Revelation 1:4b-8
Reign of Christ Sunday
Preaching
on this Sunday is challenging. Christ
the King. Reign of Christ. Today is the
culmination of the liturgical calendar, a year modelled on the life of
Christ. It begins with the promise of
his coming, followed by his birth, his life, death, and resurrection,
ascension, the season of Pentecost, which eventually leads us to Christ the
King. But, what does it mean to say that Christ is King today, when kings and
monarchs are a relic of the past? We can
modify the language a little and talk about the Reign of Christ, to get away
from the monarchial, and masculine aspects of Kingship. Still, what does it mean to affirm the reign
of Christ? It can sound so arrogant and
even pompous. You can see why it’s often
overlooked or bypassed, especially in years when Reign of Christ is the Sunday
before Thanksgiving instead of the Sunday after Thanksgiving, like today. Presbyterians are free to use or not use the
liturgical calendar and the accompanying lectionary and are, therefore, free to
focus on this day, or not. Sometimes it’s
easier to celebrate Thanksgiving and sing, “Come, Ye Thank People, Come,” than
focus on the Kingship of Christ and sing (like today),
Crown
him with many crowns,
the
lamb upon his throne,
Hark! how the heavenly anthem drowns
All music but its own:
Awake, my soul, and sing
Of him who died for thee,
And hail him as thy matchless king
Through all eternity.[1]
Talk about kings and crowns and thrones
sounds like we’re lost in a Grimm’s fairy tale.
Liturgically-speaking,
theologically-speaking what this Sunday means for us, though, must be taken
seriously. The theological heft of this Sunday can be seen in today lectionary readings, such as John
18:33-39, where Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you king of the Jews?” (18:33). If you’re king of the Jews, Jesus, then where
are your armies? And then there’s the reading from the opening of John’s
Apocalypse, from Revelation.
When John
received his revelation—his apocalypse—on
the tiny island of Patmos, in the Aegean Sea, he was in exile. Eusebius
(263-339), the fourth-century church historian, records an early Christian
tradition that Emperor Domitian (51-96) banished John to Patmos in AD 95. The Roman historian Tacitus (c.56-c.120) tells
us that there were three small islands (Gyaros, Donoussa, Amorgos), near
Patmos, which were used for political exiles.
Tacitus doesn’t name Patmos, but we know there were islands where people
were banished by the empire, or islands inhabited by people who sought to flee
the empire.
Read the Book of
Revelation very closely and you’ll see Rome everywhere. And you’ll discover that John’s apocalypse is
not really a prophecy for the end of the world, the so-called “end times.” Instead, you’ll see that John is writing a
pastoral letter to followers of Christ who have sold out to the idolatry of the
Roman Empire, he’s writing to encourage Christians to “come out” from the
collective, come out from the empire and stand up for Christ, step away from
the crowd and be faithful to the Lamb, to Christ. John challenges and offends anyone who
supports Roman rule, those who prefer to follow the Anti-Christ, who is none other
than the Roman Emperor himself. Yes, John
was in exile—either he fled there to save his life or he was sent there by Rome. Either way, the Roman Empire is the stage
upon which John’s vision unfolds.
The Book of Revelation
is challenging, to be sure, and there are a lot of wacky interpretations out
there. What we need to remember is that
Revelation is essentially a book of
worship; not a book about worship.
Revelation is a liturgical drama, written in such a way to invite you
into worship, calls you to enter the divine drama, become part of the liturgy, join
in the chorus of praise of the Lamb; it’s something to be experienced, not
analyzed to death.
And, remarkably,
unlike any other text in the New Testament, John intentionally links worship with politics. He believes they
are inseparable. It begins with a
liturgical blessing, “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and
who is to come” (Rev. 1:4b). Within two
verses, John is talking about a “kingdom,” a basileia, a “realm,” or better, “empire,” which belongs to
God. John talks about how we in the
church have been made into a new empire, with “priests” that serve God, and God
alone (Rev. 1:6). Did you hear
this? Worship and power. Religion and politics. Politics and religion converge in acts of
worship, and worship always shapes our allegiance. You see, worship is always a political
act. Worship focuses our attention on
God, and in worship we remember who is God and who isn’t God. Worship is always about allegiance, where we
place our trust and our hope. And one of
the central themes that’s running through Revelation is the question of
allegiance.
