"Have an Apocalyptic Day." Chapter 22: "Come, Lord Jesus."

 

Photo by Jack Antsley

Well, today is the day. This is the end of a 22-part devotional blog series, which took me six months to complete. The idea of adapting Revelation to poetic verse came almost a year ago, and with an early surge of inspiration, that part has been done for many months now. Some other potential aspects of this project are in the works, but I'm excited to at least see this part finished. Thanks for reading.

Revelation 22 brings healing closure to John's sometimes terrifying vision. A river of life flows from God's throne in the New Jerusalem. A tree of life--much like the tree in the Garden of Eden--yields twelve kinds of fruits, a number of completeness. The tree's leaves are "for the healing of the nations," which means the city is fully open to Gentiles and Jews alike: all who are descended from Adam and Eve are welcome inside, and they don't have to be perfectly "fixed" in every way to enter the gate. If they did, why would there be healing leaves inside? 

The text does say outside the city are all those who "love and practice falsehood." It doesn't say they can never come in. It's just that our lies won't survive in there. Stand at the gate as long as you want, but when you walk in, you step into truth.

The final word from Revelation, and the canonical scriptures, is Jesus' promise, "I am coming soon," and the author's response, "Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!" The early generations of Christianity had every hope that they would see Jesus return in their own lifetime, in the same manner he ascended in Luke ch. 24. He didn't, and hasn't yet, but that hasn't dimmed the hope. 

Still, I wonder sometimes what our faith would look like if the New Testament's first book--the Gospel of Matthew--was placed last in our scriptures. Matthew doesn't feature Jesus' ascension. It ends with Jesus on a mountain, commissioning his disciples to go and make more disciples, and promising, "I am with you, to the end of the age." 

What if the Gospel of John had the last word? John ends with a loving one-on-one conversation between Jesus and Peter. Jesus' final words, after settling one last internal squabble, are, "follow me!" The Gospel ends with the two men sitting by the lake. 

Christian theology at its best has a sense of what theologian Walter Bouman called "already, but not yet." 

We do still proclaim that Jesus will return, in a way that will be unmistakable, and the Reign of God will bring ultimate healing and justice to this world. This is the "not yet," which can't be denied if we acknowledge that God really does want better for this hurting world. 

Yet there is also an "already" to the coming of Christ. When Jesus says at the very beginning of his ministry, "the Kingdom of God is at hand," he means it. In the healing and justice we see here and now, the word of Gospel hope we hear, the sacraments of grace we receive, and the care for the poor they inspire, Jesus is already here. Sitting by a lake, gathering on a mountaintop, prepping food in a kitchen, sitting down to eat with friends and strangers, we can still say, "Amen! Come Lord Jesus!" and trust... 

that he will...

and that he did...

and that he is, right here and now. 

My poetic interpretation of REVELATION 22   

22. Forth from the throne, a living river flows

On either side, grows Eden's Living Tree;

The raging nations, healing now will know 

From its twelve fruits, producing constantly.

The servants of the Lamb shall see his face

To worship and to reign beside the throne;

But no accursed thing is in that place,

But those for whom the Lamb's own blood atoned.

I, Brother John, have heard and seen each thing,

Commanded not to seal this worthy tome,

“The time is near; I, Jesus, witness bring,”

The Spirit, bride, and all who thirst, say, “Come.”

Come, Lord Jesus! Though we know not when,

Bring freedom! Grace be with the saints–Amen. 

 

"Have An Apocalyptic Day." Chapter 21: The Kind of Earth You Won't Want to Fly Away From

 

The Gospel is, was, and always will be: 

Heaven Comes Down.

Once more for the people in the back: 

Heaven Comes Down.

A third time, before we get another rapture prediction:

Heaven. Comes. Down.

In the penultimate chapter of Revelation, after the final judgment comes a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and earth have passed away. 

There's a voice saying: "God lives here now." 

A new Jerusalem comes down, and there's no Temple in it, because why would you need a special, holy place when the whole land--every blade of grass, every grasshopper, every microbe in every drop of water in every river, and every person drinking it--is already holy? 

Why would you sing, "I'll Fly Away" when that kind of earth is coming?

Why would you fantasize about all the tribulation and torture your friends and neighbors will endure while you hop a cloud and take off for some celestial realm,

when the words of Holy scripture are so clear and so final in saying,

Heaven

Comes

Down?

Why would you waste your thirty seconds on a Sunday morning, or ever, praying as your Lord taught you, "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven," if you don't believe it will actually happen, or believe that our world needs yet more calamity and destruction in order to make it so?

The plan was always for heaven to come down.

That's what happened in Bethlehem.

That's what the angels on the mountainside promised would happen again.

Don't let false teachers lead you astray with doomsday scenarios pieced together with a patchwork of out-of-context verses about how to escape this world. 

If Jesus chose to live here, you better believe none of us is too good for it.

It's right here in the Book of Revelation.

Heaven comes down. 

My Poetic Interpretation of REVELATION 21 

21. New heaven, new Earth, new Jerusalem,

Prepared, as bride for husband, now descends;

This mortal people, God shall dwell with them,

Of mourning, tears, and death to make an end.

“Behold, for I am making all things new!

Drink now my living water, gift sublime;

Inscribe my words, the trustworthy and true,

I, Alpha and Omega, hold all time.” 

Of gold and jewels, the city stands Foursquare,

No lamps: the Lamb himself will be their light;

Twelve gates, with twelve apostles’ names, are there,

By day they open, and there is no night.

No need to climb; God comes to you and me,

Oh, taste the living water and be free. 

  

"Have An Apocalyptic Day" Chapter 20: Judgment and Grace

 

Following the return of Christ, John sees an angel imprison Satan for a thousand years. During that time, those who were beheaded for their witness to Jesus are raised to reign with him. At the end of this time, Satan rises once again to deceive humankind. Vast armies of evil surround the saints, but they are instantly defeated by fire from heaven. Some commentators note that Satan does not fight in this war: he is merely the deceiver who tricks a human army into rising against God. At length, Satan is thrown into a lake of fire, and all who have died are raised to face judgment for their deeds. Anyone whose name is not written in the Book of Life is thrown into the lake of fire. 

As a Lutheran Christian, my first instinct is to break out in hives at any mention of judgment according to our "works" or "deeds." I'm a grace person. My core conviction is that salvation is an unmerited gift of grace, through Christ. I believe, to the extent the New Testament speaks cohesively about anything, it speaks to God's grace. We are accepted by God, not because of what we do, but because of what Jesus has already done for us. 

That said, I do believe in the judgment, because I believe in truth. I believe grace and forgiveness are meaningless unless we first understand what the charges were in the first place. We need to know and fully understand what happened: the choices we made, what we did and didn't do, say, or think. Most importantly, we need to know how our choices affected others. Judgment is not my life flashing before my eyes, so much, but my life shown to me through the eyes of others. Beyond my good or ill intentions, judgment is knowing what really happened because of me, and how it felt. Bullies feel the pain and fear of their victims. Liars feel the violation of those they deceive. Gunmen and careless lawmakers learn what it's like to hide under school desks. Tyrants feel the terror of those they imprison. Generals and rulers feel the crush of rubble in buildings they bomb, and the hunger pangs of children they starve. Judgment is telling the truth in a way we never could or would before. 

But Judgment and sentencing are two different things. Judgment is knowing what we have earned for ourselves, which is death. Sentencing is up to God, and in Christ, God has promised mercy. We earn death, we get life. 

I can't accept a heaven that operates on simple amnesia: where joy comes from forgetting, where this life was ultimately a pointless side quest. God promises to wipe tears from our eyes. That means, at first, there will be tears to dry. There will be truth. There will be judgment. And then, there will be grace. 

My poetic interpretation of REVELATION 20

20. A thousand years, the serpent’s locked away,

A thousand years the faithful dead shall reign;

With Christ, the priests, until the Judgment Day,

For them, the second death shall hold no pain.

Unleashed at length is evil’s second wave,

As numerous as sand upon the sea;

Yet fire from heaven brings a fiery grave,

The Devil in the lake of fire shall be.

The great white throne two holy books unveils,

The Book of Works, beside the Book of Life;

The dead are judged, and Death and Hades fail,

The pit itself–flung in the pit of strife!

By God’s grace, in the Book of Life are we:

By faith alone, from death, are we set free.

"Have An Apocalyptic Day." Chapter 19: One Little Word Subdues Him

 

With the fall of Babylon (Which, again, stands for Rome and all other oppressive empires) comes the final battle between good and evil. For as much as it's built up, both in religious culture and in the Book of Revelation itself, the actual battle is a short affair: a single rider descends from heaven on a white horse. His robe and thigh are marked with the words, "King of Kings and Lord of Lords," which suggests this is a vision of Christ himself. From his mouth comes a sword to strike down the Beast and all the kings of the earth who oppose God. 

