I’ve been entranced by the movie world lately. Just kitty corner from my house, across the intersection, a movie has just finished being made. Or is shot the right term? I should ask Dan. Now Dan here, being from LA, would find this quite ordinary, La De Da, as our Bishop would say, but I was spellbound, mesmerized. Huge lights outside my house, electrical cords everywhere, Van after van after van of equipment. Very pleasant young people everywhere, and they really do say: quiet on the set, sound, take 2.

It looks so real on the screen. In this movie, which is called Sin Bin, they use a police car. It was white, with blue stripes and red stars. It said “POLICE.” That’s all. Tom said to me, look they even have a Chicago police car they’re using. I said look closer, it doesn’t say that. Tom insisted it was a Chicago police car. I said, look closer. No “Chicago”, No “to serve and protect.” But a great effect it gives. It makes the mind go places, imagine things. I can’t wait to see it in the finished film.

Making the mind go places, imagine things, conceive new ways of thinking, envision new ways of being. The movies do this for us. I think of the recently released Avatar: With or without 3- D glasses, it made me gasp and set my stomach aflutter as the graceful creatures soared through the jungle, ran across tree tops and flew on dragon like creatures. My mind was changed.

Theatre can do this too. When my boys were in early high school and jr high we took them to London. We went to the theatre almost every night. The expected highlight was an evening of The Lion King. Tickets were expensive, hard to get, very sought after. At that time it was playing only in New York and London. I thought this would be a life time experience for the boys. I was captivated and awestruck. The combination of the music sets and costumes overwhelmed my senses. To this day, I have never seen anything so striking visually. Matt and Wes, well they were bored. To tears. Really bored. It took me awhile to understand their whole world was visual. Game boy, movies on tv, computers. So you won’t believe what their favorite plays were: Matt saw Shakespeare’s Othello with Tom, and Wes saw Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap with me. Those were their favorite plays. (Other than the show The Complete Works of Shakespeare in 90 minutes. But that’s another sermon.) Othello and Mousetrap were the plays that opened their minds, made them see things differently, engaged their imagination. Go figure.

Does it seem like I am avoiding the scripture of the week? Boy you’ve got it there. I am. If there is a place in the Bible where I am going to get tripped up, it’s the last book of the Bible, Revelation. Oh, what I have done over the years to avoid it. Revelation, Oh, That book. It comes with just too much baggage. Let’s be clear – more than any other book of the Bible it is necessary to understand the context it was written in, and the symbolism it holds. It is a book of prophecy. Not the see the future kind, but the prophet who spoke with insight about the world he lived in. That world and how it related to God and God’s law and people. It is a book, a letter actually, that is apocalyptic in style and message. The message is that Rome has set itself up to compete with God. Rome is the beast that seeks universal dominion – the dominion of chaos. There are symbols abound: beasts, angels, numbers, lots and lots of symbolic numbers.
I am a student of the Bible, and metaphor and symbolism are a part of my everyday spiritual life. But layer it all on in Revelation, and I run away. It is pretty intimidating.
I think it is especially intimidating because it is often co-opted by those who read and live the Bible literally. The book series Left Behind is a good example. It is great junk reading, everybody has to have some, just like junk tv, maybe the food channel or MTV. It is great reading on an airplane trip, but TERRIBLE theology. So, in my typical conflict avoidance style, I have practiced big time avoidance.

Until the movie set came to my neighborhood. The lights, camera, action enabled me to step out of my box and just read Revelation for the beautiful poetry that it is. Yes, yes there are layers of symbolism and contextual understanding to be peeled back. It is a book in code, metaphor about the occupying Roman Empire. It needs to be read in context .But you don’t have to do that to hear and see in your mind’s eye the incredible images it launches toward our imaginations. It was the movie screen, the theatre of two thousand years ago.

The book of Revelation was the Star Wars of the beginning of the first millennium. Who here will date themselves, and admit to sitting in a theatre for the first Star Wars movie? Remember how your eyes got big and you took a deep breath and were taken away? The Revelation to John did this for the people of its time, and it will do it for us if we let it. Take a deep breath, and suspend yourself a bit and Listen,
”In the spirit the 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…”
This is a vision, an understanding of a place and time when there is no need of a temple - for God is with us and in us, and God’s light shines everywhere. When I breathe it in, I get it. It is not an intellectual understanding, but one of the heart.

We are not tied to the words themselves, but free in our hearts to re-image beyond them, to listen for God’s voice in the beauty of the language. In the Gospel of John today as well as the Revelation to John, we hear God’s whisper everywhere we turn,
I am with you, I am everywhere. I will not leave you, I am the Light.