“The One Coming Into the World”

The One Coming Into the World, or, Schrodinger’s Christ

(Psalm 97; Rev 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; Jn 17:20-26)

Easter 7, Sun, June 1, 2025, FBC Amherst, JG White

Maranatha! Our Lord, come. 

Jesus is returning. This is a big theme in the Book of Revelation, and other Bible texts. It is a major doctrine of the Church, part of how we understand God and the plan for this world. 

We get to the end of Revelation today, with some scattered verses from the final chapter. Once again, ‘Revelation, the good parts.’ We skip the verses here that judge the sorcerers and the immoral and murderers. The phrases that warn about changing the words of this book, the Revelation of John. Anytime we read Bible, the verses we use and the ones we do not read - all is part of the interpretation. It is a tried and true method, used by Jesus and Peter and Paul. (That’s a sermon for another day.)

For now, we have these final thoughts, summing up some things. Especially about the return of Jesus, which has meant so much, through the ages. More important at some times to Christians than at others.

In these Easter weeks of Revelation readings, I have relied some on Michael Gorman’s book, Reading Revelation Responsibly. Gorman suggests, in his introduction, that Revelation presents us with a Jesus who is especially 4 things: 1, the Faithful Witness who remained true to God His Father; 2, the Present One who walks among His congregations; 3, the Lamb who was slaughtered and now reigns; and 4, the Coming One who will complete the mission and plan for the world. 

So Christ is both here and not here, in some ways. Jesus is the One who is present, and yet is the One who is coming back. We treat Christ these ways all the time. Sing about Him both ways. Teach both. Maybe this is simply because we experience both. Both the presence and the absence of God.

I did talk last Sunday about a clear, spiritual experience I had last month, at an event. But these ‘mountaintops’ are not where most of us live. Most of the time, most days of my year, I feel the quiet absence of God. You might be the same. Not that I think God is not there, or is quite far away, or might not even be real. Just that God, Jesus, the Spirit as a personal, spiritual being is not sensed by me strongly. 

What are the traditional teachings about Jesus we have given to children in the past? Maybe we learned them when young. Jesus lives where? In us, in our hearts. Are we alone when we are alone? No, Jesus is always with us, invisible but with us. Does Jesus care? Yes, Jesus loves me when I’m good, when I do the things I should. Jesus loves me when I’m bad, though it makes me very sad. 

(We need to stop saying this this way to children, I think.) At best, we are trying to share the fact that we experience the Goodness and Power of the Universe in such personal ways. 

Jesus is the One who is present. We are hearing this all through the Book of Revelation. Remember the seven letters to seven Churches, who have the presence of God symbolized as a lamp, shining in their midst. Here at the end we hear Christ say: 

"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 grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen. Goodness from Jesus is with Christians now, before ‘the End.’

Yet also, Jesus is the One who is coming into the world again, returning. He left, and is not back… yet. In these verses we hear Him saying, "Surely I am coming soon." And others in the vision respond. The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." (The whole Church is the Bride of Christ, remember.) And let everyone who hears say, "Come." The book ends with the Aramaic phrase, Maranatha Iasu! Come, Lord Jesus!

So we have this sense, in Christianity, that Jesus is with us, on our side, watching over us, helping us, leading us, saving us, here. We also have lots of times we need Christ more! And we wait for so much more of the real, personal God to show up and do something, something we just can’t do for ourselves. Where are You? How long? The faithful have been exclaiming this for thousands of years. 

Jesus is with us, we Christians say, and we await the second coming. Let me illustrate with a side trip that may seem a total diversion. Quantum physics. The story of Schrodinger’s Cat.

Physics is a science that works to explain the tiniest of things. Things like atoms, with their protons and electrons, and so forth. Quantum physics is at least a century old now, and one of its ideas is that to explain how a tiny thing like an electron works you need two things. We explain it like it is a little particle, and we understand it as a wave. Also, it behaves sometimes like it goes two different places at once. And, by looking at some tiny thing, this changes how it looks, or how it behaves, or where it is.

Complicated, I know. So this great scientist, named Schrodinger, ninety years ago, said it is like this. Suppose you have a cat. You put the cat in a box with a mechanism that has a 50% chance, after a while, of being fatal to the cat. Just before you open up the box to see if the cat survived, is it alive or dead? You’d think it is one or the other. But in quantum physics stuff, it’s like the cat has a probability of being 50% alive and 50% not alive. Only when you open the box and look is the cat one or the other. 

Doesn't make sense, does it? But that’s how the physics of the tiny parts of atoms and light seem to work. Not until you check is an electron this or that, here or there.

Like this - here’s my physics parable of Jesus - we have Schrodinger’s Christ. Is Christ with us, close at hand, our Master and Saviour? Or is Christ away and coming back some day, somehow? Maybe he is 50% both of these. And when we check on Jesus, then we find Him right inside us and among us, or sometimes on His way and we long for His return. 

We are about to see ourselves at the Lord’s Table. Here again we have both the presence and the absence of Jesus the Christ. We quote scripture when we say that we share this bread and fruit of the vine until He come. And yet this is our ancient, traditional ceremony in which the fellowship experiences the presence of Christ in this moment, with this bread and wine. 

Perhaps we actually see Jesus as the One coming into the world in three tenses: as the One who is present with us, as the One who is in the process of coming into our lives more, and as the One who is yet to arrive. So we align ourselves with the plans and the values of Jesus - all the things He trains us to be and to do. 

O come, O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.

You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart.