The Unholy Trinity

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Revelation 12-14

I don’t want to say too much as far as a preramble because we have yet another long passage.  But to set the context, one of the reasons, if not the main reason, John wrote the Revelation was to encourage early Christians to remain faithful to Jesus in the face of persecution that for all shapes and purposes appeared politically motivated.  Calling Jesus “Lord and Saviour” and refusing to worship or offer incense at Imperial Cult temples on civic occasions at a time when the Roman Emperor was demanding to be worshipped made early Christians appear treasonous and they suffered for it.  There are questions that those suffering for their loyalty to Jesus would ask.  

The main driving question showed up in Revelation 6: “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood upon the inhabitants of the earth.”  With respect to the question of how long, the answer was a little while longer until the number of martyrs is complete.  To illustrate that answer, John was shown a countless multitude of white-robed worshippers in heaven who had come through this great ordeal.  Judging by the uncountable number, that’s going to be a long little while.  Apparently, God wants as many people as possible to turn to him in faith which requires the Gospel to go out into the world and unfortunately those who proclaim it will suffer and sometimes even die for their loyalty to Jesus.  

The last sermon involved a vision of angels blowing trumpets resulting in a third of everything on earth and in the skies being destroyed.  The message was that God could take the tough guy route and destroy a third of everything and still the inhabitants of the earth surprisingly would not turn to him.  Thus, God is choosing the route of proclaiming the Gospel throughout the world by means of Jesus' followers and their fellowships of unconditional love and that will yield a better outcome. 

This week we’re looking at the question of who or what is the behind-the-scenes reality driving humanity away from God and persecuting/killing those who bring the Truth.  The short answer is Satan by means of Empire undergirded by False Religion.

 

Unfortunately, we don’t really have time to unpack all the symbolism or coded images here so forgive me for being brief.  Chapter 12 begins with an obvious reference to the birth of Jesus and as Matthew’s Gospel recounts. King Herod of the Jews wanted him dead and killed all the male children around Bethlehem born around the time that Jesus was born.  This political and religious opposition to Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, continued throughout his life in the form of opposition from the religious authorities until finally he was crucified by the Romans at the behest of the Jewish authorities on trumped up charges of blasphemy (claiming to be the Son of God) and treason (claiming to be Lord).  Both of these charges stood in the face of what Caesar claimed himself to be – Son of Zeus and Lord of all the world.  Finally, God raised Jesus from the dead.  Interestingly, there was also an urban myth that circulated about Emperor Nero after he died that he had been raised from the dead.  That’s what all that talk about the first beast being raised from dead was about.

As evidenced in the Book of Acts, what happened to Jesus was the pattern of persecution that affected early Christians.  Sometimes it looked like bigotry and at other times like systematic ICE raids or Kristallnacht.  Throughout the Roman Empire in the early church, the followers of Jesus were often accused by Pagan and Jewish religious authorities for blasphemy and treason for claiming Jesus was the Son of God and Lord of all (Pantokrator).  They would lose their trade jobs and businesses, were forced out of town, were stoned, and publicly whipped.  Some had to fight wild beasts and gladiators in the coliseums as public entertainment.  Some were themselves crucified, skinned alive, or burned to death. 

To explain why this is to early Christians suffering for their loyalty to Jesus, John gives a behind-the-scenes explanation that goes beyond saying, “Power corrupts and ultimate power corrupts ultimately”; though that is certainly the case.  He says Satan is behind it all, the Red Dragon.  In the biblical worldview there is a personal unseen force in God’s very good Creation that is violently opposed to God and seeks to destroy God’s good works, particularly humanity.  

Satan’s means for destroying what God is up to in, through, and as Jesus Christ is to persecute those who follow Jesus.  The fullness of Satan’s plan is simply to destroy all of human community through the vehicle of Empire.  To do this he raises up two beasts, one from the sea who is blatantly an Emperor-type leader who controls everything particularly by pulling economic strings and demands singular loyalty (worship).  One cannot buy or sell without having received his brand.  

Satan then causes a second beast to come up from the land that forces everyone to worship the first beast.  This beast represented the Imperial Cult.  Refusing to worship the Emperor at the Temples that the emperors built all over the empire was likely the test for whether or not a Christian would be sentenced to fight beasts and gladiators for public entertainment in coliseums or worse.  So, to sum up thus far, Satan’s means of destroying human community made in God’s image and the vehicle through which God is trying to restore his image to human community – Jesus and his followers – is the populist authoritarianism that is endemic to Empire and Emperor undergirded by civil religion - the idolatrous worship of those who are ultimately corrupted by wielding the power of the State.  

The warning of chapter 14 is quite clear.  When this Emperor/Empire worship stuff comes to a head, those who buy into it are going to drink the wine of the grapes of God’s wrath.  Babylon/Rome/any Empire will in God’s time fall.  Therefore, it is a time for patient endurance on the part of God’s people.  It is time to abide by God’s commandments and loyalty to Jesus at all costs.

All that said, these are interesting times that we are living in.  I don’t know about you folks, but I can’t help but think and feel that these three chapters of the Book of Revelation are particularly relevant at this moment in history.  Speaking as an American serving as a Presbyterian minister in Canada, I realize that what I’m about to say might be lacking in appropriateness and I apologize.  That said, I am astonished at what I see happening in the US.  My comments need to be brief as we’re having communion today.  Perhaps that’s fortuitous.  

True power looks like the Jesus revealed in this meal – the giving of oneself in unconditional love so that others may live.  Granted, there is yet to be a government on earth that follows this way without some form of corruption.  Still, when tax dollars go to feed, heal, educate, house, clothe, protect, and employ the most vulnerable among us – well, that’s a good start.  But when a nation suddenly stops doing such things and, in the end, it is simply part of a larger effort to make the very wealthy wealthier at the expense of everybody else, particularly the most vulnerable, well something else is at play.  By their fruits you will know them.  Good trees bear good fruit and bad trees, bad.  Moreover, the fact that the current President and majority party in government in the US could not have been elected without the strong, unquestioning support of a certain element of the Christian faith is also telling.  Something else is at play.

The lesson coming from the Book of Revelation today is pretty straight forward – whenever there is a political leader who comes grasping at and attempting to wield ultimate power, demanding absolute loyalty, and claiming to have the backing of an almighty God and this leader/ship is backed by religious groups that for all shapes and purposes worship it…it is entirely possible and likely that it’s the dragon and his two beasts who are at play.  Jesus said, “Beware that no one leads you astray.  Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead man astray” (Mk 13:5,6).  “When the Son of Man comes, will he find loyalty on earth?” (Lk 18:8).

 

Scatter Forth

 Genesis 11:1-9

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Why congregations build buildings is an interesting study?  Back in the 80’s I regularly heard church people remark, “If you want people to come to your church, build a new building.”  The idea was that if a congregation could afford to build, then it was a vibrant and growing fellowship rather than some stuck in mud, always-done-it-this-way club of old stogies.  Consequently, a lot of new church buildings went up in the 80’s as congregations blatantly tried to make a name for themselves in the grand competition for new members that went on between churches.  Unfortunately, the result was mostly “sheep stealing” rather than new disciples of Jesus.  Congregations lost members to each other over what amounts to religious consumerism.  Congregations were making a name for themselves through building up-to-date facilities to house their snazzy church programming and charismatic ministers.  People came, but mostly from other churches.  Sadly, the “build it and they will come” model of church growth did little to further the name of Jesus.  Census figures still showed that Christianity was waning in North America.  

Building a new church these days is a rare occurrence. Today in North America we are dissolving more congregations and selling the buildings than we are planting congregations and building facilities to house them.  Most church buildings are simply ghostly reminders of the day when Western culture and Christian religion walked hand-in-hand, a relationship that has all but withered.  The idea that a culture, a civilization needs a god to make it great has all but died.  

