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A literary approach to Revelation Chapter 13-18
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
So last week, we opened the second half of Revelation by looking at the great red dragon. But we only have two weeks left to finish off this book, and we still have to talk about two beasts and the harlot today, and then the reign of Christ and the coming of the new Jerusalem next week. So we have a lot of work still to do in this series. And so I appreciate you kinda sticking with me, but we got a lot to cover let me remind you though that we are very quickly moving toward the season of Easter. And we had an incredible, fantastic Ash Wednesday service here together to launch the Lenten season.
Speaker 1:And so if you were able to be part of that, thank you. But I would encourage you to think about how you can prepare yourself to experience Easter well. This is such a significant time. It's such a significant moment in the cycle of the church calendar and rhythm. And so my hope is that even though Revelation is an incredibly heavy book and we're doing a lot of work over these weeks, that as we get to the end of Revelation, we will see next week just how incredibly hope filled this letter actually is.
Speaker 1:And that the transition to Palm Sunday and Good Friday and then finally Resurrection Sunday will actually flow quite naturally out of this gift of hope that John pictures for us as he closes. As he gives us an image of the end of pain, the abolition of death, and the coming of peace into the world. And so hopefully, holy week will flow quite naturally out of this series, and so I would encourage you to begin thinking and praying about Easter and resurrection and how you wanna experience that. Before all that though, I wanna recap last week quickly because we're gonna need some of the imagery that we talked about there to understand what John is going to speak to us about tonight. And so last week, we were introduced to the red dragon.
Speaker 1:Now John comes right out and tells us who this is, so no surprise here. This is the Satan. This is the devil. But more than that, the image of the dragon represents for John the cosmic embodiment of evil. So if you have trouble in your mind with the image of a devil, quote unquote, who is an actual person who is actually at war with God.
Speaker 1:Then I think what I would say is that John, from his perspective in the first century, probably does see the world that way. In his imagination, there is a real devil as a real being, but in this image of the dragon, he is talking about so much more than simply the devil. Because for John, the concern here is not Hasatan. God didn't need to defeat the devil. What God needed, what he wanted to do was to overcome evil and pain and brokenness in the world.
Speaker 1:That's the point of the image that John is giving us. It's much bigger than just a devil. And so John gives us another story, yet another tale to weave into this incredible tapestry that he's been building for us. And this time, it is drawn from Greek mythology. He takes the story of Leto and Python and the birth of Apollo, famous narrative in the Greco Roman pantheon, but he renarrates a new meaning for us.
Speaker 1:And see, in the Greek version, the great dragon, Pithon, comes, crouches down before the pregnant Leto, and he is going to devour her twin children, the son and daughter of Zeus, Apollo and Artemis. But just before he can devour them, Zeus comes, rescues the children, takes them to Olympus with him, and grants them each a special arrow on the day of their birth. Then three and a half years after Apollo, is born, he grows into a man, and he returns to the earth as a god man, battles Pethon, uses the special arrow from Zuth to defeat him, and ushers in a new era of peace and prosperity. What John does is take that very familiar tale in his world, link it to an image from the Hebrew scriptures of the nation of Israel pictured as a woman in labor awaiting the coming messiah. But in John's version, when the child is snatched away to heaven, he uses language that reminds us not of Zeus, but of the death of Christ.
Speaker 1:Because Christ is the Apollo figure in the story, he's just not the one we expect in the story. Because Jesus doesn't need to come back to fight the dragon. Dragon. Jesus doesn't need a special Because weapon from his father to defeat the dragon. Instead, it is Jesus' sacrifice itself that undoes the dragon.
Speaker 1:So Christ allows the worst thing that could possibly happen to a human being to happen to him. He is nailed to a cross, but it doesn't end him. The point of the story is that death is not strong. Because in his death and his resurrection, Christ unmasks evil for what it is. It is utterly empty.
Speaker 1:And so the dragon roars and he rages, but it is not because he's strong. It's because we see him for what it is. He's caged and powerless, overcome by grace and peace and sacrifice. That's John's story. And so on a very personal scale, small way, you could think of it this way.
