Alpha and Omega

Preached on 11-11-01

ALPHA AND OMEGA

A Sermon by the Rev. Patrick A. Rose

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End saith the Lord, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty." (Rev. 1:8)

OUT OF ALL THE PEOPLE in the universal spiritual and natural worlds, none are wiser than the angels of the highest or celestial heaven. We can scarcely begin to imagine the depth of their wisdom. Indeed, the deepest insights of which we on earth are capable, our most profound thoughts, are as nothing when compared to the thoughts of these highest angels. Yet for all their wisdom, it is a remarkable thing that when seen from a distance such angels appear as children. They are seen this way because they possess the childlike quality of innocence.

These inhabitants of the highest heaven know many, many things. Their intelligence and wisdom are greater than we could imagine. Nevertheless, the deepest thing they know, their guiding principle, is a childlike one: they know that what they know is relatively nothing, and they rely completely upon the wisdom of the Lord Himself. Just as the world of a baby is centered completely around parents, so too, the world of the celestial angels revolves around their Heavenly Father. They love Him. They worship Him They are completely and totally dedicated to serving Him.

It might be thought that the greater the wisdom and intelligence a person has, the less he needs to depend upon the Lord. The truth, though, is the complete opposite. A person cannot even begin to experience intelligence and wisdom until he first accepts the most basic fact of life -- a fact that is the most profound of all truths. He must come to see that the Lord is infinite. The Lord is everything, and compared to Him we know nothing at all.

In the New Church we are of course used to the idea that people must think for themselves in matters of religion. This does not mean, though, that we must be foolish enough to imagine that our own limited thought and experience are anything in comparison to the wisdom of God. What we know and think are, in themselves, completely and utterly insignificant. The purpose behind thinking for ourselves in matters of religion is not so that we might develop opinions from our own limited intelligence, but rather so that we might begin to see and understand for ourselves something of the Lord's wisdom revealed by Him within the pages of Divine Revelation.

Sometimes people make the mistake of thinking that the New Church is an intellectual church -- a church especially for those who enjoy reading deep, complicated and profound books. Now it is indeed true that different people have different capabilities when it comes to understanding books like the Writings. Some will find reading them easier than will others. Do not forget, though, that there are many parts of the Writings which are written very simply indeed. As for the more complicated parts, it is worth remembering that the Writings are a revelation of wisdom for all time. They are not to be judged by the standards of the shallow popular literature of the present day. There is also something else worth remembering -- that when we talk of approaching the infinite God Himself, the differences between intellectual and simple people mean very little indeed. In the Lord's sight, not only are all of us simple, but, compared to Him we are all completely ignorant.

The point of learning from the Word is not so that we might become walking encyclopedias. Far from it! To learn from the Word is in essence an act of adoration and worship. It is a way of turning to the Lord and saying to Him, "We are ignorant. You are our infinitely wise Father. Tell us what to do, and we will do it."

It is the same with formal worship. We are here in church. Why? There are of course many reasons why formal external worship is commanded by the Lord. Let us not forget, though, that the deepest and most profound reason for worshiping is the childlike one. We worship because we love the Lord. We love and adore Him, and we know in our hearts that we need Him and are completely dependent upon Him as our Father. Sometimes pride can get in the way. Still, with a little effort, we can, while we worshiping, silence such feelings for a while, and forget the proud, the foolish, the insane idea that we are somehow important in ourselves, somehow independent of the Lord. We can turn to Lord and remember that we are completely and totally dependent upon Him.

We of course all live in a world in which individual dignity, individual pride, and individual rights, are stressed over and over again. So often we are conscious of our own dignity, our own pride and importance, our own rights and privileges. It can be difficult to get used to the fact that in worship -- in real worship -- we are approaching an Infinite Being before whom our own pride and our own sense of importance mean nothing. Neither can we come before the Lord demanding our rights to certain things. Before the Lord, none of us have any rights at all. Instead, we become conscious of the fact that everything we have is a gift, given to us freely by the Lord as an act of pure love. Even our very existence and life is a gift. How often we hear the expression: "It is my life; I can do what I want." Yet even the life we have is a gift from the Lord.

It can be difficult indeed to get used to such thoughts. True worship does not come easily to us. It isn't easy at first to approach, within our hearts, a Being before whom we are like little specks of dust. It makes us feel so very small, and we don't like being made to feel small, even though we are. Perhaps also we feel a little out of our depth. The Lord is infinite -- infinitely powerful, infinitely wise. How can we even begin to grasp what He is really like in Himself? This, though, is the very reason why the Lord, in teaching us about Himself, talks to us in simple language, in a way accommodated to our understanding.

Our text this morning is an example of this -- simple words given to us by the Lord about a subject that we can never fully understand. "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, saith the Lord, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty." These might sound simple enough words. But the Writings say this about them: "These words . . . include all things which angel and man can ever think, spiritually and naturally, concerning the Divine" (AR 31). In these words, in these simple words, the Lord describes to us His own infinity. And though we can never understand this infinity as it is in itself, we can still have, from what the Lord tells us, a general idea of what it is like.

Now this morning we would ask you to reflect upon just one aspect of this text -- one idea it gives us about the Lord. It is the truth that everything, without exception, is from Him and is governed by Him. Everything is included under His creation and government. Nothing is independent of Him. This is the first and most obvious meaning of Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. They are the letters which enclose all the other letters. A similar idea is expressed by the Beginning and End, which also includes all things in between.

