Sermon, Fifth Sunday of Easter, "Friends and Followers"

 C Easter 5 Pilg 2022

Revelation 13:11-18; 18:1-4,9,11; 21:1-6

May 15, 2022

 

           Two treasured terms within the history of Christianity are “friendship” and “followers.”  Friendship with God is well-illustrated in the Sayings of the Fathers of the Egyptian desert.  Fourth-Century Gregory of Nyssa (following his brother, Basil) and the 5^th Century Theodoret of Cyrrhus described friendship with God as the goal of growth in the Christian life.[1] 

           And Jesus begins his public ministry by calling his would-be disciples to “Follow me.”  Become my followers. 

           Now this gives me pause when I realize how active I am on social media.  Facebook’s primary category is “friends.”  Twitter invites you to become “followers.” 

           On Facebook, friends are people who are willing to observe your preaching, excuse me, your one to two sentence observations or descriptions of your ongoing life, humor, or mood.  Friends are allowed to comment, offer suggestions, or to thank you for sharing scenes from your recent vacation.  When my wife and my mother-in-law took a recent spring trip to Belgium and Holland, I got to see all the great times they were having without me, while I was sitting on my couch . . . in Sawyer.  No . . . really . . . that’s ok. (tearing up)  I’ll be fine. 

           I have 668 friends on Facebook.  Pretty sweet, huh?  My son, Abraham, has way more friends than I do without even trying.  I know of people who brag about having over 1000 friends.  But 668 is pretty good, right?  To have that many friends?  Except . . . those people I have listed . . . they’re not really “friend” friends.  I am neither that popular nor that loving.  I’m not sure I even know or have met some of the people who are my Facebook friends.

           And Twitter, Twitter is even worse!  It is great to have friends, even better to have a following!  I spend too many days hoping a Facebook friend will like my post.  I went over the moon when one of my favorite authors liked my post!  And then shared it!  And Anna Lappé, one of my favorite writers and leaders, now follows me on Twitter.  Life is complete!

           Facebook and Twitter have totally re-defined what it means to have a friend and a following.  It is the nature of cultural systems we give our allegiance to, cooperate with, or participate in, that those systems sometimes end up defining, using, and caging us more than we define, use, and contain the time we spend with them.  So much so, that Tik-Tok even has videos they throw in to say to you, “Yeah, you really should go to bed.  Stop watching so many videos.”  I’m caught.  I’m addicted.  I’m no longer free. 

           Several years ago I gave up social media for Lent because I knew I was caught, addicted, and needed to extricate myself from the unhealthy ways social media was defining me.  Ugh, it was rough.  And it reminded me how much social media is a metaphor for wider commitments and loyalties.

           On a national global scale, the book of Revelation is about a “freedom from” the Roman imperial project to have “freedom for” the things of God.  In effect saying, you cannot call yourself a friend of Rom and consider yourself a friend of Rome. 

           The book of Revelation is a reminder that the New Testament is based on the pose, poetry, and images of Hebrew Scripture.  Revelation is a book that is thoroughly Jewish in content.  In Revelation, the strong use of numerology, visions, and values all have Jewish sensibilities—particularly the critique of empire.

           Remember that the birth story of the Jewish people, the Exodus, is a critique of the Egyptian Empire.  Even when Israel rises as the most power imperial power in the ancient near East, prophets are afoot to ask David if Israel is really any different than Egypt was, or any different than any other empire. 

           One by one ten, the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Syrian, and Roman Empires marched through what the Children of Israel believed to be the promised land and claimed it as their own.  Each of these empires also required some form of tribute, an allegiance that often demanded some form of religious, political, and economic fidelity to their gods, with the king, emperor, or pharaoh often making divine claims—Daniel in the lion’s den, or with Bel and the Dragon, Shadrach, Meschack, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, Esther presenting herself to the king at the threat of death, Mordecai refusing to take a knee to the local lord, the Maccabees refusing to ordain the sacrifice of a pig in the Temple.  All these Biblical heroes and heroines had to determine how to balance loyalty to the empire versus loyalty to their God, their faith, and their people.  Just in sharing these stories, we know there were so many others who were faithful that did not escape, persecution, torture, and death. 

