|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Acts 9:36-43 |
Psalm 23 |
Revelation 7:9–17 |
John 10:22–30 |
Often poetry and dance is the door to greater truth. It is a gift to all future generations that the Biblical story of Jesus’ followers after the resurrection is far more poetic testimonies of the power of the risen lord, than a strict chronological history.
The book of Revelation is poetic drama meant to support and encourage people of faith, especially in times when the immediate future does not seem to hold any hope. It is a book of symbols and visions that makes sense beyond the current senseless world. The multitudes that have come out of great tribulation, are those persecuted in the first century under the crazed roman emperor Nero, as much as they are those today suffering under genocide .in Dafur. Revelation is meant to expand our mind to a universal and timeless view of God’s salvation.
My great uncle lived as a bachelor in the large family house he grew up in. The furniture was high Victorian, of massive dark oak and heavy mahogany. One of my fond childhood memories was getting his permission to explore his attic. It was full of trunks, castoffs, and the simpler country bedroom furniture of the maid or cook. The faded peeling wallpaper, yellow cracked window shades, and mattresses not used for decades held the musty odor of ghosts who had not yet vacated the premises. for a happier place. In a corner of one room, neatly tied up in bundles, were volumes of old National Geographic magazines, dating from the early 1900’s. I was fascinated with them, and I was allowed to take a dozen home with me every time I visited. It was the advertisements that intrigued me. Ads for brands of cars that had long since disappeared from the road, claw feet bathtubs and fixtures that in 1908 were the latest fashion. and other pictures into a world that seemed strange and exotic. People really lived this way, I would exclaim.
In some sense, every time I read the book of Revelation, it is like going up into that attic again, and opening a dresser drawer, smelling of dust and mothballs. The language is obsolete. The expressions seem strange, but like exploring a real attic, if you keep probing, and are willing to put up with the dust and even some mouse droppings, you may rediscover a wonderful treasure and wonder why was it ever put away and forgotten. Even what seems at first to be scary, can turn out to be pretty benevolent after all.
I wonder if the author, who first compiled the Book of Revelation, didn't do more than a little attic rummaging, too, for people of that time knew that the symbols and language of their larger culture were precipitously losing their meaning. They had to go outside their immediate situation and everyday language to find different vessels. They had to search for something that would contain for them and communicate to their descendants, the Good News. So they stretched into other times and shaped the images that conveyed the hope of the Gospel.
These Christians were not nomadic tribes, but were established somewhere within the larger Roman Empire. They couldn't run away from the threat of persecution, and they knew of no force on the horizon that promised deliverance. Yet they took the image of the lamb, an ancient symbol of nomadic life, redefined it to reflect the living Christ, and fashioned a great drama. Bowls, trumpets, and lamp stands were some of the props. The elders and creatures made up the choruses.
These Christians, somewhere in Asia Minor, refused to let their own troubled time trivialize their values or be forced to make their life simply conform to the cynicism of the world. Their world was in a hopeless situation and their church was in dire straits, but they knew that God had not given up on either. Rather than denying history, they went beyond it.
Like treasures in an attic, Revelation has plenty of things we can't explain or understand what use they originally had. That's o.k. for while we might not know what all the symbols meant, they may in some way, come in very handy to us today, always reminding us that life is much deeper than simply what we have in hand. Unfamiliar artifacts of a century ago, keep the present in perspective. Yes, we can tell our children, people really did live this way, they devised clever gadgets, and they prospered, laughed and dreamed dreams, the same as us. The imagery of Revelation tells us that people under persecution in a situation without precedent, retained hope and that they passed their legacy of experience of keeping faith on to a world they could not even imagine in their most whimsical fancy.
The Book of Revelation is not for the timid or those who want their church to treat them as consumers, meeting all their needs. Revelation appears odd and eccentric in a consumer society. for it challenges us to reinterpret, to adapt, and to stretch in different directions. It is such re-discovery and re-use that offers balance, that nourishes the roots of people of faith, that gives us the courage to create new language and, with confidence, to journey forward. By its ancient and oftentimes peculiar witness, Revelation continually reminds the church to groom disciples for generations, rather than breed satisfied and complacent consumers for the present.
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
