I wonder what is your happiest memory? Weddings are good and significant. Today I wonder if we are living out what might be [this couple's] happiest memory? I don’t know.
In 2014 some performance artists in the UK took a survey and asked people what their happiest memory was. The plan was they would collate all of the answers and make a play around them. They got over 3000 responses. I wonder what you might have said.
After all the feedback they were able to crunch the numbers and less than 1% of people’s happiest memories were about material things, and those that were, were something like when they were a small child and they got an X-box for Christmas.
Almost always, the happy memories were about relationships, and human interactions - family and friends and lovers. They were about first dates, first kisses and lots of babies being born. And Interestingly enough the most frequent word in all the responses was the word “home”. Home is a place where we feel we belong and usually live with those who are closest to us. We feel like it is a safe place where we can rest and be ourselves with those we love.
When these artists performed their play, one of the directors said it felt like a marriage and a wake. There was a sense that “I was happy but...” now time has moved on. The happy memories have gone and given way to nostalgia and a sense of what things once were. (Show seeks the secret of happiness; The New Heavens And The New Earth)
We all long for a home, with those closest to us, and this makes perfect sense, for I think that is exactly how we were wired and made. [couples name] as you get married today you now go and make a new home with each other, leaving your old homes and starting a new one together. This is a great thing, and we all desire friendships and places of comfort.
Beginning and End
And that is the story of the Bible. You could say that the story of the Bible starts and ends with love and relationships and weddings. It starts in a perfect Garden and ends in a new city. Weddings and homes are big things to God, for they show His love for His people.
While our passage is from Revelations, the last book in the Bible, it is sometimes worth looking at the beginning to see where we have come from. Now, in our culture, there are a few different creation and ending stories. One main one is that we start from nothing and are going to nothing, and in the time we have in between we can consume and experience and enjoy what we have, but it all goes back to the heat death of the universe anyway. People like the freedom this might feel like it gives them but they ignore the meaninglessness of it all, for if you look to closely at that side of things it might drive you mad or depressed if you fully grasp it.
But the Christian worldview is different, it is one that starts and ends in love. God is love, and He started this creation in motion for love and relationships and it will all go back to Him in love. This means that we are headed somewhere in particular
As one author puts it
The answer to both questions—where we are from and where we are headed—is the same: God. Our ultimate origins are in God, and our ultimate end is in God as well. As T. S. Eliot wrote, “In my end is my beginning”:1 our final destination is the same as where we started (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B, Volume 4 Theological Perspective)
In Revelation, it doesn’t just give us the conclusion to everything, but instead ends with a word of hope and a promise of a new beginning.
I know lots of prep is involved with weddings, especially if you are a bride. I am sure [the bride] can attest to this today. On my wedding day, I slept in, had Maccas for breakfast, put on a suit, had a friend do my tie because I can’t tie my own, and then when it was time we walked to this church as I didn’t live far away. I think if my wife were to say her side of the day it would be a bit more hectic, with make-up, and hairdos, and photos and cars.
We are told that there is this City that has been prepared like a bride. I don’t think this means it was built shoddy but made with expert hands, and so it should - for a voice tells us that this City is where God is going to live with His people. Both God and people will dwell together forever in this city.
The idea that God will be with His people, is the major storyline of the Bible. The first man and woman, husband and wife, were together with God in a garden, but they disobeyed and sin and death and shame were brought into this world. The couple hid from God and each other. Their relationships were broken.
But God didn’t give up on His people, He sought a way forward, so that He could be with His people again. Throughout history, God has been saving His people, restoring and bringing them back to Him. They had tents and temples for God to dwell with His people. And then Jesus, the God-man, comes along and we are told in John’s Gospel that He took on “flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). Jesus replaced the temple and became the dwelling place of God on Earth. If you were to ask where God is at that time you could point and say, He was over there.
And Jesus’ mission was to restore our relationship with God and to each other. Jesus lived the perfect life that we could not, and He took what we deserved for all our failings and terrible attitude towards God and others. Jesus died in our place and then rose again defeating sin and death for us. He made sure that we would not be abandoned to the grave and see decay (Ps 16:9-10).
