No, that Gradual hymn was not just me indulging myself with my favorite hymn. Well, maybe just a tiny bit. But in the reading from Revelation, we heard “Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be.” When Charles Wesley worked with this text, he gives us the well-known, “Lo! He comes, with clouds descending.” This hymn makes fits well in Eastertide because the Resurrection is God’s future invading our present. If you want a fuller explanation of this, listen or read the sermon from the Easter Vigil. A hymn about the coming of Christ makes complete sense in Easter because Resurrection is when God’s future and ultimate salvation is experienced in our lives.
Over
the next six Sundays, all of the New Testament readings will come from Revelation
and I’m taking this opportunity to preach on what is generally considered to be
the most controversial, complicated, confusing, and challenging book in the
Bible. Despite this, Revelation is worth our attention because God is still
speaking through it today.
I
will get to today’s reading, but it will be helpful to start with an overview
of Revelation. Also, please note that there is no “S” at the end of it – don’t
ever call it “RevelationS.” The first question is who wrote it – John. Well,
that’s about as helpful a description as it is today. I know dozens of people
named “John” and Scripture has several people named John in it. Church tradition
has sometimes said that the author is the disciple John, but there’s really no evidence
for that. The most compelling argument I’ve read on authorship is from a
professor who taught at Notre Dame; she argues that what we have is a vision of
John the Baptist with a few introductory and concluding chapters added to it.
Does it really matter who wrote Revelation though? No. So it’s safe to just say
“John.”
As
to when it was written: consensus is that it was written in the year 95, when
Domitian was the Roman Emperor. Persecution of Christians was not nearly as
widespread as it is made out to be, but at that particular time and under that particular
Emperor, localized persecution of Christians was intense and the author of
Revelation knew and suffered under it. It was a time of religious and political
crisis. It would be just as easy to explain Wikipedia to someone in the 1st-century
as it would be to explain the idea of separation of Church and State. To be a
Christian meant that you weren’t worshiping the Emperor, which meant that you
weren’t a good citizen and were treasonous. And to worship the Emperor is to
commit idolatry and excommunicate yourself. The word “crisis” comes from a
Greek wording meaning “to decide.” In every sense, this was a crisis, a time of
deciding where allegiances will lie.
We
also need to bear in mind that Revelation is a letter. We are reading someone else’s
mail, and this fundamentally changes how we read it. The way letters of this sort
worked is that they would be sent via courier to the recipient, which was a
group of people, a church, and then read aloud in worship. And so Revelation is
not written to Christians in general, but rather to very specific people. This
means that while Revelation is not written to us, it is written for us. By this,
I mean that through the Holy Spirit, we have much to learn through Revelation,
but we must remember that it is not addressed to us. Revelation may well
provide a message for the future, but not predictions about it.
To
understand why Revelation is not to be used in the way that so many Christians do, we
have to know what genre we’re discussing. I’m currently reading The War of
the Worlds to Ellie at bedtime. You’ve probably heard the story of when
this book was adapted for radio in 1938, it caused panic because some listeners
heard it not as a work of fiction, but as a news report. Hearing about Martians
armed with laser canons is dramatically different based on whether it is
fiction or news. Genre matters in Scripture,
and particularly with Revelation.
Its
genre is apocalyptic literature. “Apocalypse” does not mean “the end of the world;”
it simply means “uncovering.” An apocalypse is anything that reveals truths
that are deeper than we had previously been able to see. It’s also worth noting
that apocalyptic literature is always written by the oppressed and for the
oppressed. In this sense, it is resistance literature – meant to strengthen and
inspire, and reframe current oppression as the temporary and fading triumph of evil.
Apocalypses, such as Revelation, are about giving people a “nevertheless” even
when a “therefore” doesn’t make sense.
And
because such writing is done from and for the oppressed, the language used is
often symbolic. If it’s true that a picture is worth 1,000 words, Revelation is
much longer than it appears in our printed Bibles because it is full of
symbolic imagery. To be very clear about this though, Revelation is not encrypted
or coded. No key unlocks the meaning of these symbols. It’s not a cipher where
we just exchange one word for another and discover what it quote-unquote really
means. These are symbols and symbols do not represent one single thing, but several.
Symbols pull us deeper into the story, so Revelation is not something to figure
out, rather it is a description of how God triumphs over evil.
This
means that there is no right way to read Revelation because there is no single
way to understand the symbols. And this is a good thing. If Revelation had one
meaning, and it would have been the meaning of its 1st-century
context, then there would be no point in us reading it. But it remains Holy Scripture
to us because the Spirit still speaks through these symbols. However, just
because there is no right way to read Revelation, that doesn’t mean that there
aren’t wrong ways. Revelation is about not about predicting the future, describing
the end of time, or creating conspiracies about 5G wireless signals, the
election of presidents, public health policy, or vaccines. That would be like
using a cookbook as a dieting book – which, if it’s a recipe book for cakes
might be satisfying, but ultimately isn’t going to lead to healthy eating.
