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A literary approach to Revelation Chapter 12
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Last week, we closed off the larger second cycle of the book of Revelation. And so we read in chapter 11 about the God who was and who is and who has now come in chapter 11. And so halfway through the book, we reached the end of the story of Revelation. And that's how Revelation works in cycles and repetitions, and hopefully, you're starting to get a feel for this now as we work our way through it. Because today, we're actually about to begin with John as he starts all over at the start one more time.
Speaker 1:This time, telling the same story from the perspective of the nature of evil itself and how God intends to bring even that story to write. That's his focus now. And so this is the grand scope of John's revealing. God is not just interested in the church and his people, or the book would have ended after the seven letters in chapter three. And God is not interested just in nations, economies, and politics, or the book would have ended with the seven trumpets in chapter 11.
Speaker 1:God is also, we now find, deeply interested in what it means to heal and repair and redeem creation and even the cosmos itself. And so if you've been following along in this series and feeling like I've done a lot of energy emphasizing the historical and maybe not the theological implications of the apocalypse, then hopefully, what you'll see is that shift starting to happen as we move into this final last cycle of the book. Because this is where we start to talk about the nature of evil and what John has to say about that. Now before we jump into that though, I wanna quickly recap the last three weeks of the series for you, because to see them all together is really important for the whole picture in that second cycle. So three weeks ago, we read about the scene of the throne and the lamb, and we are introduced to a someone who sits on the throne.
Speaker 1:But John reminds us that we can never really fully recognize God until we see him in the light of the Christ. So it's not God's power, and it's not only God's strength that draws us to him or that pulls us in as we trust him. John says, Domitian appears powerful too, but it is the sacrifice of the lamb that finally fully pulls back the curtain so that we can actually see God clearly and recognize that he has been the one on the throne all along. And so it's kind of a bizarre image, for us to read, and then it takes time for us to wrestle with and understand, but this is beautiful theology John is giving us. That we see God most clearly, not when he's sitting on the throne powerful and strong.
Speaker 1:He is those things, and he always has been. But we actually see God most clearly in the sacrifice of the Christ. Because this is how God has chosen to reveal himself to us as the lamb that was slain for others. And so the great Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, the way he says this is this, the economic trinity is the imminent trinity. And what he means by that is that the God who acts to save us in history, this is what he calls the economic trinity, is what God sees when he looks in the mirror himself.
Speaker 1:So this is who God is imminently in himself. So not only do we see God in his sacrifice, but this is how God sees himself is in sacrifice. This is who God really and truly is. This is called Rahner's rule, by the way, and you can use that at your next dinner party to impress your friends, assuming your friends are into twentieth century Roman Catholic neo Thomist theologians. Anyway, next, we tackled the seven seals, where John outlines the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Speaker 1:And this time, instead of images of the emperor's strength, he gives us images of the empire's weakness. So its inability to defend the borders indefinitely. Its inability to create meaningful peace in the hearts of people, its inability to create sustained economic security, and then finally, the empire's inability to actually protect us from the frailties of human existence. And so as all of these illusions are taken away, we see how we've put our trust in the wrong places, how this has led to the oppression of others. But just when we think we deserve judgment and wrath from we are surprised by an image of grace and peace and salvation so great it cannot even be counted.
Speaker 1:Just when we think we've hit the end, John interrupts the movement towards the final seal to show us that God is not full of wrath. God is good. And then finally, it was the seven trumpets. And here, John gives us an image of what it would be like if John took our advice and acted the way we want him to. So we call out for vengeance.
Speaker 1:We wanna see justice done on our terms, and God says, sure. I could do that. Hail and fire, mountains thrown into the sea, waters turned bitter, light stricken from the sky, smoke and locusts, armies, battles. But at the end of it all, he says, it wouldn't work. I could do all of that, but people would not repent.
Speaker 1:The world wouldn't be changed. No one would be saved because calamity and terror does not convert the world. It is only the witness of truth that takes up the story of Jesus and that lives with the courage and the love and the sacrifice of Christ. This is how the world is transformed. So God says, do not write down what the thunder say.
