Sermon from March 25, 2007
The wise never walk among the visions of Revelation without a guide. Following that counsel, I asked the Son of St. Andrew to guide me. He has warned me away from dangerous byways and has kept me from many a fool's errand.

He resolved many a mystery, when he taught me that "Revelation does not predict a sequence of events, as though it were history written in advance," (Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation, 149-150). Instead, its images help us to see the unseen world. They also defy without denying the world we see every day, which would have us think it is the only world. They take us behind the scenes, so to speak, to the real power that guides human life ineluctably toward that Promised Land where all is peace.

I hear people speak of Revelation as a book of violence. In reality, John spends surprisingly little time on the judgments of God. I wonder if we highlight the acts of judgment, because violence and the threat of violence loom larger in our experience with every passing year.

The unexpected stories of the martyrs interrupt the acts of judgment and put them in proper perspective. They, not the judgments, emerge as central to the meaning of Revelation. They changed the way I read the book.

This new way of reading Revelation makes me blush at my earlier thought that the purpose of God's judgments was to cow a rebellious world into submission by sheer force. Judgment, even the judgment of God, has limits. Stories of the martyrs express God's self-imposed limits on the use of force against rebellious man. They express the patient mercy of heaven. The delays no longer frustrate me. I welcome them.

They also made me realize with a start that I had forgotten something important. I had been so preoccupied by the four horsemen, the martyrs, and the plagues on the earth that I had forgotten the mysterious scroll, which the Lamb had opened.

The story of the two witnesses in chapter eleven of John's vision told the content of the scroll in a nutshell. The two witnesses embody the bittersweet story of the whole Church in her witness to the truth of God. It is a faithful, powerful, suffering and sometimes martyred witness. It imitates the witness of Jesus Christ, by which He overcame the evil of our world. It, not the judgments of God, achieves the conversion of the nations.

It should come as no surprise that the seventh angel sounds the last trump at the conclusion of the story of the two witnesses. Turn with me again to the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, to chapter eleven of John's vision, Revelation 11:15.

Jesus Is Victor
The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever." Heaven's lavish praise followed. In the elders' words, verse 17: "We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. The time has come for judging the dead."

The seventh trumpet seemed to herald the end of the world as we know it. The long night of man's rebellion against God would end. Eternal day would dawn.

Then, I saw a familiar sight. Verse 19: God's temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a great hailstorm. This scene occurs four times in Revelation, each time more intense, each time signifying that God was about to visit the earth in judgment and salvation. Once again, the one who sits on the throne had postponed the final reckoning. I knew more was to come.

I was glad for that, because in the story of the two witnesses John mentioned for the first time and with no explanation a ferocious enemy of the Church. Verse 7: Now, when they had finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack the two witnesses and overpower and kill them. We want to know, "Who is the beast?" John's vision will reveal the identity of the beast, but of far greater interest is the power behind the beast. We meet that power in chapter twelve.

The Dragon and the Woman
Chapters twelve and thirteen are a nightmare of evil. Waking from nightmares usually brings the delicious relief that it was only a dream. To wake from this nightmare was to live the nightmare in the cities of the Empire. If the dragon has not deceived us into stupefaction, it is to live the nightmare in the cities of this country.

The nightmare begins with landscape giving way to skyscape. Verse one: A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Verse five of the vision tells us what we need to understand the sign. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.

In verse three, another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. The middle of verse four presents us with unthinkable evil. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.

An insatiable appetite to destroy goodness crouches near every human endeavor. It was overtaking the Roman institutions of power and animating them to move with violence against the early Christians. That same insatiable appetite can move in non-violent ways but with the same destructive purpose.

The nightmare gave way temporarily to unexpected relief. The woman gave birth safely to her son, and both found refuge from the dragon. Then verse seven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon ... was hurled down – that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Nightmares alternate eerily between the grotesque and fantastic on one hand and familiar images from the real world on the other. Verse eleven speaks the familiar language of Revelation. It also interprets the nightmare and connects it to the stories of the martyrs, especially the story of the two witnesses.

They (the persecuted Christians) overcame him (the dragon) by the blood of the Lamb. The risen Christ had interpreted the meaning of His death this way: To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne – Revelation 3:21. Martyrdom does not seem like the way to overcome, but that is how Christ overcame evil, death, and the dragon. Becuase Christ overcame in that way, the persecuted Church can overcome in that way.

Verse eleven again: They (the persecuted Christians) overcame him (the dragon) by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Their faithful, powerful, suffering and sometimes martyred witness imitated the witness of Jesus Christ, by which He overcame the evil of our world.

