Foundry United
Rev.
“Cosmic Hope from the Strangest Book in the Bible:
Sermons on Revelation”
Sunday, May 15,
2011
Rev.
Hope from the Margins
Revelation 7:9-17
Revelation is a strange book.
There is more about the Book of Revelation that we don't understand than what we do. My favorite scholarly biblical commentary is the Word Bible Commentary. The commentary on Revelation is three volumes long – a total of 1,354 pages of possibilities and speculations about what the images in the Book of Revelation might mean.
We don't even know whether the dramatic scenes of battles and victories and defeats and plagues and healing and renewal and glory are written with intentionality and consciousness, or whether they are visions from the writer's subconscious and from his dreams and visions.
There are those who believe Revelation is a carefully written literary work, sort of like Dante's Inferno or Pilgrim's Progress, using images from Old Testament and other Jewish writings to communicate a coded message that only those familiar with Jewish literature would understand.
There are others who think the images of angels and living creatures "full of eyes around and inside" and the heavenly hosts and the lamb are visions John, the writer of Revelation, actually had.
We don't know.
We do know it is exquisitely written. The third century theologian Origen asked, "Who can read the revelations granted to John without being amazed at the hidden depth of the ineffable mysteries, a depth apparent even to the person who does not understand what the text says?"
The 20th century novelist D. H. Lawrence said "When we read Revelation, we feel at once there are meanings behind meanings."
Whether the powerful images in Revelation came from John's intellect or from his subconscious or a combination of the two, this is dense and thick and complex and rich and intense and sometimes scary writing.
But the core message I think is clear – Nasty things may happen here on earth but nothing will happen that God can't handle. Bad things may happen here on earth but nothing will happen that God won't fix. Evil is real but not permanent.
The Book of Revelation is not a balanced theological treatise. It is not academically objective.
We believe Revelation was written about 30 years after the horrible persecution and pogrom against Christians in Rome led by Nero, during a time when the persecution of Christians was beginning again during the reign of Domitian. John was in exile on the island of Patmos. Christians were fearful that the kind of suffering they had experienced under Nero would happen again.
John's message is that God is sovereign. God is in charge. Nothing is going to happen that God can't handle.
Furthermore, if we could see what is happening in heaven while bad things are happening here on earth, it would make us want to cheer and shout and sing songs and dance and sway. If we could see the present through the eyes of eternity, we would be cheering.
Jesus, the lamb who was slain, is really the One who sits on the throne of time and eternity.
There is no injustice that he will not correct and reparate; there is no wrong he will not right, no sacrifice that he will not reward, there is no act of courage that he will fail to celebrate.
So if you want to understand what is really going on in human history you need to read history through the eyes of the eternal Christ. What seems to be happening on earth is very different from what is really happening if we could only see it from the perspective of heaven and eternity.
Those who appear to be last are really first. The losers are really winners. Those who seem insignificant and unimportant are those who are really writing human history. Those who get crucified on a cross are the ones who are really alive.
In chapter 4 of Revelation, John gets invited to visit heaven so he can see what is really going on, not from the perspective of earth but from the perspective of eternity.
John discovers in heaven all sorts of angels and unusual creatures. But he also discovers lots of people. And it is the people who the part of Revelation we are looking at today focuses on.
When John visits heaven there are 144,000 people in heaven from the 12 tribes of Israel. These 144,000 people from the 12 tribes of Israel have gotten to heaven without suffering. They lived their lives with a special protection. Revelation says they were protected by a special seal on their foreheads so that bad things would not happen to them during their lives on earth.
But in addition to these 144,000 people of Israel who had gotten into heaven without suffering -- there was a great multitude that no one could number. You'd think it would be hard to number 144,000 people. But apparently this group is much, much, much larger than 144,000.
This multitude who can not be numbered is not only from Israel but from every nation, tribe, language, every group of people, every religion.
This large, large, large crowd, too many to count, gets the best places in heaven. They get to stand right before the throne. They get to wear the best outfits. They get to wear white robes.
White was the color you wore only to weddings and parties and the most festive occasions in the time Revelation was written. They got white robes.
