Foundry United Methodist Church

Rev. Dean Snyder, Senior Minister

“Cosmic Hope from the Strangest Book in the Bible:
Sermons on Revelation”

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Jana Meyer

Strange Hope
Revelation 1:9-20

Just when you thought it was safe to come to church, just when you thought you had made it through Lent, the financial fast, and Holy week and Easter, just when you thought you could finally relax, we bring you the Book of Revelation, the strangest book in the Bible.

The book of Revelation shakes us from complacency and wakes up our imagination with images so fantastic that someone even compared it to Harry Potter on acid.  Revelation shows rather than tells us and calls us to experience our faith in a new way, through the imagination.  Over the next weeks we will encounter different images from Revelation: golden lamp stands and seven stars, the lamb with seven eyes and a scroll, the multitude dressed in white, a woman and a dragon, a serpent who is really the Devil, a new heaven and a new earth, and the river of life flowing through the streets of the city and the tree of life for the healing of the nations....

Are you ready for this journey?  Are you ready?

So what is this book called Revelation? The more we try to understand Revelation, the more its meaning eludes us.  Multiple and contradictory interpretations and opinions exist, probably even within this sermon series, and possibly within this sermon.  It didn't matter how many books I checked out of Wesley library, as soon as I told someone that I was preaching on Revelation they would suggest another book (which most of the time I hadn't heard of) which would just make everything clear to me.

Some interpretations portray the book of Revelation as an actual prediction of the future. This is a view made popular in the Left Behind series, a fictionalized account of the events of Revelation.  Other perspectives view it as a metaphorical description of events that were happening at the time of its writing.  Liberation theologians like Pablo Richard focus on its message of hope for oppressed people seeking justice.  Kathleen Norris calls it “a poet's book...it doesn't tell, it shows, over and over again, its images unfolding...”1  I invite you to allow yourself to see what these images might show you.

Some things we can say about Revelation.  It's an apocalypse.  Apocalyptic writing was popular writing for Jews and Christians at the time of Revelation, like science fiction is for us. The word apocalypse means revelation, or unveiling. An apocalypse unveils a hidden meaning or truth about our experience or the world, often in the form of a visionary journey.  Barbara Rossing describes the experience of Scrooge in a Christmas Carol as an apocalyptic journey that reveals to him the truth about his existence and causes him to change his life.2

Revelation also self-identifies as a prophecy, which actually has a different meaning than predicting the future.  It has the same nuance as the term “prophetic leadership” in our statement of call.  Prophecy refers to how God speaks to our present.  The prophetic tradition generally involves a call to God's vision of justice and salvation, and warnings against injustice or turning away from God.3 

The book of revelation is also a letter, an epistle, just like the letters of Paul. It is a circular letter, addressed to seven churches in Asia Minor.  It was meant to be read aloud at worship, and to be passed from one church to the next.  It is not a neutral letter, but has an agenda and worldview that the author seeks to instill in its audience. Clearly, as apocalypse, prophecy, and epistle, the book of Revelation seeks to transform.

Another interesting characteristic about Revelation is that according to Eugene Peterson it has 404 verses. In those 404 verses there are 518 references to earlier scripture none of which are direct quotations.  The images from Revelation come from scripture but are recreated in a new way.4

The author of Revelation is a man named John, probably a Palestinian Jew who became Christian, exiled on the isle of Patmos, writing in the first century, during the reign of the Emperor Domitian.  During this time, the Imperial cult or emperor worship was prevalent particularly in the provinces of the seven churches.  There were tensions between rich and poor, Jews and Christians.  While it was not a time of extreme persecution, there was an expectation of impending persecution.   Antipas had been martyred in Pergamum.  Individuals and churches were facing choices whether to compromise beliefs and practices in order to avoid persecution.   Should they participate in the imperial cult for the purposes of advancement? Should they seek privilege through accommodation or risk marginalization? Practicing their faith was in tension with the dominant imperial culture.  Some chose to compromise, others refused and faced consequences.5

John writes to the Asia Minor churches as a brother who shares with them “the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance.”  He both encourages and admonishes the seven churches as they struggle with how much to conform to the norms and practices around them, whether to risk marginalization and persecution.  For the church in Ephesus, a wealthy cosmopolitan city, he commends their resistance to evildoers and false apostles but notes that they have lost their love in the process. Smyrna, a community of relatively poor believers in the midst of a wealthy city, is praised for endurance and encouraged to remain steadfast in the midst of persecution.  Pergamum, the seat of Roman administration with a temple in honor of the emperor, is both praised for holding to the faith and chastised for compromising their practice.  Thyatira, a center of commerce, has love and service but is too willing to tolerate false teachings and to compromise their practice.   Sardis has a reputation for good works but is really dead inside.  Philadelphia is reassured that although they are marginalized they will have a place.  Laodicea is chastised for being lukewarm, and for presuming to be rich when in fact they are wretched.6  I wonder how he would describe Foundry – what would he commend us for, what weaknesses would he call out?

John's task is to encourage these churches and to insist on uncompromising resistance.  He is showing them that they have to choose which side they are on, to be clear and uncompromising about their identity and call even when it costs them. He does this by showing them that they are part of something much bigger, and that in the end God's justice and love will prevail even though there may be lost battles and suffering along the way.   In this way the book of revelation brings a certainty about the future in order to transform the present.

