I won’t even try to pretend that I am not a fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien.
I realize that places me in the hopelessly cliche niche of white millennials who grew up with the films at just about the peak age to have post-9/11 angst swell within our teenage souls as we saw elves, dwarfs and Ents fight orcs, wizards, and Trolls. It was just about everything a teenager could wish for from a cultural moment.
Yet my true love has always been rooted below the surface of big battles and cinematic specific effects. Tolkien, writing in his own apocalyptic moment as the second World War threatened to engulf everything he knew, anticipated that for the world to be set right, what we really needed was a “Return of the King.”
Tolkien was of course very deeply Christian in his imagination. Revelation had done its part in shaping his hopes and prayers.
However the part of the Return of the King I feel like I so often missed was what any of us were meant to be doing when the King finally returned.
I am not the first (or last) to comment on this theme. No matter how many times the Simpsons depict heaven as white robes and harps, we slowly have begun to realize more is at stake and more is to be gained. Yet still, we have often thought and taught far too infrequently about the connection between what we are doing now with our time and talents and what we might be doing then when the King does come.
Thus this closing episode to this series on Revelation asks what difference the eternal city makes to the vocations we find ourselves with on Earth. Perhaps it should come as no surprise to me that Tolkien himself thought long and hard about this question and offers a resource in a story he called “Leaf by Niggle” that I have found to be one of the most moving reflections on eternity.
Thank you for making it with me to the end of what is an undeniably challenging book. Yet its closing blessing rings out across the ages. “Blessed is the one who keeps these words.” (Revelation 22:7)
We all live now in the in-between, waiting on the return of the King. Until Jesus comes.
With hope,
John
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