Looking at Genesis, the relationship between a culture and its god is at the heart of what the story of The Tower of Babel is about.  We have a tendency to mistakenly think that the story of the Tower of Babel is about a group of humans who got prideful and wanted to build a tower so high that they could stand equal to God and so God punished them by confusing their languages.  But the story of Babel is better read as the parable of how humans try to use God to make their civilizations safe, secure, and culturally great (or great again).  

If we step back roughly 5,000 thousand years into ancient Mesopotamia with the ort of historical accuracy that archaeology provides, we find that ancient Mesopotamians didn’t build skyscraper-type buildings or CNN towers.  Rather, they built tall step-pyramids called ziggurats and usually right beside the ziggurat was a temple.  The purpose for which they built these ziggurats was not so that they could climb so high that they could go into the heavens to be with the gods.  That’s what mountaintops were for.  These ziggurats worked the other way around.  They were rather staircases for the gods to come down to earth from the heavens to come be with the people by taking their place on a throne in a temple.  The Ark of the Covenant wasn’t just a box for keeping the tablet of the Ten Commandments.  It was also God’s throne on earth.  The lid was called the mercy seat.  

The people at Babel were apparently trying to build the highest of all ziggurats to try to get the highest of all gods to come down and be their god in order to make their civilization great.  Mind you, as the story goes, back in the days of Noah God had commanded humans to spread out over the earth.  But the Babel folks stopped short of that mandate and decided to settle down and build a civilization - the seedbed of Empire, of Conquest.  

Babel represents our human attempts to build civil religions.  Civil religion is when we use God to undergird our ways of doing civic community rather than trying to get our communities to reflect God’s image – the loving communion of the Father Son and Holy Spirit – and God’s way of doing community as modeled by Jesus as the way of unconditional, self-giving love.  Civil religion is asking God to bless our empire building, our ideas of prosperity and power, rather than committing ourselves to God’s kingdom and the way of Jesus Christ.  Simply put, civil religion is our using God to make our own name great rather than lifting up God’s name in praise, gratitude, and humble service by building love-based community.

When I see a new church building, and that’s a rare sight, a question comes to mind: Is this just one more Tower of Babel?  Is this just one more congregation trying to get God to make its name, its programming, its charismatic minister…great.  I am suspicious of this fundamental need we seem to have as congregations to have a sacred space represented by a building.  If we read the Bible from cover to cover, we find the trajectory that God is on is not reposing his presence in buildings. God wants to be embodied in human community.  God doesn’t want a building where he can sit on a throne cut off from the world.  God wants to live in and among us.  That’s why God the Son became the human person, Jesus.  That’s why God filled the followers of Jesus with the Holy Spirit.  I believe God would rather we spread out through our communities meeting in living rooms and kitchens, restaurants, or school cafeterias instead of holing up in buildings that we can’t really afford. 

The last thing Jesus said to his disciples before ascending was to mandate them to go into the world and make disciples and he promised to be with us.  We did that for a few centuries and met in homes, caves, and even tombs.  Yet, soon enough we let ourselves and our ideas of God get co-opted by Empire and we have been embroiled in civil religion ever since…at least until recently here in North America and prior to that in Europe.  It’s this civil religion-based Christianity that’s dying in our culture.  The true church, the body of Christ is still alive and well.  Now is the time to yield to the Holy Spirit and leave the building mentality behind, and as the body of Christ, get back to making disciples of Jesus everywhere we are – in our homes, in our neighbourhoods, in our workplaces, in coffee shops, in schools, and even in church basements.  The mandate and the drive of the Spirit is to scatter forth, not to settle down.  Amen.

 

Prayers, Prophets, and Scary Monsters

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Revelation 8 - 11

Please recall the sermon from the Sunday before last when we took a behind the scenes look at reality.  John recounted his vision of God seated on the throne at the centre of everything and of the worship that undergirds everything.  In God’s hand was a scroll sealed with seven seals whose content is history – what was, what is, and what will be.  It is particularly the history of conquest and what God intends to do about that.  

If you remember, the first four seals were horsemen who brought conquest and its deadly results.  The fifth seal involved the prayer of the martyrs who were at rest under the altar.  These are those who have stayed loyal to God even unto death in the midst of the ways of a conquesting world that hates them.  

The martyrs ask a question which I think is the central motif of the Revelation.  The rest of the Book deals with the answer to it.  The martyrs cry out, “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long until you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?”  They were given a white robe and told to wait a little while longer until the number of martyrs is complete.  

The sixth seal is God’s cataclysmic judgement on conquest and the conquestors but John also sees a countless multitude surrounding the throne.  They are also dressed in white robes and they worship powerfully.  He is asked who are this multitude and where did they come from.   The seventh seal was silence, silence for a very long and pregnant half hour.  

We pick up today with a scene of seven angels blowing seven trumpets that appear to bring God’s judgement of conquest.  Please don’t hear this scene as a roadmap of end-times events that God is going to do.  It is rather a commentary on human nature and the route God must take to get us to repent - to turn to him and the peaceableness of his kingdom.  The lesson to learn here will be that to end our conquesting ways and bring us back to himself, God could destroy a third of the earth, a third of living things, a third of the lights in the sky, and even of humanity in ways reminiscent of the way God plagued Pharoah’s Egypt to deliver his people from slavery, but humanity still wouldn’t repent so there must be another way.  What is it?  Let’s give an ear to chapters 8 to 11.

 

Does it matter when in the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” and “Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil”?  Well, it does. God’s deliverance, God’s intervention on behalf of his people to save his creation is rooted in prayer.  In the Book of Exodus it is said that God heard the crying out of his people there in slavery and that’s when God decided to call Moses and act.  So also, here in the Revelation.  The seventh seal brought silence.  The first thing heard after that silence is the prayers of God’s people.  It's like everything in heaven stops so that the prayers of God’s people can be heard.  God hears us when we cry out about our own sufferings, about the suffering and injustice in the world.  And, it is in response to these prayers that God acts to save.

I am reminded of the parable in Luke’s Gospel of a widow who continually pesters an unjust judge for vengeance.  As a widow she had no rights in that society and somebody had wronged her.  The judge decides to act on her behalf not because it was the right thing to do, but rather because she was wearing him out.  How much more will our God, who is just, respond to our prayers for help with justice.  Pray.  Pray without ceasing.

Then the angels start blowing the trumpets.  It’s very reminiscent of God’s plagues on Pharaoh and Egypt.  There’s hail and fire and falling stars and water turning to blood. A third of just about everything living, a third of land and water, and even a third of the lights of the sky are destroyed.  That’s just the first four trumpets. The fifth brings a star (angel) down from heaven who opens the bottomless pit to unleash a hoard of Satan-led demonic monster locusts who torture people with something like scorpion stings for five months, the lifespan of locusts.  It’s so bad that people wish they could die but can’t.  Thanks be to God it’s time limited.  Then, the sixth trumpet brings the unleashing of an evil monster calvary 200 million strong who bring plagues that kill a third of humankind. 

After all this destruction, a third of everything, we are to be astonished that it says the rest of humanity did not turn away from the evil stuff we do; our worshipping demons and idols, our murdering and our sorceries and our fornicating and our stealing.  This is some fodder for some good, old-school Bible-thumping, but I won't.  But think about it.  Why does humanity continue to war when we see the devastation it brings?  When climate change is indisputably related to human conduct, why don’t we make the necessary changes to lifestyle that will prevent Mother Earth from indiscriminately burning and starving us out?  Covid - its inception and spread were 100% related to human lifestyle.  Why were people so belligerent towards masking and vaccinations? And now, measles is coming back.  Seriously, God could unleash an army of Godzilla’s that destroy just about everything and humanity still wouldn’t change.  Like hard-hearted Pharoah, humanity wouldn’t/won’t change.  There must be another way other than utter destruction.

