Sundays Come and Sundays Go
We all know there's one every week. Sundays come and Sundays go. Year in and year out, for 2000 years, we have had a Lord's Day every week. Or at least those of us who celebrate Christianity recognize it as the Lord's Day. But let's me real. It is not THE Lord's Day. That one is waiting to happen. Here's how John saw at least a glimpse of it in a vision.

Rev. 7:9-12 After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:

"Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb."

All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying:

"Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!"

Quite an image. Every time I have read or heard it I have been overwhelmed by what it has to say. Innumerable, uncountable, seemingly infinite collection of those who believe. But even more remarkable and mind-boggling is the world into which this vision came. It was a world of oppression and death and fear and uncertainty. It was a world dominated by Rome and the hated dictatorship of the Caesar. Not a world that we in the United States can even begin to imagine.

But we are perhaps in the minority among Christians. In his remarkable book, The New Faces of Christianity Philip Jenkins describes a much different world. It is the world of the 3rd and 4th worlds, many countries of which are located in the global south. There they know famine and starvation and drought without much assistance. They know cruel dictatorships and persecution. As a result they often are given visions and gifts of discernment that we have sublimated beneath our "proper" ways of living in our world. They read the Bible with eyes that I cannot even conceive. They are living the world of Revelation.

When they turn to John's words they see life for themselves. They see hope for their children. They see the promise fulfilled that no matter what happens around them, God is still on His throne and all is well and all will be well. That multitude is not a distant vision it is God's reality today.

In big theological words it is called "realized eschatology." That's just a fancy way of saying, in essence, that the Kingdom of God is not something we have to wait for. It is here. Today. It may not be in its fullest. Sin and fear and death and violence still appear to control the world. But reality is far more than it seems. Two thousand years of Sundays are not just history, they are the celebration that each day is the Lord's Day and the Kingdom is alive and well.