Speaker 1:That's not how I communicate. That is not how the mystery of my reign will come to the earth. It will come through the witness of the community. And so, hopefully, you start to see how the images in chapter 11 end of the cycle, but they draw us back to what we saw in chapter four at the scene of the throne and the lamb. Because these witnesses are intended as an image of the church now, and they are living out God's true character powerfully and courageously, but they live them out through the sacrifice that models what Christ has done for us.
Speaker 1:And so last week, I described the two witnesses of chapter 11 as a composite image from the Hebrew scriptures. I like what Craig Koester says even better. He calls them a collage. It's as if John has taken images from every prophet and leader he can think of in the Hebrew scriptures, and then he smashes them together in a collage to show us that the church, those of us who know God now, those of us who see him clearly in the Christ, we are the culmination of everything that has come before us in the Old Testament. And so now we speak forcefully and gracefully of the goodness of with the authority of every Hebrew prophet who has come before us.
Speaker 1:That's what these witnesses represent for us. So this is three scenes, the throne and the lamb, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, but together, they're designed to make one big picture that implicates us in the story of God. If you're reading this, your job is now to go to witness to the story of Christ, to live peace and grace and sacrifice in front of the world. And this is probably the craziest part of Christian theology, that God comes to our world, he steps into our story, but then he leaves. And he says, the next part is up to you.
Speaker 1:So if you read Revelation and you walk away thinking your job is just to wait for God, then you have missed John's point. John is telling us that our job is to play a significant part in the renewal of all things. And the way we do that is to model the story of Christ, witness to his story, and live into his grace and sacrifice. And so if there's anything in Revelation that you should be scared of and that should shake you up, it's that deep responsibility that John is giving you as he writes. Now, this week, it's as if we start all over again at the start.
Speaker 1:And the last thing that we read at the end of chapter 11 was this, that the time has come for judging the dead and for rewarding your servants, both great and small, and for destroying that which destroys the earth. And so as we move into chapter 12, we begin a new cycle about the destruction not of the earth as some people often think, Revelation is about. Revelation is not about the destruction of the earth. Revelation is about the destruction of that which destroys the earth. And we need to remember that as we read Revelation.
Speaker 1:God is on the side of creation in this book. He is not here to destroy his world. He is here to work against the forces that threaten his world. And so that's the story that we're about to begin tonight. But first, let's pray, and then we'll jump in.
Speaker 1:God, help us to find strength and courage and even passion to live out your story in this letter. Not to recoil with fear or trepidation, but to know that as we partner with you, we are on the side of history, that time itself works for you, and that all things are being healed in your story of renewal. And so as we participate in the telling of your story, as we participate in bringing hope into the world, as we participate in the good news of your rule and your reign in this world. We are part of the transformation of everything, and so we trust that love wins the day. And we believe that sacrifice really is an image of true strength, and we are convinced that we are called to live out that story, your story, in our time and place here right now.
Speaker 1:And so in those moments and those times when we doubt and we fear and we stumble away from that conviction, we ask for your spirit to come and remind us of who you are so that we can be reminded of who we truly are. Because it is in your story that we find the source of our conviction and our courage, and indeed, Lord, that's where we find our identity. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay.
Speaker 1:Now, I've already said, that we're moving into a new cycle in the book of Revelation. And so tonight, we are going to be introduced to the great red dragon. And if I was a fan of Bruce Lee, I would have entitled this message, enter the dragon. But I'm not a fan of Bruce Lee. I'm a fan of Brad Pitt.
Speaker 1:We all know that. Actually, do like Bruce Lee, but that's beside the point. And if we turn to Revelation chapter 12, this is what we read starting in verse one. A great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and the crown of 12 stars on her head. She was pregnant, and she cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.
Speaker 1:Then another sign appeared in heaven, an enormous red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns and seven crowns on its head. Its tail swept away a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. Now if you're wondering why that last part is in quotations, that's because this is a reference to Psalm two and the coming messiah he's quoting here.
