This is taking forever, isn’t it... preaching through the book of Revelation. It doesn’t have the familiar comfort of the gospel stories, or the practical theology of Paul’s letters, or the colorful stories of the Old Testament heroes. It’s just one clashing, disturbing picture after another. And so what I’d like to do today is pause for a moment, recap where we’ve been, and preview what is coming.
Remember where we started. The Apostle John, by now an old man in exile on the island of Patmos of the coast of Turkey, near Ephesus where he had been living and preaching for maybe as much as 40 or 50 years, had a series of visions which he was told to write down and communicate to all the churches.
John was the last of the apostles still living, and the emperor Domitian was beginning the worst wave of persecution of Christians since Nero. The young church was under pressure from all sides, pagans and Jews alike, the eye-witnesses were dying off, and Jesus hadn’t returned yet. How could Christians continue to hope under these circumstances? Their expectations didn’t match their experiences.
The whole purpose of the book of Revelation is threefold:
1. God is in charge.
2. We live on a battlefield - messy and dangerous.
3. Jesus Christ wins.
The book of Revelation is sort of like a topographical map of eternity. If we can match our life experiences to that map, we can stop feeling lost or afraid and keep on heading in the right direction. Sometimes John gives us a glimpse of the mountaintop - the Lamb upon the throne, the angels and saints singing mighty choruses of praise and adoration, the glory of the sanctuary. These images remind us of the reason for our hope, they tell us that the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is still operating, still holding the stars in their courses, still keeping the earth from falling into the sun, and still protecting his sheep. Do you remember your own mountain-top experiences? Think about
it for a moment - most of us have had them, when we have been touched in a particularly powerful way by the knowledge of the presence of God and the love of Christ. Wouldn’t it be great if we could hang on to those moments?
It’s the same reaction Peter and James and John had on the Mount of Transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah appeared next to Jesus and all three were surrounded by light and the voice from heaven said "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!" [Mt 17:5] They wanted to stay up there, away from the demanding crowds and the hostile officials and all the other things they’d had to put up with since they’d joined the Master. But Jesus wouldn’t let them. He led them back down into the world of poverty and dirt and illness and evil and told them to get back to work.
Well, John’s vision reassures us that those glittering visions are still true, even when they’re out of our sight. But he spends even more time showing us the dark side of history. And that reflects our own experience too, doesn’t it? We spend more of our time in the valleys than on the mountaintops. Sometimes they’re grim,
dark valleys of despair, but more often than not they’re just humdrum slogging along life’s dusty roads, wondering where the next rest stop or scenic view or historical marker will appear.
To help us when we’re down in those valleys, unable to see the whole terrain spread out in front of us, John reassures us that God isn’t taken by surprise at the stubborn persistence of evil, God isn’t thrown by the wars and famines and murders, earthquakes and floods and epidemics, that are part of human life here on earth. They are unpleasant, but they are the side effects of the cosmic battle between God and Satan, and can’t harm us in the long run - if we understand what’s going on, and take our proper place and role in the story. John tells us how to stay safe, how to avoid getting caught behind enemy lines, how to recognize friend from foe. And he tells us why it’s necessary, why God doesn’t just snap his fingers and shazam! Mice turn into horses and rats turn into coachmen and rags turn into ball gowns, the black and white of Kansas changes like magic to the brilliant color of Oz.
The reason that God doesn’t do that is because he wants as many people as possible to find the emergency exit, to go to the bomb shelter, to head for the hills - to take advantage of the rescue operation he put into effect at the beginning of time.
And what we’ve seen over the past few weeks is the importance of our work, the work of the church, to tell as many people as possible about the shape and meaning of good and evil, of life and history, and to point them to Jesus Christ, the way to life. Because the time will come when the harvest is ripe, the time has come, and the waiting is over. Last week we saw God’s followers gathered in, responding to the last call from their shepherd, and after they were safely out of the way, the wild grapes were swept into God’s winepress.
Today’s passage shows us two pictures side by side: the first is of “seven angels with seven plagues.” [v. 1] Remember that seven is the number of completion. John underlines that by telling us that when these angels are finished with their task, God’s wrath will be finished. That means that all those things which arouse God’s wrath, all the sin, all the evil, all the cruelty and indifference and greed and exploitation that God hates, will be gone. Gone for good. Eliminated. Scoured out of existence. Think of the plagues as a cosmic cleanser - the sweeping and
vacuuming has been done, everything valuable has been salvaged, and it’s now time for the angelic cleaning crew to finish the job with a strong dose of industrial strength Lysol. Or maybe fumigating is a better image, because “no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were ended.” [v. 8]
The second image is of “a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands.” [v. 2]
This is the cheering section. They are singing the same song Moses sang some 3,000 years ago. This is the song of the triumph of God. And the ones who are singing are the saints. It doesn’t say so in so many words, but the bowls the angels carry the plagues in may be the very same ones which once had held the prayers of the saints - remember, the saints have been praying for God’s justice to prevail. And now that it has, the saints are singing up a storm. Listen to what they are saying: "Great and amazing are your deeds, Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways, King of the nations! Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed." [v. 3-4]
Do you hear any of them saying, “How could a God of love also be a god of punishment?” Do you hear any of them saying, “It’s not fair, God, you didn’t warn them”? Do you hear any of them saying, “Give them another chance”? No. Everyone who wanted to hear, who was capable of hearing, has been rescued.
From Moses on, God’s people have understood that they had to be clean before coming into God’s presence. In Old Testament days God gave them a number of rituals to illustrate for them how dangerous it was to bring sinful people unprotected into the presence of God; the blood of the sacrificial animals and the smoke of the incense created a sort of de-contamination zone in which a temporary connection could be made. Those rituals were ways to keep people involved in an ongoing relationship with a righteous God, not a substitute for it. But the Bible makes it very clear how throughout salvation history people have
confused ritual purity with actual righteousness; as Jesus said, "Woe to you, ...hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence... First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.” [Mt 23:25-26]
Well, most of us, I think, know that coming to church on Sunday, singing the hymns and participating in the sacraments, aren’t what makes us fit for the presence of God. But some have taken the lesson too far, assuming that being kind, and honest, and basically a good person is enough. They assume that we human beings are capable of cleaning both our outsides and our insides without help. But we’re not.
What does it take to clean things up enough for God and people to live side by side together? It takes a lot. And the process is dangerous. Remember that when Isaiah was in God’s throne room, and he recognized his own sinfulness, the angel purified his mouth by burning it with a live coal. Everything that we know that kills germs can kill people, too, from fire to penicillin. The word “anti-biotics” means against life! That’s why chemo and radiation are so unpleasant - it’s hard for people to engineer cures that can tell the difference between good tissue and bad tissue. And that’s why we keep Comet and Mr. Clean away from children.
And that is why it is so important that we understand where we are on the road map to eternity. We’ve been given a glimpse of the mountaintop as an incentive to get us going and a beacon to keep us on track, but we can’t stay up there. Once we go back down the mountain and get involved in the pressures and problems of life, the only way we can navigate is to be guided by Jesus, the only way we can be safe is to be protected by Jesus, and the only way we can be cleaned is to be washed by Jesus.
When I was a new Christian, one of the bits of Christian jargon that I had trouble swallowing was the phrase “washed in the blood of the Lamb.” It didn’t mean anything to me, and I found it a rather gruesome, grisly image. It’s still not my favorite, I’m a touch squeamish. But it’s a necessary image, and a true image. Because blood is a symbol for life, and it’s only when we let God replace our life with that of Jesus - a sort of spiritual transfusion - that we can actually go and live with him.