So here it is.  God sends two witnesses, two prophets who speak the Truth and have the power to work miracles.  They come out of the Temple which is symbolic of the people of God bearing witness to the love of God in Christ Jesus, a testimony re-enforced and validated by being able to command what insurance companies call “acts of God”.  Unfortunately, humanity can’t handle the truth about itself or of the love of God.  Satan can’t handle it.  He comes up out of the Pit and kills the prophets.  But, martyrdom and the persecution of Christians will not go unvindicated.  God raises the prophets.  We are raised up to be with God.  All I can say to this is that this other way is God being indisputably present with his people in love empowering us to speak the Truth…and it is noticed.  When God resurrects the prophets and calls them up, that rattles things enough so that the people were struck with awe and gave glory to God.  It is by the testimony and living witness of the martyrs that humankind finally begins to repent.  Not fear of the scary monsters and destroying a third of everything.  So it is when we share our testimony of how Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit has touched us.

The seventh angel blows his trumpet and it’s time for Handel’s Messiah – “And He shall reign forever and ever.”  Do I get a “hallelujah”?  And then the Temple is opened.  We are the Temple.  Community in the image of the love of Christ is the Temple today.  In this world of broken and hurting humans who break and hurt each other, salvation comes through the prophetic witness of the Truth of God’s love in Christ Jesus and how we embody it as the community of those who are loyal to him.  It’s the witness to the Truth of God’s love that brings people to repent – to turn and be embraced by God.  

I’ll end as I began.  It does matter that we pray for God’s kingdom to come and his will be done and for God to save us from the time of trial and deliver from evil.  Prayer is a crucial part we play in bringing in the kingdom.  Amen.

 

Raised with Christ

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Romans 6:1-14; Colossians 3:1-4

We disciples of Jesus Christ have some statements to make about reality.  I call them statements rather than beliefs because if you call them beliefs they are immediately thrown into the world of comparative religions and Christian faith is not religion.  Christianity can certainly be called religion, all the pomp and circumstance we have created and dogmatized around Christian faith, but Christian faith is not religion.  What God is doing for his Creation in, through, and as Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah or Christ is not a matter of personal religious belief.  It is reality, real historical and indeed physical reality. 

At the top of that list of these statements is that God is Trinity – the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  In, through, and as Jesus Christ God has revealed God-self to be Trinity - three Persons who give themselves so utterly completely and unselfishly indeed sacrificially to one another in unconditional love that they are One.  If we miss this, that God is loving communion of Persons then we miss what it is to be humans created in the image of God and certainly miss what it is to be the Church.  

Another statement about real historical and scientific reality that we followers of Jesus Christ have to make is that Jesus Christ is God the Son become human flesh.  This was a hard one to believe from the very start.  For a Jew, it was blasphemous to say that God became human.  Gentiles didn’t buy it either asking, “Why would divinity, which is pure and perfect, become human?  We are weak, dull, and sickly. We routinely break out with fungi.  We stink and we die.”  

It wasn’t until the 300’s that the Christian church stated definitively that Jesus is God the Son become human with neither his divinity nor his humanity being diminished. The reason we state this as fact is as Gregory of Nazianzus said back in the 300’s, “What was not assumed is not healed.”  To heal his fallen Creation and us humans of the futility of sin and death, God had to take upon himself our fallenness and die with it so that it would be once and for all dead.  Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection has opened up a new way to be human that will come to its fruition when Jesus returns.  

The Apostle John in his Gospel liked to call that new way Eternal Life, a new human form of being in which we are indwelt by God the Holy Spirit through whom we are in union with Jesus the Son to share his relationship of steadfast love and faithfulness with the Father to the Father’s glory.  In, through, and as Jesus God has brought human being, history, and even physical matter into his very self, into the loving communion of his very self, and therefore he has and will heal it.

A third Christian statement that is readily dismissed these days is that God raised Jesus bodily from the dead.  Many, not just scientists and philosophers but even Bible scholars today, are resolute that this did not happen.  Many will say that Jesus' body was simply stolen by his disciples and buried elsewhere and then they made the whole thing up.  If that was the case, then why did the disciples of whom we have historical record live lives of poverty and die horrible deaths just to continue a lie.   If you are a fan of the DaVinci Code, then you say Jesus' disciples staged his death and he went on to live a long and happy life marrying Mary Magdalene and having children.  We must then again ask why his disciples would die horrible deaths just so he could live normally.  

If you are bent towards psychology and looking for a seemingly-scientific explanation, you will say that the post-resurrection experiences that his disciples had were just communal experiences of grief that involved a common hallucination of Jesus caused by mass hysteria among twenty-some people.  To my knowledge, such a hallucination has never been documented as ever happening among any group of people.  

Most people just fall back on reason and say that Resurrection is impossible.  Therefore, it never happened.  Yet, they believe there was something God-special about Jesus and so they follow his teachings and enjoy prayer.  

And finally, there are Christians who wholeheartedly believe in reincarnation because for some reason that seems more plausible than resurrection.  I could handle re-incarnation as long as I came back as a roach in the kitchen of a kind old grandma in rural Mexico; all-you-can-eat real Mexican food.  Sign me up.

The Gospel proclamation is that God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit bodily raised Jesus, God the Son become human, from the dead.  Jesus in his resurrection has a real human body that could eat and be touched.  Yet, his body was a resurrected body and that leaves us hanging a bit.  What is a resurrected body?  According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, it is a spiritual body that is immortal and imperishable.  That's a bit misleading for us, for whenever the word spiritual comes up, we start thinking ethereal or ghostlike wisps of energy.  But, by a spiritual body Paul meant not only a person who is personally related to God, but also a body that has been made alive by God that will indeed never die; a body in which every atom is infused with the life of God.

As Christians, the resurrection is at the heart of our very real hope.   Resurrection means that death is not the final answer; that though we die, we will not die.  We will live again in bodies; not as angels with harps sitting on clouds in heaven or as stars, none of those fictions people tell their children.  Even though this physical fallen body will and must die, we will not experience death, complete cut-off-ness from God.  As Jesus told the thief on the cross, when we die, we will be with him in Paradise, a (I presume) bodiless state, until the resurrection when we will be given resurrection bodies, bodies of real human flesh in which every molecule about us knows the living and loving God and will never die again.

So, since it is the case that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is where this Creation is heading, we should therefore begin to live the resurrected life now.  Let’s talk about Baptism for a minute.  Paul says that if we have been baptized into Christ, we have then been baptized into his death.  Basically, we are already dead.  This old self of ours has been crucified with Jesus, in his crucifixion in order that this body of sin might be brought to nothing, that we may no longer be enslaved to sin for a person who has died has been set free from sin.  Hear this, in our union with Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit at our Baptism (and it doesn’t matter whether we were an unknowing infant or even how it was done) we died with him and we are now raised with him to share in his resurrected life now by means of the Holy Spirit.  If his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the living, loving Communion of the Trinity lives in us, then the state of our being, our very existence is that we are free from death and our enslavement to sin and are now free to live in and for God.  

Therefore, Paul instructs us in Colossians to seek the things that are above where Christ is for our lives are hidden in God with Christ.  Live according to that hunger to be with your brothers and sisters in Christ in worship, in study, in fellowship.  Live according to that hunger to pray and read the Bible and hear the Trinity speak to you.  Live according to the hunger for seeing justice happen in this world, of seeing the poor fed and the sick healed.  Live according to the hunger to know oneself as always being in the presence of God.  Live in constant prayer reminded that no matter what, you are a beloved child of God in whom he takes great joy.  Live this way and you will be living Eternal Life.  Amen.