Speaker 1:And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God where she might be taken care of for one thousand two hundred and sixty days. It's Revelation chapter 12 verses one through six. So here we have a woman clothed with the sun and now a great red dragon. And so far in this book, most of the imagery has been drawn from human experience.
Speaker 1:I mean, even the four horsemen of the apocalypse, these are still fairly accessible images. Right? I mean, they are just mean men on nasty looking horses, but we get that. We understand that. We've seen that before.
Speaker 1:Now we have a great red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns and seven crowns. In the next section, we will be introduced to a beast from the sea who has seven heads, 10 horns, and 10 crowns, a beast from the land who has two horns like a lamb, but who speaks and roars like the dragon, and then a harlot who is named Babylon who rides the back of this dragon and gets drunk on the blood of the martyrs. So we are well out of the realm of normal human experience here. We are firmly in the category of first century science fiction, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think part of the appeal in Revelation is this alternative way of seeing the world.
Speaker 1:I think of Star Wars or The Matrix or whatever science fiction film it is that you love right now. Maybe you're a Dune fan. I don't know. You're weird. But these types of movies, have very, much in common or have very little in common with our experience of the world, and yet we're drawn to them because the writers find a way to weave very normal human experiences into the midst of these strange images.
Speaker 1:I mean, the newest trailer for the next Avengers movie was released this week. Looks awesome, by the way. But it features the evil Ultron, the deadly artificial intelligence that wages war on our heroes and indeed the world. Well, Ultron from the Marvel comic books gets his name from Altor, which is what the Romans under Augustus called the Greek god of war, Mars. So if John was writing today, I have no doubt that his message would have been filled not with beasts and dragons, but with robots and laser guns and intergalactic spaceships.
Speaker 1:This is just the fiction of the time. Because these larger than life images, whether they are the dragons and beasts of ancient mythology or the lightsabers and exoskeletons of modern mythology. What they are is ways of taking our experience of the world and then extrapolating them out into the farthest ends of our imagination. So evil becomes a multiheaded beast, and goodness becomes a star spangled avenger. The bad guys get badder, and the good guys get gooder.
Speaker 1:And I recognize that's not a word, but you get my point. That's what we're seeing here. And so the shift in imagery that John gives us is signaling for us a shift in storytelling. See, we've talked in Revelation about how evil affects the world, and it's scary. Economics, politics, religion.
Speaker 1:Now he wants to talk about the nature of evil itself. And so the only way to do that is to make it so big and so bad that it becomes completely unmissable. And so he pushes the image out as far as they will go so that we get what he's talking about. That's what John is doing here. These images, at the end of the day, are no more bizarre than any fantastical movie you would go see at the Cineplex.
Speaker 1:The question is what he do what is he doing with these images, and what is he trying to tell us? What's the story? Now we're going to leave the beasts and the harlots for a bit today. We'll talk about them momentarily, but for the most part, we will leave them for next week. And so for now, we wanna focus on this dragon.
Speaker 1:And so if you have been waiting to find out if Apple Pay is the mark of the beast, you will have to wait for one more week. Hint, it's not, although Apple is definitely trying to take over every single part of your life. Just know that. This week though, it's the dragon and the woman. And so far in this series, we have seen imagery from Hebrew worship, the four living creatures of chapter four.
Speaker 1:We've seen imagery from the emperor cult, the 24 elders of chapter five. We've seen imagery drawn from the narrative of Rome, the threat of attack and the Pax Romana in the four riders of chapter six and seven. Here in chapter 12, what we are reading is a retelling of Greek mythology. And part of what you have to understand is that to live under Rome was to live in one of the most multicultural milieus in human history. So we think of Calgary as becoming very multicultural, and to an extent it is.
Speaker 1:But often, what we mean by that is there are different ethnicities living together within a certain proximity. There are aspects to which every one of us carries our own narrative and our culture with us as we grow. But in the West, we largely lived by a shared narrative. Regardless of our ethnic background, we kind of buy into the Western worldview. If I don't want to, I don't need to go and learn about aboriginal cultures Canada.