Speaker 1:Someone says something to you, something incredibly hurtful and painful, something evil. And your first instinct from that is to lash out, to retaliate, to fight back, to hit back, to say something terrible. But instead, you pause, you reflect on the story of Christ, and you choose instead to respond with grace and forgiveness. Well, that person may rage, they may roar, they may become infuriated with your response, but what you've done is you have defanged their ability to define you and your story. Now, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.
Speaker 1:John is speaking to a range of people, some of whom he says will give their lives to stand up for what is right. So it may be painful to do this. But what he says is that through sacrifice, evil doesn't get to dictate the terms of your life. Sacrifice does. Love does.
Speaker 1:Christ does. And so, absolutely, we stand with Christ against the dragon for what is right and true. We oppose evil, and we work for good in the world. But we do that with the sacrifice of Christ as our guide, not the violence, the raging, the roaring of the dragon as our template. Christ is not just a new hero like Apollo.
Speaker 1:Christ is a new way of being the hero. He is the new template for humanity, the perfect divine expression of what is good and true in the universe. That's John's story. Now today, John is going to build on the story of evil that he started with the dragon, and we are going to see how for John, politics, religion, and economics find their way back into the tale. But this time, the focus is not on the politics, economics, and religion of Rome.
Speaker 1:The, what he is doing is he is showing these as simply symptoms or servants of the real problem, which is the nature of evil itself. And so today, it is the beast and the harlot and how they serve the cosmic embodiment of evil in the red dragon. But first, let's pray. God, please remind us continually and constantly of your story. Because we know that you win, and we place our trust in that victory, but sometimes we forget how it is that you win.
Speaker 1:Because we see pain, and we experience brokenness. We feel the hurt of the world come crashing into our lives in meaningful, real ways. And so sometimes we wanna lash out or retaliate or hit back, but then we see we are reminded of the image of the lamb who was slain for others. And your spirit brings to mind the sacrifice that saved us and the peace that freed us and the grace that invites us forward into a better story. And so we would ask that your spirit would be with us leading, motivating, and transforming us so that we could not only trust in the work of Christ, but that we could learn what it means to honestly live in the light of that story, courageously and fearlessly and peacefully.
Speaker 1:And so for those of us in this room who have been hurt before, for every single one of us that has been touched by harsh words or accusations, sickness and pain and death. We bring our scars to you for healing because what we long for is to live in the light of a new story. And so we ask that your spirit will be present tonight healing us, forgiving us, and helping us to find place and purpose and meaning in the light of your story. We ask all of this in the strong name of the risen Christ. Amen.
Speaker 1:Okay. Beasts and harlots. Here we go. And I'm gonna start by reading from Revelation chapter 13. We're gonna move fairly quickly because there's a lot to get through tonight, but this is starting in verse one.
Speaker 1:The dragon stood on the shore of the sea, and I saw a beast coming up out of the sea. It had 10 horns and seven heads with 10 crowns on its horns, and each head had a blasphemous name. I saw a beast. This beast I saw resembled a leopard, but it had a feet like those of a bear and the mouth like that of a lion. The beast or the dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and his great authority.
Speaker 1:One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. Verse seven, it was given power to wage war against God's holy people and to conquer them, And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation. And we have heard this language before in this letter. The lamb redeems from every tribe, people, language, and nation.
Speaker 1:And so where the lamb brings life out of death, now we find that the beast brings death to everything that lives. Verse 11, then I saw a second beast coming up out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. And it exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast. Then verse 18, this calls for wisdom that the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast.
Speaker 1:For it is the number of a man, and that number is, six six six. Now chapters fourteen, fifteen, and 16 of Revelation begin to recount a series of plagues and terrible actions that happen on the earth as seven bowls or seven vials of wrath are poured out. And we need to remember here that we are in a new cycle. In chapter 12, we started the story again, so we're going over the same stuff. And so the best way to think of these next set of chapters is a retelling of what we have already talked about with the seven seals and the seven trumpets from earlier in the letter.
