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
20th 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]
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.
[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.
[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.
