Easter 4, Year C: Revelation 7:11-14
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
May 8, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” – Revelation 7:14b[1]
There’s a lot of fear in the world right now. Between global conflicts, factions straining for dominance within our own nation, and reports of upcoming Supreme Court rulings, I expect we’re going to hear a lot of frightening messages and apocalyptic proclamations in the coming weeks and months. Many people will be turning to the Bible to discern the “signs of the times,” and there will be plenty of self-proclaimed prophets telling us what to expect and how we ought to think and respond as events continue to unfold. After all, if there’s one thing American Christians like to do, it’s dig through prophecy and uncover its secret meaning for our lives. But if there’s one thing that we have a history of misappropriating, misunderstanding, or abusing, it also happens to be prophecy.
To start off, anything going on in our country or around the planet right now does not mark the capital E/W “End of the World.” We’re experiencing no more or less of the Last Days than any other generation or civilization in human history. We’ve talked before about the fact that the world is always ending, and the world is always beginning. Both are simultaneously true, and news coming out of Paris or Beijing or Washington, D.C. or Santa Fe or city hall isn’t going to affect reality on a cosmic scale no matter how much we might hope or fear. That isn’t to say that choices we and our governments make have no affect on our and other people’s lives and futures—they certainly do. But I want to end any speculation this morning that we’re approaching The End in the stinging-locusts/flaming-skies/trumpets-from-Heaven sort of way. That simply isn’t how prophecy works.
In the modern world, what most of us think about when we hear the word prophecy involves prediction—something like prognostication or the mutterings of an oracle. It’s the sort of fantasy movie thing where a “chosen one” follows a fated and forewarned pathway either to their own destruction or to the liberation of the world. But the Bible doesn’t often use prophecy in that way. “Prophecy” in the way the Bible presents it is frequently little more than preaching or proclamation. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the future—far more frequently it’s focused on the present. The Bible’s prophecy is often either a warning to change our ways or an encouragement to continue along the path of service to others despite present challenges.
The only thing that really sets prophecy apart from preaching is that instead of being about God, it’s actively pronounced in the name of God.[2] The messenger is claiming to speak not on their own behalf but directly from the mouth of the Divine, and that makes claiming to be a prophet nothing to take lightly. The third of the Ten Commandments addresses this: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”[3] Updated into a more modern idiom, that sounds like, “Don’t make false claim to God’s name,” or even more simply, “Don’t put God’s name on your cause.” And there’s more to that commandment than we usually quote. It goes on to say, “for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.”[4] So be cautious—anyone claiming prophetic status or revelation for themself is playing a very dangerous game.
Now, you’re probably wondering how I can say that prophecy isn’t generally predictive when we as Christians assert that so many prophecies from the Hebrew Bible were fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. The truth is, even when prophecy is predictive, it doesn’t really function the way we tend to expect.
Predictive prophecy isn’t so much a mystical gift of seeing the future as it is God helping us recognize patterns. Humans tend to behave similarly no matter when or where we’re from, and prophecy often calls our overarching tendencies to the forefront of our attention. That’s why we keep seeing the same prophecy fulfilled in multiple ways in different times and places. The initial speaker may have had a specific situation in mind, but the universal patterns are bound to repeat. It’s almost like the string of history has certain holes it keeps looping through, and each strand that enters the loop finds itself with another legitimate fulfilment of that prophecy. That’s why scholars can look at a book like Revelation and definitively state that it’s using coded language to reference known events around the time it was written, but 1500 years later Martin Luther could claim it was being fulfilled through the Reformation. In the late 1800’s, Americans were certain the Civil War was the End of Days, yet life continued. Generation after generation still somehow sees evidence of apocalyptic predictions coming to fruition in our own times. That’s because there isn’t necessarily one single “actual,” “true,” or “genuine” application. All are fulfilments because the same overall concepts keep emerging in human society again and again.
