Speaker 1: Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2: Two weeks ago, I set out some ground rules for reading revelation. First, that the way Revelation uses imagery is not predictive. These are not things that will happen. John is not a fortune teller. These are abstractions about what is already happening around us, around the readers in the world.
Now, Revelation, like any good art, takes the world apart and reassembles it in new ways to show us what we have missed. Second, that Revelation is cyclical not linear. So Revelation is retelling the same story of Christ over and over again, each time with a larger scope and scale. That's why the images get more bizarre as you go. That's why the stakes get bigger with each cycle.
And John talks about the way that Christ changes our relationships and our communities. That's what Scott talked to us about last week. Then he talks about how Jesus reshapes our politics and empires. That's what we're going to dive into today. And then finally, John talks about how Jesus defeats evil and saves the universe.
We'll get there in a couple weeks. But the third thing to keep in mind when reading Revelation is that the book is not actually apocalyptic. I mean, yes it is weird and it is otherworldly and it uses the tropes of this thing we call the apocalyptic genre. But the heart of this text is a voice of a prophet that is undeniably hopeful. John is not cheering for the end of the world.
It's not the trashing of the planet and the escape of the righteous few he's looking for. No. John is trying to help us see the inevitable destination of a world created by a good and loving God. And that is the salvation of everything and the destruction of that which destroys. It's not the earth.
It's not you and I. It's not even our enemies that lose in the apocalypse. It is the overthrow of the anti God forces of sin and death, and therefore, it is all of us that wins in Revelation. And the smuggling in of this prophetic hope from the Hebrew prophets into the shape and the texture of this very popular genre called apocalypse is really what makes Revelation so fascinating. Now, last week, Scott walked us through the first cycle of the story in Revelation.
We call this the seven letters to the seven churches. And I love how Scott took us and focused in on one particular church last week, the church in Ephesus. We read this together. I know your deeds, your hard work, and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people.
Yet I have this against you, you have forsaken the love you had at first. That's a great line. Because you see there is a way to hold on to your faith that is uncompromising and firm and that's good, but then there is a way that crosses over into something else, something maybe more vindictive. Scott said it this way. There is a way to believe the story of Jesus where I get to prioritize thinking the right things and believing the right things and saying the right things all while being mean.
And so to Ephesus, John says, I get it. We're in the apocalypse. Things are tough. You're stressed and you're anxious. I know.
I understand. But please don't let all of that turn you into someone you don't want to be. Because hunting heretics and deciding who's wrong and driving out anyone who disagrees with you even when you're right, this is not the way of Jesus. And salvation begins not in our theology, but in our posture of love toward each other. That however is not the end of the salvation story.
And so today, that salvation is about to get scaled up to the level of our politics and the empires we participate in. But first, let's pray together. God of grace, who welcomes us to come, to make room for each other, to listen to each other, Or this modest door, this openness to each other begin to peel back the veneer of our world just as it did for John some two thousand years ago? That we might begin to see each other with new, more clear, more grace filled eyes. And may that turn us toward each other in tangible expressions of love.
And we trust that your demonstration of self giving care was not an anomaly or a fantasy, but in fact the very substance of the universe. And might we truly come to believe that your way in the world is an expression of what holds life itself together. Would we lean into that kind of life with abandon? And would it make us better people into our interactions with each other? In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Amen. Week three of the apocalypse. And here's our rules for reading Revelation to keep in the background. The images are illustrative and not predictive. The story is cyclical, not linear.
And, Revelation is actually hopeful not apocalyptic. But, today we begin the second cycle of the story. And, that means that we are moving from the personal to the political and the images are going to start to scale up accordingly. So things are going to get weirder, they're going to get more apocalyptic, and things are going to be a little harder to make sense of as we go. But the key as always in Revelation is to not get stuck.
If you stop in the middle of a scene and you try to make sense of what you're reading, you won't end up where John wants you to be. Because the strategy in Revelation is over and over again misdirection. It's to build up your expectation and then flip it upside down. And if you get stuck in the build up and you don't get through to the flip, then you're going to get stuck in the wrong spot. Anyone remember the movie The Prestige?
Right? Great movie with Christian Bale and Wolverine playing dueling magicians. You should watch it if you haven't seen it. By the way, anyone else ever seen the movie The Illusionist? Also about magicians.
Also came out at the same time. The Prestige was set in Europe in 1890, but The Illusionist was set in Europe in 1889. So some similarities, sure. One big difference being that The Illusionist was bad, not a good movie. So one person here loved The Illusionist and they're like, oh, I'm sad now.
