These weeks of Easter, Christians around the world listen to the beautiful description of the last day, the new Jerusalem descending from heaven, and the resurrection and reunion of God’s people. What a day that will be.

However, we often place that day far away from today. While we rightly long for that day, we also live in that day today in Jesus Christ. The end has begun with you in it. When Christ died and rose, the end and beginning began. He is the first fruits of the dead after all. So when you were baptized in Christ, you also entered into the end and the beginning. You have been judged in Christ. You were drowned and made alive. The you of the resurrection has begun to live in the spirit today.

So we live backwards. We begin at the end, the cross and resurrection. The certainty of the future ripples backwards into our today. We say we don’t like movie spoilers, because it kills the joyful, entertaining tension we want from our entertainment. But who wouldn’t want to know the end of their own life story?! We don’t mind having that tension lessened. Well, warning, spoilers ahead! You’ll be just fine. 

So we look back at our life from the viewpoint of the end. Suffering turns into times of faith-strengthening. Sins and failures turn into opportunities for grace. Everything looks different in light of knowing the end of the story. 

Even in terms of following God’s law, freed from the fear of Judgment Day, led by the Holy Spirit, we will strive to love God and our neighbor. As St. Paul said, we already died anyway. Go forward, make good choices, develop better habits, and be a martyr, if necessary! What’s the worst that can happen? 

God gave John and us a revelation that at first seems strange. Christians have argued for centuries whether it’s a chronological calendar for what we should expect, or just for the people of John’s day and their relationship with Rome, or a vision of the future. Well, it’s all those at once. It is the future, and it is the now. It equipped John’s congregation for their daily life as it does ours now. 

So we sing the ancient song, “Awake, O Sleeper, and rise from the dead, Christ will shine on you!” – Ephesians 5:14