Ruminating on Revelation
Some years ago when I was serving another church, a parishioner complained to me that I never preached from the Book of Revelation.
The truth is that I often preach on it during Advent and during this season that we call Easter that runs between Easter morning and Pentecost.
The problem is that I never spend much time preaching about the problem the airlines will have when their pilots have been “raptured” or drawing parallels between what’s happening in the Middle East and the Battle of Armageddon.
I could do that. I grew up with a devout belief in Dispensationalism that forms the basis of the Left Behind series and much of the preaching about the Book of Revelation in North America , today. I have memorized the timetable of the years of tribulation under the reign of the Antichrist, the Millennium, the great last battle between good and evil and the Last Judgment. I know what to look for in the news that will tip me off that the END IS NEAR.
I also know that, while not exactly a bunch of hooey, that interpretation misses the point of the Book of Revelation.
There are Bible scholars who seriously question whether comfortable North American Christians who feel “persecuted” because they aren’t allowed to dictate the prayers everyone will say in a public schoolroom, can really understand the Book of Revelation.
This book was written for people who had their backs against the wall. The Christians in the Sudan whose crops are burned, villages are pillaged, women are raped, men are killed and children are sold into slavery probably understand Revelation better than we do.
The basic message of Revelation is:
No matter what happens, no matter how bad things get, no matter how much evil seems to triumph don’t give up hope, because:
God is at work, even now, defeating evil, not with a lion, but with a Lamb. So then,
- Love will triumph over hate. Right will triumph over wrong. Peace will triumph over war. Inclusiveness will triumph over prejudice. And community will triumph over selfishness.
- The poor will enter the Kingdom. The meek will inherit the earth. Those who mourn will be comforted. Those who try to do the right thing will succeed. The peacemakers will triumph. And the persecuted will be vindicated.
The Book’s vision of the New Heaven and the New Earth promises that, in the end, we will live, not playing harps in the clouds but working out God’s policies in a new world.
The Left Behind books aren’t wrong. There is a terrible end in store for all the false powers of this world – and for our false selves. But all that is real and all that is right will live forever in God’s light.
