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What a motley crew, a seemingly
mismatched band of brothers—a red-headed dwarf, a wispy
Elfin, a quartet of hairy-toed hobbits and a couple of
fumbling and feuding humans. It’s a strange and unlikely
assembly, especially when arrayed against the overwhelming
and foreboding forces of evil that surround them. An odd and
rag-tag bunch with the most improbable mission…to save the
world!
It’s the “Fellowship of the
Ring” in Tolkien’s massive narrative, and it’s not at all
unlike the odd collection of improbable characters who made
up John’s fledging churches standing over-against the
massive power and might of the world’s only superpower, the
Roman Empire.
St. Paul describes them:
Not many of you were wise by
human standards, not many were powerful, not many of noble
birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame
the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the
strong. (I Cor. 1:26)
So John writes his underground
letter to this motley band of would-be warriors, written in
a secret code—the Revelation Code—with the central theme
which we saw in the first of this series: The Risen Christ
stands in the midst and holds the church in the palm of his
hand…Jesus Christ, the Alpha and Omega.
And while the cycle of violence
repeats itself over and over again—like four horsemen,
stampeding across the world’s stage—the church sings the
song of peace and God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in
heaven.
John reminds them that they are
marked on the forehead, like Harry Potter, not with the sign
of the beast but by the sign of the cross…so don’t
let the world around you squeeze you into its mold.
Now today, the battle between
good and evil builds to its climax. Like the feeble forces
of the Fellowship of the Ring confronting the powers of
evil, John’s seven little churches struggle to hold their
ground.
In order to encourage them, John
draws on an ancient and familiar landmark. For his readers
it was like hearing “Remember the Alamo.” Remember Bunker
Hill or the Battle of the Bulge. Remember Dunkirk or
Donnybrook. Remember Waterloo or Gettysburg. He used the
image of the ancient battle site—Mt. Megiddo, Har Megiddo,
or often translated Armageddon—to help them see their daily
struggle in cosmic, eternal terms.
First, the meaning of Armageddon, the image.
This is another one of those
symbols from John’s Revelation that is familiar even among
many who have never read the book. Here is an example. The
check-out line tabloid grabbed my attention: “VIETNAM,
IRAQ, NORTH KOREA...ARMAGEDDON IS NEXT! Mother of all wars
just weeks away.”
Of course, I had to buy
it…sermon research, you understand. It reported that some
unidentified “council of religious leaders” met in
Liechtenstein and determined that this series of wars is
leading to the final conflict, probably to begin in
September. Their fatalistic, hopeless, helpless conclusion:
“The only thing we can do now is to watch, to wait and to
pray.” The headline announced that “END TIMES BEGIN
AUGUST 15.”
And so, remembering the old
saying “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile,” I
thought, “Who knows? Maybe they are right!”
There was only one
problem…the dateline was August 9, 2003.
And as far as I know, August 15,
2003 passed without some cataclysmic event. It was just one
more of the many times Armageddon has been misused by the
date-setters and doomsayers.
Armageddon—another often-abused
and seldom-understood symbol in the Revelation. Like the
entire book, the allusion to a well-known battlefield is not
meant to be taken literally. John is not locating a specific
site for a final battle or dating a chronology for “end
times.” If he has any historical event in mind, it would not
be a battle raging around Jerusalem in 2006. Instead, it
would be the earlier total destruction of Jerusalem at the
hand of Rome in 70 A.D., resulting in the death of over one
million inhabitants. Like the rest of the book, it is a
parable, picture language, a symbol, a narrative.
Just
like Frodo and Sam at the Two Towers.
J.R.R. Tolkien was a devout
Roman Catholic and a friend of C.S. Lewis, so it is no
surprise that his great epic speaks like a morality play.
Scott Davison says:
The Lord of the Rings is a story about the
struggle between good and evil. We understand it immediately because it is our
story, too.
(Davison, Scott, "Tolkien and the Nature of Evil,"
The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy,
page 99)
It reads like the Book of
Revelation, full of hideous monsters from the dark recesses
of the earth marching as foot soldiers, and the people of
Rohan heading to the security of Helm’s Deep. So John uses
the graphic imagery and the reminder of Armageddon to
picture the force of the Roman Empire—symbolized by a
dragon, led by the beast in league with the
false prophet, the symbol of emperor-worship challenging
the worship of the true God. And up against such enemies,
the likes of the fellowship of the ring, or the incidental
band of John’s struggling churches, seem so small, so
insignificant.
Just look at the people gathered
at Helm’s Deep. Oh yes, there are some brave soldiers, but
also the place is filled with old women and small children,
the fearful, the lame, the blind, the hurting, the needy.
What are they against these monstrous fighting machines?
Just look at John’s fledgling
churches, made up of the outcast, the poor, the foreigners,
the slaves. Seven little churches taking on the whole Roman
Empire with the mission of saving the world. They look so
helpless against the armies of Armageddon.
Do you ever feel like
that? Just look at this week’s news reports:
-
resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the fear of
civil war in Iraq
-
destruction and death in Lebanon and Israel and the Gaza
Strip
-
tense
and tenuous elections in Congo and uncertainty in Cuba
You want to
say, “What can we do in a world such as this?”