Speaker 1:Now in some ways, you can actually take this next section and line it up pretty well with what we've read earlier in the letter. Personally though, I think rather than trying to see the seven bulls as a literal retelling where everything maps perfectly together, what we need to remember is that John is giving us a literary retelling. So it's a new perspective. And so you can't perfectly line up the bowls and the seals and the trumpets. It doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1:But we also shouldn't be trying to imagine these as some kind of linear chronological sequence of 21 terrible events that happen. That's just not the point here. This is the same story told again with a new perspective and new language in order to give us new insight into things. And so because we have already spent a couple weeks on this part of the story, we're gonna move past it so that we can focus on the new images John brings into the story this time around. And if you have questions, email them to me, and I will, try to address them.
Speaker 1:But for now, we'll move to chapter 17 where we read this. I also saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and the 10 horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet and was glittering with gold, precious stones, and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. The name written on her forehead was a mystery.
Speaker 1:Babylon the great, the mother of prostitutes and the abominations of the earth. And I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of God's holy people, the blood of all those who bore testimony to Jesus. This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are the seven hills on which the woman sits. So last week, we had our dragon.
Speaker 1:This week, we have two beasts, one adulterous woman, and two riddles to solve. The name of the beast and the name of the woman. So just as we were last week, we are firmly into the realm of first century science fiction here. They're not normal things that we're talking about. And this is where we need to pause for one moment to talk about authorial intent in the scriptures.
Speaker 1:Because one of the questions that comes up when we deal with prophecy or in particular things like these riddles is, who is speaking here? Is this John writing to us? Or is this God speaking to us? And you may have noticed, and some have, that I have used very frequently in this series, especially in the historical analysis, a lot of language like this, what John is trying to say to his readers, or what John is trying to communicate here, or what John's point is in this section. And so the logical question is, is this simply a book about what John wanted to say?
Speaker 1:Or is this a vision from God that John sees? Does it even matter what John thought about it? You may have also noticed that as we've transitioned each week from the historical to the implications, I've used a lot of language like this. What would the spirit say to us? Or what is God saying to you?
Speaker 1:Or what is Christ revealing in your heart as you read and you think about this? Well, this is because the answer to the question, is this God or is this John is very obvious for me. Yes. Because the scriptures themselves call us to a very nuanced view of their inspiration. So in first Corinthians, John comes right out a couple times in chapter seven, and he says he is speaking for himself here.
Speaker 1:Not speaking for God. This is just my opinion, my judgment as a trusted friend, he says. And for me, one of the best metaphors to imagine this divine human interaction that is happening in the scriptures is actually the incarnation. So Jesus, as Christians we say, is at once both fully human and completely divine. We say he's a human being and he's God, and there is no contradiction in that.
Speaker 1:So are the scriptures human writings? Of course, they are. The Bible is a collection of writings documenting humanity's experience of God throughout history. But does that then mean that the scriptures are not divinely inspired? Well, of course not.
Speaker 1:Because this is the story that God wanted to tell. And so when we read the Bible, even prophecy, even a letter like Revelation, what we have here is a dialogue happening between John, who is a human being in a time and a place with a posture and a culture and a language that limits him, in a dialogue, in a conversation with the spirit of God who is inviting him to see his world from a bigger, more complete, more beautiful perspective. But for that invitation to have meaning, it has to be filtered through language that John understands, images that John can relate to, and narratives that make sense of John's experience of both the divine and his world. And I would suggest this is actually part of the beauty of the scriptures. Not simply that they tell us about God, but that they show us and they model for us God in dialogue, in relationship with his people, with his creation.
Speaker 1:You know, the very fact that the scriptures exist as this divine human collaboration, at the same time, both human and divine documents, what that does is it affirms our central conviction as Christians that God desires to be in relationship with us, that God speaks to us, that God participates with us, that God calls us into his story. And so as we get to these enigmatic figures, these riddles that surround their identities in the letter of John, the way to think of this is not that John is confused by what he's writing, as if he doesn't know what it means. Because that would turn John into a glorified stenographer and not the partner that God chose to reveal himself through. So the way to think of this instead is that these riddles are ways that John invites, compels, maybe even forces you and I along with every proceeding and subsequent reader of this letter, to actually deeply engage with what it was that God revealed to him. That's what's going on here.
Speaker 1:He wants us to ask these questions, but he knows what he's talking about. So let's look at these figures together. And the first one is this. We have the beast from the sea, and this is the figure that is most often associated with the Antichrist. Now there are a couple reasons for that, and the first we've already seen.
Speaker 1:The lamb redeems from every tribe, people, language, and nation. The beast, we are told, conquers every tribe, people, language, and nation. So he is very literally anti Jesus. And that is how the John who writes the letters of John uses the term. In first and second John, the writer talks about anyone who opposes the way of Jesus as antichristos.
Speaker 1:However, the word antichrist in any form never actually ever shows up in the book of Revelation. But because John is written by a John and the Revelation here is written by a John, they're often conflated together. And so the term gets pulled from the letters of John into Revelation, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with seeing these Johns as the same person. But as Joel talked about earlier in the series, there's actually nothing in the Bible to even suggest that they are the same person other than they happen to have the same name.
Speaker 1:There's nothing that links these two letters together. In fact, the writing styles and the Greek grammar of John, the disciple, and John, the revelator are very, very different. And so I would suggest that pulling a general purpose term from the letter of John like antichrist, which means anyone opposed to Jesus, and then applying it to a specific figure in Revelation is probably just not good exegesis. That said, we do still have a beast who is still very anti Jesus. And we are told that he has seven heads, 10 horns, and 10 crowns.
Speaker 1:So he is very powerful. Talked about horns earlier in the series and what they represent in this letter. But he also looks like a leopard, but has the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion. And this imagery, as bizarre as it sounds, also is pulled from the Hebrew scriptures. Comes from Daniel chapter seven, where Daniel has a vision and he sees four successive beasts coming up out of the water.
Speaker 1:First is a lion, second is a bear, third is a leopard, and then finally, he sees a 10 horned monster. Now from the context in Daniel, we know these represent the successive empires of Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, and the Greeks. John here takes all these images, and he smashes them together into one great beast. But he also gives us a couple more clues to help us understand what he's doing with this bizarre image. First is this.
Speaker 1:He says that one of the heads had been fatally wounded but appears to be alive, and then he says the number of the beast is six six six. Now both of these, I would suggest, are references to the emperor Nero. This is how they work. Nero lived before the time of the writing of Revelation. In one of the weeks, we outlined the history of the emperors.
Speaker 1:On the screen are all seven emperors from the reunification of Rome under Augustus through to Domitian who is likely in control when John is writing this letter. While Nero is famous for being a bit of a nut, he is also famous because during his time, there was a great fire that destroyed much of Rome. And he needed a scapegoat, and so he blamed it on the Christians for angering the Roman gods by not honoring them. And so Nero had a lot of Christians killed. The rumors go that he used Christians as torches to light the gardens around his palace.
Speaker 1:So this is terrible, awful stuff under Nero's reign. But in the end, Nero committed suicide. And the problem was that it was shameful for an emperor, the son of a god, to commit suicide. So very few people, including even senators, were allowed to see his body. And so rumors started developing in Rome that Nero hadn't actually died, that Nero had gone into hiding, and he would eventually return to take control of Rome.
Speaker 1:In fact, in the decades after his death, Roman historians tell us that no less than three impersonators showed up in Rome claiming to be Nero and saying they were the true emperor. Now to be clear, John is talking about the nature of evil here. He's already shown us that this beast is a conglomeration of all the empires that have come before us through the visions of Daniel. So this is not about Rome. K.
Speaker 1:The beast is not the emperor Nero. And I don't think for a second that John actually thought Nero was alive and coming back. Only the lamb does that. But what he is saying is this, if you want to see what empire looks like, if you wanna see just how grotesque and evil this beast is, then all you have to do is remember what it was like under Nero. Then he doubles down with this number 666.
