Saints Alive!

Sunday, Oct 30 2011

Speakers: Rev. James M. Rand

Scripture: Revelation 7:9-17

Blood.  Lots of blood.  Martyrs who live.  Shape-shifting creatures and ever-changing beasts – such as a Lamb that sits on the throne like a king but is also a shepherd.

Is it Halloween yet?  The Book of Revelation is filled with tricks and treats – lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) – not to mention wave upon wave of humans robed in white – like celestial angels or Star Wars storm troopers bound for costume parties all over town.  Everything is twisted.  Distorted.  Excessive.

I know people who stand in line for hours in the shivering cold this time of year to walk through haunted houses.  I know people who sit through scary movies, and come out saying, “That was fun!”

But touch the Book of Revelation?  No way.  It’s too scary.

The universe contained in those pages is too alien for them.  And too familiar.  It’s a far cry from what we see on the surface of our lives; but close enough to worry that, if we scratch the top layer, we might find a mirror looking back at us, reflecting our world.

 * *

There’s a popular notion that the last book of our Bible is about the End of the World.  That’s not quite right.  It’s about the end of the world as we know it.  It’s about the end of evil and death – and whatever else is incompatible with God, that which cannot stand when God lives in the world.  Revelation is about seeing the world not only as revealed to our eyes, but as it appears through God’s eyes – which is to say, not from a vantage point of punishment and death, but repentance, resurrection and hope.

It is about the end of death and restoration of life.  The end of suffering and triumph of joy.  It’s about a day beyond what we’ve seen in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and Wall Street – a new day, marked not by protest but praise.  It’s about the establishment of good and righteous government beyond the partisan politics that is normative now.

The Book of Revelation is less about the End of the World, and more about the world being remade in a more perfect way – with tears wiped away and beasts slain and justice restored and sustainable practices enacted.

Where we recently heard shouts in the street of “Death to Gaddafi!” “Victory and salvation belong to our God” will ring out instead.  Instead of Tea Partiers and Occupiers barking “No” to this and “No” to that, songs of praise will offer “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and power and might … to God forever!”

Imagine that world in contrast to our own world at the moment: a world where angry rhetoric gives way to blessing.  Glory.  Wisdom.  Thanksgiving!  The Book of Revelation invites us surrender the old forms of rhetoric in favor of new expressions of praise.

I’m not talking, of course, about protests being squelched, but about not needing them at all any more because the world has become different.  I’m talking about “no more hunger and no more thirst; no more sunstroke (read global warming) or scorching heat or polluted lakes or death, for the Lamb [is] at the center of the throne and will guide them to springs of the water of life.”

It’s a picture of the world as it shall be.  And it is given to us so that we endure in hope in the meantime instead of giving up.  John’s vision in the Book of Revelation insists that we can endure in the world because it will not be this way forever. It is already in the process of foment and upheaval.  It is well along the way to being made new. A better way is visible for those with eyes to see.  And those who have daring faith will begin to live in it now.

 * *

Let me try to dispel another misconception about Revelation.  You probably have some idea that it was written by a fellow named John who was in exile on an island about 100 years after Christ.  You may know too that he was put there under the edict of the Roman emperor named Domitian.  For the most part, that has created the impression that the empire was sustained through tyranny and violent persecution.

Gail O’Day, however, says historical data doesn’t support that (Discipleship Bible, Westminster John Knox, p. 2097-2098).  She says the imperial cult was pervasive.  But those who didn’t fit in generally were not put to death.  They were socially shunned, and received fewer economic opportunities.  (Think of the old Soviet system, and how it was for those who belonged to the Party and played the game, versus those who did not.)

The real threat, according to O’Day, wasn’t persecution by the empire but accommodation to the empire.  It was the danger of trying to live in both realms at once.  It was the illusion that there is no cost to joining in the systems of the empire – the pretense that it is forever possible to run bigger cars and faster computers and larger toxic waste sites, and more fossil fuel and burnt-out employees and sidelined workers and silenced factories and melting ice caps without consequence.

And it was the conceit – or deceit – that some people are more worthy and deserving than others … that inequality is okay with God … that we only have to look out for ourselves, pay our own way, not care for our sisters and brothers.

John’s vision from the island of Patmos, however, challenges all of that.  It says that people from “every nation, all tribes and peoples and languages” stand before God’s throne equally.  All are robed in white – the color of purity and light – manifesting the presence and blessing of God.

As it was on the first Pentecost day (Acts 2), when people of many nations in Jerusalem received the Holy Spirit … and as it was before that (Gen. 12) when Abraham and Sarah received God’s promise that “all the families of the earth” will be blessed through them, so Revelation points to a coming day when shunning and economic deprivation no longer exist, but all people are gathered together as one.  It’s a theme that runs cover-to-cover in our Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.

Think of that when you prepare to make your stewardship pledge for the coming year.  Which realm, which vision of life, are you trying to support?  Which model do you intend to live by?  Which one has the more promising future?  If you believe the vision of equality and wholeness, mercy and goodness, I urge you to let your pledge show it.

 * *

Here’s another reason to live a generous life with blessing and honor and glory and thanks for God: If the old world is livable only because a better one is in the making, it is equally true that death itself is passing away.  That’s what our service of remembrance affirms.  It affirms that even in death God gives life.  Even at the most abject and undesirable end, God authors a beginning.  Every tear will be wiped away.

Today’s reading has a timeless “here” and “there” quality to it.  It is “yet, but not yet.”  The white-robed ones may be people of prior generations.  But just as easily, they may be our own families and neighbors and church folk – people we see when we look around.

What matters in that vision, though, is that death does not have the last word.  Death is not present at all.  It does not divide us between dead and living.  Whoever we are, and wherever we are (on earth or in heaven), we belong to an innumerable throng that gathers around the throne of God in gratitude and praise.  We are forever surrounded by the company of saints – a great cloud of witnesses – that goes before us and encompasses us and inspires us to be our best selves.

Not just in the future, but even now, we see hints and clues to the end of death and restoration of life, and reunion with those who make our hearts complete – because “the Lamb is at the center of the throne, and lead us to springs of the water of life.”

 * *

What we affirm today, therefore, is not the end of the world – not even in the metaphorical sense, as when we say, “My world ended when my spouse died (or my child or best friend).”

Those are endings, to be sure.  And there are other endings, all of which are terrible and unwelcome, most of the time.  But such endings are also a summons to believe and trust beyond what we see at the moment.  They invite us to trust by faith in what we do not yet see … or see only partly, as if in a mirror dimly, while waiting for the new.

Rather than trusting the powers of this world, we are learning with the help of the Book of Revelation, slowly but surely, to trust that the only true power is the power of God revealed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  It is a vision of justice-not-injustice … of liberation-not-oppression … of purpose-not-drudgery … of companionship instead of isolation … and life-beyond-death … knowing that all this is pressing into the world even now.

 To the glory of God.