Holding onto the Vision (All Saints Sunday)
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There is a lot of weird stuff in the Book of Revelation! There are dragons and horsemen of the Apocalypse. There are bowls of plagues and lakes of fire. There are cosmic battles between angels and the devil. And there are cryptic analogies to people and places that we often don’t recognize.
Now honestly, many of these images and analogies are weird to us in ways that they wouldn’t have been to the early Christians in Asia Minor to whom this vision was first addressed. When John of Patmos writes about “Babylon”, everyone knew he was referring to the Roman Empire. And when we writes to the church in Pergamum about living where “Satan’s throne is”, they knew exactly the place John was referring to (even though Biblical scholars today spend careers arguing about which of three things “Satan’s throne” might refer to!)
But, even if you were a first century Christian who understood all of these references, it’s still a weird book! And the weird stuff honestly makes it interesting. And it’s why the Book of Revelation has been the source of inspiration for more weird stuff ever since it was written – from bizarre illuminations in medieval Biblical manuscripts to apocalyptic movies in our time.
But usually, we only read the weird stuff in church when we’re in a Bible study. In our Sunday worship lectionary, we mostly read and sing about the images that are NOT supposed to be the weird stuff – like today’s second reading from Revelation 7. Today’s reading is a vision of people praising God around his throne, safe and secure forever from any pain or death or danger. It’s cool, and it’s inspiring, and it’s even quoted in many of our “this is the feast” hymns of praise.
But in its own way, it’s also weird. And it’s weird for this reason: all the crazy, wild, weird apocalyptic stuff hasn’t happened yet. The Lamb has not broken the seals on the scroll; the bowls of plagues haven’t been poured out; the cosmic battles are still coming; and all the weird, scary stuff is yet to come.
And yet here, before it all begins, is the vision of how all this weird, scary stuff ends. In the end, “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation,
from all tribes and peoples and languages” is gathered to God and live in peace and security for eternity. In fact, this comes just after the “sealing” of the 12,000 from each “tribe of Israel” – a section of the book that’s often been misinterpreted as meaning “only 144,000 will be saved, and you probably won’t make the cut!”
But that’s clearly not the case. God’s love and salvation are so far reaching that nobody can count the number of people. And they’re all with God. And they’re all at peace. And this goes on forever.
And what’s weird is that this vision is given in Chapter 7, right at the beginning. You actually don’t need to even read the book! You know how it ends already. The vision is more fully fleshed out at the end in chapters 21 & 22, but you know it now. John of Patmos is already giving people a vision of how it all ends, before they even read the book.
Doing that is also kind of weird. Authors usually keep people on the edge of their seats until the surprise ending. But here, the weird, early vision is important. It’s important because in order to endure what’s coming, the folks reading it need to hold on to the vision of how it all ends. And it doesn’t end in death and destruction and evil. It ends with God winning. That’s actually the entire point of the Book of Revelation – God wins!
And the thing is, the people to whom John wrote didn’t really need to read the book. Their lives were already filled with danger, chaos and evil. They lived with those things everyday. They struggled to get through it. And they perhaps wondered if Jesus had forgotten about them.
And so John shares this vision with them, to give them something to hold onto as they face the danger, the chaos and the evil that will be coming not only in the rest of the book, but in their daily lives as well. And it was through holding onto that vision – which seemed really weird when everything around them seemed to be falling apart – that gave them hope and strength and courage to go on.
Today, we celebrate All Saints Day. And when most of us think about “saints” we think about people of extraordinary faith or courage. We think about famous people in the past, or perhaps even people we’ve know in our own lives who have been remarkably faithful.
But here’s maybe a better definition of a “saint” – a saint is someone who holds onto God’s vision, even and especially when it’s hard because the world seems to be falling apart around them. That’s really the kind of life that the book of Revelation called early Christians to live, and it’s what the Spirit uses the book of Revelation to call us to live as well.
And it’s not easy. And it’s not static. You need to live into – and practice – holding on to that vision of God’s love and promise. And that’s why All Saints Sunday shouldn’t just be about remembering folks long ago who now live in God’s nearer presence, but about us practicing living as saints in our own time and place, especially when our own times and places are also often filled with chaos and danger and evil.
And it seems to me that practicing holding on to the vision is about more than reading about it once in a while in the Bible. Instead, practicing holding onto the vision involves:
- Investing ourselves emotionally in the promise of God, not simply letting ourselves get caught up in the emotions of anger, sadness and outrage – and it’s one of the reasons worshipping together (which also seems weird to many people in our world today) is so important – it helps us emotionally focus on the promise that, in the end, God wins…!
- Focusing ourselves on God’s actions in the midst of evil and chaos – one of the things about the scary, weird stuff in Revelation that even Christians often get wrong is that you’re not supposed to focus on, for instance, “who the anti-Christ is.” You’re supposed to see that God is actively fighting the devil even when you’re in the midst of the battle. The idea is not to look for the weird, cosmic stuff, but to look for the signs of God’s activity in the midst of the battles of life, and to notice when evil doesn’t, in fact, simply get its way…
- Living boldly in the midst of evil and chaos – it’s about intentionally doing good and being signs of God’s presence in the lives of people around us. And we do this not because we think if we try hard enough we can win the battle, but because we can be a sign and foretaste of that time when we’re confident that God wins. And after all, this also one of the reason John is told to write to the early Christians – it’s to encourage them to keep on doing good and living faithfully even and especially in the midst of the evil and chaos that surround them…
All Saints Day isn’t just about the past. And it’s not just about other people. It’s about the continual call of the Holy Spirit in our own lives to live faithfully in the midst of chaos and evil. It’s about the call of the Holy Spirit in our own lives to be signs of the ultimate victory of God by giving people a foretaste of that time right now by what we say and do. And it’s about the call of the Holy Spirit in our own lives to hold on to the vision and the promise – especially in times of chaos and evil and ugliness – that in the end, God wins!
Amen.