Spiritual Reflection, September 2023

Looking Back, Looking Forward

This summer, for the first time in my life, I visited the Island of Patmos, where John saw the visions that became the Book of Revelation. Patmos is a small island about 40 miles off the Turkish coast, with a sheltered natural harbour and steep slopes rising from its shores. High on a pine-wooded hill, overlooking the sea and exposed to its winds, is the cave in which John is said to have received and dictated his revelations.

In this bare, dark, and exposed cavern, John saw visions of apostasy and martyrdom, terror and salvation, promise and fulfilment, and of the new Jerusalem descending from heaven. Though in different colours and in a strange language, he beheld the same things that we recall and anticipate in the High Holidays. And as we celebrate the liturgical holidays – both Jewish and Christian – it is important to remember that we are never merely looking back to the past or forward to a new year. In celebrating them, we are also marking the movements of the whole history of salvation.

For us, as Jews who believe in Yeshua HaMashiach, these movements are spiral-shaped: they arise from early promises and come to rest, full circle, in the life of the Messiah; then rise and circle again towards a future, greater rest, which will be fully his and fully ours. Yeshua’s earthly life is both fulfilment and promise. It fulfils the promise of God’s history with Israel, which we remember in the holidays; but it also reveals that promise to be greater than we thought: to encompass the whole world, the innermost parts of our being, and the gap between God and humans.

So we do not only look back to Israel’s history, or even to Yeshua’s life, but also look forward, just as John did. And even if we can’t understand the full mystery of events we celebrate, or the full symbolism of the Book of Revelation, we can participate in its prayer: ‘And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come….Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus’ (Rev. 22:17).

Judith Wolfe