Revelation 1:1-19
The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.
John, to the seven churches in the province of Asia: Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.
“Look, he is coming with the clouds,” and “every eye will see him, even those who pierced him”; and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.” So shall it be! Amen.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said: “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.”
I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.
When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades. Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later.”
This morning we start a series looking at the Book of Revelation. Like I said last week, it's a strange book with a fearful reputation, and you may be coming to this feeling curious or anxious or a bit of both. It's been some years since I read Revelation, so this week I listened to it all the way through, which is how those it was originally written for would most likely have encountered it. I recommend you try it if you have an hour to spare this week, but I will warn you that it is quite an overwhelming experience. Terrible and wonderful things happen so quickly that it's hard to keep up. Years pass in a moment and scenes change with all the logic of a dream. There are beasts and books and bowls that all seem to represent something else. The same numbers appear over and over again. It is a vision but it wants to tell us something about reality. It is no wonder that some people avoid the book while others become obsessed with it. My hope is that over the coming weeks we can navigate our way between those two extremes, getting to a place where we can more easily access the text without losing ourselves down a rabbit hole. So for this morning, I want to focus on giving us a sure footing from which to take the first step. This might end up feeling even more like a lecture than my usual preaching style, but I think it's going to be really helpful in exploring this book together.
The first thing to say about Revelation is that it is a letter, which means it is geographically and historically located, and so we need to contextualise it, recognising that it might not mean the exact same thing here and now as it did there and then. The writer identifies himself as John, and it has traditionally been believed that he is the same author who wrote the gospel and letters which also bear that name, although that is no longer widely accepted by scholars. What does seem likely is that this John had been banished to the island of Patmos for his role in spreading the gospel, which suggests he was a prominent figure in the early church. The exact date of the letter is uncertain, but it is thought to have been written during the second half of the first century, either following the persecution of Christians in Rome by Nero, or during the wider persecution of Christians across the Roman Empire by Domitian. Either way, it was written against a background of violent oppression, which probably goes a long way to explaining the violent imagery of the text. It was sent to seven churches in Asia Minor, named in the order they would have been reached if travelling from Patmos. It is not clear why these seven churches were chosen, as they weren't the only ones in the region at the time, but they give a reasonable geographic spread, so may have acted as epicentres from which the letter could be shared more widely. This was a letter hoping for a large audience.
The next thing to say about Revelation is that it is an example of apocalyptic literature. The word apocalypse has come to mean the end of the world, or an event involving destruction on a catastrophic scale, but it originally meant revelation, which is where the common name of the book comes from. An apocalypse of the sort we are looking at here is a type of prophecy which pulls back the curtain on the world to unveil a deep truth, particularly in relation to cosmic events, and often looking forward to the triumph of good over evil at the end of the current age. It was a well established if not tightly defined genre of writing, with other scriptural examples in Daniel and Isaiah, and elements in common with other prophetic visions such as those found in Ezekiel and Acts. Apocalyptic literature is heavy on symbolism, some of it bordering on the grotesque, and much of it drawing on existing imagery. Two hundred and seventy eight of the four hundred and four verses of Revelation refer to the Hebrew Bible. We’ll explore some of those connections as we go through, but it's really important to understand that Revelation is deeply rooted in what has come before. So much so that Eugene Peterson suggested that it tells us nothing that we do not already know from the rest of scripture, but that in it “old truth is freshly perceived”, revealed not for the first time but in new language and imagery so that it might be understood anew in its own time.
So how are we to understand Revelation in our time? There have been many attempts and many approaches, and we won't do justice to them all, even in the three months we have with this book, but I will attempt to summarise a few of them. Historicist readings seek to map the events of Revelation onto the events of human history, preterist readings assume that the prophecies were fulfilled at the time the letter was written or shortly afterwards, futurist readings believe that the events that unfold in John’s vision are still yet to unfold in reality, and idealist readings see the scenes that play out as purely allegorical. Amillennialists hold that the millennium of God's reign began with the birth of Christ and will be followed by the second coming, postmillennialists agree that the millennium will be followed by the second coming but think it has yet to begin, and premillennialists say that it is the second coming that will begin the millennium. There have been feminist readings which focus on the dramatically stereotypical female figures in the text, and there have been liberationist readings which draw particular attention to the letter’s background of persecution and look to it to speak into contemporary situations of oppression.