And in three verses (Rev 19:19-21) it's all over. The beast is captured and his armies are defeated. All are destroyed by the sword of the rider. 

Two things I think are essential for understanding this vision are: 

    1) The rider--i.e., Jesus--does all the fighting. Every force of evil that stands against God are dispatched quickly and easily, not by any human force, but by Jesus, the Word of God.

    2) The "sword" Jesus uses to defeat evil comes "from his mouth." It's so strange, with as literalistic as so much church art and interpretation can be, that so many depictions of this scene (and there are lots) show Jesus with a sword in his hand, held high in a traditional "battle pose", where the actual text says the sword comes "from his mouth." I realize it would look strange (and the pictures that do take it literally are VERY strange), but the intent seems clear: The sword comes from his mouth because it isn't a literal sword. It's the Word of God. It's Jesus' teachings. It's the Good News, that he has already defeated death and evil. 

It's remarkable how universal it is that little kids (myself included) will find sticks outside and immediately imagine themselves as master swordsmen in a duel. It's not just the "Star Wars" generation, although we did get cool sound effects to add to our imaginary battles. But here, near the end of the final book of the Bible, we get a reminder that the most important "weapon" we'll ever have is telling the truth and sharing Jesus' teachings of love, inclusion, justice, reconciliation, and peace. That's the sword that wins the fight. 

To quote Martin Luther's classic hymn, 

"Though hordes of devils fill the land

all threatening to devour us

we tremble not; unmoved we stand

they cannot overpow'r us.

Let this world's tyrant rage;

in battle we'll engage!

His might is doomed to fail; God's judgment must prevail

One little word subdues him."

My Poetic interpretation of REVELATION 19 

19. Praise, salvation, glory, pow’r, to God,

Of hell's great whore, his judgments true and just;

At length, he has avenged his servants’ blood,

God's people, to the Lamb, as bride entrust. 

From heaven's white horse comes a rider true,

His eyes aflame, his new name, none has heard;

Behind, in white, rides heaven's retinue,

With King of Kings and Lord of Lords, God's Word!

“Come, gather, carrion birds from West and East,”

Beckons an angel, standing in the sun,

“Your meal shall be the armies of the beast,”

From rider's mouth, a sword, Truth, overcomes!

Yet only God's, the sword and victory,

The bride, God's peaceful people, shall be free.

"Have An Apocalyptic Day." Chapter 18: Easy Come, Easy Go

 

No sooner does John's vision introduce the "Whore of Babylon" (a personification of Rome), than the fall of Babylon begins. The imagery of foul spirits, birds, and beasts roving the streets makes clear that this city, symbolic of all empires, has become a ghost town. In an hour's time, all the wealth is gone. 

John sees kings, merchants, shipmasters and seafarers weeping over the fallen city. But in this truth-telling vision, even their grief is twisted: they are crying about their lost wealth. They are sad about their nice building materials, their spices, their cattle, and even the human lives they have enslaved. 

A reminder: slavery was the norm, rather than the exception, in human history, and that the New Testament emerged from a culture in which slavery of various forms was commonplace. Even so, John's list of lost possessions in Revelation 18, "choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves--and human lives", to me seems to mock and expose that very institution. To mourn human lives as another bullet point on an insurance claim of lost goods, is to lose our own humanity, and our connection to God. 

We should mourn people, not things. We should love people, not things. If we get it upside down, then John's vision implores us: leave Babylon. Do it now. 

My poetic interpretation of REVELATION 18 

Another angel now patrols her streets

With spotlight and loudspeaker does he wail:

“From fallen Babylon, all folk, retreat!

She mixes twice in her unholy grail!”

In one swift hour, down Babylon is hurled

The merchants and her kings, faroff, survive;

“Such costly silks and linens, gold and pearls!”

They weep for wealth, but not for human lives.

The captains and shipmasters mourn for jewels,

For iron, marble, humans they enslaved;

The lamp is snuffed, and henceforth, darkness rules;

No flute nor trump, from silence, shall be saved.

Rejoice at this, O Heaven’s Progeny!

Let those who value lives, for praise be free. 

