Revelation 7:9-17—The Great Multitude in White Robes
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12—The Beatitudes
Introduction
These
are familiar passages. I have worked with them often enough before, and I am
sometimes tempted to think that I know what they are saying. But in fact in every
new reading we hear God speaking in new ways, so we walk through the passages
together in order to see where they take us.
Revelation
Revelation
7 is one my favourite chapters. As the angel shows John the truth behind the
daily events he knows in the world around him, we get a glimpse of where
history is going. In Genesis we see the way that God scatters the nations and
then begins to work in one people (Abraham and his children) on behalf of all
peoples (Genesis 11-12). Pentecost shows the grace that was present in the
destruction of Babel, gathering people together and revealing the gospel to
them each in their own language. But it is left for John to portray the full
glory of Babel restored:
9 After this I looked, and there
before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation,
tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.
They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they
cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the
throne, and to the Lamb.”
This is a
wonderful picture, although the elder’s explanation of the vision reminds us of
the suffering they experienced in their lives:
These are they who have come out of the great
tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of
the Lamb. 15 Therefore,
they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. 16 Never
again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat
down on them, nor any scorching heat. 17 For
the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them
to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
We have
here both the glory that waits for us, and the pain within which we live. For
John’s audience, this was the torment of bitter persecution. Christians were
led into the arena and given a choice: Sacrifice to Caesar and say, “Caesar is
Lord”, or die. One such was an old man named Polycarp. On account of his
advanced age, the officials did not want to kill him and pleaded with him to
renounce his allegiance to Jesus. He replied with these words (as told by F.F.
Bruce), “The old
man made his noble confession: ‘Eighty-six years have I served Him, and He has
done me no wrong; how then can I blaspheme my Saviour and King?’” He was burned
at the stake.
We do
not suffer this kind of persecution. Indeed, there is a general feeling in our
culture that no one should ever suffer. Often we hear someone who has walked
through great loss say something like this: “We need to take steps so that no
one ever has to face what we have experienced again.” I appreciate the compassion
of such people, and they have done great good in our lives. But there is a
basic problem in what they say: Life is such that we will always suffer pain
and loss. Indeed, pain and loss are vehicles through which God brings us grace
and strength.
1 John 3
Turn to
John’s letters. You know that these letters are concerned to show that true
Christian faith is fully in Jesus, the Son of God. The way that John begins the
first letter, deliberately echoing John 1, shows his concern to lift up Jesus.
The way that he does so focusses especially on God’s love, so that the verse,
“God is love” is found in John’s letters. The verses we read express John’s
thoughts well.
In these
verses, John lifts up a series of ideas that lead to glory.
·
God’s
incredible love for us is visible in our identity: “children of God.”
·
This
identity places us at odds with the world. This recalls John’s consistent
position that “the world” means “whatever in this world is opposed to God”.
Because it is in continued opposition to God, the world—seen also in the
cultures in which we live—also is against us.
·
Being
children of God means that we become like God.
·
We are
not always like him now because “we see in a mirror darkly”, but when he
appears we will be like him fully, because we will see him clearly.
·
This hope
leads us to seek purification, cleansing now, to be like him.
Purification
requires pain. It is hard to take the impurities out of metal, and requires
great heat and purification. It is hard to train the athlete to reach the highest
levels, and requires great stress and the pain of strict training. It is hard
to purify our very selves, and requires the presence of Christ leading us
through the training grounds of this life.
Matthew 5
So we
come to the beatitudes.
3 Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn, for
they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek, for they
will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful, for
they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for
they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are
persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are you when people
insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because
of me.
12 Rejoice and be glad, because
great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the
prophets who were before you.
We will
not go into these in any depth, except to note the inversion of all that we
might expect. The source of power is weakness. The place we find joy is mourning. The
righteous are those who know their spiritual poverty. Most importantly, the
source of peace and joy and greatest blessing is the experience of persecution.
We come closest to God when we are forced to hold this world lightly and accept
our inevitable movement beyond this world. In short, the path to experience the
power and glory and greatness of God is to embrace the weakness and fragility
of the cross.
The Myth of Redemptive Violence
A
Christian Peacemakers’ Team member recently was present near the battlefront,
as American air power drove back the forces of IS(IS) from the Azridis and
Christians huddled together in the mountains near Kurdistan. He observed his
own internal conflict at rejoicing over the success of a military response to
the devastating fighting in Iraq and Syria. It is deeply ingrained in us that
violence in the right cause is good. We respond to pain by fighting.
But even
in this situation, where violence is most easily justified as response to evil
on a scale we rarely see, even in this case we see the limits of our ability to
fix what is wrong in our world by fighting it. Consider the actions of the
Islamic State. In the years following Desert Storm, the forerunner of the
present Islamic State had trouble gaining traction in Iraq, especially as many
of its leaders were killed in continued fighting. One result was an influx of
new leaders in about 2010, so that now the primary people who have led the
current fighting are old officers from the Iraq military. In a sense they are
secular Muslims who are using a militant movement to pursue their own agenda of
revenge against the West.