Speaker 1:I can get by without that. Now I'm worse off for that, and I rob myself of a great deal of learning if I don't go out and learn those things, but I can get by without doing it. In the same way, a lot of us just don't know much about our neighbors in the Muslim faith or our Mormon friends. We can get by within our own world. In Rome, to get by, to communicate, to be in relationship, that kind of thing wasn't really an option.
Speaker 1:Because not only were there different languages, there were different religions, different politics, different cultures, and different economic strategies that were interacting within the Roman Empire all the time. There was a saying in Rome that you learned Hebrew for worship, Aramaic for conversation, Greek for trade, and Latin for politics. And it wasn't that chose the field you wanted to go into and you learned that language, and the idea of a monoglot was absurd in Rome. You learned all four, and probably even more if you came from outside the empire. And so you would be familiar right from the highest, most educated person right down to the lowest slave.
Speaker 1:You would be familiar not only with your language, but with other languages and other cultures and stories that you were coming into contact with all the time. This is just how Rome worked. Think of Europe today. Most people in Europe speak multiple languages because they need to. Now if you wanted to make a point about your God, to say that your god was not just your god, but your god was the god of everything, you would want, perhaps you would even need, to find ways to tell that story using narratives, multiple multiple cultural touch points.
Speaker 1:And that's what John is doing throughout the book of Revelation and in particular now in chapter 12 by telling us a Greek myth. And this is the story of Leto. See, in this story, the myth of Leto, the god Zeus comes down to Earth, and he meets a woman named Leto, and Zeus says he is won't to do, sleeps with her, and she becomes pregnant. And in the story, she becomes pregnant with twins, the gods Apollo and Artemis. Now Apollo is a very important god in the Greco Roman pantheon.
Speaker 1:He was variously recognized as the god of sun and light, the god of truth prophecy, healing and plague, music and poetry. As the son of Zeus, he wore a lot of different hats. But his most famous title was the light of the world. Here he is on the left with his twin sister, Artemis. Now Artemis is also very important.
Speaker 1:She was known as the goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, childbirth, and virginity. She had a lot of roles too. But the story goes that while Leto is in labor, a great evil snake like dragon named Pethon, and this is unsurprisingly where we get the name Boa Constrictor from. Just kidding. Python.
Speaker 1:Pethon comes, and he represents chaos, and he is a dragon monster that represents chaos as a very common thing in ancient mythologies. The Babylonians called him Tiamat. The Hebrews called him Leviathan. The Greeks called him Pethon. But Pethon crouches down in front of Leto in order to eat her children as they're born.
Speaker 1:But just when the babies are delivered, Zeus steps in. He snatches them up to Olympus with him, and he gives them on the day of their birth a special arrow each. Now Artemis uses her arrow to become the goddess of the hunt and wild animals. Apollo stays in Olympus for three and a half years, one thousand two hundred and sixty days, and he grows into a full man. He's a god, so it only takes him three and a half years.
Speaker 1:And then he takes his special arrow from Zeus, and he comes down to fight the forces of chaos. So Apollo descends from Olympus, Olympus, uses his arrow, confronts Python, kills him, and brings in a new era of peace and prosperity for humanity. Now this is Greek mythology, but the Romans loved this stuff. Romans were in love with Greek culture. And so they talked about the empire and the emperor as the embodiment of Apollo all the time.
Speaker 1:The story went like this, that the emperor is the one who fought back against the forces of chaos. And all of those outside of the empire, those who tried to undo the world, the emperor was here to stop them, to bring peace and prosperity to the world just like Apollo. In fact, the emperors often called themselves, we've heard these titles before, savior of the world, the source of light, and the bringer of peace. All of this was in the spirit of Apollo. So this is very conventional imagery that John is using here in chapter 12.
Speaker 1:Imagery that anyone living under Rome would have recognized immediately. Okay. I know what he's doing. What's interesting, though, is that John also has a really great parallel in the Hebrew scriptures because the Hebrew scriptures often depict the nation of Israel as a woman in labor. And that image of the nation as a woman in labor was often connected to Israel waiting for the coming messiah who would then save the world.
