sure and certain witness to the life-saving plans of God unfolding right before our very eyes. Through generosity that’s energetic, intelligent, and enthusiastic, offerings of time, talent, and treasure are changing lives for the better.
And all that’s left for us to do is sing with the robust gusto of a German Oktoberfest and celebrate with solemn abandon – as if we’re watching a different kind of light beaming from that glittering ball that slowly drops over Times Square. Rejoice and be glad, yours is the Kingdom of God: Jesus Christ is the One who signals the dawning of an entirely different kind of new year.
Our joyful noise might start off like no more than a murmur. But soon others similarly incarcerated by sin and brokenness will join our ranks, in praising the One Lamb who was slain to redeem every square inch of Creation. Such singing is breathtaking testimony to the power of the Spirit to elicit praise from every corner of God’s world – particularly from within all sorts of prison walls that create challenging circumstances in which to sing of God’s amazing grace, as with the men of the Calvin Prison Initiative Choir.
As John proclaims at the start of his letter, “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.”
So it is to be. Amen!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during morning worship on Sunday, January 18, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. It is part of his current sermon series on the New Testament book of Revelation. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Doug Bratt, Scott Hoezee, Stan Mast, and Eugene Peterson inform the message.
If you asked me to rank my favorite Church holidays, last week’s Feast of Epiphany would be toward the top of my list.
Part of my love for Epiphany is its excuse to keep the holiday lights burning just a little longer. The VanderVelden household has never been too quick to take down the Christmas tree and unplug the yard lights. Epiphany is, after all, a festival of light. And what better beacon to guide us toward Easter springtime than the Light of Christ. Amen!
Part of my advocacy for Epiphany surely stems from its association with the gift-bearing Wise Men. That great vision-quest of Matthew’s Gospel – heavy-laden with gold, frankincense, and myrrh, cast with Herod as the heavy-handed villain – has been a favorite since I was a little. Amen! to the nurturing gift of childhood faith-formation!
Part of my attraction to Epiphany is the capstone it lays upon the Christmas season. From December 25th to January 5th, the Church celebrates 12 days of Christmas. Then on Jan. 6 falls Epiphany, the making available of sacred space for “treasuring and pondering in your heart” all these things of Bethlehem. So it is to be. Amen.
In light of Epiphany, my heart is treasuring and pondering a lyric from a contemporary holiday favorite, which declares that the birth of Jesus “draws the line between the days of hope and the days certainty.” That biblical truth is nowhere-better affirmed than in the New Testament’s book of Revelation. We’ll be spending the next month-or- so of Sundays in the pages of Revelation, and here’s some helpful understanding for our journey.
“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) I am reading to you from the book of Revelation. Let the time be now – by the power of the Holy Spirit.
John to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, [the Beginning and the End] who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty. (Revelation 1:4-8)
Let’s not hear John’s talk of “apocalypse” as permission to think in terms of unthinkable catastrophe or dreaded terror.
This word “apocalypse” that kicks off the book of Revelation with such scary-sounding terms actually means an “unveiling” or a “revealing.” My friends, John explains in the form of a letter, what follows is an unveiling and revealing of Jesus Christ. It is revelation in the sense of realization, the seeing and understanding of who Jesus really is, and what that means, not just for the future but for right now, too. Whatever the shroud covering God’s Son, Jesus, the book of Revelation lifts the veil to reveal a clear and precise portrait of the Christ.
John stands tall upon a faith so strong that, in Christ, he foresees a day when knowing Jesus will not hinge on having the eyes of your heart opened by grace – will not only depend on letting your heart prepare him room. John anticipates with every confidence the coming day when knowing Jesus will be as easy as just opening your eyes. Period! End of discussion!! John claims a day when faith will become obsolete, because everyone – even those who signed Jesus’s death decree and hammered nails into his hands and feet, even they will see Jesus coming on clouds of glory.