So, why was
allegiance relevant to the seven churches in Asia Minor addressed by John? Because the imperial cult, that is, the worship
of Caesar as divine, was widespread and extremely strong in Asia Minor. The Emperor demanded their allegiance; the
emperor demanded their worship and adoration because the emperor was considered
divine; one of his titles was “son of God.” The Emperor expected to be thanked,
relentlessly, excessively, for all the benefits bestowed upon his people, for
all the great things done for his people.
Knowing this, the Book of Revelation becomes a clarion call for
believers to avoid giving ultimate allegiance to any person or power other than
God and the Lamb.[2]
New Testament
scholar Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza suggests that Revelation is asking one
central question: “Who is the true Lord of this world?”[3] Is it the emperors of Rome as the Roman
Empire would want its citizens to believe?
Is the emperor of Rome to be worshipped, as was his desire? Is the true
Lord found in powers and institutions, including the merchants and shipbuilders
of the empire, that support the empire?
The entire book makes the case that Jesus Christ is “Lord and God and
King of the world,” not human emperors or empire-builders. Jesus Christ is “the
faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the
earth” (Rev. 1:4b), as John said. You see,
this is, at the same time, both a theological claim and a political claim—and they
can’t be separated This means that if Christ is the ruler of the rulers of the
earth, then Caesar is not really Caesar.
From the perspective of the powers that be, from the perspective of
Rome, from the perspective of Caesar, such a claim is both heresy and sedition,
and worthy of death.
John wants us to
look at the Lamb. John sees Christ as
the Lamb who has ransomed us from sin. John
is calling for repentance. But the sin
John has in mind is not what we ordinarily consider sin. For John, the most
pernicious sin is the sin of accommodation. “[John] wants those who are
accommodating themselves to cultic practices [of the Roman imperial cult], [the]
social affiliations, economic buy-ins, and demonstrations of political loyalty
that acknowledge, celebrate, and support the lordship of Rome to repent from
such activity. Sin, then, is specifically tied to affiliation with Rome and the
Roman imperial cult and its practices.” The lordship of God and Christ requires
a greater loyalty. This means that following
Christ makes you part of the opposition.
John is essentially calling for nonviolent resistance against the powers
that be.[4]
And John sees
the Churches in Asia Minor as the first line of resistance. He writes to the seven churches—Ephesus,
Smyrna, Pergamon, Thyratira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea—each with its golden
lampstand. (Notice the seven lamps
carved into the apse behind and above the pulpit.) Seven is significant because
it is, for John, the number of completeness.
These seven churches represent the Church as a whole. And, not by
chance, each of these cities had a Roman law court where believers could be
forced to testify about allegations that they were Christ-believers. John is intentionally taking on the imperial
court, which includes the imperial cult, the worship of Caesar as divine. These citied owed their prosperity solely to
the emperor’s beneficence. The
revelation John received forces him to take all of this on. We could say that Revelation is a liturgical
text that amounts to a theological and political manifesto.[5]
God desires the
Church to become a witness against the sins of the empire. Caesar is not the true ruler; God is the true
ruler. The implications of this are obvious, as Brian Blount makes clear: “if
God uses God’s power (Spirit) to contest Roman control of human history, and God also uses God’s power to empower
the churches to whom John is writing, then it must also be the case that John’s
churches will form one of the principal mechanisms through which God will win
the fights against Rome. This Holy Spirit, then, is very much a political Spirit.”[6]
John writes, “Grace
to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.” “Who is, who
was, and who is to come.” There is no other place in the New Testament where
Christ is described this way. There is
no other place where God is described this way.
A threefold formulation was a commonplace way of celebrating a deity’s
eternity and immutability. It was said,
for example, “Zeus was, Zeus is, and Zeus will be.” Athena also claimed this title. Plutarch (45-127) tells of a statue to Athena
containing these words on the base, “I am all that has been, and is, and shall
be.” But John does something subversive here. He refers to Christ as one “who
is, who was, and who is to come.” John hijacks the formulation, and then adds,
is coming, Christ is coming, bringing
the supernatural order to the natural realm. And John messes with the flow of
time; he changes the order. It’s Christ
who is—now—because he was, and is now
coming, for he’s always on the way.