Speaker 1:So let's go back to our story in Revelation and look at why John might be using this familiar Greek imagery and tying it to the Hebrew scriptures. So right after verse seven, right after the child has been born and snatched up to heaven, a battle erupts in the heavens, and the angel Michael goes to war with the dragon and his army. But the dragon loses this war, and he's cast down on the earth. This is what it says. Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah.
Speaker 1:For the accuser of our brothers and sisters who accuses them before our God day and night has been hurled down. They triumphed over him, How? By the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony. So remember last week. How do you defeat evil?
Speaker 1:It's not thunder and pain. It is the witness of those who speak grace and truth and peace in Christ. In other words, this battle in heaven really doesn't look like a battle because the dragon was overcome by the word of testimony, by witness. Continues, but woe to the earth and the sea because the devil has gone down to you. He is filled with fury because he knows his time is short.
Speaker 1:Now a couple things here. One of the popular ideas about the devil that we often have today in pop culture is this, that he was banished from heaven before creation. This comes from John Milton and his, epic work, Paradise Lost in the sixteenth century. And Milton connects a passage in Isaiah 14 with the serpent in Genesis and creates the narrative that we generally know. So Isaiah writes about someone called the Daystar.
Speaker 1:Says this, how you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn. You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations. You said in your heart, I will ascend to the heavens. I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will make myself like the most high, but you are brought down to the realm of the dead to the depths of the pit.
Speaker 1:Sounds very similar to what John is telling us in Revelation. But Milton connects this back to Genesis and the serpent showing up there, and he figures, well, this casting down must have happened before the creation of the world. So that's how the devil becomes the serpent and ends up in Genesis. John's interpretation of Isaiah is slightly different, though, and his is very similar to Job's. In Job, Satan is very much active both in Earth and in heaven.
Speaker 1:Because in heaven, his job, his day job, is to come and accuse people. So what he does. If people do things that are bad, the Satan is the one who points it out to God. In fact, when business is slow, the Satan might come and ask God if he can go and tempt some people into doing some bad things so that he can come back and tell them about the bad things that they did. So it happens in the book of Job.
Speaker 1:And that's essentially what Satan means. So Satan doesn't always refer to the devil in the Bible. Sometimes the word satan or satan, the Satan, just means anyone who accuses. Sometimes, Satan is even someone who works on behalf of God and accuses somebody of their sin. Here, John says that once the Christ has been snatched up to heaven, God is no longer interested in listening to accusations anymore.
Speaker 1:And so the dragon who is the devil is now cast down to earth. So in John's imagination, the Satan isn't going down to Earth for the first time. Satan is actually being stopped from coming back to heaven. And John says he's cast down in the earth, and he is filled with fury. He goes war he goes to war on the woman.
Speaker 1:At first, he chases her, but she's given two wings to fly away. Then he spews a torrent of water from his mouth. This time, the earth opens up and swallows the water to protect the woman. Finally, it says that the dragon goes off to attack all of her children, all those who hold fast to the story of Jesus. But even this proves ineffective.
Speaker 1:And so then the dragon goes to the edge of the sea, and he calls forth a beast with seven heads and 10 horns, a beast that represents politics and empire. He calls forth a beast from the land, a beast that looks like a lamb, but speaks like a dragon, a beast that represents religion and deception, and then finally, a harlot drunk on the blood of the oppressed. This is a woman who represents economics of slavery and subjugation, and we will explore all of those images next week, so wait for that. But the point here that John is making is all of this raging and roaring and war making that the devil is doing is that evil, as John sees it, is utterly pathetic. And I know that at first, the image of a great red dragon terrorizing the saints and served by beasts, this is a scary image.
Speaker 1:Right? And we picture this in our world, terrifying. It makes, the devil, or it makes evil, if you like that better, look intimidating. But that's not actually John's point. You see, in the image of Leto and Pithon, Apollo makes war on the dragon.