So if we want to understand a book like Revelation, looking for specific, real time events and proofs will never help us. It was never meant to show us some sort of divine secret that will allow us to prepare for or escape from The End.[5] To understand Revelation—and prophecy in general—we have to consider the bigger picture, adapting to and applying its overarching themes. And the theme of Revelation basically boils down to a tale of two competing realities: Empire versus the Kingdom of God.
I frequntly talk about God’s Reign as the reality behind our reality—the path of faithfulness, love, and peace that Jesus revealed to us and instructed us to expose within the world around us. Revelation’s primary addition to this theme is its emphasis on how the Reign of the Heavens will always continue to surprise us and keep expanding beyond our expectations. Throughout the book, we find John hearing one thing, but when he looks he sees something completely different. Both last and this week’s New Testament readings are good examples.
Immediately before our passage opened last Sunday, John had heard of the arrival of “the Lion of the tribe of Judah.”[6] But when he looks for himself, he sees a “Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.”[7] Just before today’s text John hears about the 144,000 servants of God sealed from the tribes of Israel: 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes[8]. But when he turns, instead of a privileged minority commended to God’s favor, he witnesses “a great multitude that no one can count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before [God’s] throne and before the Lamb,”[9] all of them drawn to worship together with one voice.
The entirety of the New Testament pronounces that God’s Kingdom isn’t constrained to the worthy few—people with the right pedigree or the right behavior or the right theology. Revelation reveals God’s Reign as expansive, a realm of unity despite difference, an experience of harmony and wonder and love expressed through[10] diversity. No matter where or when they’re from, regardless of what their societies demanded they think about the world and people around them, all these people—including us—find true union and citizenship through the object of our common worship and the joining of our common prayer and praise.
Empire, on the other hand, is ravenous in its desire for power and control. It speaks of unity but demands uniformity—and it will have what it wants, no matter the cost to those around or within it. It proclaims its own peacefulness and honor, yet its tools of choice are fear and intimidation. When those fail to achieve its goals, it embraces open violence and terror. It creates its own stability through destabilizing others. Empire seeks to divide, to establish distinctions between its loyal citizens and their craven, godless subjects. But at the same time it always finds ways to continue restricting its rights and privileges to more and more exclusive portions of its population. Empire springs from the corruption available in the heart of each person and can express itself at any level of society—from posturing and power plays between nations to manipulation and abuses within institutions down to mistreatment and malcontent within a single family or group of friends.
That contrast between Empire and God’s Kingdom is what we really need to look at this morning. Our country has been badly divided along ideological lines for decades, and this social instability threatens the stability of the Church as a whole as well as individual congregations. In the coming weeks and months, Empire will do everything it can to seduce and divide us, sowing fear and drawing us into ideological factions. Its prophets will try to certify each of us in our own righteousness and persuade us of our neighbors’ evil intent—often under the label of “Biblical” teaching and thinking despite talking about things the Bible never once mentions. But you can recognize Empire and its agents by the fruit of not just their actions but their words. Its prophets will always seek to instill fear and to divide, to stop our ears to one another and to turn our hearts to paths of exclusion. The Reign of the Heavens, however, guides us toward love and mercy, toward self-giving and reconciliation.
As humans, we have no choice but to live within the sway of Empire. Yet our citizenship and loyalty need not lie within its grasp nor answer to its demands. So be slow to anger, slow to assume ill of one another, and slow to turn upon or fear your fellow Children of God. Be especially wary of anything or anyone who establishes tests for purity of thought and behavior. What defines God’s Children isn’t our assent to a particular position or party line. What defines us is our worship—who we worship—and only in God’s service, in service of one another, can we find true unity and peace.
“These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Or “the gods” or “spirit” or whatever your religious persuasion regards to be its supernatural influence.
[3] Exodus 20:7a | King James Version
[4] Exodus 20:7b | New Revised Standard Version
[5] That kind of teaching falls into the heresy of Gnosticism.
[6] Revelation 5:5
[7] Revelation 5:6
[8] Revelation 7:4-8
[9] Revelation 7:9
[10] Not “despite”