“I am the A and the Z, the first and the last, the beginning and the fulfillment” (Revelation 22.13).
There was a mattress store somewhere in town I used to pass all the time. Out front it advertised “Everything from A to Zzzz.” It’s stuck with me all these years; because, it’s a cute way of both describing its selection and its business. They’re not unique, of course. Many places advertise that they have everything from A to Z.
Most, if you look, don’t. Good luck finding anything that starts with X or even with a Y (it’s to Z after all, not through it). Those are your high point Scrabble letters, they don’t get used much. And, unless a place isn’t concerned with maximizing its shelf space, it won’t bother with xylophones and yams.
But we don’t go looking for every letter of the alphabet, do we? We understand this idea of A to Z as a shorthand way of saying “all that lies in-between.” It’s meant to convey that everything, absolutely everything is in here. It draws our focus not to the first and last letters, but all those between them.
Ego to alpha kai to omega is how the Greek reads. Ego A et W is the Latin. All of the translations I normally reference render it the same way “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” These letters have become one of the Divine names. These Greek letters have been sculpted on the bricks and stones of buildings, threaded into fabrics hung in churches, and even adorn the covers of books.
We forget that they’re just letters in an alphabet.
I’m the A and the Z, Jesus says. I was here at the beginning and I’m here at the culmination of it all. Part of our faith is this understanding that through Christ all things were made and all things will be redeemed. We teach this, we testify to this. But we get too hung up on the front and the back and not what lies in-between.
This Sunday is known as Christ the King or the Reign of Christ Sunday. It’s a day, at the close of the liturgical year, when we remember that one day, Jesus will oversee a Creation healed of its brokenness and ruled by love, compassion, and mercy. It is a day on which we look forward to when history will end, and something new will begin.
What we forget is that moment includes all the moments that preceded it.
“The Reign of God has come among you,” Jesus said nearly two-thousand years ago. It didn’t disappear with the Ascension, it is still here. It’s present in every act that seeks to heal instead of hurt, comfort instead of ignore, and love instead of hate. It is part of the work that culminates in that final moment. It’s the letters between the A and the Z.
“I am with you, always,” Jesus tells the Twelve and, through them, us. I have been with you; because, I am the A. I will be with you; because, I am the Z.
And I am with you through in-between.