           As a result, in Jewish storytelling, allegiance to, cooperation with, and participation in the religion, economics, or politices of empire became the definition of evil.  Jewish heroes like Joseph or Daniel or Esther may have ascended to high rank and position within the empire, but eventually their faith practice or the plight of their people would run counter to imperial edict.  The listed Scriptural stories were about how a faithful Jew, outed by their loyalties, their friendships, their followings, their spiritual practice, navigated faithfulness.  Even the apostle Paul would use his Roman citizenship to make his way in the world but often found himself in conflict, turmoil, and prison for his faithfulness.

           In this Jewish storytelling, Babylon became the iconic empire, the seat of all evil.  In critiquing empire, Jewish writers used Babylon to remember that empire regularly conquered with violence, war, and death.  Blood covered the earth.  Empire also led to regular practices of economic injustice.  Real, physical hunger was ignored.  The poor were cheated of their subsistence so that the rich could regularly fill themselves with lavish fare.  Finally, one of the signposts of imperial sin was ecological devastation.  The earth hemorrhaged. Mother Earth, as a living, spiritual being, began to wheel out of control in chaos.  Famines, disease, and catastrophic shortages became more commonplace.[2]

           To convey just how terrifying and ghastly these imperial practices were, Jewish storytellers created monstrous beasts with multiple heads, long teeth, and insatiable appetites.[3]  These monsters salted the land, burned the cities, killed or enslaved the men, raped the women, and turned paradise into desert.

           The book of Revelation is very specific in naming kings, military generals, and merchants as the enforcers of this living death.  Only a certain “marked” people can participate in the wealth such a system generates.  If a people is unwilling to play by the rules of the system, that people will be slaughtered at worst, excluded from the imperial wealth at best.  This Domination System ensured the participation of the masses through deception, brute force, and charity.  The rule is, however, that all must participate and comply.  Or die.  (Revelation 13:14, 16-17)

           The classic Jewish drama plays out in Revelation.  When allegiance or complicity is demanded which conflicts with allegiance to the Living God, how has a faithful Jew responded through the ages?  To whom do they give friendship?  To whom do they give following or loyalty?

           Remember that the Biblical definition for purity is to “will one thing.”  That is a prophetic statement which suggests that God unseats all other idols, priorities, or values.  The exiled author of Revelation, John of Patmos, advocates a fasting from the machinations of the Roman Empire.  The angel in Revelation 18 tells the faithful, “Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins, and so that you do not share in her plagues.”

           As Jewish storytellers and prophets had declared for centuries, the correct response to impire was an unwillingness to provide allegiance for, cooperation with, or a participation in the imperial religious, political, or economic systems. 

           Exiled by Rome on the isle of Patmos, John made it clear that to choose for the Domination System, to choose for empire, meant lack of freedom or enslavement. Chapter 18 reads, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great.  She has become a haunt for demons.  She is a cage for every unclean spirit, a cage for every unclean bird, a cage for every unclean and disgusting beast.” 

           John urged the people to show their freedom through their unwillingness to show allegiance to, cooperate with, or participate in the Domination System.  For it is tempting to use the system to gain what little profit one can, when it appears to be your only source of life on the horizon.  Fast from the system of death, John encourages. 

           This fasting, or freedom from empire, allowed the faithful Jew to be free for the things of God.  Though it should be remembered that John’s vision is graphic about what your fasting from empire might cost you.  The cost of discipleship might mean your life.

           But, sisters and brothers, sibling and cousins, God’s purposes are being worked out.  And the future . . . ah, the future is so bright we have to wear shades.  John’s vision, part of it in Revelation 21, is borrowed from the Babylonian Exile prophet Exile prophet Ezekiel who believes the first order of joining hands with God is a friendship in solidarity that will lead to the creation of a new heaven and a new earth.  And the heaven and earth will be filled with the presence of God.  Caesar will be unseated and God will take the throne—with a whole set of other values. 

           War and sorrow are no more.  The land and creation are restored.  Rural and urban settings live in harmony.  The water will not be poisoned with lead

or despoiled with blood.  Rather, the river running from the throne will be crystal clear.

           Would that some evangelical, fundamentalist, or even mainline preacher study Revelation enough to notice that critique.  Can you imagine someone at one of these highly-advertised Revelation seminars preaching that the end of the world is coming because we have not headed off empires appetite for conquering through war, economic justice, and ecological devastation?

