Revelation 1 BFC 2019
Daniel 7:1-14, 12:1-4; Revelation 1:7-8,
12-15; 2:27-29
September 15, 2019
Sometimes the literalism
of religious faith creeps up on me. We
have had a hurricane that decimated life for so many in the Bahamas with the
threat of another hurricane coming. We
have had two hailstorms in the Billings area—evidenced by the number of
contractor signs appearing on lawns across town. And Kate Rosetto, one of few remaining Community
Supported Agriculture vegetable shares in the Billings area said the hail
storms destroyed her whole farm. She is
thinking of hanging up the hoe and selling.
And then the
grasshoppers. I have never seen so many
grasshoppers in the five years I have been in Billings. One day they surrounded me as I got in my car
just outside the church. I could not get
in my car without some of the bounding in the car with me. Could it be that a plague of locusts is
gathering? One stayed on my windshield
and stared at me with suspicious eyes.
Sometimes the literalism
of religious faith creeps, bounds, and stares at me. And I wonder.
Is the apocalypse upon us? Are
the prophecies in Revelation being fulfilled?
No. And yes.
No. Revelation is written to interpret the time
for a specific situation for specific faith communities.[1] How is the larger narrative of God playing
out for Christians living in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, in the First
Century, in the heart of the Roman Empire.
All seven of the cities John of Patmos, the author, addresses have
places of worship for Rome’s emperor and the protectorate goddess, Roma. Six of the seven had dedicated temples to
Rome’s empire. Five of the seven cities
had imperial altars and priests. And one
of the cities, Pergamon, was the center of Roman worship and the first in Asia
Minor to declare Caesar as the one who should be worshipped.[2]
Rome was divinely chosen
to rule the world, the center of all trade, and any threats to the ordered
peace as dictated by the goddess Roma were brutally and violently neutralized.[3]
John of Patmos looks
deep into the ancient Jewish world to try and interpret the times for his
readers and listeners. His theology
matters because lives are at stake.
People look all around
the world in Asia Minor and see nothing but Rome as god. On your daily walk to the market, Rome
rules. On your daily purchase of bread,
Rome’s Caesar appears on all the coins which declare him as son of god. If you choose to act upon your notion that
there is something other than Rome, you, your family, and your people are
violently visited with Roman law and order.
Rome is everywhere. Rome’s reach
touches everything. By their power over
others, Rome declares, “Can you not see?
God blesses us. Can you not hear? God is with us. Do you not know? We are the chosen and God is
us!” Rome inundates your Facebook
thread, dominates your Twitter feed, and overruns every nightly news show and
the monologue of every talk show host.
John of Patmos looks
back and sees the prophet Isaiah in a situation where his own nation, Judah’s
royalty, have declared that they are the blessed, they are the chosen, and that
God is with them even when they act outside the character of God. Therefore Isaiah imagines a God who is far
more distant, cannot be trapped by any plans or schemes, any machinations of
Judah’s royalty, put in a box to be used as a justification for any cruelty or
injustice they could imagine. The
prophet Isaiah says that God is not your plaything or puppet, not a
participant, has been removed from their plots and schemes, is broader and
wider and more transcendent than the small-heartedness of Judah’s rulers. Isaiah wants people to imagine God as a
deeper memory than their justified wars, rationalized wealth, and bloody
violence done to the most vulnerable.
God is a deeper memory who knows the Jewish people to be connected to
one another in neighborly justice.
John of Patmos remembers
prophets like Isaiah and asks Christians in Asia Minor to lift the veil of
everyday existence where Roman status quo parades as all-important and
ultimate. John shows them to be of
secondary importance to the call of God.
John is trying to lift the veil from contemporary actors, events, and
options, and asks us to imagine something deeper than the present reality.[4]
To oppose the beastly,
carnivorous monsters of empire, like the prophets Isaiah and Daniel before him,
John creates a transcendent heavenly entourage that is more transcendent and
resplendent than anything Rome has to offer.
He calls Rome Babylon, the great empire Isaiah and Daniel witnessed, and
he asked Christians to come out from Babylon, courageously denounce it, recognizing
that you may suffer for your public opposition to it.
As in John and Daniel
and Isaiah’s time, we are in a time when God is neatly packaged, always a god
of immanence—a domesticated god, who is on a chain, under lock and key, the god
who is always with us, forever blesses us or our people
and, therefore, god becomes us. Does God
call us out of what has been normalized and domesticated to something wider and
deeper—a common memory that might help us build true community?
Michelangelo’s “The
Creation of Adam” is one of the most well-known works of art in the Western
world. Harmonia Rosales, a
Chicago-based, Afro-Cuban painter decided to re-imagine something different. She painted God and the first human created,
reaching out to one another in connection, as both black women. God, as black woman, reaching to touch
another the first human, another black woman, in Divine love. Though Rosales’s painting attracted thousands
of likes when posted on social media, the backlash referenced the painting as “disgusting”
and a “desecration of an artistic masterpiece.”
Not unlike John of Patmos, Rosales sought to create a counter-narrative
to the normalized, domesticated narrative of what is fully human and fully divine—two
white men.[5]
Now that is just art,
but it reveals our captured imaginations—what is human and divine in public
policy, criminal justice reform, and immigration. The benevolent bearded white god reaches out
in creative power to touch the white man.
And that . . . that is everywhere.
So no, Revelation is not literally interpreting or
predicting the future. But yes,
Revelation does relate how the all-consuming worship of empire requires us to
normalize its violence so that law and order, Rome’s peace, might be served—in every
age. And John wants a deeper memory to
be served.
John is critical of those Christians who have made an
uneasy peace with the Roman Empire. In
hope that they might escape persecution and notice, Christians choose not to poke
the bear. They want to look just like
every other, every day Roman. Bleccccch!
One of the great gifts I received from a congregational
member was a framed, word art quote from Revelation which has Christ saying
about the church in Laodicea, “Would that you were hot or cold, but you are lukewarm,
so I shall spit you out.” That quote
forever reminds me that I am called out from a god who is not like me, who transcends
me, and who calls me out from my everyday lukewarmness. Or . . . grasshoppers. And they stare long and hard at me, “Mike,
were that you were hot or cold.” Yeah, I
hear ya, grasshoppers.
What John reveals is a God who will not participate in
Roman plans and schemes. John’s imagination
of a God who is resplendently removed gives Christians in Asia Minor a critical
distance from Rome—so that they may see what is truly real. It is as Wendell Berry and Henry David
Thoreau said, “The work of the critic is to locate where the poisons are dumped
and then turn back on oneself and ask: ‘What
is my place in all this? Is it possible
to live differently? And if so, how can
I begin?’”[6]
Like John, I believe we need an imagination, acts of
courage, stories, of a deeper memory so that we can gain critical distance from
the reality Rome, Voldemort, or white dictates so we do not believe that is all
there is in the world. My prayer is that
this blessed church is once again poised to live out a more transcendent vision
of a God who calls us to a New Jerusalem, to the stars of our faithful
ancestors who have gone before us, and to the Morning Star who knew and lived
out knowing that Rome and its Caesar were not god. May we, as Christ’s followers, live today as if
that were so. Join in. Engage.
Rally. Amen.
[1]
David A. DeSilva, Seeing Things John’s Way: The Rhetoric in the Book of Revelation (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), p. 14.
[3]
Ibid, pp. 38, 40, 44.
[4]
Ibid, p. 14.
[5]Vicky
V., “Artist Receives Huge Backlash,” Fem Positive, April 4, 2019.
[6]
Jedidiah Britton-Purdy, “A Shared Place:
Wendell Berry’s Lifelong Dissent,” The Nation, September 9,
2019. https://www.thenation.com/article/wendell-berry-essays-library-of-america-review/.
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