The four horsemen: Been there, done that

Text: Revelation 6:1-8

           I’m going to start this sermon-blog with a little survey. Now, I know what happens when I ask you a question involving raising your hands in worship—three of you will raise your hands about as high as your mouths and the rest of you look will around like I’m not talking to you. But since this is online hopefully you can at least answer in your head. Don't raise your hand. That might make your family or the other people at the coffee shop think there's something wrong. So, here’s the deal. This is a multiple choice question. There are no correct answers. However, there is one way to get the question wrong and that is if you don’t answer. So here’s the question: Which of the four horsemen do you find the scariest?

            Listen to your four choices and think about it. There’s the white horse, which represents conquest, especially by a foreign power; there’s the red horse, which represents internal conflict and violence; there’s the black horse, which represents economic insecurity and famine; and finally, the pale green horse that represents death. White horse, conquest; red horse, violence; black horse, famine; green horse, death. Those are your choices. Which do you find the scariest?

            I'm going to go out on a limb and say you picked death. Maybe not; maybe you thought long and hard and came to a different conclusion, but the force that we most strongly fear tends to be death because it screams to us of the unknown.

Albrecht Durer, "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Albrecht Durer has this fantastic woodcut in his Revelation series of the four horsemen (see image on right). If you look closely the first horseman is in the back with his bow, the next a little bigger and further forward with his sword, the third front and center and huge with his scales, and then there’s this little pygmy horse hanging out in the lower left hand corner and a rider with a kind of trident, which of course is Death. Now, I realize this is just Durer’s interpretation but I love that he almost hides Death is plain view, because while most of us are honestly more scared of death than these other forces it is precisely because death comes in such sneaky and unexpected ways. For as much as violence and bloodshed and economic hardship hit the 24-hour news cycle and the blogosphere, death is more often silent than loud; more like a stillness than a bomb; death more often comes in a tumor or a blood clot, a bad kidney or disease that we cannot see without a microscope.

The four horsemen may be portents of a future, but we know that these forces are also a reality in our lives today. Some of us who are lucky enough to have avoided conquest and violence and who have survived economic uncertainty are still faced with the unavoidable figure of death. It is a truth we cannot avoid. The horsemen give us a pretty straightforward message: we are not in control of our lives. There are always these forces—conquest, violence, economics and death—that you cannot control and at any time—and in any place—any or all of them may befall you.

There has been a lot in the news lately about national security and privacy, especially when it comes to technology and government surveillance. Federal Republics, such as ours in the US, tend to work from the philosophy that if we just strengthen our security enough we can protect ourselves from all forces outside of our control. In fact, the way governments have historically prioritized has been very similar to the four horsemen. First priority: outside conquest. We beef up our borders and expand our military. Second priority: internal conflict. We debate issues of gun control and discrimination. Third priority: the economy. We live in a country with an economic disparity that is growing and growing with every passing year. The rich are richer; the poor are poorer. Often, the rich have gotten so over security concerns regarding foreign and domestic violence. And then there is death—little, insignificant death, hanging out in the corner of Durer’s woodcut.

Governments don’t know what to do with death. I suppose it is a thing we all struggle with, but governments are built on a world of efficiency that is conquered in death. Governments may hand out death, and in fact the ones that do so more often tend to be the ones who fear it more. This is why a Christian who lives under a civil power is in this world but absolutely not of it. We live under these principalities and powers, and no matter your political views or convictions your ability to do good in this world is ultimately limited by the fact that our world deals with its demons in exactly the opposite way of the Christian world.

Through Christ, death is no longer our mortal enemy. In Christ, we were baptized into death. For those of us who were baptized as infants, we began our lives in this world with death. During Confirmation this year, Sam--our youth leader--was doing a devotional with our young people and she asked them jokingly, “How many of you have died?” Of course, when you ask a question like that to 7^th-9^th graders there’s always one who raises his or her—usually his—hand. Sam dismissed him, but he didn’t give up. He said, “Pastor Frank said I died when I was baptized!” Again, Sam rebuffed him but I was listening from the other room and I leapt to defend him. Actually, he’s right. We proclaim that we die in baptism—not metaphorically, not technically, but actually die—because our sinful self needs to be drowned in those waters in order to live a life that is ultimately free from the powers of conquest, violence, economics and death. This ninth-grader remembered what I said in Confirmation class weeks before; and I expect he remembered because it’s so jarring.

How can we die? We’re still here.

This is how the powers of this world work. When they die, it’s all over. There’s nothing left to see, just a thing cast aside to the junk pile. But the Christian faces a different kind of life. We are confronted with death in our baptism. We die to Christ and we are raised a new creation. Every day we die to our old selves. How many of you have looked in the mirror and said, “That’s the old me. No longer.” The entire book of Revelation is moving us faster and faster through chaos and praise, through visions of terror and awe, chugging ever more speedily toward the end of all things, toward a new creation so glorious that John can hardly wait to tell us about it. It’s a promise that starts with confronting death, but it continues through the terrors of this world—four horsemen that represent everything in our lives that cause us to fear.

But, in the end, we triumph over every fear. In fact, death is one we meet as equals, able to say we’ve already been there. Death is the end of all things, yes, and the world of principalities and powers runs in terror from it. But death is something that we, Christians, know intimately. It is something we have experienced in the waters of baptism. It is something that marks our time on this earth but only for a little while. You see, to fear death is to fear the unknown, but the death we fear is only the little death. Been there, done that. This is something you can hold over every civil power that suggests it is our duty to concern ourselves with conquest, violence and the economy. No matter whether we have a just government or an unjust one; a world full of righteous people or sinners; an economic system concerned with the poor and marginalized or the rich and greedy; no matter our policies and the powers behind them, we know that the thing that all of those powers fear is exactly our strength as Christians. We know that death is not something to be feared, because Christ has gone there first.

Who is the one opening the seals? The Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, the firstborn of the dead. There news media try to make you afraid of what’s out there, but what of it? You are Christians in this world but not of it. You are children of God who have a promise that even if your nation is conquered, even if violence comes to your neighborhood, even if the bottom falls out of the economy, and even if death comes for you, you have nothing to fear. Been there, done that, we can say. Been there, done that.
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
   Where, O death, is your sting?’ (1 Corinthians 15:55)

Amen.