Confronting Revelation again

We find ourselves confronted, maybe assaulted, again this morning by the prophet John of Patmos’s apocalyptic letter to the churches in Asia.  We’ve just heard this wild, outlandish text from Revelation 13 and into chapter 14.  I’ve read it over and over again but it goes far beyond my imagination.  A beast from the sea.  A beast from the earth.  The first one has ten horns and seven heads.  The second has two horns and speaks like a dragon.  The first beast reminds John of a leopard, but its feet are more like a bear’s, and its mouth resembles a lion’s. 

What’s with all this crazy far-out talk?  Please, oh please, give me Jesus.  Jesus, sitting down, calling the children together and saying “you’ve got to be like a child.”  Or Jesus, standing near a lake, saying “there once was a man who had two sons.  The first one…”  Oh, how much I long for a good story, or one of those mind-puzzling parables. 

But no, today it’s John of Patmos, and the things he describes in his apocalyptic vision.  I was moaning about this at home the other day.  “Why, oh why, I don’t get this stuff.  I read words but they make no sense…”  So Glena cuts to the chase, “so why in the world did you pick Revelation in the first place?”  Well, we have this theme of transformation this year, and Revelation seems to have something to do with big cataclysmic changes, and it’s a book we want to ignore, but yet lots of people read it, so maybe we ought to try to own the book rather than ignore it.

And besides that, there are important Anabaptist/Mennonite scholars who are digging into this book and it is worth our effort to hear what they have to say.  As Christians who read the Bible through an Anabaptist/Mennonite lens, we are instinctively drawn to the important themes of Jesus centeredness, of service, of community, and of working towards God’s just peace.  We look for ways in which the book draws us in the ways of faithful, radical discipleship, which seems so central to the call of Jesus.

I think that Revelation is a serious book and we honor it as Holy Scripture when we read it carefully and appropriately.  That’s why, along with most people, I don’t read it literally.  I also do not read it as predictive prophecy.  That is, I don’t see it as some great puzzle to figure out, and if you can just decipher all the clues, you can figure out what the future will literally look like.   But the figures do mean something, and meant something to the early readers, and that is an important first step to figure out.  Then from there we try to figure out, how do these themes apply to us today. 

But of course reading the Bible more baldly and boldly, I won’t deny, can have its place.  And some of the early Anabaptists, living in circumstances far different from our own, found reason to use Revelation. 

You can find in Martyrs Mirror the story of Hans de Vette and eleven other Anabaptists in Flanders, today Belgium , in the city of Ghent .  It was 1559 and they were rounded up, largely for their views on believers baptism.  During the course of one of the interrogations, de Vette was being pressed on who baptized him, since he had openly admitted to his rebaptism.  They were verbally jousting around who they were and where they came from.  The authority said “perhaps I am just an orphan of unknown parentage.”  To which de Vette snapped  “yes, John’s Revelation (13:1) speaks of a beast, which rose up out of the sea; you may belong to that race.”  (Martyrs Mirror, p. 621)   Responding in this acidic way probably didn’t help his cause.  In due course, all twelve, men and women alike, were either burned at the stake or beheaded.  That’s not a very pretty way of saying that I want to take Revelation seriously.

The beasts of chapter 13

Reading these chapters I find several key verses which I believe are the words we stand upon, that we cling to.  Chapter 13 begins with this description of the first beast, rising out of the sea.  And then in the middle of the chapter we hear these words:

            Let anyone who has an ear listen…

And

            Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.

 

Then there is a detailed description of a second beast, this one rising out of the earth.  But then at the conclusion this word of counsel:

            This calls for wisdom

Followed by the confusing;

            Let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the
            number of a person. Its number is six hundred sixty-six.

 

Then the next chapter begins with John of Patmos saying

            Then I looked, and there was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion !

 

In the Old Testament apocalyptic book of Daniel four ancient empires were represented as beasts, beasts rising from the sea, beasts representing threatening empires in that day.  In Revelation 13 there are two beasts, and they too connote that which is evil.  I will go along with those who say that in the time this was written, towards the end of the first century, the beasts are symbols for the Roman Empire.  The commentator William Barclay puts it forcefully For John the Roman Empire was so satanic and terrible that in itself it included all the evil terrors of the evil empires which had gone before.  It was, as it were, the sum total of all evil.” (Barclay quoted in Yeats, Revelation, p. 242). 

More particularly, people reading this in the early centuries would see in the beast rising out of the sea as the Roman Empire.  The empire at that time was ruled by Domitian, who could have been seen as Nero, the first great persecutor of Christians, incarnate. 

The second beast, the one that rises out of the earth, is one that pushes people to worship the first beast.  We can think of the second beast as representing “emperor worship” itself.  Domitian, in his time, began to compel citizens to refer to him as “lord” and “god.” 

Using a literary method, apocalyptic, not particularly uncommon it its time, John of Patmos shocks his readers with these large, aggressive images.  Remember, he is writing to churches in Asia.  He worries about the temptation of too much acculturation, a too easy drifting into the broad way of doing things like everyone else does them.   He sketches these outlandish beastly characters as a way of shaking his listeners to say, “look, can’t you see?!”