If our Christian faith is true, then at some point the same faith will be clearly true for everyone. If our claim that “Jesus is Lord” is anything other than a pious wish or a self-righteous fantasy, then it represents reality. And that reality will, ultimately, be undeniable to everyone – even to the loudest of skeptics and the most vehement of doubters. Amen!
Some say that only the past is inevitable and that the future is wide open – your future is that what you make of it. Or the future is unknowable – because it is not yet present. Well, maybe. But in the book of Revelation, John loudly cries foul and quickly tosses the red flag of hearty disagreement.
OK, so yes: Maybe we must account for a certain amount of dumb luck and random chance to influence future events. And perhaps we can faithfully hedge that claim by saying that it is the Creator himself who designs the universe to include some degree of fate and coincidence, which then allows God to intervene and work together unto good in re-establishing the justice of divine will.
Even so, we cannot and must not – if we are to claim ourselves Christians of Spirit-inspired integrity – believe that the future is unknown to the Lord God Almighty, that future is filled with anything but the fullness of God’s goodness, grace, and peace. Among those many other things, heaven most-assuredly knows that, sometime in the future, Christ is coming again. The One who was – the One who is – is so also without question the One who will return. Amen!
Right now, of course, we live by faith, not by sight. Right now, however much the Spirit convicts our joyous hearts to the Gospel’s truth and the present reality of Jesus, we cannot prove such things according to the rigorous standards of logic. We cannot empirically demonstrate any part of our faith in ways that would satisfy the methodology of science.
Again, however, if what we believe in our hearts is right, then the day will come when the reality of Jesus will surpass the human desire for precise data and hard evidence. The day surely will come when we no more need to prove the truth of Christ in our midst than today we must verify the earth under our feet and the sky above our heads. Everyone will just see it!
So it is to be. Amen.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, January 11, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. It is the first installment of a short series on the New Testament book of Revelation that will continue until the start of Lent in mid-February. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Scott Hoezee and Christopher C. Rowland inform the message.
To celebrate my 40th birthday, Julie and I did what we always do to mark such occasions: enjoying a nice meal at a cozy supper club. With our little Mary (at the time our only child) left behind in the good care of a trusted babysitter, “me and the missus” were jazzed to be footloose and fancy free – if only for a few hours.
Our dining destination was my favorite German restaurant, about an hour’s drive from our then-home in southern Wisconsin. When our date-night began, the late-summer sun was still high in the sky, but it had dipped below the horizon when we finished our wiener schnitzel, sauerbraten, and strudel and we headed back down the highway for home. The 60-minute drivetime ensured full-on nighttime by the time we’d be pulling into the driveway.
As it turned out, the setting sun wasn’t the only thing whose energy was fading away that Saturday night. Excited as I was to be going out with my honey, as nourishing to body, soul, and spirit as was our meal together, I began to lose my party mojo as our hometown lights drew closer. It was getting late; I’d endured an exhausting week, and I was ready for bed.
But, while my get up and go had gotten up and went, for my lovely wife the evening was still young. Seemingly fresh as a daisy, Julie was no worse for the wear and raring to go, nowhere near ready to call it a night. We were a veritable study in vitality contrasts.
By the time we crossed the city limits, the gauge needle of Julie’s energy and excitement had hit the red zone – while weary ol’ me, freshly aged into my 40s, was running on fumes. But then, somewhere along those final miles of city streets, my second wind began to blow in. I began perking up when the light bulb of mental connection finally came on. A-ha! Something’s up, and Julie knows it. Big plans are afoot, and Julie’s in on the secret. That’s why she can hardly contain her late-night enthusiasm.
Indeed, what lay ahead for me in our living room was a surprise birthday party that Julie had arranged with a dozen or so friends and colleagues. No wonder she still overflowed with party-hardy energy when I was too pooped to proceed. When you full-well know that great, beautiful, and wonderful things are most-definitely going to happen, your heart bubbles and sparkles like the finest of merrymaking champagnes. Because you’re in on the secret.
That same eager sense of cork-popping glee over good things that assuredly lie ahead shimmers between the lines of this morning’s first Scripture lesson. In the infant Jesus held close in his mother’s arms, tired eyes that have seen a lot at long last lock focus on the very presence of heaven’s promise. The aging Simeon, whose hope is built on nothing less than the full assurances of God, gazes down upon divine grace fulfilled in swaddled human flesh: the Savior who is Christ Jesus the Lord.
Simeon knows that something’s up, that plans are afoot. He’s in on the secret; the party isn’t over; the celebration is just beginning. And Simeon bursts with joy! Let a weary world rejoice as you listen to the Word that God has spoken in the Gospel of Luke –
When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, Mary and Joseph brought the baby Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”
Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”
And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (Luke 2:21-35)
Simeon’s heart bursts at the seams with unbounding gladness.
Because he knows that something’s up. Because he knows that grand plans are afoot!
Simeon’s in on the secret, because he trusts in God’s promises of a Savior. And Simeon’s now making room in his heart for Jesus – the long-awaited Messiah. A-ha! Simeon connects the dots! Jesus is the guest of honor at God’s surprise party, and Simeon’s rejoicing cannot and will not be contained!
Simeon experiences epiphany: thanks be to God, a sudden moment of jaw-dropping revelation or gob-smacking insight such that his world will never be the same! And the full blessing of Simeon’s sudden discovery is not only answer to the question of where he’ll go if he died tomorrow but also image of what Simeon will experience when he walks past St. Peter through the pearly gates.
Like those who walked that way before him – like all those who’ll walk that way behind him, Simeon will become a work of art. Angels will gasp at God’s handiwork complete. At last you will have a heart like Jesus. You will love with perfect love, worship with radiant face, hear every word that God speaks. Your heart will be pure like crystal; your words like sparkling jewels; your thoughts like precious treasure. Just like Jesus, you’ll carry a heart that’s guiltless, fearless, thrilled, and joyous. Songs of loudest praise never ceasing, you’ll be just like Jesus.
“I have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people,” Simeon bellows to God with full throat. “The sleepy child you’re holding, Mary, is a light to reveal God to the nations. He is the glory of God’s people!” And in short order, others too – when first gazing upon the Christ Child – will echo Simeon’s eager response to such life-affirming good news.
When a bright, shining star signals that something is up, that big heavenly plans are afoot, astrologers from faraway lands follow the sky beams and encounter the salvation of God in the boy Jesus. After offering their gifts, they then turn for home. But a-ha! A second wind! The Wise Men follow a different way! Listen to the Voice who is close at hand in the Gospel of Matthew –
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”
When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. (Matthew 2:1-12)
The Wise Men follow “another road,” head for home following “another way.”
In biblical times, to be a disciple of Jesus is also known as being a follower of “The Way” – capital T, capital W, as in following The Way of Jesus. It is the path along which your heart starts beating in perfect rhythm with the Lord’s. A heart so pure, a character so flawless, that your keen spiritual hearing never misses even a divine whisper. Jesus’s mercy so abundantly primes your heart that you never forego the opportunity to forgive another. A lie never passes your lips; shiny baubles never distract your vision. You endure when others resign.
With each and every step along The Way of Jesus, your heart more and more becomes like his. That Spirit-driven cardio workout is daily exercise until, one day, you are dismissed from this broken and fearful world in peace, and The Way of Jesus culminates in the paradise of eternity, where angels will gasp in amazement at the full completion of God’s handiwork upon your heart.
As I suggested when I began this series, Jesus loves you just as you are, but he refuses to leave you that way. So as the 12 days of Christmas near their end and as the Feast of Epiphany dawns in the eastern sky, our prayer for the new year remains steadfast: Let every heart prepare him room!
Glory to God in the highest! And on earth peace, goodwill toward all!
For my eyes have seen your salvation!
Amen, and amen!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Epiphany Sunday, January 4, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Commentary and reflection by Max Lucado informs the message, which is part of Pastor Grant’s series for Advent and Christmas, “Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room.” Earlier messages in the series are available at FirstPresWaukon.com/sermons/.