Sorry, it wasn't a good movie. By the way, always amuses me when studios do this. I imagine someone sitting around in a boardroom saying, wait, they're gonna make a historical magician movie? I mean, we can't let them have a monopoly, a nineteenth century handsome magician fandom. Someone get me Jessica Biel and the guy who used to be the Hulk.
We're making a movie too. I don't know. Anyway, in The Prestige, which was a good movie, the movie gets its name from the way that a magician works the trick. There's three parts. There's the pledge.
This is where the magician shows you something you've come to expect, in this case maybe a rabbit. There's the turn where the magician makes the rabbit disappear. And if all goes well, you're suitably impressed with this and you missed the sleight of hand, but the trick isn't actually done yet. Because nobody wants to leave the show after the woman has been cut in half or after the rabbit has been disappeared, you need the final step. And that is the prestige, where the magician brings you back to where it all started.
The trick isn't just disappearing the rabbit, the trick is reassuring us that the rabbit is okay. And John is not a magician, that's not my point. But he is doing something very similar over and over again in Revelation, Where he will start a scene full of tension and despair and fear and anxiety, and he will proceed to very intentionally ratchet that up and bring out all of those things that we are feeling in our own lives. But at the very last moment, over and over again, he will remind us the rabbit is actually okay. God is actually in control and Jesus has already saved the world.
That's the rhythm of revelation. The build up and then the upside down. And so with that in mind, let's start in chapter four and let's look today for the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. At once I was in the spirit. And by the way, that's our clue we're starting over again.
John says the same thing in chapter one. He says it now here again, this is a new vision, a second telling of the Jesus story. At once I was in the spirit and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby, a rainbow that shone like an emerald encircled the throne. Surrounding the throne were 24 other thrones and seated on them were 24 elders.
They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder. Revelation four:two-five. Now, if you step back from your assumptions here just for a moment, you can admit this is a strange start. John says, I had a vision, I was in heaven, there was a throne there and someone was sitting on it.
That's got to be intentional. Right? Someone? Who else would this be on the throne of heaven but God and yet here we get someone. In fact, the word someone isn't even technically here in Greek.
It's actually the verb to sit framed as an anarthrous subject. I know, sounds fancy, but the idea here is that John has used the most indistinct way possible of describing whatever it is that is on the throne. Is it a man? Is it a woman? Is it a spirit or a dog?
Is it a plurality of beings? A crowd sitting on the throne? We don't know. This is like saying something is there, but I am not gonna give you any hints about what it is at all, at least not yet. Because next we read this, that the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby.
Now, when I think of jasper, I immediately think of that beautiful little town in Northern Alberta. And because of that, I think, I imagine jasper always for me as the color green, which apparently it can be. It's Jasper SW 6216 in the Sherwin Williams paint locator if you're interested. But the stone Jasper is not green at all. At least not usually.
It generally looks more like this. Since it's very red, very much like a ruby which we're likely more familiar with which also looks like this. So here's our first clue about this someone on the throne. They are red. Weird, but hold on to that because it may not mean much yet, but spoiler, I think it might.
Next, we hear that surrounding the throne were 24 other thrones and seated on them were 24 elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. Now, there have been lots of attempts by lots of scholars to figure out exactly who these 24 elders are. Later in Revelation, John will use a motif to describe the city of heaven that represents the 12 disciples along with the 12 tribes of Israel. So that's an interesting connection.
There's also a reference to 24 groups of priests that lead worship in first Chronicles back in the Hebrew scriptures and some have made that connection as well. But both of those possibilities are a bit of a stretch because of this term presbuteroi, translated elders here. That's an idea that is borrowed from Greco Roman thought, not from Hebrew worship. So let's keep going. From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder.
This is a bit of a scary scene, but we're starting to get a bit of an image here. This someone is red. This someone is surrounded by 24 worshiping dignitaries in golden crowns wearing white. And this someone rules with threats of lightning and thunder. That means it's time for a bit of a history lesson.
By the time of Jesus, Rome had fallen into a civil war. Before the time of Jesus. Sorry. And Julius Caesar had been assassinated and different factions had vied for control of the emperor, but eventually it was Julius' nephew Octavian who defeated Mark Antity and took control of the empire. Now Octavian renamed himself Caesar Augustus when he did this.
That's probably how you've heard of him. But what you have to understand is that Augustus was absolutely revered in Rome because he ended a long and bloody civil war. He very literally brought peace to the world as far as they were concerned. Now he did that through a lot of war and a lot of violence, but the narrative in Rome was peace. And Augustus being a good politician as well as a very good strategist seized on this opportunity.