Jesus said to John of Patmos, "I am the
Alpha and the Omega." The beginning and the end. Again, John refers to him as the one, “Who is
and who was and who is to come, the Almighty" (Rev. 1:8). Not one or the
other, but both-and. A text such as this lifts up the cosmic Christ. To call this Cosmic Christ “lord” is to oppose
the empire’s teaching that Caesar is “Lord and Savior.”[7] Christ embraces every aspect of time, and yet
we experience him in time, in our time, in our lives. On this Reign of Christ
Sunday, the culmination of the liturgical year, we remember that, always, we
live in the wide embrace of Christ. He is our beginning and our end, and
everything in between. The Alpha, the Omega, the Almighty.
Christ as “Almighty,”
pantokrator, in Greek, means Christ
is the ruler of the human realm, not the powers that be, not Caesar, not kings
or queens or prime ministers or presidents.
Those who pierced Christ will soon discover that he’s the one who holds
all time in his hands; he’s Lord of everything that occurs through time, in
time. Even the designation “Almighty” becomes a title of resistance, which,
then, makes his “coming” a political claim. His coming means that the present
ruler will have to give way, the present aeon will have to yield to the new
moment breaking into time. The coming of
Christ is always an event destabilizing the present order in order to make way
for the new emerging order. As Caesar
discovered, the birth of Christ meant the end of the old order. He is alpha and
omega, beginning and end. He is our
beginning and our end. Christ says, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev.
21:5). Whenever we encounter Christ who
is always coming toward us, the old order of our lives passes away. God’s new age is always coming and is now;
now and always on the way. You could say that we exist in a perpetual Advent.
The German
theologian Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) concluded his sermon from December 12,
1943, preached in Germany in the middle of the war: “To be a Christian means to
be one who waits for God’s future. Hence
for the Christian perhaps all seasons are essentially an Advent season. For Advent is characterized above all by this
note of expectation…It is intended to remind us sharply of what we so easily
and so often forget, namely, that as Christians we are expectant.”[8]
As we wait and
expect, we need to remember that Jesus is Lord.
Jesus poses a political challenge to every ruler that defies the reign
of God. Who is your “Lord” is always a
political question. In other words, who
has power? Who has ultimate authority in
your life? Who reigns over our decisions
and choices as a church? And as we wrestle with these questions, which can take
a lifetime, we must never underestimate the power of anti-Christ which seeks to
block and hinder his coming. We must never misjudge the power of the force that
seeks to resist God’s reign.
On March 24,
1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero celebrated the Eucharist at the chapel of the Divine
Providence Cancer Hospital in San Salvador.
In the preceding months, Romero had summoned the people of El Salvador
to nonviolent resistance against a repressive military regime. In this sermon, he said, “God’s reign is
already present on our earth in mystery.
When the Lord comes, it will be brought to perfection. That is the hope that inspires
Christians. We know that every effort to
better society, especially when injustice and sin are so ingrained, is an
effort that God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.”[9]
As he finished his homily, a single bullet from an assassin ended his life.
Worship is always
a political act. The gospel, God’s good
news—if it truly is God’s good news—
is always political, because as Mary and Elizabeth and Joseph, the shepherds,
the Magi-Kings, and Simeon and John the Baptist, and everyone came to know, God’s
glad tidings of great joy (Luke 2:10) announce the coming reign of God! Come, Lord Jesus. Come!
Images:
Christ as Alpha and Omega, fresco from the Catacombs of Domitilla, Rome; Christos Pantokrator (12th century) in the Cathedral of Monreal, Sicily.
[1] The hymn “Crown Him with Many Crown” was written by Matthew Bridges (1800-1804) and Godfrey
Thring (1823-1903), in 1851. It’s set to the tune DIADEMETA, composed by George
Job Elvy (1816-1893).
[2] J. Nelson
Kraybill, Apocalypse and Allegiance:
Worship, Politics, and Devotion in the Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids,
MI: Brazos Press, 2010), 33.
[3] Elizabeth
Schüssler Fiorenza, Invitation to the
Book of Revelation (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1981), 72.
[4] Brian K.
Blount, Revelation: A Commentary
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 37
[5] Blount, 34.
[6] Blount, 35.
[7] See Matthew
Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The
Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance (HarperOne,
1988).
[8] Cited in
David W. Congdon, Rudolf Bultmann: A
Companion to His Theology (Cascade Books, 2015), 157. I’m grateful to David
for the rich phrase “perpetual Advent.”
[9] James R.
Brockman, The Church Is All of You: Thoughts
of Archbishop Oscar Romero (Minneapolis: Winston, 1984), 110.
