You may have noticed that, throughout Easter season, we’ve been reading from the Book of Revelation on Sunday mornings. Since preachers usually focus their remarks on the Gospel appointed for the day, our series from Revelation has been passing by without much commentary.
Perhaps that suits you just fine. I remember a time when I really disliked Revelation. I found it confusing, and a bit frightening. And having grown up around many evangelical Christians who liked to use it in attempt to convert people to their viewpoint, I was content to set it aside as “crazy talk” that didn’t really have anything to do with my own relationship with Jesus.
But eventually, when I was in seminary and we studied Revelation together and were empowered to name the parts that were foreign to us or that we found confusing or scary, I came to appreciate it in a different way. The crucial piece for me, was my professor’s insistence that all apocalyptic literature—whether Revelation or the book of Daniel or some of the apocalyptic portions of the Gospels (recall the “little apocalypse” in Matthew 24, for example)—must be read, not with our heads, but with our hearts. Apocalyptic literature is about emotion, rather than fact. But that emotional testimony conveys very real truths.
Apocalyptic texts have a lot in common with the prophetic texts with which we are probably more familiar and certainly more comfortable. In the prophets, we see both a prediction of destruction as well as beautiful and poetic words of comfort, and their messages frequently come as the result of visions that involve some degree of other-worldly or fantastic imagery. The primary difference is that the focus of prophetic literature is on the call to repentance, whereas apocalyptic literature seeks to strengthen our resolve and endurance by the promise that good will prevail in the end.
While it’s easy to get distracted by horsemen and beasts and lakes of fire, we aren’t mean to read Revelation as a literal prediction of future events. We’re meant to read it with our hearts. The world is a terrifying place. Sometimes it feels like evil is winning. Sometimes it feels like things are only going to get worse before they get better. And the most frightening thing, when we feel that way, is the thought that sometimes creeps in that maybe things won’t get better at all—that the wars and violence and exploitation and greed of our present world will only escalate until we have annihilated one another, and all is lost. And to that, in Revelation Jesus says, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.” (1:17-19)
The message of Revelation is one of hope. It is the assurance that in all of the chaos and fear of this world, Jesus is still triumphant. God is not blind to our suffering, and it will not go on forever. Though we cry, “How long, O Lord?” we can trust that God will intervene. Just as he came into the world in the incarnation, Jesus says he is coming soon.
“Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”
Mother Terry+