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In just these
few short weeks, there is really no way to grasp the expanse
of images, the epic proportions of John’s fantastic vision.
It is filled with imagery and symbols, dream language and
illusions, and written in a secret “Revelation Code” which
is entirely foreign to us but would have been discernable by
John’s underground church. So the best way to approach it is
through the use of fantasy and science fiction, wonder and
imagination—the movies: Harry Potter and the Hobbits, The
DaVinci Code and Crash. I’ve tried to touch on a
few of the high points and, frankly, to cut through some of
the clutter of contemporary literalism—best described in Tim
LaHaye’s mega media money-maker known as the “Left Behind”
series, which really ought to be left behind, along with
most of the TV preachers.
We’ve seen
that John’s primary concern is not the “mark of the beast,”
the 666, which is nothing more than initials for the
emperor. He is primarily concerned about whether the mark of
Christ can be seen in our lives. The “four horsemen” are not
a prediction of some future apocalyptic event, but rather
the ongoing cycle of violence which stampedes through human
history in every age. And over-against that dark drama, the
church lifts up the witness to God’s kingdom of shalom. John
is not envisioning some “Armageddon” to come; he is helping
a persecuted church to see its present-day struggle in
eternal dimensions. He never uses the words rapture
or Antichrist. Instead, he lifts up the present
presence of the Risen Christ, standing in the midst of his
Church, holding human history in the palm of his hand like a
scroll. The Revelation doesn’t give us a timeline for
end-times; John is offering a word of hope for all
times, a witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the alpha
and omega, the beginning and the end.
But having
said that, there clearly is a future orientation to the
book.
After all,
one way to encourage the suffering saints of his day or any
day is to look beyond the present crisis to see a new day
dawning:
John calls
them to see this moment in human history—a time filled with
beasts and battles, wars and violence, demons, evils, and
minions from the deep—in the light of a hope that will not
fade, to keep “Cruisin’ Toward the Dream.”
1. John’s dream gives us a glimpse of the
future…and that future is good!
The last
scene in the book, the grand finale to the human story—after
all the brutality and battles, all the monstrous attacks of
evil and the struggle for good, the last crescendo just
before the curtain rolls down on the stage of the human
drama for the last time—is the joyous reunion of God’s
people, the glorious celebration of new life and God’s
kingdom fulfilled.
-
One
day, evil will be overcome with good.
-
One
day, the power of Satan will be bound and cast into the
sea.
-
One
day, death will be no more. Neither will there be
mourning or crying or pain.
-
One
day, God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
-
One
day, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
-
One
day, when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and
time shall be no more, the morning will break eternal,
bright and fair.
-
One
day, as our African-American brothers used to sing in
the face of grinding slavery, that chariot is going to
swing low and come for to carry me home. One day, we
will all gather at the river, and “My Lord, what a
morning that will be; when you hear the trumpet sound
and the stars begin to fall.”
After all the
fearsome and flamboyant imagery, the battle of sin and the
conflict with evil, the book ends in triumph and joy.
It ends with a wedding…and guess what? We are
going to be the bride!
There’s going
to be a wedding, and we will all be there, all dressed up in
white, like a bride adorned for her husband.
Do you see
why this book has been such a source of strength at times
when the church was under persecution? For John’s church
suffering under the Roman Empire; for African Americans
under the evil of American slavery; for the professing
church under the Nazi regime or the persecuted Christians
living under communism; for the poverty-stricken church of
Appalachia, giving birth to the tradition of American gospel
songs. John is saying, “As bad as the present may seem, hold
on! We are cruising toward a dream. You may feel like
nothing more than a slave, but one day, you’re going to be
queen of the prom. Right now, you may be oppressed,
persecuted, forgotten and abused, but one day, you are going
to be the bride at the big, fat, Jesus wedding.”
I’ve had a
movie for every other sermon, and if I had one to share in
this sermon, it would be the final scene from Kenneth
Branagh’s wonderful 1993 adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much
Ado About Nothing. I only own four movies, and this is
one of them. It is set in the beauty of a Tuscan villa, a
story of ill-fated love, intrigue and some modest villainy.
There is the powerful moment of sorrow when Claudio believes
his beloved Hero is dead, and he weeps at her tomb. But then
the bad guys are led away, Hero is found to be alive,
Benedict and Beatrice stop their bickering and fall madly in
love, and the movie ends with this glorious double wedding.
The music rings, laughter fills the halls, and everyone
dances for joy through the gardens of Tuscany with flower
petals streaming down.
That’s John’s final vision of the future to
come.
Scottish
preacher James S. Stewart was one of the greatest preachers
of the twentieth century. I’ve kept his book of sermons
called King For Ever since my seminary days. In it he
captures John’s vision for the future and his word for the
church. Listen to this incredible paragraph:
Of course, it
is right that as Christians we should agonize over the
plight of the third world, the miseries of men and nations
victimized by war and famine, poverty, discrimination and
injustice; right that we should be devising ways and means
of remedying the hateful, conscience-searing iniquities;
right that by all means in our power we should be serving
the suffering and the downtrodden and the oppressed, and
doing it in the name of Christ…but wrong to do it without a
note of unalloyed triumphant gladness. The world’s dark
night may still continue pressing in upon us, but if we have
seen Christ, then we know that the darkness of history is
now shot through with unquenchable hope, and with the final
certainty of the glorious outcome of all its struggles.
Then he says:
Or to make it
more personal, I may go down into the dark, but if I do, I
am still in the hands of Him who bears the scepter of all
the universe and everlastingly makes all things new, here
and hereafter; and therefore, I am safe forever.
(James S.