The truth
is that you can never bring lasting peace by crushing someone. The seeds of
World War 2 were sown by World War 1. The second war in Iraq (Desert Storm)
grew out of the first invasion of Iraq more than 20 years ago. Repeatedly we
experience the way that violence gives birth to violence.
The same
pattern is true on a personal level. You know the pattern that people have
often observed: the boss at work shouts at an employee; the employee goes home
and argues with his/her spouse; the spouse turns the bad feelings into
excessive discipline of a child; the child kicks the family dog; and so it
goes. Similarly we notice the way that abused children grow into adults who abuse
others. Violence gives birth to violence. As a beekeeper in a story I’m reading
puts it, “Bees won’t stay by a house where there’s hating.”
We want
peace and harmony. We like the song:
I’d like to build a world a home and furnish it
with love.
Grow apple trees and honey bees and snow white
turtle doves.
I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect
harmony.
I’d like to hold it in my arms, and keep it company.
I’d like to see the world for once all standing
hand in hand,
And hear them echo through the hills for peace
throughout the land.
It’s
somewhat clichéd, but we want peace and harmony. The passages we read show us
the way. The way to peace and harmony, the way to the world that we want is
following Jesus on a path of persecution and hardship. The way to peace is to
accept violence without returning it or passing it on. This is hard to do!
The Path of Peace
In
Revelation 7, those who stand before God in victory are those who accepted the
violence of this world into themselves. In 1 John 3, those who become like God
are those who keep their eyes firmly fixed on Jesus and imitate him. In Matthew
5, God’s blessing comes to those who embrace the peace and love of Christ, even
when the world is against them.
Even those
who are committed to peace can be surprisingly militant. Recently I wrote a
review of a book in which an OT scholar named Eric Seibert works with OT
passages that embrace violence. He argues that we need to read such passages
resistantly and not accept their call to violence. While affirming his basic
thoughts, I wondered what grounds we use to evaluate these problem passages.
This past week I received a response to my review. The responder basically questioned
my own commitment to peace so vigorously that I felt attacked. Even we who are
committed to peace can sometimes be combative.
I want to
be careful in my response to follow the path of peace. I want to curb my own
tendency to fight or run away. I want to engage in a lifestyle that embraces
the way of Jesus. I know myself well enough to be quite sure that I do not and cannot
live this way consistently. So I look back to the passages.
Revelation
7 encourages me to embrace conflict in my life with the presence of Christ,
whether it goes well or not.
1 John 3
reminds me that I can live with God’s love when others speak or act against me
only by keeping my heart and mind fixed firmly on Jesus.
Matthew 5
makes clear that the life God blesses flows out of engagement with God.
Even more than I want to follow the way of peace, I want to follow Christ. Only as I am filled with the Spirit of Christ, am I able to walk in the way of Christ.
Conclusion
Today is All
Saints’ Day. I think of the saints throughout time and around the world. I
think of my bishop (Dan) from the Brethren in Christ Church in Zimbabwe. In the
1980s Zimbabwe went through a time of real trouble. It was after their
Liberation Struggle, to gain their freedom as a country, had ended; but the new
government chose to inflict violence on those who had not voted for them. As
part of this crackdown soldiers were posted in the area where Dan’s parents
lived. His father owned a store there, but a curfew made it impossible for him
to restock his shelves. Then one day some soldiers came by and demanded beer
from him. He had none. So they filled his mouth with bottle caps and beat him
around the mouth with their rifle butts. Because
of the curfew his family was not able to take him from their home to the
hospital for several weeks. By the time they were able to move him, gangrenous
sores were eating away his mouth, and in fact he died in the hospital from the
results of his injuries. Dan was finally able to visit his father in the
hospital, and he told me that he was filled with rage against the soldiers who
had beaten his father so badly. “I imagined myself standing with a machine gun
and lining their children up against a wall and gunning them all down.” His
father could hardly speak, but saw the anger in his son’s eyes and recognized
the revenge he wanted to take. He spoke his last words to his son: “Don’t, Dan.
Don’t”
Don’t
hate. Love.
Don’t
kill. Give life.
Don’t
return violence for violence, but accept even other people’s pain into
yourself, seeking the peace of Christ for them and for yourself.
I know
that this counsel is idealistic, and the experience of the Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria shows how difficult it is to live a life of peace. I do not try
to reconcile these problems, but simply affirm my desire to embrace the triumph
of suffering we find in Jesus. At the end of all things I want to be in that
wonderful multicultural crowd singing before the throne of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment