About a month ago, someone in our on-campus Bible study suggested I do a sermon series on the Book of Revelation.
I think because he wanted to torture me.
But I appreciate a challenge, especially when it comes to talking about the Bible. So I told him I would try to start the series in September.
And today is September 1st. So here we go.
I want to start off with this question: Why should we do a sermon series on Revelation?
After all, many Christians use this book to predict doom and gloom. In fact, Christian Zionists use Revelation in very antisemitic ways that encourage a massive war in the Middle East because they foolishly believe that it will cause Jesus to return and lift the faithful to heaven so that they can escape the apocalyptic violence that they think will come.
Let me say two things about these Christian Zionists and their use of Revelation. They claim to support Israel, but they actually hate the Jewish people. Christian Zionists only support Israel as a state because it is a tool for their own violent, destructive fantasies. They don’t care about the Jewish people. They want the Jewish people to die in this end-of-the-world war they fantasize about. In fact, they think the Jewish people will burn in hell forever and they will get what they deserve.
They believe this because they fundamentally misunderstand the Book of Revelation. The Book of Revelation is not about “end of the world” destruction. It’s about hope in the midst of violence and oppression.
This is precisely why it’s important to do this series on Revelation – for too long, we liberal and progressive Christians have allowed Christian Zionists to define this book while we sit on the sidelines. Just like it’s time to take Christianity back, it’s time we take back the book of Revelation.
So today is part 1 of this sermon series. In this sermon, I want to introduce the Book of Revelation to you. And then, over the next few weeks, we will dive deeper into the content of the book.
To begin, I want you to know that Revelation has always been a very controversial book. Did you know that it was one of the last books of the Bible to be accepted as scripture? In the very early days of Christianity, Christian Bishops and leaders made lists of books that they thought were authoritative for the Christian life. Revelation was one of the books that was most often left off of those lists. Many Bishops thought that the book was so mysterious and prone to misinterpretation that people wouldn’t understand it and they would misuse it. Unfortunately, they were correct. But over time, Revelation gradually grew to be accepted.
But even in later Christian history, the book remained controversial. In the 16th century, the great reformer Martin Luther was clear that he detested the book of Revelation, saying that it was theologically inadequate. Ulrich Zwingli, the leader of the Reformation in Switzerland, went as far as to say that the Book of Revelation was not a Biblical book. Another reformer named John Calvin wrote commentaries on each of the New Testament books except for Revelation – and that wasn’t because he died before he could write it. He just didn’t think Revelation was worthy enough to write about.
So the Book of Revelation has been controversial from the beginning and people have had big feelings about it throughout Christian history.
So if you don’t like this book, you are in good company. I am not here to convince you to like it. There are passages within Revelation that I find disturbing and awful. But during the next few weeks, I want to tell you why I think the book of Revelation is important.
First, let’s take a look at the title of this last book in the Bible. The name “Revelation” comes from the Latin word revelatio, which is where we get the English word revelation. But in the original Greek, the word is apokalypsis, which is where we get the English word apocalypse.
Our cultural understanding of “apocalypse” is that it refers to “end of the world destruction.” But that’s not at all what apocalypse means.
In Greek, apocalypse simply means “unveiling” or “revealing.” An apocalypse attempts to pull the curtain so that we can see God more clearly. In fact, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is an apocalypse because Jesus reveals who God truly is – the nonviolent God of love for all people, including those we call our enemies.
For Christians, Jesus is the ultimate apocalypse, or revelation, of God. Jesus is the key through which we unlock the mysteries of God. In other words, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the key through which we understand the mysteries of God, including the mystery that is the Book of Revelation.
Just to give you a quick sense of the radical apocalypse we are looking at here – Christian history has emphasized Jesus’ cross and resurrection as the great revelation of God. This is crucial for us to understand. When Jesus realized that he was going to be killed, he told his disciples that he would be handed over to be killed by the religious authorities and killed.
So one of the key questions is, “Who killed Jesus?”
Many Christians claimed that God killed Jesus by channeling God’s wrath against God’s Son. But is that how Jesus explains his death? I’ll answer that for you.
No.
It’s not God who killed Jesus. It was not God’s wrath that was channeled against Jesus. The apocalypse of the cross reveals that it was human wrath that was channeled against Jesus and it was humans who killed Jesus and they used religious laws as their excuse.
And here is the other important question about the apocalypse of the cross. How did Jesus respond to the wrath and violence of his fellow humans? Did he respond by threatening them with wrath and violence in return? Did he tell them that they would get the hell that they deserved in the end? I’ll answer that for you, too.
No.