If you are a parishioner of St Andrew’s Southampton or Geneva, you may have the feeling that you heard that sermon before.  That was the very first sermon I preached in the Coop Easter Sunday April 5, 2015.  We wanted our first Sunday as a Coop to be Easter Sunday and that would be largely why April 1 is our founding date.  Over the last ten years we’ve grown, not so much in numbers.  Death has taken its toll on us.  Yet, we’ve had a few new faces who stuck around.  We’ve grown to be more and more like the image of the God who created us.  Each congregation has grown and deepened in love.  Disunities have healed.  We’ve welcomed and loved our surrounding communities.  People we’ve prayed for have been healed.  In a day when in our culture it is difficult to be the Church of Jesus Christ, we remain churches witnessing to resurrection hope.  Well done, good and faithful servants.  Well done.  Amen.

 

Behind the Scenes

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Revelation 4-8:1

I like to imagine what it would be like to part reality in front of me as if I were poking my head through closed curtains to see what was happening behind the scenes.  Would I see some wizard pulling levers that makes things happen on this side of things?  Well, that’s kind of what John is recounting here.  He’s parted open the curtains of reality and stepped on into what’s going on behind the scenes of everything and one could say that what he sees going on there is the foundation, the driving force of what happens on this side of things.

He sees God the Father (not the Wizard of Oz) seated on a throne at the center of everything.  Except, he can’t see God because God is hidden behind an almost indescribably magnificent light display as the hymn says, “Tis only the splendour of light hideth Thee.”  Circling the throne are four living creatures who represent all of life on earth.  Day and night they forever sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty who wert and art and evermore shalt be.”

Surrounding them are twenty-four elders, twelve from the tribes of Israel and twelve for the churches planted by the Twelve Disciples.  When they hear the four living creatures sing, they fall down and “casting down their golden crowns upon the glassy sea” they begin to sing, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created.”  If you’re a first century hearer of this, you will be thinking that this God is bigger than Zeus and you will notice that none of that Greco/Roman Pantheon are there.

The next wave of concentric circles rippling out from the throne of God are myriads upon myriads upon thousands upon thousands of angels also singing praise; Cherubim and seraphim falling down before him; God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”  Then there is the fullness of the Twelve tribes of Israel.  And then there is every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth singing praise as well.  And then there is an uncountable multitude of people singing “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb.”  A first century person hearing that would say, “I thought salvation was what the Emperor claimed to bring through the Empire by means of his military.”

Our reality, God’s very good creation, is centered on God and worship of God is the lifeline that holds everything together – worship of God not political power, not militaristic, not economic power.  When we gather for worship or when we’re out in the field struck with awe and gratitude, we are joining in on the worship that holds everything together that’s going behind the scenes.  When we gather in the presence of God and worship the curtain is open.   

That said, when something else seeks that central place and the songs of worship are disrupted, our reality gets disrupted at the very core.  That is what empire and emperor have done.  Something I’m curious about here is something is something that can’’ be determined for certain for there is no evidence, but I am suspicious and I think it’s highly likely that the hymns that John hears here as he is peering into heaven probably sounded quite like things the citizens of the Roman Empire were required to say about Caesar when they worshipped him and the power of the Empire at the Imperial temples and/or Zeus at his temples.  Just conjecturing, but I think John is co-opting the songs of civil religion – the worship of nation and national leaders – and directing them to the One who rightly deserves to be worshipped with those songs.  Civil religion is quite alive today.  It’s very easy to get people quite worshipful in an idolatrous kind of way over flags and national values and popular national leaders who brand themselves as Saviours.

In God’s right hand is a scroll with seven seals.  The scroll is history – what was, is, and will be until God ends it.  If we want history to make sense we need to know what’s on that scroll.  But the scroll is sealed and no one on earth or in heaven is worthy to open it.  The fact of that is incredibly, incredibly sad.  But wait, suddenly in front of the throne there appears a Lamb who was slain, the Lion of Judah who has conquered by being slain and he’s full of the Spirit of God.  He is worthy, so worthy that the heavenly songs of worship change and become new songs.  Sing a new song unto the LORD.  “You are worthy to take the scroll and to break its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed a people for God, saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they reign on earth.”  “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and glory and honour and blessing.”  “To the One seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever.”

This Lamb is Jesus, the crucified and risen one, the faithful one, the only faithful one.  If we want to know and understand the course of history, we must look at him and get involved in what God is up to in history in, through, and as him in the power of the Holy Spirit.  History, indeed life, is centered on him.  It is otherwise purposeless without him.  He, and only He, is worthy to sit on the throne of God as he is the true Son of God.  Caesar claimed to be that but is not.  Those who are loyal to Jesus even unto death are the true kingdom and the true priests who serve the true God.  The Emperor, the Empire and the priests of the Imperial Cult are not.

And now…the moment we have been waiting for…the Lamb takes the scroll and begins to peel away the seven seals.  If you are looking for a roadmap to history, this is it.  This is the past, the present, and the future of human history.   But, one should rather call it the history of Empire.  It is what has happened, is happening, and will happen because of Empire-ism until God ends it all.  

The first four seals are horse and riders, affectionately known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  What each of them brings is a side effect of Empire-ism.  The first horse and rider, deceptively white, brings conquering.  A red horse and rider take peace from the earth and replace it with slaughtering.  A black horse and rider deceptively carrying the scales of equity take economic security away. The fourth, a pale green horse and rider…is Death…brings war, plaque, famine, and animal attacks.  These are the incurable symptoms that are present when Empire is around.  I am troubled at how well this describes the world we live in. 

The fifth seal is the struggle and fate of those who try to remain faithful to Christ Jesus and his kingdom.  This seal is the fact that there are martyrs.  These faithful ones abide in the most sacred place of heaven, the Altar.  And they cry out the question of those who suffer: How long, God, until you judge and take vengeance on our behalf.  The answer seems coldly disappointing.  First of all, there’s an honour in being on the right side, a white robe.  There is also a rest of a kind that the world doesn’t have.  But, the cruel reality of Empire-ism is that there will be more and more martyrs for Truth until their number is complete, however many that is.  The time frame is also trying – a little while longer.  The timeframe of suffering always seems to be a little while longer!

The sixth seal is the end.  Empire-ism will end.  Until that day the Empires that be will in time all implode or be themselves conquered.  Yet, the Day will come that Empire-ism will end.  John describes it with all sorts of celestial and earthly disturbances.  This wild imagery is the typical way the prophets tried to describe the indescribable nature of God ending the way things are to bring about something new.  It’s inconceivable.  One thing is for sure though; those rich and powerful slugs are going to hide in fear and in shame.  It’s called being held accountable. 

The seventh seal is silence; a long half-hour long, palette-cleansing, pregnant silence as God prepares something new.  Have you ever sat in the restful, peaceful presence of God in silence for a half-hour?  Amen.

 

To the Church In...

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Revelation 2-3

In chapters two and three Jesus asks John to write to the seven churches in the Roman province of Asia which today would be western Turkey.  Given the significance of the number seven in biblical numerology as the number of completeness or perfection, it is easy to say that the letter was to go to the entire church and that it contained not just a word for each of those individual churches named but also a universal message.  At least that’s the way the book was received in the early church.  I bet you didn’t know it but in the first couple of centuries of the church the Revelation was the most widely circulated book of the New Testament.  During the Cold War and since, with the world threatened with nuclear annihilation, the book has been quite popular as well.  For the rest of church history, the book was largely ignored and there were even some major leaders in the church who wanted it out of the Bible altogether because it was weird and provided ample food for fringe groups.

