Revelation 18:1-10
After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendour. With a mighty voice he shouted: “‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!’ She has become a dwelling for demons and a haunt for every impure spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable animal. For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”
Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “‘Come out of her, my people,’ so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes. Give back to her as she has given; pay her back double for what she has done. Pour her a double portion from her own cup. Give her as much torment and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself. In her heart she boasts, ‘I sit enthroned as queen. I am not a widow; I will never mourn.’
Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her: death, mourning and famine. She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her. When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: ‘Woe! Woe to you, great city, you mighty city of Babylon! In one hour your doom has come!’”
We have now reached the penultimate week of our study of Revelation. We have heard seven letters written to seven churches, containing both encouragement and exhortation. We have had seven seals, seven trumpets and seven bowls, all unleashing disasters upon the world. We have seen a fixed number of the chosen become an infinite number of the faithful, two witnesses be martyred and resurrected, and beasts with many heads seek to dominate the earth. It has been a whirlwind of signs and symbols, which do not necessarily map precisely onto past or future events, but which nonetheless open our eyes to truth by describing the world as it has always been, and invite us to repentance by warning us about the world as it may yet be.
There has been a particular focus on the totalising and brutalising force of empire, and last time we ended with the declaration that empire always falls because it is incompatible with God's heart and design for creation. In this morning's passage we see the fall of Babylon, which seems intended to represent all empire. I think it is significant that a voice calls the people out of the city, seemingly to save them from sharing in its fate. Right until the very last moment there is the chance of repentance, and it is clearly not the population of Babylon but all that it represents that destruction is aimed at. Shortly after the passage we heard this morning, we learn a little more about Babylon, with an emphasis on its economic activity. The city has defined itself by its wealth and its splendour, but it is not only "excessive luxuries" and "fancy things" that it has been buying, it is also "bodies - that is human slaves". This detail comes at the end of an expansive list of purchases, after clothes and spices and animals, but I don't think that is because it was an afterthought. I think it is because that is where our attention is supposed to land. This is the great evil of empire, the commodification of human life. Because as Granny Weatherwax says in Terry Pratchett's 'Carpe Jugulum', "sin...is when you treat people as things".
Darrell Johnson casts his net a little wider and identifies seven marks of Babylon-ness - rejection of God, sensuality (or what we might call hedonism), injustice, consumerism, violence, deception and idolatry. It is a damning indictment of Babylon, but there is also a challenge for us to ask where we see those marks in our own society. What is that we need to destroy? It is all well and good reading Revelation and talking about Babylon and Rome, but until the final victory, empire continues to shape shift, and we need to be alert to the ways in which it manifests in our own time.
Back to the text, the fall of Babylon clears the way for the final victory of Heaven, and yet we never actually see a battle. In chapter nineteen, Jesus arrives on a white horse, followed by the armies of heaven, and the beast and the kings of the world take their stand against him, and then he just wins. We're gearing up for something like the climax of 'The Lord of the Rings', but Jesus simply throws the beasts into hell and kills the armies with his sword. Some scholars think the battle is skipped over, like a Greek drama where all the exciting stuff happens offstage, but perhaps it never actually happens. As is so often the case, God plays to our expectations and then usurps them. Because it is not just the speed but also the manner in which this scene plays out that is interesting. Jesus may be portrayed as a warrior, but his only weapon is the sword that comes from his mouth. Perhaps then the violence is not physical but symbolic, for in truth it is the word of Jesus that brings victory.
However it comes about, Revelation promises a chaotic and frightened world that victory is assured, but it seems important to acknowledge that this victory doesn't deny suffering now. In the immediate aftermath of the US presidential election, a lot of people online were expressing their fears, and in response some well meaning Christians declared that we don't need to be afraid of earthly powers because Jesus is Lord. Still others countered that Jesus is Lord but those earthly powers can still do a lot of harm. I think somewhere in the middle of all of that is a call for us not to give in to either despair or complacency, but to keep acting justly and loving mercy and walking humbly with God. We live in the tension of the now and not yet, and so we can be both honest about the world and hopeful about the future. And in the meantime, as Anglican priest Grace Thomas put it, "The two greatest commandments - love God and love your neighbour as yourself - don't change. The call to stewardship doesn't change. The beatitudes - blessed are the merciful, the peacemakers, those who hunger for righteousness - don't change. This is our calling in every age." The more closely we can following that calling, the more fully we can live in the victory that is promised.
Chapter nineteen also introduces the imagery of the wedding feast of the lamb. I won't dwell on this, but I do think Darrell Johnson does some interesting things with it, which I will touch on briefly. He sees the Last Supper as the betrothal that began the preparations for the feast to which all are now invited, with the covenant symbolised by the cup being the marriage contract itself. He believes that the church is already engaged to the lamb, and this means knowing we are loved and having security in that relationship. It calls us to be loyal and reframes sin as adultery and therefore a primarily relational issue. It also requires us to make ourselves ready for the marriage feast, which encourages a kind of simplicity as we focus on Christ. There has been a recent move to do some quite odd things with the image of the church as the Bride of Christ, but I rather like the idea of a present engagement, which feels like a relatable way of making sense of the now and not yet between all that Christ did through the cross and all that Christ will do through the final resurrection.
That brings us onto chapter twenty, which speaks of the first resurrection of the faithful. This is wrapped up with the idea of the millennium, a thousand years in which Satan is bound and the faithful rule with Jesus. It is a complicated passage and has given rise to multiple interpretations, which disagree over when this millennium will occur. I'm not going to get into the differences between premillennialism and postmillennialism and amillennialism, because I found Darrell Johnson's summary of what they do and should agree on a more helpful approach. He says they do agree that the best is yet to come, that ultimately the future belongs to Christ, and that this future breaks in from the outside; and they should agree that the millennium is symbolic, that Jesus is already king, and that the gospel changes things. However we understand the binding of Satan and the rule of the faithful, they seem reasonable markers to guide us.
The fact that the millennium is a fixed time is interesting, because it means that having been bound, Satan is released, although he is quickly defeated and thrown into a lake of fire. It seems odd that he isn't simply bound forever, or destroyed entirely the first time round, but remember that Revelation is trying to convey deep truths not actual events. I think this scene tells us that evil can try again but will always be defeated, and that feels like a really important assurance in this time of now and not yet.
This section of Revelation ends with the final judgment and the opening of the books. Some of these books contain the records of our deeds, but then there is also the Book of Life. Death and the grave give up their dead, who are judged according to their deeds, and then death and the grave are themselves destroyed, along with those whose name is not in the Book of Life. This feels like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't quite fit. The dead are judged according to the books of their deeds, but whether or not they escape the lake of fire depends on whether or not their names are in the Book of Life, and we don't know the criteria for appearing in the Book of Life or how that relates to what is written in the books of our deeds. Darrell Johnson suggests that the Book of Life is the book of Jesus' deeds, which covers the books of our deeds, because it is by the life of Jesus that we are saved. Similarly, Bruce Metzger reflects that "our earthly lives are important and meaningful and are taken into account at the end...[but] our eternal destiny is determined by God's decision, by God's grace, by God's amazing goodness". To be honest, I have much more confidence in God's grace than our deeds, and I am hopeful that we might find all of our names in the Book of Life, but we have heard that our calling holds true no matter the circumstances, so may we still live in such a way that we can give a good account of ourselves at the end. That would be a victory worth winning.
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