Question from Reader-- The Book of Revelation

A New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:1-6) 
Fontaine, Nicholas.  L’histoire du Vieux et du Nouveau Testament.  Paris, 1670.

Dear Father Tony: 

I have heard many “liberal” teachers and Bible commentators say that the Book of Revelation is not about the future, but about things that happened during the author’s lifetime during the Roman Empire.  But one of my favorite passages is the vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:1-6.  That scene is clearly a description of a future event.  So what gives?  Books like “The Late Great Planet Earth” and the “Left Behind” series seem to make the Revelation into a preview of coming events.  Is it or isn’t it about the future?   -- Just Curious  (via e-mail)

JC-- 

A very good question indeed.

As the Revelation says itself, it is about things that will "come to pass soon"  (Rev 1:1).   That doesn't mean soon to us, but soon to the writer. 

Book of Revelation is a good example of Apocalyptic literature, a style of writing in Judaism (and, later, Christianity) common in the Macchabean and Second Temple Jewish periods.  The Greek word apokalypsis means "an uncovering" or a "revealing."  What is uncovered is God's purposes and the final direction for things, not "coming events."

Apocalytpic literature is persecution literature.  It seeks to understand present (to the author) persecution of the righteous and encourage resistance to the persecutors.  It takes the rich, symbolic imagery of late prophetic literature (like Ezekiel) and develops it into a code to communicate with its readers. The authors of Apocalyptic write to encourage their readers to not lose faith, and to keep resisting the oppressors who persecute the faithful, whether the persecutors were Romans under the Emperor Domitian--as in Revelation--or the Greeks under Antiochus Epiphanes—as in Daniel.  They place it all in rich images and code so that the readers can get the message without the censors and secret police of the oppressing power catching on and then torturing and executing the author and readers.  It is thus very much about "current events" as seen by the author.  It looks to the future and uses the rich symbolic language to argue that no matter how bad things get, in the end God and the righteous will triumph and all the suffering will be vindicated.  It is only about the future in the sense of its talking about the ultimate ends of God and the final triumph of Good.  It is NOT a key-word coded guidebook to previews of coming events in the distant future. 

The 666 symbol, for instance, is almost certainly code for Nero and a belief that Domitian was Nero come alive again ("Nero Caesar" in Aramaic at that time has the numerical value 666-- Aramaic and Hebrew, like Latin, gave numerical values to letters of the alphabet.)  Because the imagery of this book is so rich and loaded with emotion, over the centuries people have applied its various images to people and events in their age, always with the idea that God’s ultimate triumph would happen soon.   Many people today do the same thing, and thus believe these books predict in order specific events of our day.  I suspect that they will be shown to be as wrong in their specific prediction of coming events based on this analysis as the people over the ages who have made the same arguments in centuries past. 

But that doesn’t mean these books aren’t valuable.  Whatever the specifics of the final consummation of history that still waits us, we must remember that these books are about hope and perseverance, and the ultimate triumph of God.

Hope this helps.

T+

"My Lord and My God" (Easter 2C CoE)

“My Lord and My God”
Second Sunday of Easter (Year C)
11th April 2010
Homily Delivered St. John’s Cathedral, Hong Kong
8 a.m. Eucharist and 2 p.m. Eucharist
Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 20:19-31

John 20:19-31 ¹⁹On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.  ²¹Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." ²²And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." ²⁴Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. ²⁵So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"   But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."  ²⁶A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" ²⁷Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." ²⁸Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" ²⁹Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."   ³⁰Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. ³¹But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Many “common sense” sayings are just plain wrong.  “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” we say, but does that mean that a person is incapable of change?  Maybe “one bad apple does spoils the whole bunch,” but doesn’t it often happen that a “bad” person can be uplifted and bettered through associating with “good” ones?   And then there’s “the Lord helps those who help themselves,” a statement that seems to affirm a faith in God but actually says God is irrelevant.  

Think of the phrases “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” “It’s just too good to be true!”  What do they say about us?  That we have been so beaten up by life that we simply assume that if something is true, it will be disappointing?  That nothing true can be purely good?

Today is the Second Sunday of Easter.  In the Eastern Church it is called Thomas Sunday. The Gospel reading tells us the story of how St. Thomas came to faith in the risen Lord.   In the West we know him as “Doubting Thomas,” the one who said, "too good to be true!"  But the Eastern Church remembers Thomas for his confession "My Lord and my God," and says he was the first to publicly proclaim the two natures of Christ: human and divine. 

It really is unfair to call Thomas a doubter among the other disciples.  Look at the stories of the resurrection appearances. 
 
Women disciples in Mark’s Gospel see an angel at the tomb announcing that Jesus is not there but has risen, and telling them to report this to the others.  The women run away “trembling with astonishment” and tell no one about it “because they were afraid” (Mark 16:8). 

In Luke, as the women come back, they remember words that Jesus had said to them while he was alive, and this gives them the confidence to announce what the angel has said.  But the apostles take it as “an idle tale,” and they do not believe the women (Luke 24:10-11). 

