(Revelation 13.11,14-18, 14.6-13)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time: September 13, 2009
The tenth in a summer series on topics members of the church asked to hear sermons about.
This morning's is the second to address the question: What is the Revelation to John about?

This is the second sermon in a mini-series in response to a question Dorothy asked two weeks ago: "What in the world is the book of Revelation about?" Last week I talked about the historical setting for the Revelation to John. John wrote to seven Christian churches in western Turkey. These Christians were under extreme persecution by the Roman Empire. Because they were Christians, their property was being confiscated and they were being tortured and killed. Understandably they were tempted to turn away from their faith and do whatever Rome wanted them to. John writes to them to encourage them to stay faithful to God. Because only God offers life, hope, and strength. John told his audience that when their suffering leads them to feel hopeless, they must remember what Jesus went through. The Roman Empire killed him. But God raised him to new life. So if they remain faithful, even to the point of being killed by Rome, they will not be defeated. But God will raise them to new life.

Our scripture passages from Revelation last week were the three verses that George Friedrich Handel used as the basis for the "Hallelujah" chorus. They are the kinds of words that produce finger-snapping tunes. The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever King of kings and Lord of lords . . . . The scripture passage for today is not one that leads to the creation of finger-snapping tunes. Parts of this passage are harsh and offensive.
Listen for a word from God.

I saw an angel flying high overhead, sent to announce the Good News of eternity to all who live on the earth – every nation, race, language, and tribe. It said in a loud voice, "Give reverence and glory to God, for the hour of divine judgment has come. Worship the One who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water."
A second angel followed and said, 'Babylon has fallen! Babylon the Great has fallen, who made the whole world drink the wine of corrupt passions.'
A third angel followed them and shouted, "All who worship the beast and its image, or accept its mark on the forehead or the arm, will drink the wine of God's fury, which has been poured, undiluted, into the cup of divine wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. The smoke of their torments will rise up forever and ever. There will be no rest, day or night, for those who worshiped the beast and its image, or accepted the mark of its name."
This calls for the endurance of the holy ones, those who keep God's commandments and remain faithful to Jesus.
Then a voice from heaven said, "Write this down: Happy are they who die in Our God for all eternity." "Yes," says the Spirit, "let them rest from their work, for their deeds accompany them (Rev. 14.6-13; all citations in this sermon are from The Inclusive New Testament © 1994 by Priests for Equality, Brentwood, MD).

The first and last parts of this aren't so bad. It's the stuff in the middle that is hard to hear. Words that suggest those who don't follow Jesus will be burned with sulphur for eternity. And Jesus and the angels are going to watch it all happen, and seemingly enjoy doing so. It's horrible. John says those who suffer are the ones who bear the mark of the beast. Next week I'm going to talk about this beast who bears the number 666. Here John is saying that all of us bear some mark, and the mark we bear shows us who we belong to, who our god is. Baptism marks us people who belong to the God who says, "You are my beloved". Which means God should be the one we live and die for. But many Christians and non-Christians allow ourselves to bear the mark of some other force. Like a nation, an ideology, a job . . . like violence, fear, or greed. So John is saying to his audience, continue to live for God. If you allow yourself to be marked by any other force, you will become an enemy of Christ's church. And you will spend eternity in torment.

Passages like this are what make a lot of Christians try to keep Revelation at a long arm's length. And they're what lead a lot of Christians to which Revelation had never made it into the Bible. But I believe passages like this show us why progressive Christians need to reclaim the Revelation to John.

I think we need to do this for two reasons. First, we need to be able to respond when some Christians try to say with utter certainty what Revelation says. When we hear a Christian say that Revelation tells us that anyone who doesn't believe in Jesus is going to hell, we need to be able to offer a different word about Revelation. Too many Christians who read Revelation as the literal word and will of God use it as a reason to turn God and Jesus into hateful, vindictive beings who seem to enjoy inflicting pain on those who choose not to follow them. The pastor of a 6000-member church in Seattle is an example. He said, "Some [Christians want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up" (Mark Driscoll, Relevant magazine, January-February 2007, quoted in Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw, Jesus for President, The Simple Way, 2008, p. 194).

People who interpret Revelation like this do incredible damage. They cause deep pain in families and friendships, because they lead people to believe that if someone they love doesn't believe in Jesus as the only way to salvation, they will spend eternity in torment. They lead some Christians to believe that they know exactly what God's thinking and what God wants, and that they can do whatever they want to carry out what they perceive as God's will. Such extreme interpretations of Revelation lead some Christians to support extremists in Israel who believe Arabs should be forcibly removed from all of the land the Bible says belongs to Israel. Which only deepens the violence and suffering among Palestinians and Jews, and delays any just resolution to this conflict. We progressive Christians need to be able to offer a different story about Revelation. When we hear irresponsible, destructive interpretations of his book like this pastor offers, we need to be able to do better than saying, "I don't think that's what Revelation says." We need to be able to offer sound reasons as to why the eternal suffering of any person is not the will of God.

