Sermon preached on May 29, 2022, the 7th Sunday of Easter, at St. Thomas' Church, Bath, NY using the Book of Revelation.
You can listen to the sermon here.
I recall the reading
from Revelation from two weeks ago:
I, John, saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first
heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw
the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared
as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne
saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as
their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will
wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and
pain will be no more.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more.
And this morning we
heard:
Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they
will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates.
Most of us would ignore
the Book of Revelation if we could, and, practically speaking, most of us
do. But I believe we need the Book of
Revelation and its most basic message.
The whole point of the
Book of Revelation is this: We must
choose to live under the reign of death or within the reign of life. The reign of death rules the world now, but
it ultimately has no future. We can
choose to live in it, but then we will have no future either. And no future, no hope.
We can resist the reign
of death. We can choose to embrace the way of life. The way of life—the way of
God—is all future because the future belongs to God, and God alone. But we must not expect the reign of death to
give up its power easily. It will not
and resisting it may result in great suffering.
But if we truly embrace the way of life, we will have the power to
endure, and God will be there in the end to wipe our tears.
Many who read the Book
of Revelation can only conclude that the writer—who is known as John the
Seer—was deeply disturbed. His writing
is at best bizarre, at worst, angry and violent, full of hatred and wrath.
Many in John the Seer’s
community of Christians in Asia Minor thought the same thing. The reign of death, which John personifies as
the great beast, was simply the Roman empire under which they had to live, like
it or not. They believed they could make
accommodations for it, and have a chance to live in peace, to prosper even.
John would have none of
it. Rome was nothing but a seducer and
deceiver. The Empire’s propaganda
machine churned out the notion of itself as the bringer of order and prosperity
to the world. They called it the Pax
Romana. John said It was a lie. It
was a lie to cover up the oppression and violence that was the true heart of
Roman rule. Rome ruled by the threat of
death masqueraded as the gift of life.
Look deep, John
says. Learn to recognize the seduction
of the Empire, its empty promises, the death disguised as life, and have the
courage to say “no” to it.
Say “yes” instead to the
vision of a new heaven and a new earth, a new city in place of Rome: the new Jerusalem, the gift of God, the place
where God dwells among us and death is no more.
In that city the gates are always open because there is no need of
defensiveness, and all who enter are welcome, so long as they say “yes” to its
vision.
Let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who
wishes take the water of life as a gift.
John invites us, urges
us, cajoles us, demands of us to make this choice: death or life, the city of our making or the
city of God’s making.
Perhaps we lack the
urgency of John. Perhaps we are uncomfortable with the choice put in such stark
terms. We love our country and its
hard-won freedoms. That is much on our minds this Memorial Day weekend, when we
remember those who have sacrificed themselves so that we can be free.
Love of country is not a
bad thing. Desire for freedom is not a bad thing. In a few weeks we will hear from the Letter
to the Galatians one of St. Paul’s great cries, “For freedom Christ has set us
free” (5:1).
John would say, “Yes,
but look carefully at what the promise of freedom is obscuring, what it actually
costs. Is it really freedom? Freedom for everyone? Or is it a smokescreen for the power of
death, the maintenance of an oppressive political control?
There is the seduction,
for instance, that guns make as safer and are necessary for the protection of
our freedoms. Really? Ask the families of the ten murdered in Buffalo
two weeks ago. Ask the families of the 19 fourth graders and their two teachers
murdered in Texas on Tuesday. You will
get a different answer.
Look deeply for the need
for power at any cost masquerading as freedom.
The seductive power of so-called “replacement theory,” that fear and
action are required to defend the dominance of white culture. Well, we saw the “action” in Buffalo, and it
was a total embrace of the culture of death.
I know I have, for some
of you, crossed the line from spirituality to politics from the pulpit. John the Seer crossed that line a scant fifty
years or so after Jesus’ death and resurrection. It’s uncomfortable, and we will disagree, but
we cannot put on blinders when we walk into a church building.
We cannot pretend in
here that everything is OK out there.
Everything is not OK. There is an
ugliness out there, an embrace of the culture of death, oftentimes fed by a
blasphemous notion of God and God’s purposes.
We must stand with John
and Jesus, the Alpha and Omega, the bright morning star, the giver of
life. John did have a replacement
theory, and we Christians have a replacement theory.
It is the replacement of hate by love.
The replacement of fear by faith.
The replacement of chaos and despair by hope.
The replacement of death by life.
The replacement of the city of our own making by the City of God.
Let us be about this
replacement. Let us choose the way of
life rather than the culture of death.
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