The seven churches were in seven cities that were connected together by a major postal route.  John, in exile on a small island off the shore of Turkey, likely would have sent seven copies of the Revelation by means of a courier.  The first went to Ephesus, the second to Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and finally Laodicea. The letters would have been read aloud when Christians gathered together to worship not in church buildings but in homes and most likely in the home of the wealthiest patrons as they had the big houses.  Once one church read it, the letter would have gone to the next church in the area until all the small house churches in the city and its surroundings had heard it.

The Revelation was given to John to encourage Christians to remain faithful to Jesus during a wave of persecution that was beginning or soon to come.  Persecution?  Well, what typically happened in the early church was that either Jewish synagogue authorities or pagan religious authorities turned Christians over to the Roman authorities because they would not burn incense to Caesar as part of their civic responsibility.  This was in fact an act of treason.  Christians who would not worship Caesar as Lord and Saviour (two imperial titles) were arrested and usually made to fight wild animals or gladiators in the civic games at the coliseum.  Persecution became a serious problem in the mid-90’s AD during the reign of Emperor Domitian who was insane enough to require that he be worshipped as a living god, the incarnation of a son of Jupiter.  Emperors were believed to become gods after they died, but Domitian got a bit ahead of things. 

It was not easy to be a church back then.  They had problems that were unique to their day.  In Chapters two and three of the Revelation John is instructed to write something specific to each of the Seven Churches addressing particular problems they each had.  I’ll run through those briefly. 

Ephesus had lost its first love.  It’s agape love – unconditional, sacrificial love.  Reading through the brevity of the language it seems that they had struggled against false teachers who wanted to be their leaders.  They stood faithfully against them, but with a cost: their Christian fellowship had fallen second place to doctrinal witch hunts.  It can happen that Christians can get united around correcting the theology of others more so than attending to loving and supporting one another.

The Christians in Smyrna were already facing persecution and impoverishment because the Synagogue authorities were very persistent in hunting out Christians.  Christians could face being outcast in their communities and lose work for being different.  That seems to be what they were going through but with the added burden of some of them being imprisoned for their loyalty to Jesus for which they could die.

Pergamum was the capital city and the Imperial Cult was strong there, and they had stood faithful against that.  But there was another problem in the church there.  They were tolerating among themselves, the Nicolatians, a group of Christians who taught that it was okay to feast with pagan worshippers and participate in the orgies those feasts became and not only that but it was okay if they themselves feasted like that when they celebrated communion.  Jesus tells them to repent of that or he himself would come after them with the brutality of the two-edged sword…the Truth.

Looking at Thyatira, in many to most cities back then if you were a tradesperson, you could not work unless you were a member of a trade guild.  Well, each trade guild had their own god to worship and that worship involved feasts and we all know that feasting led to dancing if you know what I mean.  Therefore, Christians couldn’t work unless they participated in their guild’s pagan feasts.  In response to that, there was a woman leader who claimed to have had a word from Jesus saying that it was okay for them to participate in the trade guild feasts and a good many of the Christians took her word for it.  Jesus said some pretty strong words against her and those who followed her.  But he also encouraged the others to remain loyal to him at all costs. 

The church at Sardis was a perfect model of a “going-through-the-motions” inoffensive Christianity.  Keep to yourself.  Don’t confront.  Just give the outer appearance of being good.  There was apparently nothing that distinguished them from any other religion or civic club or guild.  He told them to wake up and also encouraged the few there that were still faithful.

Philadelphia was the only church to receive no correction.  They had recently been through a wave of persecution and had remained faithful.  They were a fine example of what it is to patiently endure, to bear up under having their faith severely tested. 

Finally, Laodicea; they were rich Christians.  Their wealth had blinded them to their need for God.  They were lukewarm; comfortable.  Having everything they needed but really having nothing.  Therefore, they were going to have to spend some time in the school of hard knocks, i.e., Jesus knocking at their door and they’d better have enough sense to open it or they won’t have Jesus with them.  Ephesus had lost its agape love in an exchange for doctrinal fidelity.  Laodicea sold it for wealth.  They needed to learn compassion, to see and feel the needs that people have.  That we love one another and how we do it matters.  One cannot say, “I’m rich. I have everything I need.  Therefore, I don’t need your love…it would make me look weak.”

That’s a snapshot of the church back in that day and I would say even in our day we can find some commonalities.  As you could see their main struggle was with fidelity, with remaining faithful to Jesus and his kingdom whether it be in the face of outright persecution or avoiding cultural appropriation.  Through these churches the Kingdom of God was breaking in through the reign of agape love.  It was important that their loyalty to Jesus shine brightly through acts of compassion, through warm fellowship, and that they abstain from the unrestrained hedonism involved in the worship of other gods even if it cost them their job or led to systematic persecution. 

Jesus tells all these churches that in the face of this testing of their fidelity, they must conquer.  Conquer is an imperial word involving winning in war.  Just as Rome led by the emperor had conquered most of the known world, so they also are to conquer.  But, in the Revelation conquer does not mean take up weapons and dominate and oppress.   Quite the opposite.  It is to stay loyal to Jesus, keep the confession of faith and live as communities marked by agape and a lack of hedonism.  In our culture where the gods of power, wealth, sex, consumerism, and the Almighty “Me” are readily worshipped, we face the same challenges the early Christians did – do we follow Jesus taking seriously his one commandment that we love or do we seek political power by joining the Imperial Cult, judge one another’s doctrinal purity, party with the hedonists, or probably the worst thing of all…simply just fit in?  Will we conquer…?  Amen.

 

Standing in the Midst of the Churches

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Matthew 1:9-20

You’ve all probably seen enough AA meeting moments on TV to know that when one of the members stands before the group to give their story, their testimony, they begin with “Hi. I’m Randy. I’m an alcoholic.” and the rest of the group will enthusiastically respond “Hi, Randy.”  The introduction is done that way because being an alcoholic is a hard thing to accept, there’s a lot of shame that comes with it.  Introducing yourself as an alcoholic and then being welcomed instead of judged is a huge thing in recovery.  Admitting this about yourself in a room of other alcoholics makes you realize you are not alone in this disease.  In that room you have a family and you are all co-sharers, bond together in having the disease and recovering from it.  In a meeting the first thing you say about yourself is, “I’m an alcoholic.”  That sets the stage for everything else.

I hear something similar happening here in how John introduces himself in this letter as he begins to give account of the things he has seen.  He first says, “I, John, your brother” to highlight the family nature, the family-like bond in Christian fellowship that is due to the presence of the Holy Spirit in and among us binding us together as brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, God’s family.  

He then identifies himself as a fellow-sharer with them in Christ in three things: the persecution, the kingdom, and the patient endurance.  Fellow-sharing means we are bound together to each other and to Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit dwelling in and among us, what happens to one of us, happens to us all.  As Jesus more or less said in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, “Whatever you did to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did to me.”  As Jesus suffered, so we suffer in like manner.  We all go through it together and we all feel it and so does Jesus for he is with and in us.  This “fellow-sharing” is the one quality I appreciate most about small congregations.

Persecution is one of the things John states they were going through together.  That is what happens when the kingdom of God comes into contact with the kingdoms of the world.  Small communities of Jesus followers indwelt by the Holy Spirit in which the reign of God shines through them in acts of humble and enduring unconditional love is a powerful affront to the powers that be.  We North American Christians presently are not (yet) suffering persecution, but it could very easily happen with the authoritarian bent that’s working its way through our nations, an authoritarianism that is oddly undergirded by a large segment of the North American Church that is deceived and deluded by political power.  Thus, the persecution that could erupt would be Christian on Christian.  We’ll talk about this more in two weeks when we look at chapters 12 and 13.