The nightmare of evil resumes immediately. Verse twelve: "Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short." Verse 17 summarizes the fury that followed. Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring – those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

The Beasts
The nightmare of evil deepens as chapter 13 opens. And the dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the seas. He, like the dragon, had ten horns and seven heads, indicating the source of his power, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The chapter closes with a mysterious summons: If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.

We politely dispute the meaning of the number or make jokes with it. John's first audience had more urgent matters at hand. The beast seemed invincible. The end of verse four: The whole world was astonished and followed the beast.

Verse eleven presents another beast, coming out of the earth that reinforced the apparent invincibility of the first beast. He had two horns like a lamb, a mockery of the Lamb of God, but he spoke like a dragon, revealing his true nature. With totalitarian resolve and resources, verses 16-17 say that he also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.

The nightmare vision of the dragon and the beasts retells the story of the two witnesses, this time in an expanded version. The risen Christ had summoned the whole church to overcome. Now, we know what they had to overcome. They had to keep their faith in the face of the hostile and seemingly invincible beast.

John's first listeners did not have to guess at the political meaning of the nightmare. They knew that the vision spoke of Rome and her seemingly invincible power and her increasingly lethal policies toward the Church. They lived the nightmare and bore their witness at great human cost to them.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
I understood that, and I felt empty. What does it have to do with us? How shall we live out the story of the two witnesses? How shall American Christians with unparalleled, personal liberty participate in the suffering witness of Jesus and in His victory?

As I pondered these questions, I was caught up in the Spirit, and behind me I heard a woman's voice. It soothed, aroused, inspired and threatened. I wish I had never heard it. Yet, I wanted it to go on speaking forever. It conjured up a vision of endless indulgence.

I saw there a buffet of every imaginable sexual pleasure. Whatever caught a person's fancy could be had for the taking, as if it were a buffet of crackers, cheese and grapes. Close by sat people smiling with dreamy eyes that looked but didn't see, unable to talk or listen long, as if they were shrinking away inside their own bodies.

Other tables held stacks of neatly packaged currency, packets of $50 and $100 bills, piled high. People took away as much as they could hold and could return for more. Signs in small print, attached to each packet, called for the eventual return of the money. Many gave no heed.

Several doors opened on to this banquet hall, but they seldom opened. Behind them sat the circles of power. The great ones, who decide even the fate of nations, gathered there. Men and women lusted for admittance into those rooms. People smiled and betrayed friends, and they lied and called it truth to get into those circles of power.

When the voice, which was the voice of a woman, spoke, it bade us transgress every boundary known to man. I was prepared to transgress and taste the promised infinity. I turned to follow the one that spoke and I was appalled by what I saw.

I saw three beasts. I wondered that they could speak with one seductive voice. The beast on the left, whose lair lay beside the sea, had a head of flaming color. Its scales shone like stars.

The beast on the right, whose lair lay beside a mighty river, had a green head and scales that seemed to be gold coins, some of which fell off, whenever the beast moved. The poor came and gleaned them, always at personal risk.

The beast in the center, whose lair lay beside a swampy river bed, had a head like a bird of prey, very white. Out of its beak came a column of fire by which it incinerated its enemies. It protected the other two beasts from any who attacked them.

Each beast devoured those who obeyed the seductive voice. They did it by sucking the life out of the person in its grip. They went about their feast with no more emotion than jackals over the carcass of an impala. I'll never forget the endless sucking and the agony of their prey.

I refused at first to believe it. How could that voice and those pleasures camouflage the deadly beasts? I had heard the seductive voice so long that I began to believe its lies. When I saw the beasts that used that voice, I woke as from a dream.

Awake, I saw that the beast and Babylon the harlot had not perished with the passing of the Roman Empire. They had reinvented themselves as beasts of the Pax Americana, seductive and dangerous as ever; only with us, they have for the time being renounced violence in favor of personal liberty as their way of intimidating us and luring us into their clutches.

The risen Christ has summoned American churches to overcome. Now, we know what we have to overcome. We must keep our faith in the face of the seemingly invincible seductions of liberty. It has been granted to us on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to face unparalleled personal liberty for an unprincipled pursuit of pleasure and power.

We are to follow the Lamb into the desert, where He said "No!" three times to the dragon's offer of pleasure and power. There, the ancient serpent called the devil or Satan began to know that his appetite to destroy goodness could be resisted and broken. Our refusal of the voice of the beasts, which is like that of a woman, is how we American Christians are called to participate in the suffering witness of Jesus and in His victory over sin and death and the devil. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches!