Text: Revelation 1
I’m going
to start today with a bit of a warning and a promise: the warning is that this
sermon will be more academic than most—and if you’re my wife who thinks that
all my sermons are way academic, then this one may be a little too academic.
Hence, the promise: I promise that the rest of the summer will not be just like
this week. I think that when introducing something as strange to us, as
the book of Revelation is, that I should take some time to explain what it is
first. So, I hope you bear with me.
I’m going to guess that some of you
are a little uneasy about a summer full of Revelation. This is, after all, one
of the books Martin Luther wanted to cut off the end of the Bible (you know,
shake your Bible hard enough and hope those pages at the end just fall off).
It’s the stuff we’ve given over to those Left Behind authors and doomsday
prophets. That’s their area of interest; not ours. I remember a camp counselor
friend of mine leading a devotion from Revelation in which he talked about
Satan and the forces of darkness and the battle for sinners’ souls and these
kinds of things with 8-12 year olds. I wanted to run and hide. These are the
typical things you hear about this book, so I can’t blame you if you’re a
little worried that you’ve signed up for a summer full of crazy things here at Grace-Red River
For
those of you who have these worries, let me assure you that this summer will be
about more than fire and brimstone.
But
now that I’ve said that others of you are disappointed because you’ve been waiting
your entire lives for some good ol’ fire and brimstone preaching. You’ve been looking
forward to dragons, and the beast, and the harlot of Babylon, the lake of fire,
the horsemen of the apocalypse, the seven seals, and the seven bowls full of
plagues, and all manner of other things in Revelation that are actually kind of
thrilling and we don’t talk about them in church. You’re thrilled by those
things even if you would never, ever show it or never, ever admit it. (I know
Scandinavians)
You might be
concerned that I’m going to try to tame Revelation like the Revised Common
Lectionary does. Did you know that you can read through the entire three-year
cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary—the source of readings across almost
every mainline denomination—and never once come across a story from Revelation that
includes any of the apocalyptic images? The RCL ignores every part of
Revelation that is about anything the least bit interesting.
For
those of you who are concerned that I’m going to somehow make Revelation
boring, well, I can’t assure you I won’t be boring, but let’s say not any more
boring than most weeks. Instead of going for shock and awe or pure academic
boredom I’m going to try to do something crazy and hit it all. We’ll read our
share of strange stories and befuddling symbols; but we won’t just leave them
out there. We’ll try to piece together what it all means for us. My hope, by
the end of the summer, is that Revelation is at least a little more
approachable—and for many of you—a little less scary.
One
of the things you may frequently hear about the book of Revelation is that it
is written in a kind of code and our job is to unlock its meanings. This leaves
well-intentioned readers trying to fit characters from the Revelation vision
into current events. You’ve heard people make claims, for example, about so-and-so
being the Antichrist, and they use symbols from Revelation to make those
guesses. People do this even though the word
Antichrist is never used once in the book. Then there is 666—the
number of the beast—which is another popular thing to ascribe to somebody you
don’t like. Most of this is just hubris. Revelation is not a code to be
unlocked. It has symbols, but most of these are actually pretty
straightforward.
Since
we’re in chapter 1 this week I want to demonstrate a little of how this works.
First, we have John, writing a letter to seven churches; that is the author and
setting. It is not a timeless work for everyone in the history of the world;
instead, it is a letter addressed specifically to seven particular churches in
the 1st century AD. This letter is about a vision that John was told
to share with these churches. After the standard greeting for a letter in
Biblical times—“grace and peace to you” etc, etc.—John jumps straight into some
symbolic language. We have seven lampstands and “one like the Son of Man.” This
man has seven stars in his hands and a two-edged sword coming from his mouth.
He also says he has the keys to Death and Hades. Now, we could stop right there
and say, as some do, “This is all too confusing. It’s just a mystery. Leave it
alone!” Nobody can know what these symbols mean—probably they are talking about
a future that will only make sense when it comes to pass. Others, who are more
interested in fitting the book to our time, may try to interpret these symbols
in light of current events, usually in a way that plays into their
pre-conceived judgments. I know you’ve heard people do this. Some Christian
authors have made a career out of imagining that these symbols fit some aspect
of our lives today.
However,
in this case, we have only to read a few verses later and John explains it all.
He writes, “As for the mystery of the seven stars that
you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are
the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven
churches.”
John tells us what the symbols mean.
Yes, they start out as a mystery, but quickly they are explained for what they
really are. This is basically how Revelation works. I suppose John could have
had a vision of Jesus, and rather than giving him symbolic names like the “Son
of Man” or the “Lamb” he could have just called him Jesus, and then instead of
seven lampstands he could have just had seven churches in his hands, but that
image was less powerful for those churches to hear—and it is less powerful for
us today. As we go forward from here this is something to remember: Revelation
has many symbols but it is not a complicated code. In fact, it’s rather simple.
Things stand in place of other things, people in place of other people, but
through it all there is a moral that was important to those churches to whom
this was addressed long ago.
But, you may be wondering, why we should
care about Revelation today?
For several reasons. Firstly because
we are not so different from some of the people John was speaking to those many
years ago, and secondly, because John is giving us a blueprint for the end of
the world.
The problem is that we’ve gotten
confused about what to do with this blueprint. With the blueprint in hand we
have tried to use it to decode the process by which the end of the world will
happen. We’ve tried to figure out the when and how and who, but John didn’t
write this letter so that people two thousand years later could figure out the
when or how or who. That’s Left Behind stuff; it sells books and keeps people
entertained but it isn’t really faithful to the purpose of the book. Instead,
Revelation was written in order that we might know the what, which is to say
that we might know exactly what it is that awaits us at the end of this life.
It was written as a warning for those who think that the faith life isn’t very
important, and just as surely it was written as a vision of hope for all the
faithful of the life of the world to come.
At its core, Revelation is a vision
of hope. Think of the music that comes from this book: the Hallelujah Chorus;
Holy, Holy, Holy; the Battle Hymn of the Republic; My Lord, What a Morning;
Crown Him with Many Crowns; Soon and Very Soon; and countless others. No book
in the Bible other than Psalms has as much music as Revelation. You already
know the sentiment of this book; you’ve sung it in worship all your lives. It is so assimilated with our worship that we don’t even realize
it. My hope for you is that, by the end of this summer, you value it more than
you do now and realize, like Luther later in his life, that this is not a book
to throw out of the canon. My hope is that some of the things that concern you
and scare you about Revelation end up being the very things that strengthen the
promise that God has given you. And lastly, my hope is that we can read things
together that don’t always make sense without assuming that it is bad or
unworthy of our time.
Or at least I hope you don’t run me
out of the church for trying.
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