I wonder what the churches at Ephesus and at Smyrna made of it, when the messenger from Patmos arrived and read to them the letters which John had written. Of course, he wouldn’t have read just the little scraps which we had for our second reading; they are like the few lines of personal greeting on a Christmas card, which we read first because they are special to us, before settling down to enjoy the letter which comes with it. And what a letter this was, full of references to the shared inheritance of the Hebrew Scriptures, news of old friends as it were, but transformed into a series of dramatic confrontations and stunning new visions. How often do you think the messenger will have been made to read again John’s terrifying nightmares of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, his fiery red dragon or his great beast rising out of the sea, dragon and beast alike equipped with seven heads and ten horns? Or did they beg him to read again John’s vision of the throne room of heaven, or the ethereal sea of glass, the tree of life with its leaves for the healing of the nations, and the sublime picture of a new Jerusalem where every tear would be wiped from their eyes. Whatever they may have made of it at Ephesus and Smyrna, what message does this strange and wonderful book have for a church in the twenty-first century?
But first a health warning. The book of Revelation is a bit like a volume of statistics – you can use it to prove almost anything if you are sufficiently selective, and perhaps not over-scrupulous about the context. Nor am I sufficiently steeped in the apocalyptic imagery of Daniel and Ezekiel to be qualified to act as your blue badge guide to the wealth of allusion which permeates John’s visionary material. However, in this sea of baffling imagery I do want to draw attention to one or two points about the victory of Christ, which make the book of Revelation such an appropriate focus for our thoughts on a Sunday evening in the season of Easter.
First of all then, the theology of Revelation is a response to such fundamental questions as: Who, if anyone, is in charge? What, if any, is the meaning of the tragic and destructive events which comprise our history? If God is in charge, why doesn’t he do something about the evil and mayhem which we continually unleash on one another? If he cares about the human race, why doesn’t he do more to save us from destroying the fragile environment that is our only home? The resounding answer of the writer of this book is that history is a long story which is not over yet. God is in charge, and not only will he act ultimately to utterly destroy the forces of evil, but he has acted already; in heaven the angels are even now celebrating his victory in hymns of endless praise and joy. In this world the forces of evil – including our own selfish instincts – are still very powerful, and they certainly have the capacity to do a lot of harm, not least to God’s own people. But their power is temporary and in the end they will be swept away.
John was looking at the mighty Roman empire in its imperial heyday, the one and only superpower of his day, which had destroyed Jerusalem, and put to death at Rome both Peter and Paul the two great leaders of the early church – chapter 11 is a somewhat cryptic account of those events. The seven churches to which he was writing would also face persecution and even death, if they refused to compromise with the cult of emperor worship which was demanded as the test of loyalty to the Roman power. Pressing the Fast Forward button, some modern scholars have seen in Revelation a judgement on the ways in which our contemporary society abuses its power to exploit both people and the earth’s natural resources to the benefit of a few. As Christians we recognise our responsibility to care for the planet on which we live. We view with fear and foreboding the likely consequences of current economic policies, in this country and around the world. We despair of the political and economic forces that seem incapable of finding ways to move towards a more sustainable future. Yet these fears are held in tension with the hope and joy expressed in the anticipatory hymns of heavenly victory which continually break through into the book of Revelation whenever the focus shifts from events on earth to events in heaven.
How can we know that God’s ultimate victory is as certain as the seer of Revelation would have us believe? His answer is to point to the person and the work of Christ. His book begins with the confident proclamation: ‘This is the revelation of Jesus Christ’, and the messages which he receives come from a Great Angel, standing in the midst of the seven-branched lampstand of the temple, a figure whom we are clearly invited to identify with Christ in glory, since he is referred to as a figure like unto a man – a reminder of the Messianic vision from the book of Daniel with which Jesus identified himself as he stood before Caiaphas. Moreover the angel speaks of himself as one who was dead and is now alive again (Rev 1.1, 13, 18). But there is a strong indication that this angel figure is more than an angel, since he also describes himself as the first and the last, language which Isaiah had used to speak of Yahweh, the Redeemer of Israel.
The Great Angel is not the only figure who represents Christ in the book of Revelation. The other is of course the Lamb, who is worshipped in heaven because of what he has done on earth to fulfil the divine plan for salvation, through his victory on the cross. The hymns which praise God in chapter 4 are repeated in very similar terms in praise of the Lamb in chapter 5, concluding with a great shout of ‘Praise and honour, glory and might, to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb for ever’. When the seer first sees the Lamb, he sees him – lest we should miss the point – standing with the marks of sacrifice on him, with the four living creatures between the throne of God and the twenty four elders. Thus the Lamb stands both within the aura of the Godhead, since the four living creatures hark back to Ezekiel’s vision of the four fiery aspects of the glory of God, and at the same time among the elders who represent the prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New. Thus, Christ the sacrificial Lamb is seen to be included both within God’s divinity and within our humanity. Something to ponder perhaps as your eye rests on the Lamb in our west window.
Whilst it is clear enough from the book of Revelation that the author attaches great importance to the sacrificial death of the Lamb as a key event in the history of salvation, it is less clear how he thinks the two events are linked in a chain of cause and effect. We are on safer ground in asserting, without attempting to specify how, that Revelation identifies Christ with the Lamb and presents the death of Christ as a sacrifice of cosmic significance, the event which, by whatever means, has assured the triumph of the forces of God and of good over the forces of Evil. We are perhaps more used to seeing the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ in terms of our personal salvation, and of course that is a truth to which we must cling, but it is no bad thing to set our personal history, and the story of our church, within the wider context of the cosmic battle between good and evil, as the book of Revelation invites us to do. Is it not the case that the sacrifice of the Lamb, and every suffering for Christ’s sake which has ever been associated with and redeemed by that sacrifice, is the only suffering which has the power to break the cycles of violence and hatred, exploitation and impoverishment, which otherwise wind themselves up with ever greater bitterness and incomprehension from one generation to another?
Hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Set the life and witness of the seven churches within the context of the Lamb’s ultimate victory over the forces of evil, John calls on each one of them to play their part in witnessing to the truth of the gospel – fearlessly, unashamedly and uncompromisingly. Each of the churches is part of a great chain of witness, reaching back to God himself, and passing through Christ, through the angel, through the churches, to the world. Every church, and every one of us within a church, is part of that great chain of witness, which it is our task to maintain if the good news about God is to be heard in every corner of this and every land.
Here we are, meditating in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, as John the Elder did on the island of Patmos. We know that the victory has already been won, so that there is no excuse for any of us to fall away from the total commitment of our first love (like the Ephesians), nor to fear the suffering which may ensue (like the church at Smyrna). The message to us, in all the communities of which we are a part, is that we too are called to witness to the truth about God with the same commitment, the same courage, the same endurance, the same hope as was once demanded of the seven churches.
Hear what the spirit says to the churches. To those who are victorious I will give the right to eat from the tree of life that stands in the garden of God.
Then I heard all created things, in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea, crying: Praise and honour, glory and might, to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb for ever. Amen.
Note: This account of the theology of Revelation owes much to John M. Court, Revelation, (Sheffield: JSOT Press) 1994, p109-123.