Stewart, King For Ever, page 15)
That’s John’s
final vision…the vision of a wedding. The vision of Christ’s
final victory, God’s kingdom come….One
day….
2. But until
that day, we live this day in hope.
We live in
hope of the day when God’s kingdom comes on earth as it is
in heaven, and we live today, as the people of God who have
already experienced something of the kingdom.
In several of
his hymns, Charles Wesley used the word foretaste:
What he meant
was a sampling, an appetizer, just enough of the banquet to
know that when it comes, it will be great. And the church of
God is called to live into that hope, to live
out of that hope, and to model
that hope for the world now, a foretaste of the feast of the
joy, a sample of the good things to come.
We are called to live in that “party spirit”
now….until he comes.
Quite
frankly, I haven’t a clue as to when that day will be. And
if I take Jesus at his word, neither does he. He tells us no
one knows, not even the Son himself, but only the Father in
heaven. So if even Jesus couldn’t figure it out, I am not
sure we should be trying to out-guess Jesus. I figure our
job is to be about the business of the kingdom, here and
now, so busy with the work of Christ, so busy living as a
foretaste of the kingdom, so busy as his disciples, that
when he comes, he will take us by surprise like a thief in
the night.
I had an
e-mail this week concerning this series from someone who had
tried to follow the date-setters and end-times predictors
who had taught her we should be looking for the signs of the
end-times. Then she said:
It’s taken me
a while to wrestle with it all, and I don’t know if I am
right, but I just can’t waste my time searching for the
clues of the Second Coming… I’m too busy trying to live for
Monday morning.
And I wanted
to say, “You go, girl!” Or as we used to say when we were
cruising Woodward in the ’60s, “Right on!” We are called to
be about the business of the Kingdom, offering the world a
foretaste of the banquet to come, living in the hope of
God’s good future, witnessing to the Lordship of Jesus
Christ, first and last, alpha and omega, beginning and
end….until the morning breaks and the shadows flee and the
Lord comes.
So the book ends with this gracious, simple
invitation: “Come.”
The Spirit
and the bride say “Come.” Let everyone who hears say,
“Come.” Let all who are thirsty, “Come.” Come, all who
desire and take the water of life without price. Just
come…or better yet, as my Tennessean friends would say,
“Y’all come.” “All of you…everyone…come to the wedding
feast.”
Come, Chevy
drivers and Ford owners and maybe even Dr. Z. Come, “Chicks
with Classics” and “Crazy Car Guys.” It doesn’t matter if
you drive gas-guzzlers or Smart cars, muscle cars or
minivans. If you are thirsty, just come to the waters of
life and drink. Come, east-siders and west-siders, young and
old, rich and poor, male and female, gay and straight. Come,
immigrant offspring and Native Americans (after all, we are
all one or the other). Come, Arab and Asian, African and
Hispanic, and maybe even a few middle-aged white guys like
me. Come, Methodists and Baptists and maybe even a few
Presbyterians. Y’all come. We’re cruising toward the dream.
Let everyone say, “Come.”
Come, Lord Jesus.
I close this
series with one more picture from the world of fantasy, from
C.S. Lewis’ wonderful Chronicles of Narnia. My
favorite scene of the seven books is in the last chapter of
the last book, entitled The Last Battle. After all
the conflict and crisis, all the battles with evil and the
striving for good, the children come to the final moment of
their journey through the land of Narnia. Lewis writes:
Suddenly they
shifted their eyes to another spot, and then Peter and
Edmund and Lucy gasped with amazement and shouted out and
began waving: for there they saw their own father and
mother, waving back at them across the great, deep valley.
“How can we
get to them?” said Lucy.
“That is
easy,” said Mr. Tumnus. “We have only to walk along the
ridge, upward until it joins on. We must all go up.”
And soon they
found themselves all walking together—and a great bright
procession it was—up towards mountains higher than you could
see in this world even if they were there to be seen.
Then Aslan,
the Lion said, “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you
to be.”
Lucy said,
“We are so afraid of being sent away again.”
“No fear of
that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed? There really was a
railway accident. Your father and mother and all of you
are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term
is over; the holidays have begun. The dream is ended; this
is the morning.”
And as He
spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the
things that began to happen after that were so great and
beautiful that I cannot write them.
And for us,
this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly
say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it
was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in
this world had only been the cover and the title page: now
at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story,
which no one on earth has read; which goes on for ever; in
which every chapter is better than the one before.
(C.S. Lewis,
The Last Battle, page 182)
Amen and Amen.
* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * *
NOTES:
This sermon
was preached on “Dream Cruise” weekend, when one million
people and 20,000 classic cars gather on Woodward
Avenue…hence, the title and the references to cars
throughout. The worship service included a number of
African American spirituals and American gospel songs, which
are quoted in the sermon.
For further
reading on this approach to the book of Revelation, I
recommend the following books. All can be ordered from our
“virtual bookstore” at www.fumcbirmingham.org.
Revelation
for Today
by James Efrid. It is short and readable, and gives
background on the growth of “dispensationalism,” the
approach to prophetic writing which has given rise to
interpretations like Tim LaHaye’s “Left Behind” series.
Breaking the
Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation
by Bruce M. Metzger
In God’s
Time: The Bible and the Future
by Craig C.
Hill
Mysterious
Apocalypse: Interpreting the Book of Revelation
by
Arthur W. Wainwright
You will find
that all writers do not agree at every point, and I
therefore do not assume everyone will agree with me on my
approach to Revelation. But given that the book is written
in symbol and code language, there is plenty of room for
various interpretations. Who knows? Maybe even Tim LaHaye is
correct—but I seriously doubt it. (jeh)
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