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I’d like to say I’m a little bit concerned. What about? Economics, the cost of living, the cost of housing in particular. I was already concerned about it a few years ago as the cost of real estate was in a huge bubble and…bubbles burst. But the bubble has continued on biggering and biggering even now as we pull out of the pandemic. People from urban centers are discovering they can work remotely from remote-ish places like ours. They sell their million and a half or more dollar houses in the city and can pay way above asking price out here with quite a bit left over. Meanwhile, we out here can’t compete. The government says the bubble is a supply and demand issue; that there’s not enough housing and when supply is low and demand high, the price of the commodity will go up as things tend to sell to the highest bidder. Tragically, there’s no regulation on the price of real estate. Land and homes are something people can speculate on and make money.
The only filter in this sewage treatment facility called the housing market seems to be whether the banks think the buyer can afford the inflated mortgage and no one ever says anything about the ethics or even the morality of something called a market inflated price. I’m reminded of 2008 when the banks caused a lot of trouble for everybody but the very rich by letting people like you and me have high risk mortgages to buy that house that we really couldn’t afford. The economy got tight and people started losing homes in a bad way. It was brutal in the States but a little less brutal up here because thankfully the Canadian banking system is a bit more regulated, a bit.
You may also remember that when all was said and done that the U.S. government’s Securities and Exchanges Commission charged Wall Street’s biggest investment firm, Goldman Sachs, with fraud. To spell out the sickening nature of the crime committed; they speculated on people losing their homes, made money, and it was apparently legal to do that. Goldman Sachs was charged with fraud because they weren’t telling other investors that the hedge funds involved, instead being a cushion to protect against other losses, was actually set up to lose money to get the insurers to pay the investors. This sort of risky tricky business was one of the things that helped cause that nasty recession in 2008 that took years to recover from.
Honestly, I cannot understand why anybody with any moral or ethical sense would call the banking and investment business “securities and exchanges”. There is nothing secure about it and the fact that people would speculate and indeed prosper on people losing homes just makes me sick. Just because governments say they regulate this kind of stuff in no way makes it secure. In this global free market economy, it seems the only certainty is that greed will find a way and that a few will prosper at the unfortunate expense of very many others. Seriously, there are people who have made money off of this pandemic. There are people making money on the supply chain issues that are causing inflation for us right now. There are even people making money on the war in Ukraine and would dramatically benefit if it expanded. Hardship for the many always seems to be lucrative for the few. I’m really worried what’s going to happen when the current bubble bursts. I don’t feel secure.
Well, the Book of Revelation is given to us to give us the security of knowing that the love and reign of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is at work behind the scenes of this twisted world in which we live and will in the end win out. God will have his day and the culmination of it all is here beautifully summarized in the testimony of this elderly, exile named John the Beloved. He says, “I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!’” Though it may appear to us that all Hell has broken loose in human history, what God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is doing in history will culminate in every creature everywhere, indeed all of creation, worshipping; worship that was, is and always will be undergirding creation. The security that we have to lean on is that when all is said and done, whatever evil may befall us and it will, what God has in store for his creation is so unimaginably good that the universe and every creature therein will be spontaneously moved to worship.
This vision here in chapter five, believe it or not, is all about human history, indeed the history of creation, being integrally bound to Jesus Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Lamb who was slain, God the Son become human, the one who is in himself the indestructible reconciliation of God and humanity, the one whose very existence as the union of God and humanity, says we are forgiven all things and all will be healed. Jesus crucified and risen is the only one worthy to open the scroll which contains the will of God for his creation.
So, what is the reality behind what is going on in this, our world, in which every person and every event is both good and evil? Well, Jesus has conquered. The cross was a victory. It was a victory over sin and death that in the end reconciles us to God and cures our alienation from God. The cross was a victory, a victory proved by Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus has defeated sin and death and evil and is now calling forth a people who are to live as those freed from slavery to sin and death and who then proclaim and live out the Good News of Creation’s salvation in Christ Jesus. This way of life is unconditional love, extravagant generosity, and unrestricted hospitality and it speaks loudly against the evil that’s in this world and threatens its hold on things. But it comes with a cost. Many faithful followers of Jesus have, do, and will die for him, lose jobs and friends, and lose spouses, and be ostracized from family on account of him.
Jesus has bought, ransomed, redeemed people from slavery to sin and death to be the people of God and he did it, as John says, at the price of his own blood. That’s not some sort of revivalist conversion gimmick to get us all to feel guilty because somebody died for us. To the Hebrew, blood is the life of a person or animal. The sin/atonement sacrifices in Old Testament times involved blood(life) passing through death by the death of a sacrificial slaughter to be sprinkled on the Ark of the Covenant where God was believed to be seated in heaven and then also on the one bringing the sacrifice. This union in blood (life) between a person and God kept the Israelites rightly related to God. So and thus, Jesus’ life passed through his own death and is now sprinkled on us as the Holy Spirit who unites and thus rightly relates us to God. This union in the life/blood of Jesus is God’s means of defeating sin and death that we might now live knowing God personally, something which John in his Gospel called eternal life (Jn. 17:3). God uniting himself to his sin diseased creation can have no other end than Creations healing. Death will thus end in Resurrection.
Moving on, Jesus bought us so that we might be the people through whom God’s work of reconciling all people to himself takes place. As God’s people, we are a kingdom and priests. We are an organized realm spread all over this earth where God’s reign becomes evident in communities of faith readily practicing unconditional love, indiscriminate hospitality, and extravagant generosity. And yes, the church has failed miserably at this. Unfortunately, the church is still a fallen, human organization where good and evil happen. But even still, within this institution called the church are the people of God through whom the reign of God breaks forth.
Last week, I said Jesus has paid the price and made us to be priests who lead Creation’s worship of its Maker. We have immediate access to God. We proclaim forgiveness. We pray. We worship. We are those who give voice to the worship of God that undergirds all of creation. When all hell is breaking forth on earth, we are those who hear and see and sense the worship that is going on in and behind everything, the worship that transcends time and place. This worship confronts and subverts the powers that be.
You know, and here I will wrap up, what’s behind the free-market economy and driving it exists in the hidden, speculative realm of conspiracy theorists because it has to remain hidden to do the evil that it does. In this Revelation of Jesus Christ in the Book of Revelation God is freely making known what he is doing to save his creation and us with it. It may sound lame or far-fetched to say that reality is that God the Father loves his creation and us so much that God the Son became human and was crucified to defeat the powers of sin, death, and evil; and by this God has purchased people from all peoples by giving us the gift of God the Holy Spirit that we may be God’s kingdom and priests; and though Hell may break lose now in the end every creature on earth and in heaven will worship God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in New Creation.
It may sound lame and far-fetched to profess that God’s love and will are where our security is, but…look at the alternative. Do we live and die for the security of securities and exchanges where greedy people full of power lust do things like speculate and make money on people losing their homes because they can and, God help us, because they can get away with it. Not me. I look around and sense and listen to the powerful, peaceful calm of the Creation at worship and I join in saying, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing! To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” Let God’s creation say, “Amen”. Amen.