           The “freedom for” to “freedom for” found in Revelation must seem miles away from the simple fasting I did from social media one Lent.  But that fasting had me wondering how available I am for my faith and family when I spend too much time fretting over whether I should join the Wordle craze.  Do I use Facebook and Twitter for enjoyment or do they use me, manipulate me, define my world, tell me who are my friends?  Do I use my cell phone, my podcasts, or my Roku TV to entertain me, or does my cell phone (oh, I’d better check that email), my podcasts (do I have an Illini podcast cued up for my free time), or do the many Roku TV apps (will I have to join Hulu to watch that show?), do they all dictate my life?  Is my identity defined by the kings, military officers, and merchants of the world?  Or am I free enough to claim my faithful identity as a Child of God?  How do I claim the good I want to do?  Who am I friend to?  Who am I follower of?

           Even more gut-wrentching . . .

As a community, as a nation, how do we resist or fast from those practices of empire which are all about systems or cultures of conquering, and war, and economic injustice, and ecological catastrophe?  Do these systems and cultures define us and the wants, desires, and practices we have in the world?  Or are we able to, as John describes in Revelation, step out from them to define their role in our lives?  How do we claim our faithful identity as the Children of God?  As the Body of Christ?  How do we claim the good we want to do?

           God’s purposes are being worked out.  Though it might not be apparent, God is acting as a source of life, an underground spring that we may not believe war, economic injustice, and ecological catastrophe are the only ways we might live in the world.  May we choose the freedom for a place where war and sorrow are no more, where rural and urban settings live in harmony, heaven and earth are filled with the presence of God, and the river flows crystal clear from God’s throne.  May we have the courage to walk faithfully toward that vision.  Amen. 

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[1] Roberta Bondi, “Prayer in Friendship with God,” Christian Century, January 29, 1997.

[2] See David J. Hawkin, “Globalization, Empire, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Churchman 118 (2004), pp. 317-324.

[3] Heather Macumber, “A Monster without a Name:  Creating the Beast Known as Antiochus IV in Daniel 7,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures Vol. 15, Article 9, DOI:1055.08/jhs.2015.v.15.a9.

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, "The Four Horsemen," September 22, 2019

C Revelation 2 BFC 2019

Revelation 6:1-8

September 22, 2019

          It is that time of year again!  It is the time of year when I go through the seasonal ritual of dashed hopes and impossible dreams of the University of Illinois college football team going through the season undefeated . . . Ok, maybe to a bowl game?  Or playing .500 ball?  Maybe winning one or two Big Ten games?  How about just beating the lowly Eastern Michigan Eagles?  Or hold Nebraska under 700 total yards?  No.  Drat.  The dollars and pageantry poured into college football recognize a long history of mythology created to make it a nation-wide phenomenon. 

Early 20^th Century sportswriter, Grantland Rice, had a way of writing which elevated sports to something beyond the everyday, ordinary, and mundane.  In the 1920s, Grantland Rice wrote about the Notre Dame backfield, under famed coach Knute Rockne, as the four horsemen of the apocalypse.  Today they sound like your State Farm insurance agent:  Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden.[1]  Most of these guys weighed less than 160 pounds.  I may not be as fast as these guys, but I bet I could still take Elmer Layden? dowwwwwwn!  Four horsemen!?  Pfffft.

          That is the purpose of mythological, particularly apocalyptic, storytelling.  Whether Grantland Rice or John of Patmos in the book of Revelation, use of the apocalyptic is to elevate the stakes, make something bigger than life so that we recognize deeper meaning or something more than the everyday, ordinary, or mundane.  For John of Patmos, it was about helping Christians of his day see a crisis unfolding such that they would move to non-cooperation with the Roman Empire, to speak out in a way that might very well create suffering for them, and to recognize that they were part of a long line of faithful ancestors who would work to bring God’s shalom to all of creation. 

Throughout history, those who espouse hate and violence to the most vulnerable have done so in a way that de-humanizes or belittles, calling them “rats or cockroaches”, “animals or savages”, “murders or rapists” and continues the imagery by herding people into cattle cars, boarding schools, or detention centers.  In so doing, we deny our connection and justify our humanity by declaring some as less than human. 