The Writings have a remarkable phrase by which they describe this concept. They say that the Lord is the All in all (see AR 29). Every thing, no matter what it is, is dependent entirely upon the Lord for its existence and continuation. In other words, all the existence of all things is from Him alone -- the All in all. This is supremely true of everything that is good -- and so it is said that the Lord is the All in all of heaven and the church. Even evil things depend for their existence upon God. God does not create evil, but evil is the perversion of good, and there could be no evil if it were not for the fact that the Lord creates what is good. Otherwise the evil would have nothing to pervert.

The Lord is thus the All in all. He is intimately involved in every least detail of our lives, both physical and mental. Not only is every single atom in the world around us under the Lord's direct government; so too is every single feeling and thought within our minds.

The Lord is said to be the Alpha and Omega. He describes Himself in this way, not simply because all things are from Him, but also because all things of love, specifically, are from Him Both the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet are vowels. The alpha is a long "a" -- an ah sound, and the omega is a long "o" -- an oh sound. The vowels of human speech are a way of conveying affection and feeling. Much of the emotion conveyed by speech depends upon the way we sound our vowels; consonants, on the other hand, are more for giving form and meaning to the words. The Lord is thus the Alpha and Omega -- the Ah and Oh --because He is Divine love, and all things of human life, human love and affection, are but derivations of His love as it is received by finite human beings.

As Alpha and Omega refer to the things of the Lord's infinite love, so Beginning and End refer to the things of the Lord's infinite wisdom. It is wisdom which sees and directs something from beginning to end. In other words, it is wisdom which understands how to bring forth, in a sequence, those things which are desired by love. And so all things of thought and understanding also come from the Lord. They are derivations of the one true Wisdom -- the Wisdom of the Lord Himself. If we did not constantly receive, in one way or another, the influence of His love and wisdom, we would be dead -- incapable of experiencing any feeling at all -- incapable of thinking even a single thought.

The Lord is also said to be the One who is, and who was, and who is to come. These words convey an image of the eternity and infinity of God, a Being who is above time, and whose love and wisdom and power know no limits whatsoever. Therefore, when we think about the Lord, think about what He is really like, we begin to see, in a small way, the complete and utter stupidity of imagining that we can do without Him -- of thinking that in some imaginary way we are somehow something by ourselves. By ourselves we are nothing. We are nothing at all without the Lord. He is, as our text tells us, the Almighty. He is all-powerful.

But there is one thing above all about the Lord which we should never forget. The Lord loves us. If the infinity of His love, wisdom and power begin to make us feel uncomfortable, let us remember that all of His love, all of His wisdom, and all of His power, are directed towards man in order to bring him into a state of happiness. The Lord loves us, completely and totally. Though His infinity itself is completely beyond our imagination, He is still, above all, our Father, and as our Father He loves us. Though all things are under His government, they are governed for no other purpose than that mankind, as a whole, might experience happiness. This happiness comes only with freedom. And so the Lord loves our freedom, for He loves our happiness. The power that is His is not directed against us, but for us.

Until we understand this, we understand nothing at all about the Lord. It is because He loves us, with the whole of His infinite heart, that we, being merely finite, can approach Him. We are nothing. He is everything. Yet He loves us, and He comes to us.

This is why a little later on in the same chapter as our text, the Lord says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last" (Rev. 1:11). He is not only the First. He is the Last as well. He is above all things, and yet nevertheless He comes right down to last things, right down to our level -- in order to meet us.

We can picture ourselves as resting in the Lord's arms. He has two arms, or two hands, in which He holds us. From on high He governs all things, rules over all -- in order that all things might continue to exist. From on high He breathes life into all that is living. But He holds us from below as well -- coming to us and inspiring us on our own level..

Think of the Word. The Lord, of infinite wisdom, and above all things, talks to us in simple stories. Think of the Old Testament -- which talks of a garden, a serpent, a flood, and so on. This is the Lord in ultimates or lasts, coming to us, teachings us, holding us with His hand, on our own level.

Think of the supreme example: the Lord's incarnation and glorification. He formed a body for His infinite soul -- and was born on earth. And during His life on earth, He gradually in-filled this body more and more completely and perfectly with His Divine love. He is indeed above all things, but because He loves us, He came to meet us on our own plane, the plane of this world, as a Man of flesh and bones. He is not only the First, but also the Last.

Today He is still with us. He is very close. Some might have difficulty in really understandinq the way in which the Lord is with us -- but we can all hold on to the simple truth that, even in the lowest things of life, He is right here beside us.

Take a very simple example. Suppose you are in a bad mood. You decide to do some chore -- scrub the floor, or weed the garden, for example. You are happier afterwards. Why? It is because even in the ultimate or last things of life, indeed sometimes especially in such ultimate things, the Lord is with us, blessing us with His love and wisdom.

A loving Father does not leave His children. The Lord is with us. He loves us. As for ourselves, if we would have anything of true wisdom, let us make the effort to come to see that we must love Him in return, listen to what He tells us, and do what He says.

Think of the Lord as your Father. It is a simple thing. Yet if we can come to really think of Him this way, both in thought and in life, then we will have come to the very beginning of all wisdom. All the angels, and especially the celestial angels, adore their heavenly Father. Around Him their lives revolve. He is their Alpha and Omega, their Beginning and End their First and their Last. They worship Him. And from Him, and from Him alone, they receive all their life, all their wisdom, and all their happiness. They have placed all of their life and all of their love in the hands of the Lord.

Amen.

Lessons: Isa. 40:18-28, Rev. 1:1-8, AR 29 (part).