A Revelation of Hope
The
Rev. Lynn Oldham Robinett
Assistant
Rector
Fourth
Sunday of Easter
May
2, 2004
Readings:
Acts 13:15-16,26-33(34-39)
or Numbers 27:12-23
Revelation 7:9-17
or Acts 13:15-16,26-33(34-39)
John 10:22-30
Psalm 100
When I was in the Peace Corps in Costa Rica, I lived in a small town where most people considered themselves very faithful to their religion. The three religious options for consideration were Catholicism, conservative Evangelical (of the Jimmy Swaggart variety), and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Being the good Episcopalian that I was I attended the Catholic Church since it was the most mainstream and liberal I could find. I didn’t even consider going to the Evangelical service since anyone who outlaws dancing and drinking outright doesn’t understand Jesus in the same way I do. At first I didn’t have much interaction with the Jehovah’s Witnesses either, until I’d been there a few months and became close with a family that attended the Kingdom Hall. And they were one of the most kind, disciplined, faith-filled families I met while there.
During coffee-picking season, I spent a lot of time in the fields with them, picking coffee and shooting the breeze. While you’re picking coffee, it’s hot, it’s dirty, and it’s tiring, unless it’s raining, dirty and tiring. So you talk and sing and play while you’re picking (at least that’s how I did it). Now being Episcopalian, I didn’t know much from the Bible, so talking with the Jehovah’s Witnesses was quite an experience. I had a hard time agreeing with much of what they interpreted the Bible as saying. I didn’t know all the passages they would quote or the concepts they promoted, but I knew that I didn’t agree with the images of Jesus and God they were putting forth.
One of the primary books of the Bible from which they draw their inspiration is Revelation. As you probably noticed from our reading this morning, the book of Revelation is quite descriptive and offers concrete images which can overwhelm one’s sense of understanding. One of the most widely used numerical figures brought to my attention by my friends was 144,000 from chapter 7 of Revelation. This was the number they claimed would be resurrected from the dead when Jesus came back to earth. These were the righteous who had served God and given their lives in faith for Jesus. They were the only ones who would be in paradise after the apocalypse that would annihilate the world as we know it. Now I am not a mathematical whiz, but I knew that if those who would be resurrected were so few, I did not stand a chance at being one of them. I also knew that I could never believe that Jesus came to save only a select few, and the cream of the crop at that. This much I knew, Jesus came for all of us, not for only 144,000.
What I understood but couldn’t express was that scripture is not meant to be dissected word for word, in order to tell us what is going to happen in the future. It is a document from the past that is meant to guide us in the present. When the Book of Revelation was written, the early Christian community was facing a lot persecution. The author of Revelation wrote it as a summons to courage and faithfulness and a testament to hope. He uses the imagery of saints in heaven before the throne of God. What is striking about the saints though is that they come from every nation, and speak every language. They are not one homogenous group speaking just one language. What the author suggests is that the perfection for which we all yearn, the perfection for communion with God and with one another, overcomes all artificial barriers that divide nations from one another. There is hope that those who suffer now, will one day see their vision succeed.
We live in a period of history which is seeing both the hope and the despair over communion with those around us. We only need to think of the events that have transpired in the last few decades to see how far we have come, and how far we have yet to go. There is no more Berlin Wall; there is now a European Union; the horrors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and Cambodian killing fields are past; nations that were once at war are now engaging in peaceful trade. Yet there are still places where war rages, people starve, and leaders are corrupt. Recent events in Afghanistan, Liberia, Iraq, and other places remind us that our hope for communion is not yet realized. Yet we continue to hope.
It is easy in these days of pop-psychologized spirituality to lose sight of what this hope means. It is not about achieving a better figure, a better checking account, or even a better nation. It is rather, according to Revelation, about keeping faith in God’s original promise to Abraham: “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” In the time that Revelation was written, their faith was tested daily. To be openly Christian was to face imprisonment and death. Some of those early Christians were not able to stand the testing of their faith. They instead chose to revert back to their pagan ways of worship so as to avoid the persecution that was around them.
Hope, according to Revelation, is the knowledge that the sufferings of this world are but a tragic moment in an otherwise glorious story. Christian hope is nothing less than a glimpse of the eternal in which God retains ultimate power over life and death. The saints are those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, and who have shared in the persecution of Christ by not compromising their faith in the face of a Roman threat. They have walked with Christ down the road of suffering, and now they share in the glorification of Christ. They shall know neither hunger nor thirst, for Christ has led them to the springs of life-giving water.
We Christians today are no different from our ancestors in faith. As St. Augustine of Hippo once said, we live in two cities, the city of God and the city of human beings. We must be thankful when there is no conflict of citizenship between these two cities. Sometimes, however, we must recognize that our citizenship in the city of God puts us in a position of potential conflict with the human city, and it is up to us to reject the temptation to make our lives easy by compromising our faith.
To be Christian is to have hope. To have the deep-rooted conviction that even when we experience suffering, Christ is with us, and all shall be ultimately well. Revelation does not offer us some sugar-coated panacea for facing the world’s ills. Rather it offers us a vision of hope that only God can provide. May we ask for the grace of this hope in the face of our suffering and the suffering of the world.
Art used by permission by Pat Marvenko Smith, copyright 1992.
To order prints visit her "Revelation Illustrated" site.
Return to Top Return to Sermons Page
After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree.
Then I saw another angel ascend from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads." And I heard the number of the sealed, a hundred and forty-four thousand sealed, out of every tribe of the sons of Israel, twelve thousand sealed out of the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand of the tribe of Reuben, twelve thousand of the tribe of Gad, twelve thousand of the tribe of Asher, twelve thousand of the tribe of Naph'tali, twelve thousand of the tribe of Manas'seh, twelve thousand of the tribe of Simeon, twelve thousand of the tribe of Levi, twelve thousand of the tribe of Is'sachar, twelve thousand of the tribe of Zeb'ulun, twelve thousand of the tribe of Joseph, twelve thousand sealed out of the tribe of Benjamin.