“It’s the end of the world as we know it… .
It’s the end of the world as we know it…
It’s the end of the world as we know it…
And I feel fine.”
More than fine, actually.
I feel hope.
I feel promise.
I am clinging to the love of God that is bursting forth alive in this world!
Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!
As we journey together through this season of Easter, we are going to wade into the elusive and strange revelation shared by John of Patmos.
United Methodist pastor and theologian, Magrey DeVega writes that this book can be used “as a guide to experiencing the resurrected life. John’s vision allows us to see the world, the church, and the Christian life in the way God envisions it: not for how it is, but for how it can be.” (A Preacher’s Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series, Vol. 2, p. 197).
The world as we know it, well, it is kind of a mess.
As we lifted up in prayer already this morning, it is a world filled with hunger, violence, oppression, death, disease, and inequality.
I can’t help but think of the opening of the seven seals in Revelation chapter 6, where four horsemen are unleashed with authority “to kill by sword, famine, disease, and the wild animals of the earth.” (6:8)
Persecution and natural disaster are close at hand (6:9-17).
We may not know where to start interpreting or unpacking the verses of these texts, but we don’t have to look far to see the realities they present in moments of crises all around us.
And you see… that is the thing about apocalyptic literature.
It is an unveiling of what is already there.
The Greek word apokaluptein literally means to uncover.
It means to pull back the curtains and let the light in.
It is not necessarily a prediction of the future.
The prophets of our Old and New Testaments spoke God’s truth and power into their time and place as they point to God’s intentions and will for our lives.
It is also a word from the one who is… and who was… and who is coming…
In that sense, they do point towards the future and the kind of actions and behaviors God is calling us to embody as we are formed into God’s people, made into a kingdom, set apart to serve.
The prophets tell us the truth about the world as it is and beckon us to leave it behind…
No, not just that… they promise us that God is in the business of transforming the world as we know it into a new reality, a new creation, a new life centered on God.
Sounds like an Easter kind of story to me.
So why all the strange images and numbers and blood and violence?
What are we supposed to do with all of the weird stuff that we find within the Book of Revelation?
I must confess that our series on Sunday mornings is not going to dive into all of the nitty gritty of every verse and metaphor and vision.
We will skip large sections of this book.
And part of the reason for that is that it would probably take us a couple of years to really take the time in worship to do this right.
But the other reason is that we don’t need all of the details about what this beast looks like or what is in the fourth bowl or what happens when the fourth trumpet sounds to understand the main point of the text.
As the authors of “Crazy Talk” describe it: “No matter how bad it gets, Christ has already emerged victorious and because you are joined in the body of Christ, you will emerge victorious as well.” (Crazy Talk: A Not-So-Stuffy Dictionary of Biblical Terms)
What I can do are give you some tools to help think about and interpret the things that we will encounter as we read this text.
The first tool that I want to give us is a key to decipher the meaning of the weird stuff that we find.
I want you to think of it like a political cartoon.
In newspapers today, you’ll find images of donkeys and elephants and those of us living in the United States today can understand that it is not about animals, but about people and positions.
Take for example this political cartoon from World War II.
It isn’t a literal depiction of a baby fighting a three headed giant… but depicts the U.S. as newly entering the war against the Axis powers, using the tools of our allies. We are familiar enough with the images and dates that we can interpret the meaning.
But if we were looking at a political cartoon from 100 years ago… or from Nigeria or New Zealand… we might have a harder time deciphering the meaning.
Philip Long writes that when we look at texts like Revelation, “we need to cross two different boundaries. We need to study the imagery in the proper time and in the proper culture… put it in the right era…. [and] know the cultural cues implied by the art.” (https://readingacts.com/2012/04/05/revelation-and-apocalyptic-imagery/)
Knowing that the book of Revelation is from the late first century, written on a Greek island in a time where Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire, we can start to unpack and interpret some of the vivid and dramatic imagery that we find.
Numbers, for example, have meaning.
The number seven represents completion or totality… the sum of all of the heavens (3) and earth (4)… like the seven days of creation
Twelve represents God’s people… three times four… like the twelve tribes of Israel or the twelve apostles.
We can start to see the beasts as the empire of Rome and its allies and the throne is about where power ultimately resides.
The second tool I want to give you is an orientation in time.
I brought with me this morning a commentary on the book of Revelation that lays out at least four different ways that you can approach this text and then provides at least four different interpretations of a verse based on which approach you are taking.
How many of us here have read “The Late Great Planet Earth” or the “Left Behind” series?
Those authors and some preachers that you might have heard on the t.v. or radio, have a future orientation to the Book of Revelation. They believe that it predicts things that will happen, but haven’t yet.
Or maybe that are happening as we speak.
But just as I wouldn’t take that political cartoon from WWII and use the metaphorical imagery to speak of future events, I don’t think this is the orientation we should take towards Revelation.
It might sell, but I’m not sure that it is truly faithful to the text.
And neither do the leading people who study the Book of Revelation.
In his book “Making Sense of the Bible”, Adam Hamilton writes:
“I’ve got ten commentaries on Revelation in my library, written by some of the foremost scholars to study this book, and every one of them holds some combination of the preterist and idealist perspectives. This is in stark contrast to the views of most television evangelists and many conservative preachers, who favor the futurist view. Most mainline scholars see the book as describing events of the author’s day.” (p.285).
Now, he just threw some big words at us, but the “spiritual” or “idealist” view thinks that the book is timeless… that it uses metaphor to talk about how good and evil constantly battle in this world with the promise that God will ultimately win.
The “preterist” view is oriented towards our past and John of Patmos’s present.
John isn’t reading tea leaves or telling the future, he is describing events that are happening as he is writing and speaking about how God is present in the midst of it.
Many scholars hold those two in tension.
They look back to what was happening in the time of John of Patmos… apocalyptic literature after all is about revealing what is there… but believe we can apply the themes of the text to the struggle between God and the powers of the world we experience and remembering that God will ultimately prevail.
This orientation is probably the most helpful to us today as we try to figure out what to do with this strange writing.
Finally, I want to remind you to keep the main thing the main thing.
The text we began with this morning from Revelation is a sort of overview or introduction to the themes that we will discover within the book.
John of Patmos has received a word, a revelation, from Jesus Christ the slaughtered and risen Lamb and is sharing it with the world.
The message is simple: Jesus is coming and he will sit on the throne and the world and all its powers will not.
Our work is to allow God to make us into a kingdom, to serve as priests, and give God praise.
That’s it.
Those are the basics of this entire book and it is the lens we can use to make sense of every verse we read.
The locusts and plagues and persecution… the worst things will never be the last thing.
And we have a choice about whether we will serve God and worship God or if we will choose to throw our lot in with the powers of this world that bring nothing but disaster and death.
And friends, we know the end of the story!
We know how it turns out!
God wins!
Friends, this is a book of hope and love and life!
These aren’t meant to be texts of terror or designed to confuse or scare us.
As Nadia Bolz-Weber writes,
“originally… apocalyptic literature —the kind that was popular around the time of Jesus—existed not to scare the bejeezus out of children so they would be good boys and girls, but to proclaim a big, hope-filled idea: that dominant powers are not ultimate powers. Empires fall. Tyrants fade. Systems die. God is still around.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/03/14/were-in-the-midst-of-an-apocalypse-and-thats-a-good-thing/
The world as we know it… with all its trials and tribulations… is coming to an end, and we are fine.
More than that… we have hope because it is all in God’s hands.