John then mentions something called patient endurance which was an earmark descriptor of Christian life in the early church.  As we wait for Jesus to come and put things to rights, we patiently endure the consequences that come with being followers of Jesus Christ whose primary loyalty is to him.  The word in Greek for patient endurance is a profound word – “hypomeno”.  “Meno” means to abide in.  Hypo can mean “by means of” or “under” as in bearing up under.  Jesus said, “Abide in me, as I also abide in you.  No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must abide in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in me.  I am the vine; you are the branches.  If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.  Apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:4-5).  “Meno” is also associated with the word for “a room” – “In my Father’s house there are many rooms.”  Patient endurance is the room in which we abide as we await Jesus’ coming with the room that he has prepared for us in our Father’s house, the New Jerusalem which shows up at the end of the book.  The sufferings, the trials of faith that we go through in this life, we are going through them because we have one foot, so to speak, in the door of our heavenly and the world is opposed to it.  We taste of our heavenly home, and the things of this world pale in comparison.

Now looking further in our reading; It is quite often the case that when I find myself in a conversation with people that involves the Book of Revelation someone will contribute that they believe John had to have been on something to have come up with all of this.  Well, though hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and Ketamine are enjoying favour in the worlds of psychiatry and psychology these days for treating severe depression and a few other things, John was not tripping.  He was having ecstatic or mystical religious experiences – visions.  He had his head in the door of the heavenly home, not just a foot.  

John recounts that he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day – Sunday – for this first vision.  He heard a voice from behind telling him to write in a book the things that he was about to hear, messages for the seven churches he named.  Yet, these messages are for the whole church as there are seven of them and seven represents wholeness or completeness.  He turns to see who is talking to him and he sees seven golden lampstands which represent the church.  Being lampstands emphasizes the church’s role of being light to the world.

He sees “one like the Son of Man” standing in the midst of the lampstands.  The prophet Daniel in a vision also saw “one like unto the(a) Son of Man” taking his seat at the right hand of God.  This Son of Man is of course Jesus.  Jesus says “Do not be afraid” and gives reasons why.  He is the first and the last, the one risen from the dead who now has the keys of Death and Hades.  This is meant to be an encouragement to the churches that their Jesus is the one who has power over death and the place to the holding place of the dead.  The persecutors of early Christians often threatened them with death.  Death was nothing to be feared by a faithful follower of Jesus even if it came while fighting wild beasts in a coliseum for public entertainment. In Jesus’ right hand were seven stars that were the seven angels for each of the churches.  Each church is protected by an angel.  The words that come from his mouth are a two-edged sword of the Truth.  His face shines with the full power of the son meaning that those who persecute Christians will find themselves exposed and it will “burn”.  But his followers need not fear him.

“Do not be afraid” is the first thing Jesus has to say to his churches and to us.  To us, his brothers and sisters; to us fellow-sharers in his sufferings he says “Do not be afraid.”  He is standing in our midst and there is no greater power than he.  In this world, we are patiently enduring through many kinds of things that try our faith in Jesus, things that Satan is using to try to break our faith in Jesus, because we are part of Jesus' bringing in the Kingdom of God.  It is through these sufferings that the kingdom comes, they are the catalyst to our own growth and fruit bearing as we abide in Jesus.  

In Acts 14:22 Paul, “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the Kingdom of God.”  He said that after he and Barnabas had been stoned for proclaiming Jesus.  We aren’t getting stoned for our faith, but it is often the case that the reason for some of the things we suffer, the behind-the-scenes reason, is our faith in Jesus.  So we pray, “Save us from this time of trial and deliver us from evil (the evil one).”  Patiently endure for the kingdom is coming and do not forget that Jesus has promised to be with us to the end of the ages and he indeed is.  Amen.

 

King of the World

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Revelation 1:4-8

One of the most iconic moments in film of the 1990’s, Leonardo DiCaprio playing the poor world-roving artist Jack Dawson and his best buddy Fabrizio De Rossi standing at the very tip of the bow of the RMS Titanic as it sets sail on its maiden voyage carrying some of the richest people in the world to America where they intended to make themselves more and more wealth.  For Dawson, he’s going home, back to the land of dreams having roamed the world a bit.  Like sons of Poseidon, they peer over the gunwale to watch the dolphins escort them out to sea.  The ship’s captain, like Zeus, is watching from high above on the bridge while he has his tea.  The sweating minions are down below in the belly of the beast shoveling that dirty coal into the largest steam engines ever made that propel the largest steamship ever made out to sea.  The RMS Titanic, the symbol, the prophetic emblem of the Imperial power of the British Empire and Capitalism and Industrialism, and so on and so on but mostly it was the symbol of the pride and fall of man.  Caught up in the moment, Fabrizio says, “I can see the Statue of Liberty, very small though.”  Then Jack climbs up on the railing stretches out his arms, his coattails flapping in the wind as if he’s flying and with a Superman fist pump, he shouts, “I’m the King of the world.  Woohoo.  I’m the King of the world.”  We, of course, know how it all ends.  Three hours later in the world of film, the unsinkable Titanic sinks and Jack dies after heroically making sure his new found love, Rose, is safe.  

How could the Titanic and the Empire-ism of Modernity that it represented sink?  It had a fatal flaw, the pride of its makers.  They deemed it unsinkable. It’s avantgarde design was such that nothing could pierce its hull.  Believing that icebergs can’t sink ships, the captain dismissed warnings of icebergs in the area and kept going at near full speed with no adjustment to course and relied only on lookouts peering through the dark of night.  And in an ode to arrogance and irony, the designers only equipped it with just 20 lifeboats that could seat 47 people each, enough to save just half of the passengers.  The Titanic sank due to the denting of its hull that caused seams and let water in.  Over 1,500 died.  This captain honourably went down with the ship.  Such is the fate of just about every man who would be King of the world.  Human ingenuity is no match for Nature.  And like the Titanic, empires end.  Emperors and kings come to their end.  Those who seek to be almighty and rule the world come to their end…usually due to the pathetic foolishness of pride.  That’s the unveiled prophetic message behind the sinking of the Titanic.  The Titanic sinking signalled that the British Empire would end.

There’s a reason why kings and emperors and empires don’t last.  The Book of Revelation prophetically reveals it.  It’s that there’s only one king of the world, Jesus, the truly faithful witness to what rule and power is – giving oneself in love.  He is the ruler of the rulers of the earth.  Empire emboldened by religion killed him but God, the God of the Jews albeit, His Father, raised him from the dead.  Even death and the fear thereof (which is the power of Empire) has no power over him.  The Romans liked to call their great god Zeus (Jupiter) the one who is, who was, and who is to come, but that’s who Jesus is - the First and the Last, the Alpha and Omega.  Jesus is the One who is, who was, and who is to come…and the message of the Book of Revelation is…he is indeed coming.  Jesus is coming and you kings, you little emperors who like to think you are gods on this earth will face his judgement and you will mourn.  You will weep and mourn and wail because you will find yourself in the presence of God confronted by his love and then you will utterly realize how you have utterly wasted your life and abused your power and hurt people and that realization is a lake of fire reserved for Satan, his minions, and for Sin and Death themselves.

Our passage ends with calling Jesus “the Almighty”.  I don’t like the English word Almighty as a title for God.  That’s what Hitler called the god he claimed to serve, the god who undergirded the Third Reich.  The word in Greek is Pantokrator.  Krator means ruler and panto means over all.  I’m sorry to steal your thunder there Leo DiCaprio, but Jesus is King of the world, Ruler of all that is.  Everything was created by and through him and this creation will come to its completeness in him.  Everyone and everything will answer to him.  He is coming.