Lisa and I remarked about the three people who made incredible statements on Facebook about the immigration and refugee forum being offered this Friday.  One even carried her objection over to Lisa’s weekly offering of communi-tea with Lisa responding in such a beautiful and elegant way that no response followed.  I was less charitable.  When another person asked what I was doing about the persecution of Christians in China, I tried to be kind in my first go-round, but after being accused of carrying a political football, I responded by saying, “It sounds like you don’t care about the persecution of Christians at our border?”  Yeah, I don’t think it occurred to them that the people at the border might have a faith.  Take that.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it.  Triple snap. 

(scolding myself) You are a pastor, Mike.  A pastor.  Deep breathing.

What Jewish and Christian writers have historically done in response to unjust and dehumanizing words and actions aimed at vulnerable populations is to help the faithful see the principalities and powers, the systems and structures as the true monsters, hybrid wild beasts, animals with excesses in things like teeth (representing appetite) or horns (representing power).[2]  John has these mythological figures doing horrifically graphic things, like drinking the blood of the martyrs, so that the faithful do not accommodate to or get used to their everyday, ordinary, and mundane violence.  If the images John uses scare us or cause revulsion, John might say, “Yeah, you get it then!  Wake up!  Don’t try to pretend this anything less than horrifying!”

The root of the word “monster” is “a sign, to show, or to warn.”  And John is revealing these terrible monsters as a way of warning the faithful of the ordinary violence, regularly perpetrated by the conquering empire.  Don’t be co-opted, don’t accommodate, don’t cooperate, don’t pretend their sly and subtle invitations to be like them or to aspire to be them are innocuous or without the destruction of others.

John conveys that there is something deeper than the everyday, ordinary, and mundane world you experience, something more real.  As it is with the four seals in Revelation that are opened, opened as if to give entrance to the soul[3], the cosmic order broken open to the chaos that now ensues.  The first rider that emerges with the breaking open of the first seal is conquering Rome in all of its imperial glory on a white horse.   White is symbolic of victory and that was a primary mission statement of Roman imperialism: “Peace through military victory.  The Roman mantra was “RELIGION, WAR, VICTORY, PEACE.”[4]  Rome conquers and conquers and conquers ever more.[5]

Just to emphasize, when the second seal is opened, the chaos emerging is a bright red horse.  On that horse is a rider who comes with a sword to take peace from the earth so that the people would slaughter one another.  This is a countercultural statement over and against Rome’s claim that it brought peace to the earth.  “(F)rom the point of view of those who were exploited by the Empire and opposed it, this was not real peace.  It was an imposed peace.”[6]  All of this is to emphasize Jewish thought, story, mythology, and values.  Violence is the original sin.  Rome is rife with it.  John’s monsters are calling forward not only chaos but unmasking and revealing Rome as run through with this sin.  John is interpreting a narrative to charge Christians in Asia Minor with a necessary spiritual exodus from Roman cooperation and accommodation. 

The third seal is opened and coming forth is the black horse, black a symbol of economic misfortune.  The rider of the black horse, holding scales in his hands, makes us aware that this is about economic injustice.  There is a severe shortage of the staples, the essential food, the wheat and barley.  But the luxury items like olive oil and wine, now those are protected.  “Do not damage the olive oil and wine!” it is declared.  The monstrous, inhuman, and violent are shot through all representations. 

Finally, the fourth seal is opened and the fourth horse is called forth.  Death and Hades come with them and the horse is a pale green color.  They are given authority of one-quarter of the earth to kill with the sword, famine, pestilence, and by the wild animals—all signs that the earth has been overrun. The Greek word used to describe the color of this horse is also the one used for grass and other vegetation.[7]  The ever-more conquering in war, the widespread violence against the vulnerable, and the economic exploitation leads to ecological catastrophe, death and hell now loosed upon the earth.   The fourth horse and rider are pictured as ecological devastation. 