In Matthew, when Jesus appears to the disciples after their return to Galilee, “they saw him and worshipped him, but some doubted” (Matt. 28:17).

It seems that all the disciples had their own thresholds for when they would stop saying to themselves, “it’s just too good to be true.”   Early on Easter morning in John, Mary Magdalene sees the resurrected Jesus by the tomb, but mistakes him for the gardener.  It is only when Jesus calls her by name that she recognizes him (John 20:25-16).  For her, it takes his voice.

In Luke, early in the evening on Easter Sunday, Jesus appears to two disciples walking  to Emmaus.  For them,  it takes Jesus' breaking bread with them for them to recognize him.   The act triggers memories of Jesus' open table-fellowship, his feeding of the outcast, and the strange Passover meal just days before where he said the bread was his body. 

Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus by Bouveret

When the two disciples arrive back in Jerusalem, they are told that “the Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon” (Luke 24:34).  Apparently for Peter, it was simply seeing the gentle eyes of Jesus—the eyes that had looked on him after his three-time denial—for him to recognize the Lord (cf. Luke 22:61).  

Luke’s story here, like today’s Gospel from John, has the disciples gathered together late evening on Easter Sunday.  Jesus appears to them, but where John says simply that the disciples (absent Thomas) “were glad when they saw the Lord” (John 20:20), Luke tells more:   the disciples cannot believe their eyes, and think that maybe they are seeing a ghost.  Jesus replies, “see my hands and feet, it’s really me; touch me and see, for a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Luke 24:39).  They still “disbelieve from joy” (Luke 24:41).  “Too good to be true!”  It is only when Jesus eats a bit of roast fish that they recognize him (Luke 24:42-43). 

So when Thomas says, “unless I touch the wounds, I won’t believe,” he is no more a doubter than any of the other disciples, or than any of us.  We all have our own thresholds of trusting God, of believing, of having faith.   Mary needs to hear his voice; Peter see his eyes; others his breaking the bread, his eating fish.  

Yet when Jesus comes the next Sunday, Thomas doesn’t need to touch after all.  He takes one look and declares, “My Lord and My God.”   Fr. Raymond Brown says this is the “Christological high point of the Gospel of John.”  And the Gospel of John is the Christological highpoint of the Bible.  No wonder the Eastern Church praises Thomas as a model of faith.   The doctrine of the two natures of Christ would not become clear to the Church for another 200 years.  But Thomas’ confession is at its core:  when you look at the face of Jesus you look upon the face of God; if you have seen Jesus you have seen God.   It is the very fact that Thomas was so skeptical that allows him to make the affirmation.  Thomas knows that in this world, dead men do not walk about alive and well once they’ve died.  So it must be God at work in front of him, though he still recognizes the person he knew as his friend Jesus.  So he must simply confess, “My Lord, My God.”

Earlier in John’s Gospel, when Jesus had told his disciples that in his father’s house there were many dwelling places and he was going there to prepare a place, he had said, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.”  It was Thomas who replied, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”  To this Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you know me, you will know my Father also.  (John 14:1-7)   In today’s story, when Thomas falls to his knees and say, “My  Lord and my God,”  it is clear that he now knows the Father.

Jesus himself praises Thomas for his affirmation, “Happy are you because you have seen and believed.”  And then with no negative comparison implied, he adds, “how much happier those who do not see but still believe.”

Jesus here is talking about us.  We are in the same place as the disciples before they actually see the risen Lord:  we each have our petty thresholds and barriers we set up for faith.  “I won’t believe in God if he doesn’t prevent evil and suffering.” “I can’t believe in God unless I see some miracle or vision.”  “I can’t believe in God unless I understand everything I desire to know.”  But this is just our beaten down hearts talking, afraid to trust because we have been hurt in the past, deceived by those we loved, or disillusioned by the world.  “It is too good to be true.”   This is not a description of the world, but an expression of our pain. 

But that’s exactly what these stories are about.  Jesus taught by word and deed that this whole world is occupied enemy territory.  God’s putting things right, the in-breaking of God’s true kingship, was already set in motion in his person.  But Jesus’ death seemed to prove the foolishness of his teaching.   It was unjust, wrong, and horrible, a perfect proof of just how bad this monstrous world actually was. 

But a full day after his burial, Jesus, more alive than he had ever been before, came back to his friends.  They had no doubt that he had been dead.  And the one before them now was so burningly alive that many of them had problems recognizing him. 

The only way we can learn to recognize Jesus, and see God’s hand in our lives is by listening to these stories again and again and engaging with the one they tell about.  It is important that we care passionately about it, and if this means sometimes expressing our bottom-line thresholds and being labeled as “doubters,” that’s O.K.  God can break down the walls we place around our hearts only if there is something there for him to grab onto.  It is our passion and yearning, for the good, the right, the holy, and the beautiful that provides the traction necessary. 

Let us be more honest in our prayer life, and express our complaints and conditions, so that God might break them down, and give us the great gift of letting us recognize him. 

In the name of God, Amen.