Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Chris is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Grace to you and peace
from him who is and who was and who is to come,
and from the seven spirits
who are before his throne,
and from Jesus Christ,
the faithful witness,
the firstborn of the dead,
and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
That’s how John begins his revelation,
on which I plan to preach
all of Eastertide.
Eugene Boring says,
“In times of threat and persecution,
Christians of the second and third generations
revived the older apocalyptic expectations
with the conviction
that even though earlier predictions were wrong,
now the End has indeed come near.”
Boring continues,
“Revelation is best understood as fitting into this category.
When John said ‘the time is near’ (1:3),
he meant the time for the happening
of all the events his letter envisions,
including the return of Christ,
the destruction of evil,
and the everlasting glory of the new world.
He meant both ‘soon’ and ‘End.’”
without spiritualizing
or making a code
for precise predictions
based on centuries or generations
for what “soon” and “End” meant.
Knowing this part of our story —
alongside how it’s been presented
in popular media
or by other Christian siblings
acting in varying degrees of good and bad faith,
but with firm belief nonetheless —
is important for our own
Christian lives.
We say week by week
Christ has died.
Christ is risen
Christ will come again
or
We remember Christ’s death.
We proclaim Christ’s resurrection.
We await Christ’s coming in glory.
Each week as we confess
the faith of the saints who’ve gone before
we say
“He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end,” and
“We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.”
As John writes,
persecutions of Christians
have barely gotten started.
He foresees how bad they will get
and he presents the church of every age
with a question:
Who will you serve
until Jesus returns?
He starts the letter today
by giving Jesus titles
that he never used for himself,
but that the church
feels comfortable using.
I know Revelation,
even the idea of reading from it!,
can make some of your eyes twitch.
I love it, though
because these tiles that John uses:
Christ,
the faithful witness,
the firstborn of the dead,
and the ruler of the kings of the earth,
set the tone of rest of the letter.
Alleluia. Christ is risen.
Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia.
Writing to the Churches of Asia
John is telling them them
to hold fast to the faith
that Jesus the resurrected Christ
is the true ruler of heaven, earth, life, and death —
not Caesar.
As they start to face persecution
they should hold to that for strength
knowing that Jesus the faithful witness
is watching alongside them
and their acts of love for neighbor
in defiance of imperial power
aren’t in vain.
Before they start really being killed for their faith,
John starts this letter by reminding them
that Jesus is firstborn of the dead,
and that we who have come through the font
will share his resurrected life.
Y’all are actively working
with my blessing and some support
to figure out what it means for us
to stand in the face of imperial power.
This week has raised a lot of eyebrows
and blood pressures
and deep-seated concern.
John is writing to the churches
who believe in Jesus as God’s annointed
who expected his followers
to welcome strangers in.
This week a judge was very publicly arrested —
without an indictment yet —
for not enforcing laws
that aren’t hers to enforce.
Or something.
US citizens aged 2, 4, and 7 —
one with stage four cancer —
were deported this week
without access to counsel
or much of any process.
Supreme Court justices
are lying about the content
of an alphabet book I have at home;
haven’t even looked at it;
or are more sensitive
to an illustration
of a person in a leather jacket
than the most hardcore vegan activists.
As John writes,
persecutions of Christians
have barely gotten started.
He foresees how bad they will get
and he presents the church of every age
with a question:
Who will you serve
until Jesus returns?
Advent is the only time
we can pray “Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus.”
Christians of no stripe
are being persecuted
in the United States.
Persecution for being a Christian
will not likely come
so long as Christian nationalists
are willing to carry water
for the power of the empire.
They’re answering John’s question
about who they will serve.
What’s much more likely to happen
is persecution of those
who stand in the way of the empire.
Whether that’s as a pebble in their shoe
or publicly demonstrating
or working through courts
praying for neutral arbiters.
When Jesus gives a new commandment
to love one another,
there’s no restrictions on that.
That’s part of the difficulty of the commandment.
It doesn’t make sense to us
in our broken, fallen, selfish states.
We want to put orders around it
and raise some people up
as more willing or worthy of love.
When we say that we will
seek and serve Christ in all people
loving our neighbors as ourselves —
which we just did at the Vigil last week —
that means all people.
For the rest of Easter
we’re going to explore
how a church about to start facing persecution
lived through it —
though some didn’t.
I know Revelation,
even the idea of reading from it!,
can make some of your eyes twitch.
At its core, though
Revelation isn’t about
being taken to heaven
and letting the rest of the world be damned
and burned.
It’s about a church
living through tribulation,
living through trials
and still having the faith to say
that Jesus the the firstborn of the dead.
Revelation is about a church
living through tribulation and trials
and still having the faith to say
Alleluia. Christ is risen.
Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia.