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During the Easter season, liberal and liturgical Christians read from the Book of Revelation in worship (along with the stories from Acts and a gospel text).
Revelation is, as most people know, a difficult book. The genre is that of apocalyptic literature — a form of biblical narrative based on mystical visions and dreams and, most often, concerned with issues of divine justice or the end of the age.
Today’s reading is from the penultimate chapter of the New Testament.
Revelation 21:1-6
I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
"See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away."
And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true." Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life."
This week, I went shopping at Target. As I stood in a particular aisle looking for hand sanitizer, I realized that I had been in that exact spot in late February 2020. I was getting ready for a trip to Oregon and had heard of a strange virus that had been recently reported there. I remember thinking: “I should buy some extra Purell.” My husband laughed when I came home with more than a dozen travel-size bottles for upcoming trips. Trips that, of course, never happened.
I stared at the shelves full of sanitizer, recalling how I thought hand cleanser would defeat COVID-19. All the time lost, the pain of isolation. I thought of how I woke up and wept every day for at least six months. A million Americans dead. Millions more around the globe. We’ve been through a literal apocalypse.
And I cried, right there in Target.
Apocalypse involves tears — lots of them.
The word “apocalypse” means “unveiling” or “uncovering,” a pulling back of the curtain. I didn’t always know that. When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I became fascinated with the book of Revelation, the New Testament’s apocalyptic text. The church I attended insisted that it was prophecy, a book of predictions about the literal end of the world. The pastor preached on the signs of the times — how John’s prophetic vision was unfolding in our midst and how the end of the world was near. We studied Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth and There’s a New World Coming. It was both terrifying and thrilling. Terrifying, of course, because we might be raptured at any second and be with Jesus. Thrilling, of course, because God’s new Jerusalem was about to come to earth.
Later, when I was studied theology in college and seminary, I learned that Revelation didn’t predict how the world would end. Instead, professors (even at my evangelical college and seminary) insisted that John’s apocalypse functioned as a comforting text for a persecuted church. The book revealed the evils of this age and assured Christians that a triumphant God would overcome all their pain and suffering. Revelation was, essentially, an extended metaphor of Christ’s victory over a sinful world. We shouldn’t take it literally, as some Christians do.
There’s a lot of confusion over the terms “literal” and “metaphor.” To say something is a “metaphor” doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Indeed, metaphors use familiar language and images to point toward something that is true but difficult to understand. Metaphors are a poetic way of talking about a real thing.
And that brings me back to tears.
The Book of Revelation is built around a central metaphor: The Roman Empire — like every empire — is a murderous Beast. According to the writer, the empire destroys everything, takes everything, and controls everything. The empire was born of violence; all it knows is war. It marks its subjects with death. It waters the world with weeping, its seas flooding the earth with sorrow. Humankind mourns under its sway, and lament is the life we experience in empire. Tears are the very character of empire.
And that is true, an utterly honest assessment of empire.
The author of Revelation gets this right. And the writer is correct about another thing: Don’t collaborate with the Empire. Rome is bad, really bad. Resist. Do not surrender. Keep the faith, even when you are weeping. Maybe most especially then.
Yet the imperial metaphor breaks down. Yes, Rome is bad. Empire is a beast. Revelation depicts earthly imperial violence in a war with the heavenly empire and the violence of divine retribution.
Revelation describes God’s empire with a throne room, an Emperor Christ, and an imperial angelic army bent on revenge. Yet, it is a “good” empire, ultimately on the winning side of history, because God is all-powerful and benevolent. God defends the faithful in the same way Caesar defends his empire. Earthly violence met forcefully by divine violence. Revelation bathes the world in blood and tears. Caesar may have started it, but a warrior God gets his.
Of this, John Dominic Crossan writes: “John’s vision is repeated in ever differing images, but with this underlying and reciprocal logic: in the imminent future Christ will slaughter Romans because in the immediate past Rome slaughtered Christians” (Render Unto Caesar, 101-102).
In a terrible turn of history, Revelation’s imperial Christ was interpreted to be literal and Christians took Revelation as a kind of political map for crusades and colonization. This book and its vision has been the source of enormous violence, suffering, and injustice. Sadly, taking Revelation literally has proved one thing: all empires — including Christian ones — are empires of grief, awash in blood and tears.