Speaker 1:He attacks the dragon. He overcomes the dragon, and thereby bringing light to the world. In the ancient Babylonian version, it is the hero Marduk who attacks the dragon Tiamat. He slays her. He cuts her body up and uses her body to hold back the waters and form the dry land.
Speaker 1:In the Roman imagination, it's the empire that attacks the forces of evil. They battle for control of the borders. They push back the invaders, and they bring peace to the earth that way. What John is showing us here is a very different image. Because in John's version of the story, just when the dragon thinks that it's one, we are told that the child is snatched up to heaven.
Speaker 1:And this word snatched in Greek is the word, and it's actually connected to the English word harpoon. It could be rendered snatched or grabbed, seized, even stolen. It comes from a root that one of my dictionary describes this way to describe, quote, the rapacious ravenousness of wolves. So this is a very urgent violent word that John uses to describe this snatching. That's because what John has in mind here is Christ's death.
Speaker 1:Christ is nailed to a cross, and evil is about to devour him. But just when the dragon thinks it has its teeth in him, at the moment of his death, Christ is snatched away to heaven. And so in John's imagination, somehow at his weakest moment, at his most vulnerable position, his greatest sacrifice, this is also Christ's strength and glory. I mean, absolutely, when you read this, this harpooned child is meant to make you think of the lamb who was slain from earlier in the book. And so what happens?
Speaker 1:The dragon then comes before God to accuse, but God isn't interested in that anymore. Something has changed. God doesn't wanna hear about accusations anymore. Salvation has come, verse 10. So the dragon tries to fight back, but he doesn't have the strength.
Speaker 1:He's overcome, not in anything that looks like a battle that I would recognize, but instead by the sacrifice of the lamb and the word of testimony, verse 11. And he ends up on earth. He tries to attack the woman, but she's saved. He tries to bring chaos back to the world, but creation itself opens up and saves us. He terrorizes the faithful, but he needs beasts and harlots to do his dirty work for him.
Speaker 1:He is filled with fury. Why? Because he knows his time is short. See, the image John is painting here is not one of the strength and power of evil. The image he is painting here is a caged lion roaring and raging because he knows he is completely devoid of anything like power or control.
Speaker 1:That's what the image is about. John is saying, yeah. I get it. There's there's evil in the world. And sometimes it looks scary.
Speaker 1:It looks like a dragon. And I know at times it feels like evil makes war on you, and it hurts, and it's scary. And I know trust that there is still good in the universe because of what is happening around you. But believe me, John says, evil is not something that is strong. Evil is not something that needs to be overcome.
Speaker 1:Evil is not something that needs to be fought against. Evil is not something to be scared of because evil has already been undone. See, the reason that evil roars in Revelation is because it knows the story is over. And see Jesus is not the Apollo figure that we expect to read in this myth. He sets us up with imagery from, Greek mythology.
Speaker 1:But just like he's always done, he pulls the rug out from under us because Jesus doesn't fight the dragon. Jesus doesn't battle against evil. Jesus doesn't take a weapon from God and come back to wage war. What Jesus does is he takes the worst that evil can throw at him. Jesus allows the worst thing that could possibly happen to a human being to happen to him, but it doesn't end him.
Speaker 1:That's how Jesus overcomes evil. That's how evil is undone. That's how the story works for John. Because John is trying to show evil for what it is. It's a sham.
Speaker 1:It's an illusion. It's nothing. Now maybe, you have seen evil, darkness, hurt in your world, and it looked like sickness or death. Or or maybe simpler than that, maybe evil looked like this. It looked like accusations and harsh words that somehow cut deep to the core of who you thought you were, and it made you question your identity and your place in God's world.
Speaker 1:Not words that were destructive and evil and painful, and they made you wonder about whether you were loved or you were hated, or perhaps even worse that you were just ignored and uncared for. What John would say to you in the image of the dragon is that I understand that pain. It's real and hurts and I know, but what you need to remember is this, that that kind of evil will not be overcome when you rail and you rage and you let anger and fear get the best of you because you don't fight evil with more evil. That's simply not how the story works. So when someone says something and it's hurtful destructive, you can't disarm that by responding that way.