He claimed Julius Caesar as his rightful father, even though technically it was his great uncle. Then he had Julius declared a god in the Roman pantheon. The idea being that Julius Caesar had accomplished his divine purpose on earth and then ascended to take his rightful place among the gods. He then took for himself the official title, Divi Filios or Son of the Divine. And this was the start of what we call the Roman Imperial cult.
When the emperor dies, he becomes a god and the new emperor becomes the son of that god, the representative of that god here on earth. A little grandiose, but well and good as far as theocratic dictatorships go, I suppose. However, it does not take long before even this is not enough for the emperors. By the late first century after Titus, who by the way refused to take the title emperor, After he dies, his brother Domitian takes the throne. And Domitian is nothing like Titus who wanted to return power to the senate.
He's nothing like Augustus who wanted to use religion politically. Domitian is actually all ego. So he does not like being called the son of a god. He rejects the title divifilius and he takes a new title for himself, dominus et deus or literally lord and god. He strips the senate of any real power.
He starts a new games to replace the Olympics called the Capitoline games in honor of the head of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter. Think Zeus if you're more familiar with that title. But at these games, he is flanked by the high priest of Jupiter on his left and the high priest of the imperial cult on his right, making it clear that he is not any living old god in the world. He is a god on the level of Jupiter. Even as coins minted across the Roman Empire that show Jupiter's lightning bolts above his throne.
He doubles the number of lictores the emperor has. These were essentially sort of a bodyguard slash servant whose lives were completely dedicated to the emperor. But before Domitian, all emperors always had 12. He has 24. Even has a song written for himself that was sung at the Capitoline games and everyone in attendance had to wear white, and they were required to sing these lyrics.
I won't sing them for you, but I will quote them for you here. Hail victory, Lord of the earth. Invincible power, glory, honor, peace. Security, holy, blessed, great, unequaled, though alone thou art worthy, worthy is he to inherit the kingdom. Come, come, do not delay, come again Domitian.
I mean, it's not very catchy, but this is the emperor on the throne where most scholars including myself think John is writing Revelation. Okay. So what about that appearance of Jasper and Ruby? You said we'd come back to that. The Romans had a practice called Terabolium.
And if you've ever seen the HBO show Rome, you've seen a pretty graphic depiction of this. The emperor would stand under a huge slotted floor and above him a bull would be brought in and sacrificed. All of the blood, massive amounts of blood from this huge bull would run down through the floor over the emperor being baptized. Now, we don't have official records of Domitian practicing Terabolium, but we do know that Christians at the time knew about it and wrote about it. And so to even assume that Domitian probably would have at least been part of this is reasonable.
So here's part one, the pledge. Someone is sitting on the throne of heaven and that someone looks a lot like domination. For a faithful Christian living in the late first century, this is not a good start. And it's only about to get worse. Because next is part two, the pledge.
This is where things get really weird in a couple ways. We read about four living creatures covered with eyes front and back. They've got wings and weird faces. One looks like a lion, another like an ox, a third an eagle, and finally a man and they all worship this someone on the throne. Now, what's not weird about this is all these weird creatures.
These are actually a meme drawn from Hebrew literature. So you see very similar creatures in the book of Ezekiel, and you find almost the exact same creatures in a text called the Apocalypse of Abraham that came out around the time of Revelation. In other words, this is a conventional image. And the four creatures represent a wild animal, a domesticated animal, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, that's together represented in the eagle, and then of course finally humanity. And what the image represents is all of creation together worshiping rightly.
That's why they're all covered in eyes. I know it sounds weird. You're not supposed to picture this creature literally covered in eyes. Those eyes represent wisdom to see the world clearly. It's a very common idea in ancient Near East literature.
Except, if this is a conventional image drawn from Hebrew worship, why are they venerating this one that looks so much like Domitian? Why are images of the Roman imperial cult being mixed together with images drawn from Hebrew worship? Is this vision telling us that Domitian wins? Or maybe even worse, that God is like Domitian. And if that's what we're worried about, then we are exactly where John wants us to be for the final act.
Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. The image of a ruler holding a scroll was an incredibly important one in Rome. It was about the emperor's right to dictate history. And Domitian actually had the largest statue of any emperor ever uncovered commissioned for himself. It was placed at the waterfront in Ephesus, same city Scott talked to us to about last week.
And we even have parts of that statue today in a museum in Turkey. Now, it would have been over 27 feet tall when it was finally constructed. It was a massive image of Domitian that towered over the city. But we have a head and one arm. But you can see that it was meant to be holding something in that hand that has since been lost to time.