Well, sorry to get off on that bit of a King Jesus gonna get you rant.  But, and bear with me, that’s how John opens this letter – with a little bit of bravado, of bragging on Jesus like introductions at a professional wrestling match.  In this corner is Arnold “the Terminator” Schwarzenegger, prepare to meet your end and in this corner, Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, you’re going to get crushed.  John is throwing some titles out for Jesus and interestingly, they are all titles that are falsely attributed to the Roman gods and the emperor back in the day.  Right off the bat John is blatantly saying the real God and Ruler of this earth is coming to put things to rights and you false gods and rulers are going to get your due.

This is scary if you’re one of the Imperialists who has bought into the Dark Side.  But that’s for them.  John also opens with some very comforting words for those who follow Jesus.  The Book of Revelation is actually a letter of hope written by John while he himself was exiled, imprisoned on an island off the coast of what we call Turkey.  He was a political prisoner during the reign of the emperor Diocletian, one of the real nasties of the emperors.  Dio was a big enforcer of the Imperial Cult.  The emperors had temples built all over the empire that worship might be offered on their behalf or that they themselves could be worshipped as a god.  Diocletian was one of the latter.  Refusal to worship there was treason.  As an elder pastor-type, John was the leader of groups of people who refused to bend the knee to the man who would be a god and so John was made an example of and fortunately it was only exile.

John wrote the Revelation to the churches of western Turkey who were threatened with or undergoing persecution encouraging them to remain faithful.  This letter was a prophecy predicting the end of the Empire but also of “Empire-ism”, that evil abuse of power by which we humans conquer and oppress with militaries and take economic advantage of those people who live in the lower decks of the Titanic and who shovel that coal so to speak.

To those who follow Jesus John writes: Grace and peace to you.  Grace is a world from the world of monarchy not the courtroom.  Grace is not acquittal as some would presume.  Grace is that the faithful have been welcomed into the very presence of the God and Ruler of all Creation who extends his favour to them and promises to act on their behalf and unlike worldly kings and emperors, King Jesus carries through on his promises.  Peace is what one has when in the presence of the King feasting.  It is good.

John goes on to say that King Jesus loves us.  The word he uses for love is agape, the humble love of putting oneself aside to serve the needs of others.  Emperors don’t do that.  They demand to be served.  

John also points out that King Jesus freed us from our sins at the cost of his own blood.  On the one hand that’s God’s forgiveness of all we have done to hurt others and ourselves.  Emperors don’t forgive.  They hold such things over our heads to exact a false loyalty.  On the other hand, this freedom is from the realm of sin to live in God’s kingdom of grace and peace amidst a faithful community who love as Jesus loves.  Don’t renounce that freedom.  Enjoy it.

John then says that King Jesus has made us a kingdom of priests.  We share in Jesus’ reign.  We conquer by being faithful by loving as he loved as a living testimony to how God reigns even if it means we die for him as Christians all over the world have done and continue to do.  Emperors and empires are not founded in love.  As priests, we pray for the needs of the world and even for our enemies.  We give voice to the song of praise that God’s very good creation continually sings, a Creation that moans because of human Empire-ism.  We are those who never cease to point to God’s goodness.  Emperors only seek to be worshipped themselves.  

To close, the core message in the Revelation John brings is that emperors and empire-ism get what’s coming to them.  God makes sure of that.  King Jesus is the Ruler of all…and he’s coming with his Kingdom to reign.  If you look at the course of history, this has held true.  Rome fell.  Like a virus, it imploded until in the 400’s, Barbarians, the Huns, Attila himself dealt the final blow.  The emperors, well, next to none of the Roman Emperors came to an end that looked like living long and prospering.  They were routinely assassinated, went insane, or died in horribly gross ways.  There was never a moment's peace for them.

Carrying this message into today’s world.  Rome died but Empire-ism still needs to meet its end.  The emperors are gone but there are still powerful world leaders, nearly all men, who would be kings or even gods if you gave them enough rope.  The urge to conquer and dominate still persists in the form of multinational corporations and in some governments.  Plaques, poverty, economic disparity, and wars still persist as the symptoms of the disease of Empire-ism.  The message of the Revelation today is still the same…Jesus is coming to put an end to Empire-ism finally and for good.  Until then, all you little emperors, men who would be kings or even gods, you will get your comeuppance.  Jesus is coming. 

And now to the one who, by the power at work with in us, is able to do far more abundantly than we can ask or imagine; to God be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, forever and ever.  Amen.  

 

 

Know Christ and the Power of His Resurrection

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Philippians 3:4-14

Imagine if you had the power to actually change things.  If we had that power, we would probably use it to make our little corners of the world exactly the way we want them to be so that we and those we love are healthy and comfortable and the people around us don’t rub us the wrong way.  Things are good.   Yet, we tend to assume that what is good for me is good for everybody.  So that if I have the power to change things, I should rightfully change the things around me that would make life better for me and everyone will benefit.  Unless of course, I’m a sociopath or psychopath who likes making others suffer, then I will create chaos for the heck of it and revel in the addictive thrill of having power.  Rarely, do we humans exhibit the wisdom to presume that if we had the power to change things, what needs to change first is me. 

If we want to change the world, the change must begin with ourselves.  In our passage today, Paul is spending some time reflecting on the change he himself was going through having encountered the resurrected Jesus.  His birth lineage was a cut above.  He was very zealous in his faith; exceedingly mindful of keeping the Law of Moses.  He was so zealous that he was adamantly attempting to quell a big change that was happening among his people as the result of what he believed to be a lie, that God had raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.  Paul believed that Jesus was a treasonous blasphemer who deserved death by crucifixion for claiming to be the Messiah and the Son of God.  But he had since come to call all that vainglorious zeal dung since coming to know Jesus and the change meeting Jesus was working in him.

Paul was on a trip to Damascus to round up Christians, when in a prolonged flash of light seen by all in the party, Jesus confronted him.  Paul responded to this confrontation with a question, “Who are you, Lord?”  Thus began Paul’s desire to know Jesus and the power of his resurrection. 

The question Jesus confronted Paul with was “Why are you persecuting me?”  Paul was persecuting Jesus by persecuting Jesus’ followers.  It’s likely that this question created a desire in Paul to want to know what it was about himself that made him want to persecute Jesus and his followers.  I say that because it’s interesting that in our reading the means that Paul choses to get to know Jesus Is to step into the shoes of Jesus’ persecution, the shoes of suffering as Jesus suffered, and walking a bit more than a few miles.  If you want to know someone, walk a mile in his shoes so they say.

  Paul’s very to-the-point encounter with Jesus on the Road to Damascus was for Paul the evidence that God had raised Jesus from the dead.  This meant that according to Old Testament prophecies God had poured out his Spirit upon the followers of Jesus and that through them God was bringing in the kingdom of God and changing the world by calling people to loyalty to Jesus.  This changed Paul.  His goal was no longer rising to power in the midst of the Jerusalem Pharisees by Law observance and persecuting the followers of Jesus, but rather to know Jesus, to personally know Jesus, and the power of his resurrection – a power that changes people – a change that is nothing short of being born into a new life in which you know yourself to be a beloved child of God.

If you take Paul’s letters and suss out his metaphors, his images for what salvation is, at the top of the list would be that salvation is that I was once an estranged God-hater, but through what God has done in, through, and as Jesus the Christ in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, I now know myself to be a beloved child of God as Jesus is.  I am a beloved member of God’s family here on earth.  To know Jesus is to know ourselves to be beloved children in the family of God.  The power of Jesus’ resurrection, though powerful enough to create this Creation, raise the dead, heal the sick, and cast out demons, now works powerfully in us by bringing us to want to know Jesus himself more and more in order to grow to be more like him in his selfless love. 

