Scripture - Revelation 1:1-10
The testimony you have just heard, folks, was described by Martin Luther, a leader of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century as, “an offensive piece of work” and John Calvin saw no value in the letter to the seven churches of Asia. Furthermore, Robert G. Ingersoll claimed this testimony as, “the insanest of all books.” So there you have it folks – you have just heard the testimony of a complete psycho.
Tony Campolo, professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University near Philadelphia, was once invited to speak in a classroom at another university and brought along with him a person with some form of dementia – he was considered to be a real psycho. Anyway, the man believed that he was dead, and so at the end of the lecture the students were invited to ask questions of the man. After a number of students posed their questions a young man put up his hand.
“So, you are convinced that you are dead, huh?”
The man with the mental illness said, “Ya, I believe I’m dead.”
“So,” asked the student, “Do you believe that dead men bleed?”
“No,” replied the insane man.
So the student got out of his chair and walked to the front of the lecture hall, pulled a tack out of his pocket, grabbed the hand of the madman, and pricked his index finger...it started to bleed.
“Well, whaddaya know?” the psycho replied shocked, “dead men do bleed!”
So, we have in our Christian Scriptures a letter that has undergone immense scrutiny from both inside the Church and outside. It is so difficult to grasp such a letter because it is filled with pervasive imagery, symbolism, and language that decent people like us would never use in public. The one thing we are clear about, however, is that the letter is attributed to a man named John – we don’t know which John of the 1st century, but in the letter he constantly refers to himself as John – John who has been exiled to the Greek island of Patmos.
I look at the story of John and constantly think to myself, “I can’t believe that a writer with such a story has work that was canonized – made into Scripture – by the ancient church. I mean this guy is a convicted felon. This guy has no integrity, so why are we claiming his testimony as authoritative Scripture?
Second-of-all, this book is deeply political. I know, Jesus said “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near” but isn’t that a metaphor? John seems to take it seriously and it appears that his testimony takes the witness of Jesus to the extreme – that in our history Jesus was about to go toe-to-toe with Caesar.
We often hear the stories of alcoholics and drug dealers who have come to know Jesus and their stories often go like this:
I was on the street selling drugs to make ends meet and I eventually got hooked on my own product and then when I hit rock bottom – when I couldn’t get a job, then later went to prison, and then was thrown back out onto the streets I found Jesus and my life has been great ever since.
Aren’t those great stories? But then we go back to the stories of those in the Bible and we find that Jesus messes up people’s lives. Paul what’s your story? How did Jesus make you a better person?
Paul’s response:
Well, I was this big Jewish Pharisee who was out to kill all of the Christians because they were blaspheming God’s religion, and then when the high priest sent me out to chain all the Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem, I found myself on a road to Damascus. I was with my buddies on the road to Damascus and all of a sudden I was blinded and heard the voice of Jesus and he told me to follow him – I tried to get away from him, but this Jesus is relentless – anyone who wants lessons in stalking people might learn a few tricks from Jesus. At my first few sermons people were trying to kill me, and then I eventually took up my cross and went to Rome to be executed for my loyalty – my faith – in Jesus Christ. You see, Jesus messed up my nice lavish lifestyle as a Pharisee.
Here’s a story from the United Methodist Church in the USA.
A woman was the pastor in a small church in a tiny community down in Alabama. She was becoming heartsick because her church wasn’t growing. She complained to the Bishop, “Ah Bishop, I don’t know why our church isn’t growing. I mean, I put all of these hours into crafting wonderful sermons and only have 12 people each Sunday to hear them. I think they deserve more people to hear them.” The Bishop didn’t say much so she went down to the railroad tracks just outside the village where the poor and the crack addicts and the drug dealers were and said to them, “Hey folks, I’m gonna come back here on Sunday morning at 9:45am and if any of ya’ll are interested you can come to church with me.” So the next Sunday the woman picked up the people and next thing you know she’s on the phone to the Bishop.
“Bishop, she says, on Palm Sunday we just baptized six people into Christ’s church.”
So the Bishop replied, “Well that’s wonderful, you are gonna receive the Evangelism Award this year for growth of 50%.”
“Well, not so fast Bishop. By Easter we lost six.”
“How do you lose six members so quickly after gaining six?”
“Well, the people who saw the new members I brought along didn’t like them. They said, ‘We don’t wanna go to a church with a bunch of crackheads and their kids.”