Any honest Christian, any observer of history, knows the damage done by literal misreadings of the Book of Revelation. Even a good metaphor can become a very bad thing. The past reveals that. Current American politics is a prime example of the same.
I suspect that even the author of Revelation had a few misgivings about extending the imperial metaphor to the church and tried to soften it with a couple of alternative metaphors. Indeed, “Christ-Caesar” is depicted as a vulnerable Lamb, a shelter for the persecuted, the One who welcomes those from every tongue, tribe, nation, and people. (But even Revelation’s gentler Jesus still resides in a throne room and commands avenging angels!)
However, the final metaphor — that of the bride — offers a genuine corrective. The holy city, the new Jerusalem, “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband,” has always seemed, to me at least, at odds with the rest of the book. The conquering warrior Christ is gone. Instead, this is a feminine metaphor for the reign of God. This is the bridal procession and a powerful image of love: No more waiting. We are welcomed into a relationship that is intimate and imminent. Joy. New life. A home. Separation and sadness are banished. God will be with them; God will wipe every tear from their eyes. The longed-for radiance of God. The pain of empire overcome by light and love.
Indeed, the final chapters of Revelation echo the Song of Solomon more than imperial revenge:
Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned.
Love overcomes the waters of sorrow.
Revelation is a bit like a horror story — a tale of cosmic slaughter — that oddly ends with a wedding. It is not a “red wedding.” Indeed, in the last two chapters, the violent imagery almost completely vanishes and is replaced with the fecundity of a new creation and the tender ministrations of a loving God. The apocalypse contrasts the warrior-God with the bride-Spirit. Although the warrior-God "defeats" the empire, it is incapable of new creation, healing, love. In the end, this strong, renewing feminine image displaces the violent divinity.
The vision invites and woos:
The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.
Tears are wiped away; water now heals. No more crying. That’s the very nature of God’s kingdom.
These last chapters of Revelation are among my favorite in the New Testament — the wedding, the garden, and the River of Life are some of the most beautiful metaphors in Christian scriptures.
Unlike some liberal Protestants, I don’t hate Revelation. I certainly hate the way it has been misunderstood and misused. However, the writer’s depiction of empire is more right than I knew when I sat in the pews and listened to sermons about the end times when I was a teenager. Indeed, I never imagined know how truly brutal empire could be.
But extending the metaphor of empire to Jesus — as a retaliatory warrior — was one of the worst theological missteps in the New Testament, one that led to a terrible history of abuse. Perhaps even the visionary author of this ancient apocalypse intuited that and hoped for a more gracious denouement. And, in many ways, it is a unexpected (and stunning) course correction: The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
I just wish people read to the end of the book. As I always used to tell my students, the best stuff is usually in the conclusion.
INSPIRATION
How many times have I come to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.
— Wendell Berry, from “The Country of Marriage”
May your love be firm,
and may your dream of life together
be a river between two shores—
by day bathed in sunlight, and by night
illuminated from within . . .
— James Bertolino, from “A Wedding Toast”
This week’s Sunday Musing was written before the mass shooting at the supermarket in Buffalo. I add this prayer from the Christian Reformed Church:
Lord, in our shock and confusion, we come before you.
In our grief and despair in the midst of hate,
in our sense of helplessness in the face of violence,
we lean on you.
For the families of those who have been killed we pray.
For the shooters—help us to pray, Lord.
For the communities that have lost members—their anger, grief, fear—we pray.
For the churches and congregations striving to be your light in darkness beyond our comprehension, we pray.
In the face of hatred, may we claim love, Lord.
May we love those far off and those near.
May we love those who are strangers and those who are friends.
May we love those who we agree with and understand,
and even more so, Lord, those who we consider to be our enemies.
Kyrie Eleison. Lord, have mercy.
Heal our sin-sick souls.
Make these wounds whole, Lord.
I would appreciate that scripture be inclusive. God to me and a lot of others is not a pronoun! I always do this when I’m a worship leader, and people come up to saying, “I find this more meaningful!”
Dr Letty Russel taught me this so long ago!
https://twitter.com/ShaneClaiborne/status/1527755707222740994?s=20&t=_zfCH6CmS2CbCw730n3PiQ