We get to know Jesus when we live according to that one commandment he gave us, that we love one another as he has loved us.  Unfortunately, loving the way Jesus loved doesn’t come apart from suffering.  It is costly to love.  I remember a song from back in the 70’s done by a band called Nazareth entitled “Love Hurts.”  It does.  To love the way Jesus loves means we will always be feeling empathy for others as we join with them in their struggles, so through what this world calls happiness out the window.  But it’s not all doom and gloom.  There are moments of celebration, moments of victory when God powerfully answers prayers.  There’s a contentment, a joy in knowing that God is for us, with us, and will work all things to the God of his beloved children.  Seek to know Jesus and to experience that power of his resurrection.  I am wholeheartedly convinced that as Paul says everything else is dung.  Amen.

 

The New and Living Way

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Hebrews 10:16-25

Charles Wesley wrote a hymn in the late 1700’s that became quite popular during the American Civil War.  Its first line is “And am I born to die?”  That was quite a pertinent question back then.  Wars abounded.  Plagues.  Sicknesses for which there were no cures.  You could die at sea on the way to that new land where you were hoping to make a new start or get killed by the inhabitants once you got there.  Kicked by a horse.  Attacked by a wild boar.  Childbirth.  Life expectancy then was around 30 yrs.  Life was short and Death (capital D) abounded.  Wesley wrote:

And am I born to die? To lay this body down?
And must my trembling spirit fly into a world unknown

A land of deepest shade. Unpierced by human thought.
The dreary regions of the dead, where all things are forgot?

Soon as from earth I go, what will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe must then my portion be;

Waked by the trumpet's sound, I from my grave shall rise,
And see the Judge with glory crowned, and see the flaming skies,

 

Well, one doesn’t need to be in the midst of a war or a plague to wonder if the sum total of your life is simply death.  The question should hit us every now and then but we tend to be occupied with other questions.   When we are young, we ponder and dream of what we will do with our lives.  The middle years make us wonder if we’re really doing anything useful because we’re beginning to realize how fast the years go.  The elder years hit and we look back wondering what part in the grand scheme of things we played?  Did we make a difference?  All along the way we are confronted by the harsh reality of the death of friends and family.  One doesn’t have to look too far to garner the awareness that life in all its wonder and goodness has a monstrous beast lurking about that cannot be tamed - the futility of death.  One must either wear the rose-coloured glasses of denial or gird up with the hope of resurrection that God gives us in Christ Jesus.  If we don’t, we will perish in the despair of Wesley’s pointed question – Am I born to die?

Well, are we?  Are we just born to die?  The answer to that question is an emphatic “NO!”  Death was not what God created us for.  We are fearfully and wonderfully made as the Psalmist says, fearfully and wonderfully made to praise and to bring praise to our awesome God who loves his creation with a love we cannot begin to comprehend.  We can appreciate the beauty of a flower, smell hope wafting from the mud in Spring, understand the wonders of a Black Hole, feel delight watching a baby smile, cure diseases, play, and feel joy.

Yet, something is dreadfully wrong in God’s very good creation.  With the same hands that can build little rovers that explore the surface of Mars, we build weapons of mass destruction.  We can write wonderful works of literature but also the propaganda that leads to genocide.  That’s how we to tend treat people different from us.  Do I really need to go into how we lie to, hide from, blame, manipulate, betray, and disappoint those we love the most.  I believe it was the fifth century theologian Augustine who was the first to say that the line between good and evil runs through the middle of everyone.  So, therefore, there’s no use in calling another person or their actions evil until we’ve sorted through ourselves and our own actions and miraculously found ourselves guiltless and without shame.  Guiltless and without shame doesn’t describe anybody I know much less myself.

This dreadful wrongness in God’s good creation is the insidiously deceptive Power which we in our language call Sin.  It is a disease affecting everyone, a disease that leads to Death.  Like addicts we are powerless over it.  We are both its victims and culpable of it.  It is a disease that affects the mind.  It blinds us to seeing, perceiving, and knowing the way things are supposed to be in a world where humans are to live in the image of God.  It turns us inward with a compulsion to serve our own wants and needs.  It makes us want to be our own gods and to serve false gods in sick efforts of self-preservation.  It subtly makes Good seem Evil and Evil seem Good and with even more perversion it can turn the Good we do into Evil and make doing Evil the means to doing the Good.

What does God do about this perversion of his very good Creation?  Well, it was God’s plan all along that at the right time God the Son would become the man, Jesus of Nazareth, and crown God’s good creation with his very self.  Also in this plan was God’s pouring the Holy Spirit upon all humanity and upon his creation perfecting it so that what Isaiah prophesied long ago would be true, that “the Earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea” (Is. 11:9).  But, with God’s good creation infected with the disease of Sin and powerless against it, God’s crowning and perfecting of his creation with the incarnation of the Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit had to take the horrific form of crucifixion and death. For now, the power of God’s glory and love is seen, perceived, and known by us by the death on the cross of Jesus, the incarnate Son of God and Lord of all creation.  

If we can say that anyone was born to die, it was Jesus.  In this act of incomprehensible love God took upon himself our Sin diseased nature by which we are all victimized in order to heal us of it.  He took upon himself His own judgement of condemnation against us for our culpability in Sin and suffered the sentence of the most publicly humiliating form of criminal execution humanity has ever devised in order deliver us from our deserved condemnation and sentence of death.  

How perverted!  How twisted!  How wrong!  We humans in our blindness took the one who was God’s crowning and perfecting of us and crowned him with a crown of thorns, and enthroned him on a cross, and mocked him, and spit on him.  We judged it preposterous and blasphemous that he claimed to be the Son of God come to deliver us.  We, in the blindness of our Sin may say, “No, it wasn’t me.  I wasn’t there.”  But, as Jesus taught, whatever we have done to harm even the least of us, we have done to him.  We are liars if we say we have not hurt, harmed, and broken the trust of others, especially those closest to us whom we say we love the most.

Well, we will have to wait for Easter for the full details of this story but by his death Jesus opened a new and living way to God.  It was on this day that Sin and Death were condemned and sentenced to death.  This is why we call it Good.  The great mystery of this tragic event is that God the Son become human as Jesus of Nazareth somehow experienced death himself, death on the cross.  God the Father and God the Holy Spirit somehow suffered the death of God the Son.  These are things too big for this small mind to comprehend.  It is enough to say that God the Trinity knows in his very self what it is to die.

In the wake of the horrific event of our crucifying Jesus what needs to be said is that through the death of Jesus, the Christ, God the Son, God the Trinity has established in our hearts a new covenant, a new way to live in response to him, a new and living way of coming to him.  The result of our Death going into God is that the life of God, the Holy Spirit is now poured upon us.    

God is flooding us with his very life and being and thereby recreating us to bear forth the living image of Christ Jesus and his self-giving love that he modeled on the Cross.  He calls us to live according to the Way of the Cross.  If there is a sense in which we are born to die, it is that we have been born anew to live the cross-formed life of denying ourselves and laying down our lives for others in the war against Sin, Death, and Evil; a war that Jesus has already won.  In this new life we do not simply live as good people who live according to higher standards of morality and altruism.  We rather live forth from the new life of faith, hope, and unconditional love that we find God has gifted to us, life filled with God’s continual presence with us bearing our old life away and transforming us with Jesus’ life.  Jesus' once and for all death has made it possible for us to be a part of God's life-giving, dignity-restoring work of healing this broken, hurting and indeed, dying world.  We call this day Good because by Jesus’ death, God gives us life.  Let us gratefully live it for him.  Amen.