The Bishop replied, “Reverend, did you explain to these people that we are Methodist preachers and that we’ve gotta work with whoever Jesus drags into the church? Did you explain that we don’t like these people any better than they do. But if we’re gonna be with Jesus we’re gonna have to be with his friends?”
Folks, we have a God in Jesus Christ who just loves to die for sinners. We have a God whose story is made known in a man’s writing that we completely do not identify with. We have a God who uses the psychopathic image-rich writings of a persecuted man to say, “I’m gonna getcha!” So folks, watch out. Jesus is on the loose and he’s coming to you in the long-winded introduction to a letter to seven churches in Asia.
I mean, John tells us in the introduction to the letter exactly what he’s doing and why he’s writing. He says this:
I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. (Rev. 1:9)
Folks, listen to these words – John wasn’t put in prison because he wanted to be there. John was put there because of Jesus. Jesus messed up his life. I mean, do any of you here expect the Jesus we serve to demand us to speak of him so much that we deny our own country in expectation for God’s country? Do any of us expect to be exiled to a remote island for claiming that Jesus is Prime Minister rather than Stephen Harper?
Because that is exactly why John landed at Patmos an exile. John is writing to encourage Christ’s faithful people to staunchly resist the demands of emperor worship – the worship of Caesar as god. John, in fact, believed that a showdown – a duel, perhaps – was about to take place on earth between God and Satan. And so John continually encourages these people that “Jesus is Lord” and that “Jesus is God” and that “Jesus is Emperor” not whatever Caesar is ruling this Roman Empire right now. Christians were being killed and tortured in some parts of the Empire at the writing of John’s letter to the seven churches and so John responds with encouragement.
The struggle in the Book of Revelation is like the journey of Jesus. According to the Gospel of Luke “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51-52). To be resolutely set out for Jerusalem is to acquire tunnel vision – to ignore everything on the peripheries, especially things that don’t matter. To emphasize this, Jesus says to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” Is this not what happened to Mother Teresa? She got rid of every pleasurable thing, packed up, went to Calcutta to give the dying more comfortable deaths and she found the fulfilled life that God had dreamed for her since before the earth’s foundations were laid.
There’s a reason why early Christians believed some of the things they did. John the man who baptized the people of Israel on the Jordan River used to say to crowds:
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit worthy of repentance...” (Luke 3:7-8)
John would go on saying:
“The man with two coats should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.” (Luke 3:11)
It is not surprising, then, that in the ancient Church was a shared belief that if a person had excess food in their cupboards and they knew a child was starving to death, and that child did ultimately die of starvation, the person with excess food was guilty of murder.
There was a woman, Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker movement who saw the struggle implicit in the Gospels and the struggle implicit in the book of Revelation and said that if a person has two coats and they see a poor person without a coat, the person with two coats is guilty of stealing.
WHOAAAAHHHH!!!!
Folks, I would love to give you the most inspiring sermon of all-time, but, as Jesus says in the Gospel of Mark, “The time has come...the Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.” (Mark 1:15). There was a woman who once said to me, “Preacher, I didn’t get anything out of your sermon today!” So I nodded to her and thought to myself, “Okay lady, I get it, but maybe the Holy Spirit couldn’t be here to preach the Gospel to you today. You know, maybe the Holy Spirit was busy off in Afghanistan or Darfur provoking the war-makers in those places.”
The good news is that God is looking for you so that he can mess up your life – so that he can turn your world upside down. God is looking to get a stranglehold on your existence, to re-arrange your priorities in this life – to throw your world into chaos and deliver yourself into himself for your full reliance and prosperity.
John, in Revelation, contends that it was Jesus who unveiled this letter to him who was to write it down. And so John writes in the name of Jesus Christ, “Who is, and who was, and who is to come.” The whole premise of the Book of Revelation is that there are empires out there that are looking for your allegiance, but there is only one empire worth dying for and it ain’t Rome’s empire – it’s the Empire of God who has to combat the other beastly Roman Empire. Rome asserts her power through the Pax Romana – Roman peace by the sword. But there’s another Empire whose peace is summoned by a Rider on a White Horse, who has the armies of heaven following him, who has, out of his mouth, a sword to strike down the nations. This rider will rule with an iron sceptre and on his thigh he has this name written:
KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.
Amen
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