Speaker 1:Now in both Greek and Hebrew, they didn't have symbols for numbers, not a separate symbol. And so certain letters were assigned different values, and so that's how you wrote out numbers. Letters meant different numbers, and you added them up and you made it, sort of like our Roman numerals. In Hebrew, it went through the alphabet this way. From one to nine by ones, then 10 to 90 by tens, and then 100 to 900 by hundreds.
Speaker 1:And so because this is how you wrote numbers normally using letters, the practice of assigning a numerical value to a word became popular as well, and this was called gematria. Now the Greeks did it too. They called it isopsophy. But since John, many people have used all kinds of bizarre machinations to make six six six equal pretty well anyone they want. Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Speaker 1:Six letters, six letters, six letters, antichrist. One of the characters in the novel war and peace finds a way to make Napoleon equal six six six. Antichrist. I have no doubt there are many people working right now to make Barack Hussein Obama equal, six six six. And so I'm not sure if you know this, but there is actually a diagnosed phobia out there called hexakosoi, hexakonta, hexaphobia, which is the fear of the number six six six.
Speaker 1:But the best evidence that we have that John has Nero in mind here is that very early manuscripts of Revelation actually vary here, and they have two different numbers. Some say six six six. Some say six one six. And in fact, some of our earliest manuscripts of Revelation actually say six one six. But because six six six is so iconic, no one wants to change our English Bibles.
Speaker 1:But here's the thing. There are two ways of saying Nero. The first is a Hebrew pronunciation, Kaiser Neron, which adds up to six six six. The second is a Greek pronunciation, Kaiser Nero, which we're more familiar with, and that adds up to six one six. See that number up there beside the 50?
Speaker 1:That's called a noon. And if you drop that second noon from Nero, you take 50 off the number, and you end up with 616. Point is, John's meaning was so clear to his audience that scribes who were more familiar with a particular pronunciation of Nero's name or thought that their audience might be more familiar with actually took it upon themselves to add up the number differently and make it fit. In other words, absolutely everyone knew exactly who John was talking about here. Now, again, to be clear, John is talking about the nature of evil in this last cycle.
Speaker 1:So the beast is not Nero singularly. The beast is not Rome solely. It has seven heads. It's built from all the pieces of these empires before. The beast is an image of politics and power.
Speaker 1:And that's why it is the lion, the leopard, the bear, and the beast from Daniel. So John doesn't have any particular moment in history in mind, any particular leader in mind as much as he's talking about the nature of empire, oppression, domination, and conquering. Now one neat thing here. Remember when we talked about the myth of Leto and Python? In the Roman imagination, it was the empire and the emperor who played the role of Apollo.
Speaker 1:They were the ones who fought the dragon and brought peace to the world. Well, first, John says, no. Christ is not just an Apollo figure. He is a new kind of hero. And so, he everything has changed when Christ comes.
Speaker 1:Now he gets a second dig in here because he says, not only is it not the empire who fights the dragon, the empire actually serves the dragon. In other words, he says, empire is simply a pawn of the dragon, a pawn of evil. Next is this. We have the beast from the land, and we're told that it looks like a lamb. It's a religious imagery in Hebrew culture.
Speaker 1:It's attractive. It's compelling. It's beautiful. Reminds us of sacrifice. Right?
Speaker 1:But it roars like a dragon. It's deceptive. It's evil. It's angry. And we're told that it gathers people to worship the first beast.
Speaker 1:Well, if you remember back earlier in the season or in this series to the scene of the throne, we talked a lot about the emperor cult and the worship of the emperor. So this beast represents religion of the empire that reinforces the worship of power and politics. This is false religion. It looks nice. It does cool things.
Speaker 1:It might talk a lot about peace, and we're drawn to it because of what it points us toward. But underneath it, underneath all that glitters and shines, any religion that reinforces status quo, any religion that reinscribes the invisible justice of your society, this too is evil, says John. And then finally, we have this woman who is called Babylon. But, again, this one's really not much of a challenge because this woman who is draped in luxurious purple cloth and covered in gold sits on seven hills. So this is a coin that was minted during the time of Vespasian that we found.