They got to hold palm branches. Palm branches were a symbol of victory – if you won in the Olympics you got a palm branch as a symbol of your victory. If you were chosen for an important political office, you were given a palm branch when you were installed. The goddess of Victory, whose was nicknamed "the goddess of the palm." Her name, I'm not making this up, was Nike.
So this large crowd from every nation, group, culture, language, religion -- too many to number – get the best places, get the best outfits to wear, get to carry the symbols of greatest honor.
And who are they? They are not the 144,000 who got into heaven without suffering. They are not the ones who got into heaven by being righteous and good and by following the commandments. A relatively small group of people get into heaven that way in Revelation, and they are all Israelites. Only a few people get to heaven because they are righteous. And they don't get the best places or the best outfits or the palm branches or the Nikes.
The ones who get the best places and the white robes and palm branches are those who have come out of the great ordeal. Those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb. Those who have shared in the suffering of Christ. Those who have loved when love required sacrifice.
Revelation is about how God is ultimately in charge. Nothing happens in Revelation that does not end up redeemed. God's ways may seem mysterious to us but that is only because we can not see them from the perspective of eternity.
But – and this surprised me when I started studying Revelation again this time, Revelation is also about the trustworthiness of people. The goodness of people. The capacity of people to choose love.
At the end of history we will understand and see that there is a multitude of humanity –too many to be numbered, who have chosen the way of Christ, the way of sacrifice, the way of caring, the way of love.
Yes, there are those who choose the way of violence, the way of self-over-others, the way of ruthlessness, the way of hate, and the way of greed.
But at the end of history, from the eyes of eternity, we will understand that whether they were explicitly Christian or not, there is an uncountable, immeasurable multitude of humanity who chose the way of love, who washed their robes in the blood of Christ.
One of the reasons John has hope is because he believes that God is ultimately God and we see God's heart in the life and death of Christ. But John also has hope because there are more people in every nation, tribe, group, language, religion, ideology, political party who choose the way of love than we would ever imagine. People are better than we are tempted to think they are. People are better than we know.
It is sort of funny. At the time Revelation was written historians estimate that there were maybe 50,000 Christians. But John understands that there are an innumerable number of people who share in the same kind of self-sacrificial love that is the love of Christ. People are better than we think they are.
John believes we can trust God even when things look the bleakest, but he also believes we can trust people.
On vacation most of my reading was recreational, but I did read a fascinating new book by a young Presbyterian pastor Landon Whitsitt called Open-Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All. This book has had me puzzling about how we do church more than anything I've read for a long time.
One of his chapters is about what the church can learn from Wikipedia. Wikipedia actually evolved from another online encyclopedia called Nupedia. The idea of Nupedia was to use experts to write online encyclopedia articles. In the first year Nupedia managed to publish all of 12 articles.
Wikipedia began as a way to try to generate more content for Nupedia. The idea was that articles would begin on Wikipedia but experts would correct them and rewrite them for Nupedia.
But something happened. It has taken the experts a year to write 12 articles. In one months time Wikipedia produced a thousand articles. In eight months 10,000 articles, in 12 months 20,000 articles and in 18 months 40,000 articles.
The goal of Wikipedia is to provide every person on the planet with free access to "the sum of all human knowledge." Wikipedia has gotten a lot closer to that goal than Nupedia ever did, and the assumption behind Wikipedia is that you can trust people. There are safeguards and there are corrective methods and there is even a benevolent dictator who steps in when people become abusive. But the assumption is that we can mostly trust one another.
Landon Whitsitt asks what power could we un-lease in the church if we figured out how to do church the way Wikipedia does the encyclopedia.
John believes we can trust God and that Jesus on the cross shows us the heart of God. But he believes we can also trust people. In every nation, in every culture, in every language, in every religion, there are more people who choose the kind of love we saw in Christ than we could ever count or imagine.
Evil things happen. People do god-awful things in this world, things we can not understand unless we could see it from the perspective of heaven, but we can't let that make us forget that love – love like the love of Christ – lives in the hearts of multitudes and multitudes, more than we will ever be able to know. We will see them in heaven.
Trust God. Trust people.
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