After winning our salvation, Jesus goes back to be with the Father and then the Holy Spirit comes down, and dwells in God’s people. The church then becomes the temple of God on earth. But in Revelation at the end, in the new heaven and the new earth, God comes down to dwell with His people forever, in a City, in a perfect city where there is no more death, mourning, crying or pain. It is a place of safety and rest and relationship. This was the goal God had in the beginning.
No more pain
Now the trouble today is, that there is still trouble in this world. There are still people and things that are broken. There are frustrations, and aliment, and loneliness and jealousy and worries and death, and we may feel like we are far from God for we can not see Him.
But we are not in the final act of history. His story has one more act to play out. So while weddings are great, we are realistic and we know that in any marriage there will be tears. There are misunderstandings, miscommunications, frustrations and unmet expectations. Life will come at you and things can get hard. But remember that we are still in the middle of the story.
We have a future hope, of a greater marriage. Under this new union, everything will be made new, including us. In this final wedding, there is no death do us part (line from Nancy Guthrie). There are no more hospitals or hearses, there will be no more tears. The world and us will be made new.
And we can now wait with hope, looking forward to that great moment where we will see Jesus. Like a wife waiting for her husband at the airport to arrive home after being away for a long time. With love and anticipation, hope, eagerness and excitement.
This new city will have God’s people there renewed. It will be what we dream of when we think of a good home. We will be filled with joy and have eternal pleasures by God’s side (Ps 16:11).
“heaven isn’t just home—the home we’ve longed for all our lives. It’s the relationship we’ve always longed for too.” (The New Heavens And The New Earth)This speaks deeply to what we desire, and some say this is a fantasy, pie in the sky when we die, but the good news is that it is true, and we know this from experience.
C.S. Lewis talks of how we all have these yearnings that can not be met in this world, and how no good marriage, or travel or learning can really satisfy us. Some people respond to this frustration by blaming the things themselves because they don’t satisfy them. Others may say, well that is the way of life, we will be never satisfied, deal with it. But Lewis says the Christian way is one that says,
“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exist. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. People feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex” Lewis says “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing” (Mere Christianity, chapter on Hope)God promises that there is a real place, where there will be no more tears and death and He will be there with us. God speaks of a place that we would all want to be true, that we all desire, and our desires themselves show that this is what we were made for.
Come to the water
And anyone can come to this place. The invite is there. All those who thirst for it, can drink from the water of life, and it is free. It is free not because the water is of little value, but because the price for it has already been paid for. It has been paid for by the death of the Lamb, of Jesus, and so the water is free for all who thirst for it.
This water is also mentioned in the next chapter it says:
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. (Revelation 22:17 NIV)Both the Spirit and the bride offer the free gift of life in this City, one where we can be in a relationship with each other and God. One where there is no more pain and suffering and death. We just have to come, that is all.
This water of cause is symbolic, like everything in Revelations, they point to things beyond themselves. Jesus also called Himself the water of life. He tells a Samaritan woman, that
whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14 NIV)Jesus is the source of life. He has died for His people and the sting of death taken away, so that we can be in a relationship with Him and to be home with Him forever. In this new place, we will be given a new body that will last the length of eternity. Jesus promises that there will be a pleasant place where there is no end, and our delightful inheritance is that we will not be left in the grave (Ps 16:6,9).
When God says He is making everything new, even when it looks like its tears, even when it looks like it is going to death, we can have confidence in His word, that this last act of history is coming. That God will deal with death and pain. Other secular worldviews don’t have this confidence or assurance, they do not even have an answer at all to our longings or an answer about ultimate justice. But Christians do, because Jesus rose from the grave and God has said so.
And so while we wait for this city, it may not be easy. There will be pain and suffering. There may even be death. But, we have hope and confidence in Jesus and His death. We are heading to a home and a relationship, to a marriage, forever.
So congratulations [couples name] on your wedding day. It is great that you are both together. I’m honoured to have been a part of it. And I pray that your marriage may have more joy than tears.
Now, I know wedding days can have mixed reactions. But for all of us, know that weddings are good things, God made them, and all those who trust in Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life, will take part in a greater wedding than this one - one that will last forever. One that will be about God and relationships and home. And if you are not sure if you will be there, respond to that wedding invite, it is open to all who thirst and long for it. Come to Jesus and take the free gift and drink from His water of life, today. Believe that His words are trustworthy and true.
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