Speaker 1:And shows Rome or Roma, the goddess, as a woman in a fine dress, and she's holding a sword in her hand. Now here, the sword is pointed down to symbolize the Pax Romana, the piece of Rome. And she is sitting on seven hills. It's a little worn, so just so you can see them here. Here they are numbered.
Speaker 1:The seven hills of Rome It's a major image for the Roman Empire. Well, John's woman looks like Rome, but she is called Babylon. And so, again, the point here is not Rome or Babylon or any particular city. The point that we'll see here here is she represents the economic disparity that it takes to keep empire churning. This is how that works.
Speaker 1:Chapter 18. We see the downfall of a woman when empire turns on her. And John says this, fallen, fallen is great Babylon. For the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth have committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.
Speaker 1:But then he says this, that the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore. Cargos of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk, and scarlet cloth. Every sort of citron wood and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh, and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of the fine flour and wheat, cattle, sheep, horses and carriages, and human beings sold as slaves. So everyone is getting rich off this woman. Everyone is getting rich off the luxurious excessive purchases of the Roman economy.
Speaker 1:Think of this woman, how she is dressed earlier, purple and scarlet just like the merchants. But then this last line says this, cattle and sheep, horses and carriages, and then more literally what it says here in Greek is human bodies. So they are not even slaves. This is not the Greek for person or slave here. This is the word soma.
Speaker 1:They are simply bodies to Rome. Now one of the best ways I can think of to illustrate this is the tombstone of a Roman slave merchant named Olus Caprilius Timotheus. And it might be a little hard to see on the screen here, but at the top, in the top panel is Timotheus himself. And he is reclining on a couch while being served by some of his slaves. And life is good.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you look at that top panel, things are luxurious. He's sitting, reclining. He's being fed grapes. Life is beautiful. This is Rome when you see it from the outside.
Speaker 1:But in the second panel, there's another group of slaves. These are his slaves. They're working his fields. They're gathering grapes for his cup. They work.
Speaker 1:They toil. They make his life comfortable. But then in the bottom panel is a crowded mass of human bodies chained together, being taken off to the market to be sold. This is how Timotheus makes his money. This, John says, is what the economy of the empire really looks like.
Speaker 1:She's finely dressed, the most costly purple robes. She's seated peacefully on seven hills, but she is drunk on the blood and the suffering and the subjugation and the oppression of everyone that it takes to keep the empire alive. This, John says, is what sits behind the peace and the prosperity and the luxury of empire. So last week, John told us that evil is real and active in the world, but at the same time, the evil has been defeated and overcome and utterly undone by the sacrifice of Christ. Now, lest we take that image to heart in the wrong way and we think we can just sit back and wait, wait for God to fix everything, wait for the dragon to destroy itself, wait for evil to slowly disappear.
Speaker 1:What John does is he challenges us about our response to evil. Sure. The dragon is undone. Evil is defeated, but politics, religion, economics, this is the realm where we either choose to support or challenge the world that's around us. And so sometimes in church, we want to talk about spiritual warfare, and there's a place for that conversation.
Speaker 1:But in John's imagination here in this image, the spiritual battle is over. It's done. It's won. Christ is victorious. What remains now is the practical experience of living out that spiritual victory in the realm of real life.
Speaker 1:And John does not pull his punches. He says at one point that if you do not want to be identified with the beast, if you don't want his seal or his mark, what that means is you won't participate in the harlot's economy because it's evil. It's wrong. It's disgusting. Now, we actually have have some evidence that certain emperors enacted different rules requiring merchants and customers to offer a pinch of burnt incense as a prayer to the emperor before they entered the market or the agora to shop.
Speaker 1:And so the speculation is that perhaps this was indicated by a smudge of ash on the forehead or the hand. This is how they knew you were legit. But I think that John has something much bigger on his mind here than just the ego of Domitian, because Rome isn't the problem. The emperor cult is not the issue. In the economy of the first century, this isn't the larger battleground that John sees in his mind.
Speaker 1:These are simply symptoms that come and go. I mean, by now, Rome is long gone, and the emperor cult has faded. The economy of the world has transitioned many times over since John. Are we just supposed to say, well, I guess it doesn't say anything to us? Of course not.