In fact, on the cross Jesus prayed, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And in the resurrection, Jesus came to his disciples, who abandoned and betrayed him, and offered them not wrath and violence; he offered them peace and forgiveness. He then told the disciples to spread that peace and forgiveness throughout the world.
The apocalypse of Jesus reveals that God has nothing to do with violence but everything to do with love and forgiveness. The apocalypse of Jesus reveals that violence belongs to humans, not to God.
That’s why the passage from Revelation chapter 5 is so important. Like Jesus is the key for Christians to understand God, Revelation 5 is the key for us to understand the book of Revelation. Here is why: The people of God were looking for the Messiah to be like a Lion that would roar into the world and conquer with vengeance. Even the elder in God’s throne room in our passage was looking for a Lion. But John looked and saw the most remarkable shift in the human understanding of God.
This is the pinnacle of Christian theology. If we miss this, we miss Christianity’s most important claim about God. And that is this: When John looked he didn’t see a conquering lion. He saw a lamb that had been violently conquered.
Do you see the radical reversal or religious expectations? God is much more like a slaughtered Lamb than a conquering Lion. If we look for a conquering Lion as our image of God, we are going to miss the point of Jesus and his Apocalyps entirely.
God is not like a divine warrior. God is like Jesus, who was killed by religious and political authorities who nailed him to the cross. It is here on the cross that we learn God isn’t the conquering lion. God is the bloody lamb who was slain by human hands.
If you are like me, you may feel squeamish with the blood language in the Bible, especially when it comes to sacrifice. For example, in our passage, When talking about the Lamb, those in the throne room of God sing a new song and it goes like this:
You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.
First, do you see the reversal there? Most Christians would expect this passage to go like this: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you conquered and by spilling the blood of our enemies you ransomed the saints…”
But Revelation reverses our common understanding of God. The Lamb is not victorious against the forces of evil by violently conquering them, but by remaining faithful to the love of God.
But the ending phrase of the new song goes like this, “and they [the saints] will reign on earth.” That seems like a power grab, doesn’t it? Here is the thing: Christians believe that Jesus reigns on earth. And how does Jesus reign? Not by power over others, but by power with others. Not by conquering our enemies, but by loving them. Not by sacrificing others, but by being sacrificed by others in order to reveal to us the ultimate in Christian revelation – that even when we kill God in our midst, God comes back to offer us peace, reconciliation, love, and hope.
I’m going to talk much more about this in the following weeks, but here is what else is important to know. The Book of Revelation doesn’t let us off the hook by offering love and forgiveness.
John and the first audience of Revelation lived in dangerous political and religious times. A Roman Emperor violently conquered Jerusalem and demanded to be worshiped as a god. The Emperor used his power to scapegoat and oppress minority groups as he sought more power for himself and his friends.
Stop me if this sounds familiar…
It was in that political and religious atmosphere that John wrote the Book of Revelation. It was meant to inspire hope and courage during dangerous and traumatic times. The early Christians were tempted to compromise their valuse and capitulate to the demands of the political leaders. They might find it safer. They might even benefit if they collude with the emperor.
Again, stop me if this sounds familiar…
But John and his Revelation weren’t interested in being safe in the midst of political oppression. He wasn’t interested in gaining power for himself by colluding with corrupt politicians. John was interested in revealing a God who sided with the oppressed and rose up on their behalf to bring an end to oppressive systems. And he demanded that the early Christians commit themselves to the God who sides with the oppressed, not the oppressors.
This is the uncomfortable message of Revelation: the Lamb who was slain is the God of nonviolent love, but that nonviolent love isn’t passive. It is at work in the world to topple systems and powers of evil. For those of us who are involved in those systems and benefit from them, the toppling of these systems will probably feel like violence against us. But for those who are oppressed, this will be liberation. And in the end of Revelation, we will find that actually the oppressors will also be liberated by God from their greed and violence, and they will enter into God’s realm with all of their God given glory.
Because for Revelation, and for Jesus, violence doesn’t have the last word. The cross doesn’t have the last word. Evil and oppression don’t have the last word. The book of Revelation is ultimately a message of hope, that the last word belongs to love. It belongs to forgiveness. It belongs to justice. It belongs to redemption. It belongs to God and to God’s nonviolent Lamb, who doesn’t conquer through violence, but redeems the world through love.
This is the overall message of the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, and of the Book of Revelation.
This is part 1 of a planned 6 part series on the Book of Revelation. Next week I will post part 2. We are going to take Revelation five chapters at a time and conclude with a Q &A during a live worship service. You can participate in those services at 8:30 PT on the Pastor Adam Facebook Page.