However, if we skip over to Rome in the Vatican Museum, we can find another statue of Domitian that probably gives us a pretty good idea of what this enormous statue in Ephesus was meant to be holding. Because Domitian also liked to have himself depicted holding the world in one hand and a scroll in the other. It is Domitian who holds history together. That's what he's telling us with these statues. Except, I saw a mighty angel proclaim in a loud voice, who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?
But no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. And I wept and I wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. And so this is an interesting conundrum here. The one on the throne who looks like Demetian apparently can't find anyone to open the scroll for him. Then one of the elders said to me, do not weep.
See, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals. So here's our big moment. John hears about a warrior lion, a leader in the model of David who is about to overcome and save the day. Except, we already know this is our prestige.
The moment where we are about to be brought all the way back to the beginning and so we read, but then I turned and I saw a lamb looking as if it had been slain standing at the center of a throne. And he went and he took the scroll because he was worthy. And then the 24 elders and the four living creatures all sang out in praise to him, you are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals. Worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise forever. See, the whole point here is that God does not look like Domitian at all.
God never has. And Jesus is not the lion of the tribe of Judah, the military leader we expected. He never was. All of that has always been misdirection and our misplaced expectation. It's about our desire for God to look and to act like an emperor.
But all of it now is undone with God, completely revealed to us in Jesus. As Revelation scholar David Barr says, with the reveal of the lamb, a more complete reversal of value would be hard to imagine. Everything is turned upside down. All of our assumptions about who God is, all of our expectations about how God works, all of our hopes about what Jesus might do once Jesus is in control of the world. Because God wins not through domination like Domitian, but through self sacrifice because Jesus looks like God.
Or another way of saying it, God looks like Jesus. This is how God overcomes the world. Not with rumblings and peals of thunder, not with domination like Domitian, but through the self sacrifice of the lamb. Everything in this scene that we've been reading, it's all misdirection leading you to the reveal of the lamb because John knows that sometimes what we really want is for God to act less like a savior and more like a dictator. And this is where all of our fascination with power strikes me as profoundly myopic.
Don't get me wrong, I get it. I mean, when you have a little power, it's enticing. And when you have a lot of power, it's intoxicating. But when you have infinite power, like honestly, imagine that for a moment, infinite unmitigated power over everything, the ability to call galaxies out of nothing. In that instance, why would any concept of control or power or sovereignty mean one iota to you at all?
See, we think God loves power because we love power, and I don't think God gives a rip. Once something is infinite, the only thing that can possibly mean anything is to give it away. And once you realize that, you realize that the only action in all power for God has left in the universe is to become weak, Which is precisely what Jesus demonstrates for us on the cross. It's precisely what the lamb that was slain is revealing to us. See John's concern here is not Domitian.
Domitian is not even a player as far as he's concerned. The concern is not Rome. It's not persecution. It's not fighting for our rights. It's not converting people to our cause.
None of that matters to him. But John's concern here is the way that empire steals our imagination of what is good from us. And it makes us believe that empire is the only way forward. The empire is the only way to win. That if one empire is bad, then the only way to fix it is for a bigger, badder, meaner, stronger, more righteous empire to come along and crush it the same way that the bad one crushed us.
But that is to have already lost your soul to the apocalypse, is to have abandoned the way of the self giving God. And so as John will do over and over again in this text, he will show us what we think we want, so he can show us how that is broken, so he can show us an alternative that we call the Christ. Because this is what it means to enter into the upside down kingdom of God, is to let go of our fantasies of domination And instead, to choose the only way that the world can ever be overcome, which is self giving love. Let's pray. Gracious God, for all those moments where we have been tempted to trade Your way and Your demonstration of grace and peace for one that we think is more effective, We are sorry.
And we recognize that no matter where we come from, no matter what part of the political spectrum we land on, there are times when we want to dominate others and enforce our ideas and push people into coercive manipulative ways that they step in line with what we think they should do. And at times we have given up the grace of your narrative for something that is so much smaller. And yet here in these moments, we see the lamb that was slain, the one who comes to remind us that self giving love is always the way towards healing. And so God, we pray that we could step onto that way in small ways to love our neighbors, to love those we encounter, to love our enemies, to demonstrate a new path in the world that leads us back to the upside down kingdom where everyone is welcome to come and take their seat. Where lives are actually transformed and where the goodness of your grace can flourish in the world in us and through us surrounding us.
May your kingdom come and may we get to be part of that story. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.