What’s important for us is to detect what this might mean for us.  John Yeatts (who wrote the Believer’s Church commentary on Revelation) reminds us that:

Although these are the best referents for the beastly symbols, their meaning can apply to any time when the state assumes power that should be God’s   The spirit of the beast is present when any states demands complete allegiance, whether that state be communist, Nazi, or capitalist; the spirit of the beast from the earth is present in any church that advocates allegiance to such a government, whether that church be the orthodox church of Russia, the state church of Nazi Germany, or ultra-patriotic fundamentalism in the United States.  The passage warns the faithful that refusal to give such allegiance may mean death. (Yeats, p. 253)

What are we to learn?

To that I expect we all can say in unison, why of course!  Of course we don’t want to get caught up in the “spirit of the beast” which calls for our complete allegiance, pushing God to the side.  But you know, things that seem as obvious as a big fat pimple right on the tip of your nose don’t seem so obvious when you are right in the middle of it.  Sometimes, maybe most of the time, it is hard to discern.

Look a little closer at the beasts.  The beast from the sea, in the vision, suffers a tremendous wound, a mortal wound even, but incredibly is healed.  And the second beast, the one from the earth, performs great signs.  It even makes fire come down from heaven. 

It reminds us how there were prophets, magicians, and others who performed magical signs.  Jesus warned that there would be false messiahs who, nevertheless, performed mighty deeds.  In that most troubling part of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said

Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  For on that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophecy in your name, or cast out demons in your name, or do many mighty works in your name.  Then will I declare to them, I never knew you…

 

This is a call to the critical task of discernment, of distinguishing between signs and deeds which point towards God and those which point towards the false prophet.

The task of discernment, of “reading” the powers of this world, is daunting.  The second beast exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound has been healed.(13:12)

 

It is as though, yes the Roman Empire is big and that may worry you, but look at all the good it is doing in so many places all over the known world.  Surely you can ignore the minor inconveniences, which are so small anyhow, and work hard for the good of all in the great Roman Empire, so that peace and prosperity might rain upon the earth! 

The real task of the second beast is to convince everyone that the ways of the first beast are right and just and normal.  After all, this mortal wound has been miraculously healed. Something must be good and right here.  So people, fall into line, do as the first beast so kindly requests you to do!

And this is the way it is with beasts.  In John’s Revelation he makes them big and obvious.  There are neon lights pointing at them and saying in bold letters:  THESE GUYS ARE BAD!  BEWARE!  But in real life we are stunningly blind and refuse to see; we just, somehow, can’t see.

For the most part, good Christian people in Nazi Germany just figured the good so far outweighed any bad that everything must be okay.  About a hundred and fifteen years ago people were trained to believe that King Leopold was so kind to the indigenous Congolese people that it was difficult to believe those documents which pointed out that there is a huge trade imbalance between the Congo and Europe.  That somebody is getting rich off of Congolese rubber and that all the Congolese are getting in return is a gun pointed at their back.  In Cuba a good Christian might find it best to be thankful for universal health care and ignore those inklings within that warn that maybe there is more going on than what I am allowed to read.

But of course we have to look at ourselves.  If any country on the planet today resembles the great Roman Empire, it has got to be our own.  The latest Newsweek fell into our mailbox this week with a main article about the plight of chaplains serving in our military in Iraq .  It talks about their struggles, how our soldiers struggle with fear, how they have to face loss, how it tears at their families back home, the tremendous emotional, spiritual, physical, and mental anguish it breeds.  And all this, the chaplain faces and has to deal with.  Yes, yes, to all this.  These struggles are very real, very personal, and very heartbreaking. 

The problem is, this is the second beast, whispering, diverting our attention, saying this is normal, this is the way it is, yes it is tough, but this is the way it has to be.  And so we miss seeing the huge ugly beast with its precision missiles and drones high above and trucks and tanks down below.  So it is that good people hear the seductive whispers of patriotism and courage, and hear the bugle call of duty and honor.  So they go and become part of it, and they are right in the belly of the beast and don’t even know it. 

These people deserve our love and our prayers and our tears, for their fears and their grief must be unspeakable.

We have seen the beast and it is us. The powers of this world, as represented by the beasts, are not to be just spiritualized.  They are that but they are more.  They are real and they are right among us. 

Having seen the beasts, John looks up and sees the Lamb. The Lamb stands in stark contrast to the beasts and we are reminded again here, as in other parts of the Revelation, that we are followers of the Lamb. 

As such we are called to be people who are wise and discerning.  People who listen carefully and together, to learn the difference between lies and truth.  And we are people who know how to patiently endure.  We accept with courage even the worst, as Hans de Vette did, recognizing that difficulty and sometimes persecution does come as a consequence of choosing to follow the Lamb.  We do so soberly yet gladly, for we find great joy in choosing the way of Jesus, who is the way, who is our light, and who leads us in the paths of truth.  Amen.

-- May 6, 2007