Which leads to the second reason progressive Christians need to reclaim Revelation. Wrestling with violent texts like the one we're looking at today forces us to look at the larger question of how we understand the Bible. What do we do when we come across a text that seems to say God blesses violence? Or that seems to justify hatred and cruelty? Living with this text this past week, I've had to look at new ways to interpret the Bible as a whole. And the 'new' way to interpret that Bible that I came across is in fact a way scholars interpreted the Bible 1900 years ago. But which I'd never heard about before.

Toward the end of the first century, a group of rabbis gathered southwest of Jerusalem. The temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed by Rome in 70AD. The temple is where the Jews felt closest to God. The temple was the symbol for God's love for and closeness to the Jews. So now the rabbis were trying to figure out how they could feel God's love and live as God's faithful people without having a temple to worship in. What the rabbis came up with was extraordinary. They said in all of their sacred stories, God was trying to express one message and one message only: compassion. Everything in the Bible is about how to put into practice the central teaching of the Bible: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself (Deuteronomy 6.5; Leviticus 19.18; see also Matthew 22.36-40; Mark 12.28-34; Luke 10.25-28). What was most extraordinary is that the rabbis said it didn't matter what the original meaning of a story or law in the Bible was. If the original meaning could not convey today a message of God's compassion for us and our compassion for others and for ourselves, then the rabbis said the original meaning needed to be changed. The Bible must speak compassion, the rabbis said. Always the Bible must speak compassion (Karen Armstrong, The Bible: A Biography, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007, p. 83).

A couple hundred years later, a Christian in North Africa came to the same conclusion. Augustine was born in 354. He was a bishop in North Africa. He didn't know Hebrew, and had no clue about what these rabbis had come up with. But his studies of the Bible led him also to see the Bible as being only about compassion. Everything in the Bible, he said, is about compassion. And he pushed this point even further, offering this chilling word: if we insult others in the name of the Bible, "we make the Lord a liar" (Armstrong, pp. 122-23). If I try to use the Bible as a weapon against anyone, I make the Lord a liar. If I try to use the Bible to tell anyone that they are less than sacred, less than holy, less than God's beloved, I made the Lord a liar. It's a stunning statement. And one that all Christians desperately need to hear. Sixteen hundred years ago, Augustine said that any Bible passage that seems to justify hatred or cruelty has to be reinterpreted. Because God's word can never be contorted into expressing anything but compassion.

So how do we hear the middle part of this morning's reading from Revelation as saying something compassionate?

Here's a thought I have. Imagine that some authority is oppressing you or someone you love. Some government, some church, some employer, is making life hell for you or someone you love. Or imagine some authority is consistently violating some value that you hold deeply. What do you want to have happen to that authority? Doesn't a part of you want something to happen to that authority? Doesn't a part of you want to do whatever is necessary to take that authority's power away so it can't cause any more harm? If you believed that God was going to make sure that authority was not going to be able to keep causing harm, might that give you a little relief? If you believed that if you continued to resist that authority by continuing to worship God and follow in the way of Jesus, that you were weakening the power of that authority, might that help you stay faithful, even if that meant that authority might harm or even kill you?

I saw a movie in Chicago years ago. I don't remember very much about it. The movie was set in South Africa. The oppressive system of apartheid in which the minority whites ruled the majority blacks still was doing its evil. There was a black South African who had suffered profoundly under white rule. Family members had been killed, and he had been brutalized. And yet he was committed to resisting white oppression non-violently. Toward the end of the movie, however, he had had too much. So he went to the police station, and sat in his car in the parking lot. The police chief at that station had been especially cruel to this man and those he loved. When the white police chief came out of the station, this black South African who had been so committed to nonviolence ran him down in the parking lot. And everyone in the audience cheered. The audience needed to know this police chief would never harm anyone again.

Maybe that's what John is trying to do in this harsh and offensive middle section of this reading. Maybe he's saying to his audience, "God had not forgotten you in your suffering. Stay faithful. And no matter what the Roman Empire does to you, you will live forever in the loving embrace of God. Those who are hurting you will not be able to destroy you." That is a word of compassion. John's words about those who turn away from God being tormented eternally with burning sulphur in front of Jesus and the angels are not literally what is going to happen. This is just a powerfully graphic symbol that says to people under persecution that God has not forgotten them, and God knows their suffering is unjust and evil. And it will not continue forever.

What would happen if Christians began to interpret the Bible like the rabbis and Augustine call us to? What if we began to hear every story, every teaching, every law in the Bible as saying something about the compassion of God? What if every time we open the Bible, compassion flows out of it . . . to engulf us, and cleanse us, and open us to see this world through the eyes of God's compassion? This world desperately needs compassionate Christians to live what we say we believe. May we hear the news of God's compassion anew. And step out in faith to embrace this world with the love it so deeply hungers to know. Amen.