Speaker 1:Because the problem that John sees here with incredible lucidity is how evil finds a its way back into our story, disguising itself and transforming itself and reinventing itself over and over again to deceive us and corrupt us and make us think that we can worship the lamb without actually making any hard choices about how we transform his world. And John says, no. It doesn't work that way. Worship and transformation go hand in hand. So what does that mean for us today?
Speaker 1:Well, I think the spirit might say that if you vote this coming fall in our election and you choose to participate in politics in a way that serves only your interests, that reinforces the status quo even when you know it's wrong, that keeps injustice happening in your world even after you've seen it, then you risk becoming anti Jesus. If you have allowed yourself to become anti change, anti transformation, anti grace, anti peace, anti sacrifice, anti love, this will not do. I think the spirit might say that if you choose to participate in religion that serves national interests, patriotism above all else, that calls on war and violence and uses the tools of empire to serve its needs and its agenda, religion that says there are some that are worthy of God's love and there are others that are not, Religion that is ethnocentric or culturally bounded, religion that is unable to participate in critical self reflection. If that is your religion, then you have become anti Jesus. I think that the spirit might say this, that if you shop, if you work, if you cash a check, and you are unwilling to ask yourself hard questions about your bank account, then it will be very difficult for you to be on the side of Jesus.
Speaker 1:And I don't pretend to know exactly what John would say about every transaction in your life, every vote that you make, every church that he would see in your world. But I don't think John is interested in what's too much or too little, what's just or what's not. I think what he might say is this, if I wanted to give you details, I could have given you details. But they would have been drawn from my world, and they would be irrelevant for yours. So instead, I gave you images, ideas, narratives that would force you to think and reflect, to slow down and ask yourself this hard question.
Speaker 1:Question. What do these beasts look like in my world? And so when I honestly and critically look at my politics, my religion, and my economics, and I don't see Jesus, I have some choices to make. Because if your choices don't look like Jesus, then you have decision to make about whose vision for tomorrow you find compelling, whose invitation to participate you find gripping in your life, and about whose story and whose character whose nature and whose person you find truly worthy of your worship. That's what John is doing here.
Speaker 1:He's giving us images that are drawn from his world, not so that we can be critical of Rome and say, oh, look how terrible it was. Not so that we can point to Nero and say, oh, he was the bad guy. But so that the spirit of God can come and speak and challenge and encourage and transform our hearts into something that looked a lot more like Christ. Because I would suggest that even now in this moment as we draw this conversation to a close, we trust that God is speaking to every single one of us through his spirit and through John's writing. That he is inviting us to ask some hard questions about our world.
Speaker 1:And he is encouraging us to have courage when we do it, that he is giving us strength to make hard choices, that he is providing guidance about how to move forward. He is sustaining and supporting and challenging and equipping and participating, inviting you to participate in the renewal of all things with Jesus. Because whatever is broken in this world, be it politics, religion, or economics, this we believe, is simply the last gasp of a defanged destroyer, and Christ is inviting us slowly to participate with him in a new future, a new kingdom kingdom that we'll talk about next week. Let's pray. God, help us to take granted bizarre images that relate to stories and histories and images that are so far removed from our context context here in the twenty first century.
Speaker 1:But to become so wise and so in tune with your spirit that we would be able to make parallels, connections, observations about our world. Help us to think honestly and critically about our politics, about our religion, the way we think about you, about our economics. And reasonable people can reasonably disagree about what that will look like as we serve you. But if we're not asking the question, then we risk becoming anti Jesus. And so we ask that you would help us to see a Jesus looking God who is forming a Jesus looking people, who will be ready to participate in a Jesus looking kingdom that is coming.
Speaker 1:Because this is who we long to be alongside you. And so in the strong name of the risen Christ, pray. Amen.
Speaker 2:This is a podcast of Kensington Commons Church. We believe that God is invested in the renewal of all things. Therefore, we wanna live the good news by being part of the rhythms of our city as good neighbors, good friends, and good citizens in our common life. Join us on Sunday or visit us online at commonstricks.org.