Or,
on a more personal note:
-
a
stroke fells an aging family member
-
an
economy falters and a father loses his job
-
a
marriage ends in frustration
-
a bout
with depression drains the soul and petty issues consume
our energy
Sometimes life just seems to be
too much. It feels like the forces are mounting against us
in our own personal Armageddon, and we feel so small, so
insignificant.
Then…at the darkest
moment…when the enemies are about to breach the
walls of Helm’s Deep and it would seem that all hope is
gone, the resurrected Gandalf reappears, bringing with him
the return of the sun and all the soldiers of light. Tolkien
describes him:
His hair was white as snow in
the sunshine; and gleaming white was his robe; the eyes
under his deep brows were bright, piercing as the rays of
the sun; power was in his hand. At last, Aragorn stirred.
“Gandalf,” he said, “beyond all hope, you have come back to
help us in our need.”
(Tolkien, J.R.R., The Two
Towers, page 102)
And that is
exactly what John sees...
Then I saw the heavens opened,
and behold a white horse! He who sat upon it is called
Faithful and True. His eyes are like a flame of fire and on
his head are many diadems.
And the armies of heaven,
arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, followed him on white
horses. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name
inscribed, “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”
(Rev.
19:11-16)
John’s Revelation sees the
church’s everyday struggle as part of this eternal
confrontation between good and evil. And in the face of it,
he holds out the vision of Christ’s ultimate victory as the
word of hope and encouragement: “Jesus…beyond all hope,
comes to help us. Fight on for the right. Stand firm for
justice and peace. You are on the winning side. One day,
Jesus Christ will have the last word and you will share in
his victory.”
Scholar Craig Hill says:
The essential
point of John’s Revelation is really quite simple. In two
words: “GOD WINS! God’s purposes ultimately will succeed.”
He says that, at heart,
Revelation is an attempt to deal with essential questions:
Are injustice, suffering and death the final realities in
our world? Is human history, both mine and the world’s,
without purpose and meaningless? Is this talk of goodness,
love and justice just pie in the sky?
(Hill, Craig, In God’s Time,
page 4)
And
the word of Revelation is a resounding “NO!”
In the end...God wins! In the
end…goodness and justice, peace and brotherhood will
overcome the evil of war and strife and pain and suffering.
When it is all said and done, your life and my life, small
potatoes though they may seem against the backdrop of cosmic
conflict, our lives matter in the sight of God.
It’s the same vision which
captured the heart and soul of Julia Ward Howe in the
1800s.
A staunch abolitionist and an
early advocate for women’s rights, she envisioned the day of
justice and equality for all God’s people. She and her
husband were volunteers in the sanitation commission and
were invited to the White House by President Lincoln because
of their work. On the way, they saw the watchfires of a
hundred circling camps of soldiers along the Potomac River.
Having experienced the bloodshed of the Civil War, during
the Franco-Prussian War she tried to gather the women of the
world in the first Mothers’ Day for Peace, calling for the
abolition of war itself.
She sang a song full of images
taken from the Book of Revelation, a song full of hope and
the promise of a new day. Like John of Revelation, she
caught the vision of Christ’s coming kingdom, and even in
the face of a war-torn world she could sing:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of
the coming of the Lord;
he is trampling out the vintage
where the grapes of wrath are stored;
he has loosed the fateful
lightening of his terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
Glory, glory hallelujah! His
truth is marching on.
And every time we break the
bread and lift the cup, as feeble as it may seem, we sing
the song and proclaim the faith, “Until Christ comes in
final victory and we feast at his heavenly banquet.”
It’s
a motley crew, sure enough.
Just a band of mismatched
brothers, a fellowship of the Christ, with nothing more than
bread and wine to take on the struggle for good in the face
of evil. And though events may look for all the world like
another Armageddon, the church lifts the cup of grace and
the bread of hope, the promise of a new dawn in the name of
Jesus Christ, the one who makes all things new…
The Risen Christ…Alpha and
Omega, beginning and end.
Prayer:
And when the strife is fierce,
the warfare long,
steals on the ear the distant
triumph song,
and hearts are brave again, and
arms are strong.
Alleluia.
(UM Hymnal, page
711)
Notes:
Many books have been written on
the theology of the Lord of the Rings. One I
recommend is The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy,
edited by Gregory Bassham. You can order it through our
“Virtual Bookstore” at our website,
www.fumcbirmingham.org.
While you are there, if you would like to do more reading on
the Book of Revelation, I highly recommend James Efrid’s,
Revelation for Today.
There are a variety of websites
which give background on Julia Ward Howe and the writing of
the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The specific reference I
used for this sermon is
http://womenshistory.about.com
then
search for Julia Ward Howe. She wrote her “Mother’s Day
Proclamation – 1870” during the Franco-Prussian War,
following the trauma of the Civil War. It reads:
Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have
hearts!
Whether your baptism be of
water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions
answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to
us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken
from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to
teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those
of another country
To allow our sons to be
trained to injure theirs.
From the voice of a
devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, “Disarm!
Disarm!
The sword of murder is not
the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our
dishonor,
Nor violence indicate
possession.
As men have often forsaken
the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that
may be left of home
For a great and earnest day
of counsel.
Let them meet first, as
women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take
counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human
family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own
time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and
humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of
women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at
someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period
consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of
the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of
international questions,
The great and general
interests of peace.
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