I appreciate that's a lot to take in, and I don't expect you to have it all straight, l just wanted to give you a sense of the breadth of scholarship and interpretation. I'm sure we'll learn a little more about some of those approaches as we go on, but I also hope that we will bring our own eyes and ears to the text and develop our own readings, so I want to suggest a few things that it might be helpful to bear in mind. The first is that eyes and ears are really important when it comes to Revelation. John uses the phrase “I saw” forty times and “I heard” thirty two times. There is a reason that God delivered this revelation in the form of a technicolour vision with surround sound, and so we need to pay attention to what is seen and heard, both the details and the big picture. Revelation is like a film, and it needs to be experienced as well as analysed. The second is that we may not be very familiar with apocalyptic literature, but there are contemporary genres we can compare it to, that may help it feel a little less intimidating. George Beasley Murray has likened the symbolic use of imagery to political cartoons, and Simon Woodman suggests a parallel with science fiction, as both use an imagined future to reflect on contemporary issues. And the third thing I want to suggest is that while there may be disagreement over how literally we should read Revelation, it seems clear that we must read it theologically. John is taken up into heaven and it is from there that he sees everything unfold, so what we are being offered is heaven’s perspective on our earthly circumstance, and we need to be paying attention to what it is that God is revealing to us through it.
I said we need to look at the big picture as well as the details, so I want to draw our attention to some of the big themes that unfold through the course of the book, that we might want to pay attention to and that might help draw everything together. The first may be summed up by the REM lyric, “It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine”. Whether the vision looks to a future second coming, or reflects the way in which Jesus comes again and again in the life of the church and the believers, it describes earth-shattering events, and so there is a clear sense that things are changing. At times that change seems terrifying, but it ends with the renewal of all things. There is a deeply pastoral heart to this letter, promising hope and life and beauty to a people who knew despair and death and desolation. The second is that “things are not only as they seem”. There are layers of meaning to the text, some of which are explained and others of which we have to figure out for ourselves. This may then encourage us to look for layers of meaning in the world, to keep pulling back the curtain to see the deeper truth of things. And the third theme I want to draw our attention to is the letter's strong anti-imperial message. We’ll come to this in more detail in later weeks, but much of the symbolism points to Rome, and there is a whole section about the fall of Babylon. John surely had in mind the empires he knew, but his vision may still have a message for the empires we know, chiefly that human empire must always be resisted.
Let's finish for this morning by taking a closer look at the first chapter, which we heard as our reading earlier. It begins with a very brief introduction which tells us that we are about to read a prophecy, and then the kind of words of greeting and declarations of faith that are familiar from the openings of other New Testament letters. We are then thrown straight into John's vision, with a pretty vivid description of Christ. Hair as white as snow and eyes like blazing fire. Feet like burnished bronze and a voice like rushing water. Seven stars in his right hand and a double edged sword in his mouth. His face shining like the sun. I don't know about you, but I find it quite hard to put all of that together in my imagination. What happens to the sword when he talks, for starters? Here it might help to compare these verses to Song of Songs, where the male voice describes his lover as having eyes like doves and hair like goats, which I'm sure was intended to be more flattering than it sounds. This is a poetic description, meant to convey the overwhelming brilliance of Christ in glory. It also draws on images from Old Testament prophets, so for example the feet of bronze may be intended to recall the feet of clay from Daniel's vision of the statue that represented the sequence of empires. The feet of clay were suggestive of weak foundations, so the feet of bronze may indicate that in contrast with human empires, Jesus stands firm.
It is not just the physical appearance of Christ that is significant, but where he is and what he does. John sees him standing among seven lampstands, which we are later told represent the seven churches. Remember that John is in exile and the churches are experiencing persecution, and yet Jesus appears to John and reveals himself as being in the midst of the churches. There is a clear message here that they are not abandoned to their suffering. Again this is a pastoral word of comfort and confidence to people who must have desperately needed to hear it. And I believe I have shared before that this chapter contains one of my favourite moments in all of scripture, as John falls to the ground, and Jesus reaches out to him with the same hand that held the stars, who we learn are the seven angels, as he tells him not to be afraid. Christ will let go of heaven to lift us to our feet. That is what it is to be loved by God. And with that spine tingling moment, we will draw our first exploration into Revelation to a close.
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