Overall,
Revelation does have a coherent and logical message – that there is a struggle
happening between God’s people and the enemies of God, and God is fighting on behalf
of his people and the people’s defiance and even disobedience to the powers and
principalities is called for. Revelation assures the faithful that God will achieve
the consummation of all things and so endurance and allegiance are our faithful
responses as we await the day of coming victory of the Lamb of God. I’ll have
more to say about the significance of the Lamb of God in a later sermon in this
series. This trajectory though needs to be kept in mind when we read Revelation
– it assures us of the end of the story so that we can live with hope and
courage when things don’t seem to be going well.
Though
I’ve been doing a good bit of explaining thus far, I do want to make it clear
that I will be preaching sermons, not leading a study. Some churches refer to what
I’m doing as “teachings,” but I’m not up here primarily to teach. There’s a
reason why I’m not in academic robes, but rather liturgical ones. What I am
doing up here is announcing and proclaiming the Good News – that God loves us,
that this love was given to us in the life, death, and Resurrection of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and that the Holy Spirit is with us to guide, comfort, challenge,
and heal us. So though the sermons will be focusing on Revelation, I am not
teaching about Revelation, nor are we studying it. Instead, we are listening for
God’s timeless truth in it.
With
all that being said, very briefly, we turn to the particular part of Revelation
we heard this morning. It functions something like an overture to the entire
work, so having a grasp of this section will allow us to read the rest of it
more fully. In particular, the summary is: “To him who loves us and freed us
from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his
God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
First,
God loves us. This, I hope, is not news to anyone. This is the message of our
faith and of Easter – that nothing, not Sin, not Death, not doubt, not fear,
not mistakes, nothing and no one can separate us from the love of God. And this
is true not only about us but all people. If we could only trust that love is
the truest and most important thing in the world, what a world this would be!
Next,
we hear that Jesus frees us from our sins by his blood. The blood part shows us
just how deeply and without limit the love of God for us is. And the freedom part
of that line is at the heart of what Revelation is all about. We do not owe
allegiance to an emperor, a government, a nation, a bank account, a corporation,
a job, a résumé, an idea of what we think life should be, a self-image, a boss,
or opinions of others. The only person we owe allegiance to is Jesus Christ who
loved us and has redeemed us. We are free from every other task other than love.
In
this freedom, we are made to be a kingdom. Here is where Revelation gets
explicitly political. If we are to be a kingdom it means that the kingdoms that
we live in are not our true home. If the kingdoms of this world were
sufficient, Jesus would not be making a new kingdom for us to inhabit. Throughout
Revelation, we see that worship is a political act. Worship proclaims who is
worthy of respect and reverence and who are false idols. Worship shapes our
habits to be sacrificial, generous, humble, and loving. Worship creates a beloved
community and breaks down walls that separate us. And this is what the kingdom
is all about – worshiping around the throne of the Lamb of God.
We
are to be priests in this kingdom. Yes, I am called to be a priest in a very
specific way, but we are all called to be priests of God. A priest offers
sacrifices, intercedes for the people, and represents God to the world. These
are tasks for us all. In the very beginning, Adam and Eve, representing all of
humanity, are given a priestly vocation. And on through the Old Testament, we
read about Moses, Aaron, and David who all have priestly roles, a role that is
perfected in Jesus. And what Jesus enables is for us to be what God created us
to do in the beginning – to represent God to Creation and to care for Creation
as God’s gift.
The
reason why priest language here is so important is that a priest operates in a temple,
and the temple that we have been given to minister with is our lives and
bodies. We are temples of the Holy Spirit, and with our lives, we are to be
priests to the world. This is what I’m so excited about having represented in
the Pentecost icon that is being dedicated today. Each of us, regardless of our
ability, race, age, gender, orientation, wealth, intellect, mistakes, or talents
are temples of the Holy Spirit and therefore have a priestly vocation.
And
the purpose of this priesthood is to give glory to God forever and ever, for
God alone is Alpha and Omega. God is the source and the conclusion of all things,
which is why we can be confident that all shall be well. When we keep God at
the center of all things, giving allegiance to God alone and having love be our
only currency, then we experience the fullness of the freedom that has been won
for us.
This
is what the Spirit is saying to the Church, that we are loved and freed to be a
kingdom of priests who glorify God in all things. It was the message of Revelation
2,000 years ago and it is the same truth today, because Jesus Christ is the one
who is, and who was, and who is to come.