Speaker 1:And when someone is vengeful and wrathful and they take that out on you, you can't disarm that by responding back to them that way. Evil is only undone when we trust that the work of Christ is real, and so we allow the peace and the forgiveness and the sacrifice that defined his story to then define us so that we can limit it, and we can deflate it, and eventually, we can partner with God to completely extinguish it. Somebody does something to you, and they injure you, they hurt you in a way. There is this impulse inside of us that wants to lash out and respond in kind. John would say to us, no.
Speaker 1:When you forgive, when you absorb that pain, when you respond with sacrifice and peace, what it does is it shows just how in ineffective, how ineffectual, how weak that kind of anger and that evil really is. So you absorb it and you say it stops here because it doesn't define me. It doesn't define this world. It doesn't say who I am or who I could be. This isn't real.
Speaker 1:Love is real. Peace is real. Grace is real. Forgiveness is real. Sacrifice is real.
Speaker 1:That's John's message. That God is on the side of creation, and he intends to renew all things. And he intends to destroy that which destroys, but victory comes not from battle, but from the sacrifice of the Christ and the courage that we have to live in the midst of his story. So what does this mean for you and I? Well, couple things.
Speaker 1:First, I think it means this, that death is not something we need to be afraid of. And be that harsh words, be that terrible actions, be that sickness and death in our body. And, of course, we should pray for those who are injured or sick. We should hope for God to heal us. And evil still roars from time to time, and that's painful.
Speaker 1:But death and dying are not things that we should be afraid to talk about or to experience or even to do well because there is a beginning and there is an ending to this life, and that is part of what gives meaning to the middle. So Christ endured death so that death could be stripped of its power to terrify us. We don't need to be terrified. It's simply part of life. And as hard as it is to wrap our heads around that at times, there is peace in this story.
Speaker 1:Second is simply the reminder that you can't fight fire with fire, and you don't battle evil with more evil. It's not how it works. Now we should stand up for what's right. To the point of death, we should be willing to stand up for what's right and what's true. But anger and fear and vengeance and an us versus them attitude, this is not the way of Christ.
Speaker 1:And so when we are tempted to fight back against the darkness using the tools of destruction, whether that's violence or accusation or misdirection or misrepresentation, misrepresentation. What we do is we give in to these defanged destroyers, and we give up on the victory that Christ has invited us into. And so I know that at times, it feels easier to fight back and to play the game. It's easier just to give in. But the victory that Christ won is not simply that he won.
Speaker 1:The victory is how he won, and that's what we are invited to participate in. In ways that disarm anger, in ways that dissipate fear, in ways that dissolve evil and darkness and bring hope and light into the world. And we do that with grace and peace and the sacrifice of Christ lived out in our lives. Let's pray. God, help us as we interact with images that are so big and beyond our experience of the world that sometimes it's hard to then take them and bring them back down into the level of how we're gonna live this out.
Speaker 1:But help us to realize that sometimes our experience of darkness, pain, hurt, frustration, and needs to be understood in the larger cosmic tale of evil. That even in the small ways we experience pain, this is part of a larger story that would push us towards what is unhealthy and untrue. And even in the small ways that we'd experience light, beauty, truth, goodness, love, these moments are also connected to an even bigger story that defines your universe because it was created by you. You. And so we ask not only for the wisdom to take this story and make it make sense in our hearts and our lives, but we would ask for the courage to stand against darkness, to stand against evil, to stand against death in any of the forms that it appears in our life.
Speaker 1:But to do that with grace and peace and sacrifice and love the way that you did. Because we recognize that as crazy as it sounds, you are inviting us to play a part in the redemption of everything. And that when we respond to hate with love, when we respond to fear with courage, we are in some small way contributing to the renewal of all things. Our choices, our life, our circumstances are part of a much bigger story of history that is slowly but continually and constantly moving towards where you imagine it to be. And so give us conviction to believe in that story and grace to live in the midst of it.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ, we 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 commonschurch.org.