All seems graphically and tragically hopeless, right?  Revelation is filled with such gross images, vivid bloodletting, and horrific mythology that we would want to turn our head away.  For many of us living in middle class America, we would rather that the decision had been that Revelation not be included in the Bible.  But I am reminded of a quote I repeat over and over again to explain the Bible from English author, G.K. Chesterton, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”[8]  

John wants his readers and listeners to know that evil is real, results in real consequences for the earth and all of its inhabitants, particularly the most vulnerable.  John is pleading with the faithful not to go along just to get along, only to avoid their own persecution.  Do not harbor evil because you are safe.  Do not participate in it.  Do not collaborate, conspire, or contribute to it.  Do not partner with that evil which defined unfaithfulness from the very beginning of the Jewish.  John the prophet knows it leads to ruin, and is not in keeping with God and Christ.  Evil is real and evil abounds.

I will admit that Revelation frightens the heck out of me because I wonder how much I have collaborated, conspired, and contributed to the war, violence, economic exploitation, and ecological catastrophe which seems to be the death march my country is on regardless of party. 

I think Creator could care a whit about my prolific Facebook sparring ability.  If there is a God, if there is a deeper story, I know my commitment to the care and relationship with our earth does not compare with the historical resistance of Native and indigenous peoples, does not hold a candle to the 16 year-old Swedish activist, Greta Thurnberg, who asks, matter-of-factly, why she would go to school on Fridays, instead of protesting, when the adults won’t listen to the science taught at school, when present policies and practices leave her no hope for the future. 

We would all like to believe we are not collaborators with evil.  That kind of self-inventory sounds like too much of old-time religion.  But Wendell Berry, the poet-farmer from Kentucky, asks me tough questions.  He writes:

How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy

In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.^[9]

          Those are hard questions—not questions I want to answer.  I might have to change my life!  Not unlike John of Patmos, Wendell Berry wants me to wake up and calls me to a deeper faithfulness.  Like a questionnaire on a job application, Berry unmasks my everyday, ordinary, and mundane cooperation with evil.  But . . . it is too much.  Take Revelation out of the Bible and Berry away from me.

          All this next week, Montana Interfaith Network and Billings Sanctuary Rising and the leadership of this congregation have events which offer us an opportunity to live more faithfully and to come out to be part of movements that say we will resist the four horsemen and their plans for war, violence, economic exploitation, and ecological catastrophe.  As people of faith, we are not promised ease but we are promised deep meaning.  Evil is real and evil abounds.  But the book of Revelation reminds us that dragons . . . and the four horsemen . . . can be beaten. 

          God is at work . . . deeper . . . from underneath.  Let us join Creator and collaborate in the coming of the saints, our beautiful ancestors, who have stitched and woven together a world which is waiting for us, a city that requires us to be awake with eyes to see it.   Amen. 

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[1] Grantland Rice,”The Four Horsemen,” Sports Illustrated, October 31, 1955.

[2] Heather MaCumber, “A Monster Without a Name:  Creating the Beast Known As Antiochus IV in Daniel 7,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.  Volume 15, Article 9 DOI:10.5508/jhs.2015.v15.a9, pp. 2-5.  In his book, Philosophy of Horror, Noel Carroll shared the characteristics of the hybrid monster we see in Dracula or Frankenstein:  1) Must be a dangerous or threatening entity to one’s person or society at large; 2) Impure beings crossing normative categories by fusing disparate characteristics (zombie-living and dead; werewolf-human and animal) 3) Originate on the periphery of society or known world and considered other or alien to the society they infiltrate. 4) Emotions aroused by audience create fear in community with hope that restoration of cosmic order will be restored.

[3] “455: ἀνοίγω,” Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, https://biblehub.com/greek/455.htm. 

[4] John Dominic Crossan, “Peace through victory,” The Challenge of Jesus, https://faithandreason.org/images/uploads/COJ_Participants.pdf. 

[5] One of Richard Horsley’s critiques of early Christianity is that Christianity borrows the language of empire to critique empire.  So when we sing at Easter, “Thine is the glory, ever-conquering Son!” we impute the values of Rome to Jesus and pave the way for Christendom’s ever-conquering empire. 

[6] David J. Hawkin, “Globalization, the American Empire, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Churchman, Winter 2014, pp. 320-321.

[7] David E. Aune, (Word Biblical Commentary) Vol. 52b: Revelation 6-16 (Dallas, Texas: Word Book Publishers, 1998), p. 400.

[8] GK Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles (London:  Pantiano’s Classics, 1909)

[9] Wendell Berry, “Questionaire,” Leavings (Berkley, CA:  2010), p. 14.