"Have An Apocalyptic Day." Chapter 17: Wining and Dining with Tyrants

 

CW: Violent imagery 

Revelation Chapter 17 introduces another memorable character in John's vision: the "whore of Babylon." She is seated "on seven mountains" (The city of Rome is said to have been built on seven hills), she wears purple cloth (a symbol of royalty), and her wine has caused people of the earth to become drunk. John says that she herself is drunk on the blood of witnesses to Jesus. Again, though John could be killed for saying so directly, he clearly means the "whore" to be understood as Rome. 

It is an appalling image, and it represents an equally appalling reality. By the time Revelation was written, Rome had begun a persecution of Christians that is the stuff of nightmares. Tacitus, a writer in the first century who was not even Christian himself, attests to Christians being dressed in animal skins and fed to hungry dogs, or covered in tar and placed on crosses to be lit on fire. 

I worry I'm engaging in a bit of "what-aboutism" as I point out these atrocities to explain this "whore of Babylon" imagery.  That's not my intent. Yes, Rome did some very bad things. But the fact remains: this "whore of Babylon" characterization draws on sexist tropes, reinforcing the message that the worst kind of sin any woman could commit is to sell her body. There are many worse things that women--or men--can do in this world. 

If you find this image too troubling, I say turn the page. Move on. It is one metaphor for understanding evil and oppression, but there are plenty more in the Bible. You can understand the Gospel without this.  It is possible to have a robust and Gospel-centered Christian faith, and not refer to Revelation 17 even once. Yet, for some who are traumatized by Imperial violence, perhaps this may be the strong medicine needed, bitter though it may be.  

John's bottom line is that God wills Rome to fall, and that it will be a good day for God's creation when it does. Like all Empires, it has seduced too many people with dreams of power, garnering their loyalty and even worship, yet only delivered suffering and death in the end. God wills an end to them all. 

My poetic interpretation of   REVELATION 17

17. A woman sits, in gold and purple clad

Upon the beast, with kings’ intoxications;

Too many, from her cup, great gulps have had,

Great Babylon’s whore, of earth’s abominations.

The beast’s own seven heads are seven hills,

The one who was, is not, and is to come;

Destruction shall he find, as our God wills

For tyrant after tyrant, as with Rome.

The woman is a city, ruling all,

While multitudes and nations hold her up;

Yet naked to the fire she soon will fall

Deposed by those who lately drank her cup.

God’s chosen, to the Lamb, still faithful be,

The steadfast, through temptations, will be free.

"Have An Apocalyptic Day" Excursus II: The Faithful Witness of Magdala

 

Revelation Chapter 17 introduces another extreme image: the "whore of Babylon," which we will learn is the personification of Rome, and the seductive power of all human empires. While it is a striking and memorable image, presented without any context, it can support ideas about women's roles in society that have been unhelpful in the past, and continue to be unhelpful today. 

Too often women who do not conform to a given society's view of faithfulness are cast aside as "whores." There is no name you can call a man, no matter unfaithful he has been, that cuts quite as deep. So, rather than dive right in with Revelation's image of unfaithfulness personified in a female form, I would like to first set a counterexample, also from the New Testament: Mary Magdalene, the "apostle to the apostles." 

Though Mary herself was maligned by a medieval Pope with an overactive imagination, what we know from the New Testament is that Mary was freed from seven demons by Jesus' healing, that she followed Jesus along with his disciples and provided for them from her own financial resources, and that she was the first of his followers to see him after his resurrection. 

Mary Magdalene also stands out in the Bible as being one of only a few women not defined by her relationship to a man. Contrary to modern theories that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife, we hear nothing of the sort from the New Testament. Mary Magdalene is not known as a wife of a husband or mother to a son, but as a disciple among disciples, and a witness among witnesses. In fact, some describe her as "apostle to the apostles," for Mary was the first to proclaim that Jesus is risen from the dead. 

My poetic Excursus on MARY MAGDALENE

Excursus II: The Faithful Witness of Magdala

A village, on the shores of Galilee,

Where seven unclean spirits claim one soul,

In Magdala, one woman is set free;

Dear Mary, by her Savior, is made whole.

Disciple, patron, witness, with the twelve,

She follows Jesus and proclaims God’s Reign;

Supporting with the food from her own shelves;

Three women’s generosity, Christ’s gain.

Returning to the tomb, when all is lost,

From gardener to rabbi, with one word

“Mary!” cries he who just was on the cross; 

She preaches early, “I have seen the Lord!”

She, for that moment, the whole Church must be,

By whose strong witness all in Christ are free.