Our text today is John's inaugural vision, which is a vision of a cosmic Christ. John sees the seven golden lamp stands which are the churches, and in the midst of the lamp stands is one like the son of man – an image from Daniel – a Christ figure with eyes like a flame of fire, feet like bronze, and a voice like the sound of many waters.  In Christ's right hand are the seven stars, and from his mouth comes the sharp two-edge sword.  This is a powerful Christ figure that comes with judgment, whose sword is in his words of truth, yet one who touches John and tells him not to be afraid because Christ has conquered death: “I am the first and the last, the living one, I was dead, and see I am alive forever and ever and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.”  In Christ's hands are the seven stars which are the angels of each of the churches.

What would this image of a powerful cosmic Christ have meant for the Asia Minor churches?  During Jesus' time, there was the tension of reconciling the humble carpenter's son who ate with sinners as the cosmic son of man referred to in Daniel.  Two generations after Pentecost, John was in exile, Rome was in charge, and the church was feeling the pressure to conform.  The excitement of Pentecost was gone in the struggles of day to day living.  This image restores the vision of a powerful cosmic and living Christ at the center of the churches, seeking to fundamentally alter their perception of their situation.7

What can we learn from this? In some ways we struggle with many of the same issues of the Asia Minor churches: how much do we accommodate our faith to the dominant cultural and even religious values?  We just went through a financial fast which gave some of us insight into how addicted we are to a culture of waste and consumption.  Where does our identity as a faith community, a Christian community fit in with the priorities of the rest of our lives?  Do our choices and actions have any meaning? How much risk do we take on for what we believe?  We don't want to be marginalized.  Sometimes we don't even want to identify with the church because of its many imperfections and weakness. We wonder whether God, the church, us really have any power to make change in this world with so many problems.  This image of a cosmic Christ at the center of the churches breaks open the limitations of our perceptions, and invites us to expand our vision. If we are open to it, Revelation offers us a strange hope.

Foundry is no stranger to strange hope.  Changing the discipline and ending homelessness are two of our 5 year goals.  I'm passionate about changing the discipline of the United Methodist Church to remove its harmful and wrong language about homosexuality.  I'm excited that our church has committed to raising $200,000 for this effort.  But I'm so glad I'm not staffing that effort. I don't have to figure out how we're going to do this.  I just have to do the same as most of you: pray and support and open my checkbook and give as much as I can.  I know some of you here today have been in this struggle for decades.  There are probably lots of times that you don't feel that passionate or hopeful, and certainly times you've had to make choices about how far to step out, what consequences to risk.  But we know that the discipline will be changed.  Not sure when but it will.  And it’s that certainty which may have been harder to have before, which informs our hope today.

I have a confession to make.  I'm not always that passionate about ending homelessness.  I sometimes look the other way when we talk about this goal.  I lie awake at night.  I feel foolish talking about ending homelessness  in this economy with all the budget issues, when the numbers of people who are forced into homelessness are actually increasing and the resources are shrinking, and there are still people sleeping on our steps.  It feels ridiculous.

And yet, I am utterly convinced that this is the right goal.  And I'm so thankful that we have a senior minister who is bold enough to cast this vision and proclaim it in our community and our denomination, no matter how foolish it seems.  And I'm thankful that we have a congregation who is willing to embrace it, people who are willing to actively work on this task, even when the way is not clear, when our efforts seem inadequate.  It's been 23 years since I started working at a drop in center for homeless women in Baltimore as a Lutheran volunteer.  It is hard for me to envision a world where people are not on the streets. Yet we know it is possible.  But we need imagination and faith and persistence to make it possible.  For this we need a very strange and very persistent hope.

There are many other areas in our lives and as a congregation that we face the challenge of sustaining strange hope.  Our first Haiti VIM team was a group of people who went to build a church and came back with a dream making a real impact there.  There are people marching in this country today on May 1 with a dream of comprehensive immigration reform and real inclusion for immigrants in our nation.  And many of us have strange hopes for our own lives, for resurrection and change and transformation and healing.

I imagine our church, Foundry, in all its imperfections, as a golden lamp stand with other churches involved in the same struggles for justice and for inclusion.  I imagine a powerful and redeeming Christ in the midst of us, at the center, touching us and telling us not to be afraid, with the angels of our church and other churches in Christ's right hand.  The act of imagination can transform our reality, our perceptions, our actions. Revelation calls us to be bold in our faith in the midst of our daily lives and to not compromise or diminish our calling as a community of faith to justice and love.  At times the struggle may seem futile, we may seem to be losing the battle, and yet this vision reveals to us that we are part of something much bigger that goes beyond our individual efforts.  Christ is much bigger.  Christ has overcome death, and is the beginning and the end, and is at the center of all we do.  It is this certainty of the victory of life over death, of inclusion over exclusion, of justice over oppression, of love over hate that inspires us today to a persistent and strange hope. AMEN.

Barbara Rossing, The Rapture Exposed, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004)
Catherine Gunsalus Gonzalez and Justo L. Gonzalez, Revelation, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997)
Bruce Metzger, Breaking the Code, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993)
Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination, (New York: Harper Colllins, 1988)
Pablo Richard, Apocalypse: A People's Commentary on the Book of Revelation, (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995)
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, The Book of Revelation: Justice and Judgment, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998)
David Barr, “Transforming the Imagination: John's Apocalypse as Story”, Lecture presented at Wright State University, January 28, 2000.

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